The Hill News

The Global Language Monitor and its predecessors have been keeping track of the manner in which the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 have changed the way Americans Talk.  We have updated our findings several times, as the language has evolved with the ensuing events of the decade, most tragic (Iraq, 7/7, Afghanistan, the Global Economic Restructuring), others seemingly beyond surreal  (the Southeast Asian Tsunami, the inundation of New Orleans), a welcome few comforting.

We have found subtle yet profound differences in our everyday speech since that day terrorist attacks unfolded on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The changes we have tracked include the way Americans speak in terms of vernacular, word choice, and tone.
 
9/11
The first case is the use of 9/11, itself, as shorthand for the 2001 terrorist attacks.  Using various web metrics, 9/11 outpaces any other name, including the spelled out "September 11th", by a 7:1 marg! in. This designation, in itself, is quite interesting. It is true that Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the Pearl Harbor attack as “December 7th, 1941 as a day which will live in infamy”, but there were no “12/7″ rallying cries thereafter. Neither were the dates immortalized of the original battles of the Korean War, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident which preceded the major escalation of the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, or the invasion of Iraq.

Only the 7/7 attacks on the London transportation system are recorded in common memory by their date (and primarily in the UK). 

Read more...