Language and Gender in the Military: Honorifics, Narrative, and I ...

So, given the social diversity of military recruits and trainees, one could argue that any group of military members is hardly a homogeneous enough population for linguistic study. However, veterans and military members, no matter what their sex, age, or income, are linked to one another through their acquisition and practice of the military’s cultural norms and language ideologies—norms and ideologies acquired during various forms of military training and experience.

Using theories of intertextuality, we may begin to explain the linguistic linkages among veterans. While this is not the primary framework for my analysis, given that I examine intersections of language, gender, and the military, intertextuality is, at this point, a helpful tool in considering the origins and perpetuation of military discourse. The concept of intertextuality may also help us understand the impact of military service on American culture.

Critical discourse analyst Norman Fairclough explores the concept of intertextuality, pointing out that the term “intertextuality” was introduced by Julia Kristeva in her response to Western interpretations of the work of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. As Kristeva herself states, “Any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another” (37). “Intertextuality,” then, refers to the shaping of texts and utterances by prior texts and utterances; and, for the American military—even the Air Force, as the youngest of the services—the “absorption and transformation” of common text dates at least to 1775 and to the formation of the American military. Anthropologist and linguist Alton Becker, in response to his studies of the Burmese language, incorporated the concept of “prior text” in the process he calls “languaging.” “Languaging both shapes and is shaped by context,” states Becker; “Languaging is shaping old texts into new contexts” (9). Far from esoteric, the notions of prior text and intertextuality are key conditions of all military training and operations. Military members are trained, for example, through classroom discourse, “hands-on” instruction, and by written texts such as technical orders, operating instructions, and checklists. When military members engage in the actions assigned to them, it is as a result of years of dialogic and intertextual formation of their own understanding of their duties, obligations, interactions, and practices.