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Words That Kill : Reflections on the Rhetoric of Genocide

Bryant, Michael Scott
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1391602111

Abstract Details

1996, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, History.
The thesis comprises two essays which explore the impact of the "linguistic turn" upon the analysis of ideological elements in historical texts. The first essay analyzes such features with reference to a method based upon a critical conception of ideology, that is, one having as its object the use of language for the production and maintenance of asymmetrical relations of power. The method derives from the work of two scholars, the historian Hayden White and the Critical Discourse analyst Norman Fairclough. A theory of ideology critique is advocated which differs from the traditional Marxist conception of ideology as the distortion of an empirical truth. In opposition to the traditional view, a linguistic theory is proposed that treats ideology as a process of meaning production mediated by language, through which the discourse serving the interests of a particular group or class is portrayed as both natural and common-sensical. To render more concrete this theory of ideology critique, the theory is applied to an actual text from the Third Reich, a memorandum composed by Adolf Hitler's personal physician, Dr. Theo Morell. The essay demonstrates how the very articulation of the Morell text both creates and sustains vicious patterns of domination, and how the text may have interacted with its socio-historical context to produce the Holocaust. In the second essay, the significance of context in the interpretation of historical texts is further examined, but chiefly as a constraint on the process of such interpretation. The second essay emphasizes the limitations of a purely semiotic approach to texts when applied to historical documents. The theory of textual constraints developed in the second essay consists of two parts. The first, textual coherence, is drawn from the work of the linguists Umberto Eco and M.A.K. Halliday, and emphasizes the need for every reader to respect the "intention" of the text prior to interpretation. The second part, the intertextual context, shares with Norman Fairclough an emphasis on locating a text within a historical chain of earlier and contemporaneous texts. This two-pronged theory of constraints on "unlimited semiosis" self-consciously opposes the efforts of Revisionist historians to deny the reality of the Holocaust on the basis of postmodern ideas of textual indeterminacy. At the same time, the theory defended in the second essay strives to avoid canonical interpretations by opening a historical text to multiple readings, so long as such readings respect that text's "intention."
Alan Beyerchen (Advisor)
Michael Berkowitz (Committee Member)
Peter Hahn (Committee Member)
85 p.
History

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Bryant, M. S. (1996). Words That Kill : Reflections on the Rhetoric of Genocide [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1391602111

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Bryant, Michael. Words That Kill : Reflections on the Rhetoric of Genocide. 1996. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1391602111.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Bryant, Michael. "Words That Kill : Reflections on the Rhetoric of Genocide." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 1996. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1391602111

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1391602111
347
© 1996, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.