Weapon of Ms Destruction: The Subversive Role of Linguistic Creativity
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The article provides a contextualized analysis of a front page from the British daily newspaper Daily Mirror, which categorizes a British government minister as a ‘weapon of Ms destruction’. This ad hoc formation – based on word play – is one of many productive modifications of the phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that appeared in 2003 at the time of the impending war in Iraq. The lexical creativity that underlies such modification is interpreted as an instance of word play that has a subversive potential to undermine the official government propaganda. It is shown that the modified phrase fits into the newspaper’s consistent anti-war stance and encapsulates its critical view of the official pro-war policy that was based on the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction. |