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來源于《圖書與藝術》版塊
Johnson
約翰遜語言專欄
Toil and trouble
沐雨櫛風
Emotive language takes on the legalistic kind in the impeachment battle
在彈劾戰中，情緒化的語言呈現出一種墨守成規的風格
“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!“這可能是唐納德·特朗普總統描述彈劾程序的最喜歡的方式，但這遠遠不是他唯一的花式貶損。“一場政變，”他在10月抗議道。他的辯護人插話，稱這個過程是“星際室”、“作秀審判”、“蘇聯式”和“馬戲團”。還有一個極端煽動性的比較：特朗普說他是“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.
彈劾既是一個法律程序，也是一個政治程序，它必然涉及兩種語言斗爭，一種是修辭上的，另一種是法律上的，兩者同時進行，相互重疊。特朗普和他的盟友專注于這一修辭任務，制造了一連串情緒激動的形象和對比，目的是讓他的支持者相信這個過程是不公平的。只要共和黨參議員堅守陣地，特朗普最終就會被判無罪。
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.
從民意調查來看，這種努力是成功的，即使一些隱喻性的華麗辭藻不合時宜。有些人似乎搞不清到底是誰在進行政治迫害：在萬圣節前夕，共和黨人出售將民主黨領導人描繪成女巫的t恤。與此同時，真正的政變是用坦克占領總統府，而不是在冗長的國會聽證會上提供專家證詞。私刑是一個令人不快的類比，也是一個不恰當的類比；對美國黑人的謀殺，通常是出于想象中的越軌行為，與試圖通過憲法批準的方式罷免世界上最有權勢的人幾乎沒有什么共同之處。
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