121 Language: A Powerful Weapon of Mass Deception • 1. Introduction Najib Ismail Jar ad Political Language is "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." Geoq .:c Onvell (1990: 121) Language is at the heart of human life. It is, and has always been , the means by which we construct and analyse what we call 'reality'. It conditions us to believe that the way we think is the only way to think. To call something a "war" catalyzes human emotions. It creates a willingness to use force in the service of what appears to be an indisputable objective - the desire to overcome one's enemy. It creates a sense of battle - of hope for victory for one side and hope for defeat for the other. It conveys a sense of strength behind the willingness to use force. It rallies a country around its common identity as a people, thereby engendering patriotism and the willingnE"ss to tight and/or make sacrifice for one's country. It creates a picture of a common enemy that must be stood up to. To call something a "war" mobilizes national sentiment behind a common objective, justifies the use of military power as the means to achieve this objective, amplifies w·hatever existing resentment, prejudice, or hatred that may exist toward the people or peoples one is waging war against, and through its call to patriotism, moves people to make personal sacrifice for the greater good. ' An earlier \crsion of this article was presented at the Departmental Research Seminar. Faculty of Foreign Languages & Translation, AUST Network, Abu Dhabi (October 2003). I would like to thank the audience for their comments and suggestions. I am particu larly grateful to Hass: 1n Mustapha, Tharwat El Sakran, Shawqi Bahumaid, and an anonymous reviewer for reading an d commenting on this article. Al l remaining errors and shortcomings of this article are my own. ELLS Vol. Ill No. II Dec. 200-1 English Language & Literature Studies, Vol. V, No. II, December 2004