Military terminology
Encyclopedia : M : MI : MIL : Military terminology
Military terminology refers to the terms and language of military organizations and personnel as belonging to a discrete category, as distinguishable by their usage in military doctrine, as they serve to depoliticise, dehumanise, or otherwise abstract discussion about its operations from an actual description thereof.
Similar to "legal terminology" and related to "political terminology", military terms are known for an oblique tendency to incorporate technical language and self-censorship in discussing military matters. Separate from jargon, which can be more frank, terminology is largely of the officer class, and generally refers to military actions at a generalised level. Distinct from law, the unsophisticated usage by military personnel at substantively different levels in the chain of command, serves largely to obfuscate the actual meaning or intent of discussion in transparent relativistic euphemisms or arcane jargon.
As military operations require some degree of secrecy ex-ante, those within military culture have been trained to consider many aspects of its operations as subject to secrecy ex-post. Given the chain of command and its implication of personnel controls, the usage of military terms likewise serves to mask the limited freedom of action of personnel at all degrees of rank. Hence, the term "military terminology", as with "legalese", has itself become a kind of humourous euphemism for a system of deliberate obfuscation, whose central purpose appears largely to give the appearance of greater practical value, intellegent sophistication, or ethical consideration than are in fact allowed by its chain of command. An important aspect of nationalist security and diplomacy, military terms allow officers to adequately describe military science without directly causing embarrassment to the Commander in Chief and other senior political officers.
Euphemism
- Warfare
- Military intelligence
- Military operation
- * Covert operation, Counter-terrorism, Counter-insurgency, Pacification, Drain the swamp/water,
- Enemy - wide or situationalist usage
- * Terrorist, Insurgent, High-value target
- Civilian - relativistic term for persons not holding official military affiliation.
- * Casualties, Bystanders, Collateral damage,
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