Saturday, 10 April 2004

Sometimes we create a new word because the old words aren't descriptive enough. "Blog" is one example; it's what linguists call a portmanteau, a word formed by combining two existing words. Web plus log becomes blog, just as smoke plus fog becomes smog or binary digit becomes bit. We coined a new word for blogging because the older words didn't fit: "Log" doesn't capture the element of two-way communication, and "web" means a lot of different things.

Sometimes we create a new word because the old words are a little too descriptive. "Ethnic cleansing" sounds like something you'd do during spring cleaning: Scrub the bathroom, mop the kitchen floor, kill that Muslim family down the block, do the laundry.... It sounds so much more pleasant than that nasty older term — "mass murder" — and it gives the casual reader a lot less information about what's really happening.

"Fisking" is a new word coined in the blogosphere. It replaces the older term ad hominem (Latin for "to the man"), and describes a debate where, instead of discussing an idea, one attacks the person who raised the idea. The name originated from an incident in Afghanistan involving one Robert Fisk, an anti-war journalist from the UK, who was attacked and beaten up by Afghan refugees and then commented that, if he had been through the same ordeals as they had, he'd probably want to beat up some Westerners too. The warbloggers lifted up this incident as a prime example of the "blame America first" (or "blame the West first") mentality, and began using Fisk's name as a verb.

Fisking implies that the opposing argument is so stupid and repugnant that the opponent deserves an actual, physical beating, and not just the metaphorical slap that the blogger righteously delivers. It usually involves a writing style where the blogger makes a point-by-point rebuttal of the original article, quoting each paragraph and following it with snide comments addressed personally to the original author. The tone is as sarcastic and condescending as humanly possible; the purpose is not to engage the other person's ideas, but to portray the person as an idiot who is only deserving of ridicule.

Now, changing the name of something doesn't change what it is—ad hominem is still the lazy man's approach to argument, and says that you fear having a real discussion—but from the way the warbloggers rejoice after each new Fisking, you'd think they had discovered a revolutionary new technique for converting the masses. At best a "good Fisking" can be entertaining, in a Jerry Springer-y puncture-the-windbag-with-a-chair sort of way... but most people who try their hand at Fisking end up sounding just as smug and pretentious as the ones they're mocking. (Of course, most people who feel their words are so important that they should be broadcast to the entire online world, and go through the trouble of setting up their own blog just to do so... well, we're pretty opinionated folks to begin with.)

I also find it odd that the people who decry the term "chickenhawk," or who claim to value straight-shooting plain-talking speech and clear meaning, are willing to use the word "Fisking" to describe an ad hominem attack. Next they'll make up a word to describe the actions of the Senate when it exercises its Constitutional authority to reject an ultraconservative judicial nominee. Oh, wait. We did that already.

Update: Found an even better link for "chickenhawk" today, so I used it instead.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 2:29 pm. comments.