The semantic confusing connotation of terrorism : terminologies generated in arabic and used in english

incl. ref.

For political and military considerations, English has become an international language used in all aspects of life: the language of advanced science, the internet, and business communication. Both English and Arabic are two of the official languages used in the United Nations for meetings, discussions, negotiation and documentation. The above mentioned fields might be free of culture and religion because the language of science, for instance, is direct and the action is the most important element of meaning which is more important than the doer. Obviously, the same thing is applicable on the language of business or stock markets in London, New York and Dubai. But when it comes to the language of politics and mass media which processes politics, the linguistic situation becomes different due to the excessive use of cultural and religious metaphors and religious terminologies deep-rooted in most classical and modern languages like Arabic which is the language of the holy Koran followed by one billion and half people. This number is expected to rise sharply due to the high birth rate in the Muslim World as this is recommended by Islamic teachings. This means that Arabic will increasingly spoken by a large number of people worldwide. The misinterpretation of certain Arabic, political and religious terminologies results in communicative problems for politicians and journalists who could be native speakers of Arabic or English. For the purpose of investigating this communicative problem, we collected data from 10 journalists who were Arab, British and American. They were chosen randomly and asked about the terrorism connotations of frequently used Arabic terms in mass media like: islamist, martyr, strugglers, Jihad: holy war, sacrifice, Martyr operation, guerillas, etc. Those religious, political and conceptually loaded words were described, classified and codified as the most terrorism words and the most problematic words for western journalists and/or politicians. The study has revealed that they are so because they seem to represent a linguistic interface and a big aggressive concept as seen by western journalists. On top of that, they are loaded with culturally bound connotations, images and signals. On the contrary, the Arab journalists did not see these words in the way of their western colleagues did.