Museums and exhibits that present `history' offer largely visual versions of collective narratives to a broad audience. Yet language can play a critical role in these versions of the past and, like the histories themselves, the language can become controversial. For example, the title of an exhibit on the Japanese-American internment in World War II-`America's Concentration Camps' - was disturbing to American Jews who associated `concentration camps' with their experience in the Holocaust. This article shows how linguists can assist in resolving such controversies: after becoming familiar with what actually happened to those involved in the controversy, they can offer discourse analyses (a) of the conflictual language itself; (b) of its resolution (in this case, a footnote on the brochure accompanying the exhibit); and (c) of the role of referring terms in collective narratives and public memorial.
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