Military terminology
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Military terminology refers to the terms and language of military organizations and personnel as belonging to a discrete category, as distinguishable by their usage in military doctrine, as they serve to depoliticise, dehumanise, or otherwise abstract discussion about its operations from an actual description thereof.
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[edit] Common understanding
The operational pressure for uniform understanding has developed since the early 20th century with the importance of joint operations between different services (army, navy, air force) of the same country. International alliances and operations, including peacekeeping[1], have added additional complexity. For example, the NATO alliance now maintains a large dictionary[2] of common terms for use by member countries. Development work is also taking place[3] between NATO and Russia on common terminology for extended air defence, in English, French and Russian.
[edit] Public relations
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Some military terms serve to depoliticise, dehumanise, or otherwise abstract discussion about operations from an actual description thereof.
Similar to "legal terminology" and related to "political terminology", military terms are known for an oblique tendency to incorporate technical language and self-censorship in discussing military matters. Separate from jargon, which can be more frank, terminology is largely of the officer class, and generally refers to military actions at a generalised level. Distinct from law, the unsophisticated usage by military personnel at substantively different levels in the chain of command, serves largely to obfuscate the actual meaning or intent of discussion in transparent relativistic euphemisms or arcane jargon.
As military operations require some degree of secrecy ex-ante, those within military culture have been trained to consider many aspects of its operations as subject to secrecy ex-post. Given the chain of command and its implication of personnel controls, the usage of military terms likewise serves to mask the limited freedom of action of personnel at all degrees of rank. Hence, the term "military terminology", as with "legalese", has itself become a kind of humorous euphemism for a system of deliberate obfuscation, whose central purpose appears largely to give the appearance of greater practical value, intelligent sophistication, or ethical consideration than are in fact allowed by its chain of command. An important aspect of nationalist security and diplomacy, military terms allow officers to adequately describe military science without directly causing embarrassment to the Commander in Chief and other senior political officers.
[edit] Euphemism
- Warfare
- Military intelligence
- Military operation
- Covert operation, Counter-terrorism, Counter-insurgency, Pacification, Drain the swamp/water,
- Extra-judicial law
- People
- Enemy - wide or situationalist usage
- Civilian - relativistic term for persons not holding official military affiliation.
- Casualties, Bystanders, Collateral damage,
[edit] Notes
- ^ Colonel Andrei Demurenko and Professor Alexander Nikitin, Basic Terminology and Concepts in International Peacekeeping Operations: An Analytical Review (translated Robert R. Love) in Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement, Volume 6, Summer 1997, Frank Cass, London accessed at Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, US [1] July 28, 2006
- ^ DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms accessed on Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), US website, July 28, 2006
- ^ Robert Bell, Ballistic Missile Threats:A NATO-Russia Strategic Challenge in Krasnaya Zvezda, Feb 23, 2003 accessed at NATO on-line Library [2] July 28, 2006
