Sustaining or overcoming distance in representations of U.S. drone strikes

Abstract

This article examines how U.S. news reports sustain or overcome distance between domestic audiences and the victims of U.S. drone strikes overseas. More specifically, we explain how language is used to construe distance in two different news stories about the same drone strike, enacting different political and affective relationships between Americans and the Pakistani victims of U.S. war. Drawing on theories of cognitive linguistics, we analyze how distance is negotiated in three overlapping areas of conceptualization: specificity, time, and narrative perspective. We show how lexical and grammatical choices can make victims of drone strikes appear remote, indistinct, and uninteresting – or indeed how they can make victims and their suffering appear close, clear, and dramatic. Simultaneously, we show that minimalist reporting on distant suffering is not natural or inevitable. Despite the obstacles they face, it is possible for journalists to convey what actually happens to the distant victims of U.S. violence.