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Books & arts
来源于《图书与艺术》版块
Johnson
约翰逊语言专栏
Toil and trouble
沐雨栉风
Emotive language takes on the legalistic kind in the impeachment battle
在弹劾战中，情绪化的语言呈现出一种墨守成规的风格
“Witch hunt!” may be President Donald Trump’s favourite way to describe the impeachment proceedings, but that is far from his only colourful disparagement. “A COUP,” he protested in October. His defenders have chipped in, calling the process a “Star Chamber”, a “show-trial”, “Soviet-style” and a “circus”. Then there is the ultimate inflammatory comparison: Mr Trump says he is the victim of a “lynching”.
“政治迫害!“这可能是唐纳德·特朗普总统描述弹劾程序的最喜欢的方式，但这远远不是他唯一的花式贬损。“一场政变，”他在10月抗议道。他的辩护人插话，称这个过程是“星际室”、“作秀审判”、“苏联式”和“马戏团”。还有一个极端煽动性的比较：特朗普说他是“私刑”的受害者。
Impeachment is a political process as much as a legal one—and it duly involves two linguistic struggles, one rhetorical and the other legalistic, waged simultaneously and overlapping. Mr Trump and his allies have concentrated on the rhetorical task, generating a stream of emotionally charged images and comparisons designed to convince his supporters that the process is unfair—the better to keep their representatives in line. So long as Republican senators hold their ranks, Mr Trump will ultimately be acquitted.
弹劾既是一个法律程序，也是一个政治程序，它必然涉及两种语言斗争，一种是修辞上的，另一种是法律上的，两者同时进行，相互重叠。特朗普和他的盟友专注于这一修辞任务，制造了一连串情绪激动的形象和对比，目的是让他的支持者相信这个过程是不公平的。只要共和党参议员坚守阵地，特朗普最终就会被判无罪。
To judge from opinion polls, this effort is succeeding, even if some of the metaphorical flourishes are in poor taste. Some people seem to be confused about who does the chasing in a witch-hunt: at Halloween Republicans sold t-shirts depicting Democratic leaders as witches. Actual coups, meanwhile, involve the telegenic seizure of the presidential palace with tanks, not expert testimony in plodding congressional hearings. Lynching is an offensive analogy as well as an inapposite one; the murder of black Americans, often for imaginary transgressions, has little in common with the attempted removal of the world’s most powerful man by constitutionally sanctioned means.
从民意调查来看，这种努力是成功的，即使一些隐喻性的华丽辞藻不合时宜。有些人似乎搞不清到底是谁在进行政治迫害：在万圣节前夕，共和党人出售将民主党领导人描绘成女巫的t恤。与此同时，真正的政变是用坦克占领总统府，而不是在冗长的国会听证会上提供专家证词。私刑是一个令人不快的类比，也是一个不恰当的类比；对美国黑人的谋杀，通常是出于想象中的越轨行为，与试图通过宪法批准的方式罢免世界上最有权势的人几乎没有什么共同之处。
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