Anyone who has trained with me in the last few years has heard me talk about what I call \u201ccombat semantics.\u201d Smart debaters know that many words in our language have multiple shades of meaning, and they\u2019ll often try to tell people that one of those words meant \u201cB\u201d when you used it, when in fact you really meant \u201cA\u201d. We saw this in more ways than one in the Zimmerman case.
\n
\nAt a bail hearing in April of 2012, George Zimmerman told the family of the deceased Trayvon Martin that he was \u201csorry.\u201d The next morning, newspapers all over the country ran headlines like \u201cKiller Apologizes.\u201d<\/p>\n
We all speak English here. You apologize for having done something wrong. When you say \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d in any number of contexts, such as this one, you\u2019re probably trying to convey, \u201cI\u2019m sad for your loss, and I feel compassion for you, and I wish this bad thing had never happened.\u201d But another connotation of \u201csorry\u201d is \u201cI apologize,\u201d and \u201capologize\u201d in turn carries the connotation of guilt. At the risk of clich\u00e9, \u201cSelf-defense is never having to say you\u2019re sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another example \u2013 already discussed earlier in this blog series, in one of the commentary sections \u2013 is \u201cpursue\u201d versus \u201cfollow.\u201d It is clear from the evidence that for a brief period of time, Zimmerman followed Martin \u2013 indeed, he answered \u201cYeah\u201d when the dispatcher asked him if he was following the other person. Those who wanted to pillory Zimmerman turned that into an imperfect synonym: \u201cHe pursued him!\u201d<\/p>\n
To \u201cpursue\u201d carries the connotation of intent to seize and control. A police pursuit is intended to end with the laying on of hands which takes the pursued into custody. Pursuit of wild game implies the intent to turn the animal into a carcass that will be butchered and devoured. Even \u201cpursuit of happiness\u201d implies that when you succeed, you will possess that happiness. There is absolutely nothing in evidence to indicate that Zimmerman ever did, or even ever intended to, lay hands on Martin and take control of him. But this simple choice of words \u2013 by those who indeed did \u201cpursue\u201d Zimmerman in their way \u2013 helped to convince much of a nation that Zimmerman\u2019s actions were not what the evidence now shows them to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cCombat semantics\u201d is a debater\u2019s game. Trial lawyers, if you think about it, are debaters playing for much higher stakes than the high school Debate Society.<\/p>\n
And clearly, many of those who were out to hang Zimmerman were, uh, master debaters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anyone who has trained with me in the last few years has heard me talk about what I call \u201ccombat semantics.\u201d Smart debaters know that many words in our language have multiple shades of meaning, and they\u2019ll often try to tell people that one of those words meant \u201cB\u201d when you used it, when in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-firearm-owners-civil-rights","8":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}