by Samual Seward

Created on: February 25, 2009

Why do we always argue when we have discussions? Why does everything create a war of words when we attempt to have dialogue? The Argument of Culture: Stopping America's War of Words, by Deborah Tannen has the answer. She explains that there are many factors that contribute or create this culture in which we have been centered. Most factors that contribute to this are metaphors, the war stance, and journalistic media. These create a culture where a war of words is how we communicate between people. There is no happy medium but just sides, almost always two, in which each person attempts to "win" the battle in order to show how false the other person's ideas truly are. Tannen uses the Holocaust to explain how the war of words creates misconceptions.

Her main ideas of this argument are rooted in the first amendment and the media. When two people begin to argue a point such as the Holocaust there is a definite split of ideals. If one person explains that the Holocaust did happen there is always someone that refutes it. If our society creates debates as wars then to make it interesting there must be another side to every question. That is how the anti of the truth is created. Some crazy fool who believes, against historical data, that something did in fact not happen is brought up to dispute the latter. In order to stir interest and debate.

The first amendment is an important idea in her explanation. She uses the first amendment as an explanation of how people force their ideas upon people hiding under the first amendment. People are allowed to express their opinions no matter how ridiculous it seems. This allows disputers to spread their even if it is mostly a falsehood. She uses an example of a newspaper article expressing the ideas that the Holocaust possibly did not happen. The explanation of the editor was that the freedom of expression and speech reach above the truth. Both sides must be heard no matter how foolish the latter seems.

The evidence she uses mostly relies on a fellow writer, Deborah Lipstadt, who wrote a book attempting to dispel the anti-holocaust believers. Hannen uses Lipstadt as a source for this whole section. I can understand why she would use her. She wrote a very significant book on the matter and uses what she wrote as a very significant source. Hannen was able to even use Lipstadt's personal experiences in order to prove her point.

When Lipstadt was invited on a television show she rightly refused due to the fact that she did not want

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