Can words kill? You might think that the obvious answer is that words don’t kill—people do! And, people don’t even kill with words, they kill with bombs and guns.

但是，是否有某种意义上的语言可以像枪或炸弹一样致命呢?我不是在打比方。我们都承认言语会伤人或冒犯。但我想问的是，它们真的能杀人吗?

Consider how the words that the Nazis used to torment their Jewish victims, or the words the Hutu used on the Tutsi. They did more than merely incite violence against those targeted. Their words were instruments of violence. In the mouths of genocidal killers and their henchmen, words can be every bit as deadly as a machete.

Now, obviously words can’t literally suffocate or cut a throat. They don’t kill throughphysicalforce. But they do kill throughrepresentationalforce. Think about the way the Nazi genocide unfolded. They started with latent anti-Semitism, then their propaganda transformed Jews from fellow citizens to subhuman vermin. Of course, the genocide took more than words. If they had stopped at words, they wouldn’t have been genocidal killers. But 1930s Germany was a loaded gun. Using those words was pulling the trigger of a loaded gun. So using propaganda in that context was committing genocide.

You might disagree and claim that representations can’t be acts of genocide all on their own. Until somebody movesbeyondrepresentation and acts—until they wield the machete or turn the knob—they haven’t committed genocide. But recall those Hutu journalists in Rwanda who engaged in hate radio. They were found guilty ofactualgenocide—not just of aiding and abetting those who wielded the machetes. Why? Because the International Tribunal for Rwanda recognized something really important: you don’t have to wield a machete to be a killer. In the right context, it’s enough torepresentsomeone else as a subhuman cockroach. In one case you’re perpetrating physical violence. But in the other you’re perpetrating representational violence.

Does violence have to be physical in order to be genuine violence? Is representational violence real violence, or just metaphorical violence? If you ask the victims of this demeaning, degrading, dehumanizing language, you’ll get one answer. It’s very real violence. But not everyone will agree, not because they deny how dangerous that kind of language can be—it certainly hurts and offends, it poisons politics, and it gives people license to do all manner of horrible things to one another. But if you accept that much, then why deny that representational violence is a real thing?

The question we started with was whether words can kill. If I haven’t managed to convince you of this possibility, that language can literally kill, let me make one more point. This distinction between metaphorical killing and literal killing seems to depend on a distinction that you might think is unproblematic, that between words and action. But according to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s picture of language games, that distinction is not so clear. What gives a word its meaning is not a fact given in isolation—it is deeply bound up with the way we act, with our “forms of life.” What gives the word “chair” its meaning, for example, is that we interact with the things we call “chairs” in specific way, by sitting on them. If a “chair” was something we never sat on, it would not mean what our current word “chair” means. How we interact with the object is part of its meaning. Sitting on something we call a "chair" is a final move in the game.

你可能想知道这与种族灭绝和杀人的语言有什么关系。所以，把种族灭绝行为想象成一场复杂的语言游戏的最后一步。这款游戏从非人性化的表现开始。这些表象塑造了知觉和思想，然后这些知觉和思想在谋杀中达到顶峰。所以当胡图族人把图西族人称为“蟑螂”时，蟑螂是一种令人恶心的生物，应该被消灭，他们是在用文字在语言游戏中授权这种行为。他们说图西族人是一种恶心的生物应该被消灭，他们就这么做了。这就是言语杀人的原因。