• DOI:10.1177/0957926501012004005
• Corpus ID: 144215421

Language and Public Memorial: `America's Concentration Camps'

@article{Schiffrin2001LanguageAP,
  title={Language and Public Memorial: `America's Concentration Camps'},
  author={Deborah Schiffrin},
  journal={Discourse \& Society},
  year={2001},
  volume={12},
  pages={505 - 534}
}

• D. Schiffrin
• Published 1 July 2001
• Sociology
• Discourse & Society

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.