This article explores the phenomenon of military naming, that is, the act of giving a name to military practices such as military operations, weaponry, and military units. The basic theoretical supposition is that military naming is a simple and useful mechanism that might be employed to blur undesired aspects—such as the human and economical costs—associated with the respective practices. Inspired by John B. Thompson’s ‘‘strategies of operation of ideology,’’ the research uses the construct of strategies of annihilative naming to analyze a corpus of 239 Israeli names of military operations and weaponry. By using names coming from nature and the Bible, the Israeli military uses three strategies—naturalization, euphemization, and legitimation—that mediate Israeli public opinion toward controversial military operations as well as weaponry development. Future research of other military names will support the construction of generalizations about this important phenomenon.
Solomon J. Fisher, ‘‘Speaking of No One: the Logical Status of Fictional Proper Names,’’Names33 (1985): 152.
3.
Pierre Bourdieu, On Television (New York: New Press , 1998).
4.
Gaye Tuchman, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Hearth and Home: Images of Women in the Mass Media, ed. Gaye Tuchman, Arlene Kaplan Daniels, and James Benet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 8.
5.
John B.Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture ( Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990).
6.
This is undoubtedly true if we consider not only the ‘‘quantitative’’ aspect but also the ‘‘qualitative’’ aspect of these wars: Israel was under an immediate existential threat during three wars (1948, 1967 and 1973).
7.
Defense News, December 4, 2006.
8.
Lebel points to the crucial political salience of defense affairs in Israel and argues, like many others, that ‘‘defense policy is the key component determining the way citizens vote.’’ See Udi Lebel, ‘‘Civil Society versus Military Sovereignty: Cultural, Political and Operational Aspects,’’Armed Forces & Society34 (2007): 71.
9.
Interestingly enough, in Israel’s civil arena, the Hebrew term operation means sale. It appears that some civil connotations of terminology have penetrated the military lexicon. This phenomenon deserves a separate study.
10.
In Hebrew, the difference between a battle and an operation is apparently not very clear. For the sake of this research, I use operation in the same way as it appears in the historiography of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) rather than in any precise analytical sense.
11.
Later known as the First Lebanon War and the Second Lebanon War. See Dalia Gavriely-Nuri, ‘‘The ‘Metaphorical Annihilation’ of the Second Lebanon War (2006) from the Israeli Political Discourse,’’ Discourse & Society 19, 1 (2008): 5-20. Also see Piki Ish-Shalom, ‘‘Defining by Naming: The Logic of Politicality and the Second Lebanon War’’ (paper, Arguing Global Governance workshop, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, June 21, 2008).
12.
See, e.g., Alon Peled, ‘‘The Politics of Language in Multiethnic Militaries: The Case of Oriental Jews in the Israel Defense Forces, 1950-1959,’’Armed Forces & Society26 (2000): 587-605; Darlene M. Iskra, ‘‘Attitudes toward Expanding Roles for Navy Women at Sea: Results of a Content Analysis,’’Armed Forces & Society33 (2007): 203-23.
13.
See, e.g., Bahaa-eddin M. Mazid, ‘‘Presuppositions and Strategic Functions in Bush’s 20/9/ 2001 Speech,’’Journal of Language and Politics6, 3 (2007): 351-75.
14.
Federica Ferrari , ‘‘Metaphor at Work in the Analysis of Political Discourse: Investigating a ‘Preventive War’ Persuasion Strategy,’’Discourse & Society18, 5 (2007): 603-25.
15.
Gavreily-Nuri, ‘‘‘Metaphorical Annihilation.’’’
16.
Mohammed Albakry , ‘‘U.S. ‘Friendly Fire’ Bombing of Canadian Troops: Analysis of the Investigative Reports,’’Critical Inquiry in Language Studies1, 3 (2004): 163-78.
17.
See Efrat Silber, ‘‘Initiated Killing-The Israeli Case,’’ (forthcoming).
18.
For more about critical discourse analysis relating to military and defense discourse, see Christina Shaffner and Anita L. Wenden, eds., Language and Peace (Aldershot, UK: Dart-mouth, 1995); Paul Chilton, Security Metaphors ( New York: Peter Lang, 1996).
19.
Teun A. van Dijk, ‘‘Discourse and Manipulation,’’Discourse & Society17, 3 (2006): 359-83.
20.
For a complimentary discussion about the discursive aspects of the military’s influence on the civil decision makers, see Kobi (Jacob) Michael.‘‘The Dilemma Behind the Classical Dilemma of Civil-Military Relations-The ‘Discourse Space’ Model and the Israeli Case during the Oslo Process,’’Armed Forces & Society33, 4 (2007): 518-546.
21.
Some studies are especially relevant here. See Lorraine Bayard de Volo, ‘‘Mobilizing Mothers for War: Cross-national Framing Strategies in Nicaragua’s Contra War,’’ Gender & Society 18, 6 (2004): 715-34; Robert D. Benford, ‘‘Frame Disputes within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement,’’ Social Forces 71, 3 (1993): 677-701. Also see Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, ‘‘Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,’’ Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 611-39; David A. Snow, E. Burke Rochford, Jr., Steven K. Worden, and Robert D. Benford, ‘‘Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation,’’ American Sociological Review 51, 4 (1986): 464-81; Paul M. Hirsch, ‘‘The Discourse of Globalization: Framing and Sense-making of an Emerging Concept,’’ American Sociological Review 70, 1 (2005): 29-52.
22.
William A. Gamson and Hanna Herzog, ‘‘Living with Contradictions: The Taken-for-granted in Israeli Political Discourse,’’Political Psychology20, 2 (1999): 247-266. Also see William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani, ‘‘Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach,’’American Journal of Sociology95, 1 (1989): 1-37.
23.
Robert M. Entman, Projections of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 28. Also see Ervin Goffman, Frame Analysis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974 ).
24.
See, e.g., Dennis Chong and James N. Druckman, ‘‘A Theory of Framing and Opinion Formation in Competitive Elite Environments,’’Journal of Communication57, 1 (2007): 99-118.
25.
Jill A. Edy and Patrick C. Meirick, ‘‘Wanted, Dead or Alive: Media Frames, Frame Adoption and Support for the War in Afghanistan,’’Journal of Communication57, 1 (2007): 119-41; Adam J. Berinsky and Donald R. Kinder, ‘‘Making Sense of Issues through Media Frames: Understanding the Kosovo Crisis,’’Journal of Politics68, 3 (2006): 640-56.
26.
More precisely, Entman distinguishes between two classes of framing: substantive and procedural. The mentioned functions belong to the first category.
27.
Entman, Projections of Power, 5.
28.
Tuchman, ‘‘Introduction,’’ 8.
29.
Dalia Gavriely-Nuri and Tiki Balas, ‘‘‘Annihilating Framing’: How Israeli Television Framed Wounded Soldiers during the Second Lebanon War (2006),’’Journalism (forthcoming).
30.
Gavreily-Nuri, ‘‘‘Metaphorical Annihilation.’’’
31.
Also see Dalia Gavriely-Nuri, ‘‘Friendly Fire-War-normalizing Metaphors in the Israeli Discourse,’’ (forthcoming).
32.
In another article, I thoroughly analyze the concept of war-normalizing metaphors. See Gavriely-Nuri, ‘‘Friendly Fire.’’
33.
John Murphy, ‘‘How to Name a New Product,’’ Marketing (September 1978): 100; also see Mary W. Sullivan, ‘‘How Brand Names Affect the Demand for Twin Automobiles,’’ Journal of Marketing Research 35, 2 (May 1998): 154-65; Barry Render and Thomas S. O’Connor, ‘‘The Influence of Price, Store Name, and Brand Name on Perception of Product Quality,’’ Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 4, 4 (1976): 722-30; Dan Horsky and Patrick Swyngedouw, ‘‘Does It Pay to Change Your Company’s Name? A Stock Market Perspective,’’ Marketing Science 6, 4 (1987): 320-35; Michael J. Cooper, Orlin Dimitrov, and P. Raghavendra Rau, ‘‘A Rose.com by Any Other Name,’’ Journal of Finance 56, 6 (2001): 2371-88; Leonard L. Berry, Edwin F. Lefkowith, and Terry Clark, ‘‘In Services, What’s in a Name?’’ Harvard Business Review 66, 5 (1988): 28.
34.
Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture, 7.
35.
Ibid., 23.
36.
Ibid., 66.
37.
Ibid., 62.
38.
For patterns of euphemization of war, see Ross Chambers, ‘‘The War of the Words: The Rhetoric of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ (An Informal Survey),’’ Culture, Theory and Critique 44, 2 (2003): 171-81. Images and representations of ‘‘pretty wars’’ are widespread in Israeli culture; see Dalia Gavriely-Nuri, ‘‘The Beautiful War-Representations of War in Israeli Culture 1967-73’’ [in Hebrew and English], Tarbut Demokratit 11 (2007): 51-76.
39.
Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture, 61. I use legitimation here as a comprehensive strategy, including rationalization and justification.
40.
A list of Israeli operations is available at a Wikipedia Web site (Hebrew version): ‘‘Mivtza’ei Tzva Hagana Le’Israel’’ (IDF military operations) . The list, though incomplete, does include the names of the majority of military operations. A list of Israeli weaponry is also available at a Wikipedia Web site (Hebrew version): ‘‘Emtza’ei Halechima shel Tzahal’’ (IDF weaponry). This Web site includes some subcategories. From among the full list of weaponry, the current research focuses on aircraft, navy vessels, artillery, tanks, light weaponry, rockets, and missiles. To confirm the validity of the Wikipedia Web site, I compared it with the official Web site of the IDF spokesman and various Israeli military units, encyclopedias, and lexicons pertaining to the IDF. The non-Hebrew reader can use the English Wikipedia list of Israeli operations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_ operations. This list includes most of the Israeli operations that appear in the Israeli database.
41.
For the purpose of this research, semantic fields is simply defined as ‘‘an area of meaning which can be delimited from others in a language,’’ such as food, clothing, or emotions. See http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/sesll/englang/lilt/semanfield.htm .
42.
Tamar Sovran , Investigations in Conceptual Semantics-Semantic Fields and the Anatomy of Abstract Concepts [in Hebrew] ( Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2000), 34. Also see Tamar Sovran, ‘‘Between Similarity and Sameness,’’Journal of Pragmatics18, 4 (1992): 329-44.
43.
Eitan Avneyon, ed., Word for Word-Thesaurus of the Hebrew Language [in Hebrew] ( Tel Aviv: Eitav, 2000).
44.
Avraham Arazi , And These Are the Names of the Sons of Israel [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Lesharshim , 1982).
45.
Indeed, the significance of Puma, like that of most military names, is at least partly culture dependent. While for Israelis the Puma is a beautiful, quick, and elegant animal, in other cultures the puma is first and foremost a predator.
46.
Mivtza Sheleg is an abbreviation of Mivtza Shlom Hagalil (Operation Peace of the Galilee), another name for the First Lebanon War.
47.
The Israeli government eventually concluded it could not independently finance the completion of the aircraft’s development, especially after being pressured by the U.S. government to cancel a project that would compete with American weaponry exports.
48.
Anita Shapira, The Bible and Israeli Identity (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005).
49.
The operation was depicted in Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005).
50.
Genesis 9:13-15.
51.
See note 41.
52.
Amit Pinchevski and Efraim Torgovnik, ‘‘Signifying Passages: The Signs of Change in Israeli Street Names,’’Media, Culture & Society24 ( 2002): 365-88; Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
53.
Maoz Azaryahu, ‘‘The Power of Commemorative Street Names,’’ Environment and Planning: Society and Space 14 (1996): 311-30; also see Maoz Azaryahu, ‘‘German Reunification and the Politics of Street Names: The Case of East Berlin,’’ Political Geography 16, 6 (1997): 479-93; Yoram Bar-Gal, ‘‘Names for Tel Aviv’s Streets: A Chapter in Urban Cultural History (1909-1933)’’ [in Hebrew], Cathedra 47 (1987): 118-31; Yoram Bar-Gal, ‘‘Cultural-Geographical Aspects of Street Names in the Towns of Israel,’’ Names 37, 4 (1989): 329-43.
54.
Azaryahu, ‘‘The Power of Commemorative Street Names,’’ 327.
55.
Pinchevski and Torgovnik, ‘‘Signifying Passages,’’ 365.
56.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq.
57.
The code name for the operation to deploy a force and prepare for possible combat operations in Iraq.
58.
Liora Sion , ‘‘‘Too Sweet and Innocent for War’: Dutch Peacekeepers and the Use of Violence,’’Armed Forces & Society32, 3 (2006): 454-74.
