RECOMENDACIONES PARA EL EXPORTADOR ESPAÑOL

For a final example I return to the ‘special operations’ discourse of war, using the computer war game Delta Force® – Black Hawk Down®. This game was released in March 2003 by NovaLogic, not long after Ridley Scott’s film of the same title. Its setting is the American intervention in Somalia in 1993. It uses actual documentary footage as an introduction to the game, and also features a list of the American soldiers who died in Mogadishu. At the time of writing, May 2003, it has already sold half a million copies worldwide. The company that produced it specializes in ‘special operations’ titles such as the Delta Force series, and has a subsidiary (NovaLogic Systems) which works in the area of military simulation, collaborating with the US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command Analysis Center on the high profile Land Warrior System, a system which allows training in reconnaissance, the use of advanced electronic satellite communications and location equipment. The company also has links with Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems, producing flight simulations for its military aircraft. There is thus a link between war games and real wars, both in the game itself, and in the activities of the company which has produced it.

I will compare the scenarios of a section of the documentary introduction and a ‘mission briefing’ from the game. Here is a transcript of part of the documentary introduction:

1 CS Aidid addressing crowd. Super title: 5 June 1993

Voice over:

Mohamed Farrah Aidid, militia leader of the Habr Gadir clan orders an attack …

2 VLS High angle. Somali people running for cover. Zoom in

… on a UN relief shipment, killing …

3 MLS Masked militia man with gun sitting atop a pile of bags of rice

… 24 Pakistani soldiers 4 MS Militia man swivelling rocket launcher

around

5 LS Militia man with gun … continued Habr Gadir threat …

6 MLS Militia man with rifle mounted on pickup truck

… task force rangers … 7 MLS Militia man on pickup truck with rifle … enter Mogadishu … 8 MS Militia man on pickup truck … with the sole purpose of

capturing Aidid 9 VLS Black Hawk helicopters flying over

desert. Super title: 26 August 1993

(music) 10 MLS Two US soldiers about to crash in

door

(music) 11 LS Two US soldiers crouched on street,

signalling to each other

(music) 12 MLS sideview group of soldiers aiming

rifles

(music) 13 MLS Two US soldiers lying down with guns

aimed

Voice over:

This force is comprised … 14 MLS Two US soldiers moving forward … of US Army Rangers and … 15 LS US soldiers crossing road and moving

towards building

… operators from the First Special Forces …

16a LS Humvee driving towards camera. Camera tilts up to

… operational Detachment Delta, an elite fighting unit also known as …

16b LS Black Hawk helicopter overhead … Delta Force

And here is the mission briefing. It appears over an image of a Black Hawk heli- copter with a soldier pointing his gun downwards.

Mission 1 Bandit’s crossing

Date: 27 February 1993 – 1930 hours Location: Jubba Valley

Situation:

UN forces are attempting to distribute food and provisions to local civilians. Intel reports that Habr Gadir militia may be planning to raid the distribution centres and take the supplies for their clan’s use. You must prevent any militia unit from taking food shipments. Secure the village and ensure that enemy reinforcements cannot reach the UN convoy.

The two segments are not identical, yet they draw on the same discourse. In both cases the UN provides relief supplies, is then attacked by the militia, after which Delta Force sets things right. But the discourse allows for some options. The goal of the mission may either be capturing the demonic anti-hero – the despotic warlord, the demonic terrorist leader, the ruthless tyrant – as in the documentary introduc- tion, or providing protection for the food relief agency, as in the game. The opera- tion itself, although provoked in both cases, may either be punitive, as in the documentary introduction, or preventative, as in the mission briefing from the game, where the militia only plans to attack. Such differences may relate to the fact that different media are used. To market a game in which the users are invited to kill a real person, rather than anonymous shadowy enemies, may be crossing a line that should not be crossed, even if that person is a demonic anti-hero. At other times, however, both options may be part of the same discourse, the punitive as well as the preventative option, for instance, and the motive of removing the threatening anti- hero, as well as the motive of protecting innocent and weak civilians, or defenceless relief agencies. All these options were much in evidence in the press and TV coverage of one and the same real war, the Iraq war which started more or less at the same time as the release of Black Hawk Down.

Actual instantiations of a discourse, such as those mapped in figures 5.7 and 5.8 draw only on part of the knowledge, the whole body of statements that has gradually accrued over the last 18 years to create the ‘special operations’ discourse of war. The full picture of the discourse would only emerge if we studied more texts and mapped the resulting scenarios on top of each other, using flowchart type bifurcations where two possibilities exist – for example, ‘preventative’ or ‘punitive’. The examples I have given hopefully provide just enough detail to show that investigating a discourse is like

actor militia militia Delta Force action attacks kills attacks recipient UN relief forces UN relief forces (24 Pakistani soldiers) militia time 5 June 1993 (ditto) 26 August 1993 resource rocket launchers rifles on pickup trucks (ditto) helicopters humvees guns place Mogadishu (ditto) Mogadishu purpose to take supplies (ditto) to capture Aidid

Figure 5.7 ‘Special operations’ scenario (documentary introduction, Black Hawk Down)

an archaeological dig which may seem to yield only fragments – statements and clus- ters of statements – but will, if you keep digging, eventually allow you to put the whole vase back together again.

Exercises

1 Think of a subject about which you know very little – in my case this would for instance be ‘rhinoceroses’ or ‘Bogota’. Write down what you know about it in the form of a ‘scenario’. Find someone else who also knows very little about this subject and ask him or her to tell you what s/he knows. How similar is his/her scenario to yours? Where does this scenario come from? Why does it contain the particular ‘statements’ it contains?

2 Take a short verbal text that represents a ‘tourist discourse’ about a village or town, for instance a description – and evaluation – of that village or town from a tourist guide. Now design two different kinds of illustrated ‘texts’ based on that discourse, for instance a board game and a web page for children.

3 Find some quotes from different contexts that ascribe different purposes to what is essentially the same activity – for example, advertising, waging a particular war? What is at stake for the writers or speakers in choosing the purposes they have chosen?

actor action recipient time place resource

UN forces

provide relief supplies

local population 27 February 1993 Jubba valley

Delta Force

attacks militia (ditto) M16/203s

M9 Berettas At4 Anti-Tank rockets (ditto) purpose militia plan to attack

UN forces (ditto) w/ .50 calibre

mounted weapons (ditto) to take supplies Delta Force

prevents militia’s plans (ditto) (ditto)

Delta Force

secures village (ditto) (ditto)

4 Collect a series of short texts – they do not have to be written texts – on a practice of your choice. This could be, for instance, a brief description of an arrest by the police in (a) a news report, (b) a crime novel and (c) a television series; or an account of a first sexual experience in (a) a magazine advice column, (b) a novel and (c) the lyrics of a song. Or anything else across a similar range of texts. Use the terminology introduced in this chapter to analyse what is included and excluded in each case and why.

5 Collect two series of about six photographs representing more or less the same subject matter – for instance, Africa; the countryside – one of them casting a nega- tive and the other a positive light on the subject. What means are used to do so? Note

Some of the material in this chapter appeared earlier in Swedish (Selander and Van Leeuwen, 1999). The material on discourses of war draws on research by D. Machin and T. van Leeuwen in the project Language and Global Communication, which is sponsored by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust to the Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University.