British Petroleum? Or "Anything-but-American" Petroleum?

Last week in AIS we talked about diction.  We discussed how a person’s word choice could really change the listener’s perception.  We looked at a textbook article and analyzed some of the points made.  Although all of the statements may have been historically true, the word choice most likely would have changed the way the reader viewed the event.

Five months ago, in the wake of oil spill, Obama referred to BP as British Petroleum.  Whether he meant it intentionally or if it just slipped out, his word choice seemed to blame England.  Not only did he call the company a name that it no longer goes by, but also he clearly stated it was a British company, led many to believe that he wanted to show that it was not an American company that caused such a huge disaster.

David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the UK, confronted Obama about this “name-calling”.  James Kirkiup, the author of this article, wrote the following:  “The president has promised American voters that he will make BP pay for its ‘recklessness’ over the Deepwater Horizon disaster, whose impact he has compared to that of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US… The White House has also evoked BP's British origins, calling the company ‘British Petroleum’, a name it no longer uses.”  Kirkup portrays the common idea many people thought after hearing the president make a point of saying British Petroleum: that is, that Obama was making a big deal of stating that it was by, in no means, an American company. 

I am not saying Obama’s intentions were to stress that it was a British company, no not at all.  The point is that Obama’s word choice (or perhaps word slip) allowed people to draw these conclusions.  Diction can truly change a person’s perspective on an event, especially if he or she was not there to experience the event, but is merely reading about it.  Just as the author of the textbook article we read in class did, diction can paint a completely different picture while keeping the history accurate.