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Paper short abstract:

This paper is centred around the notion of ‘wooden phrases’, a term I borrow from Merridale’s book 'Ivan’s War' (2005). ‘Ivan’ – as the ordinary Russian soldier was called – was surrounded by formulaic nonsense. This linguistic predicament is far from unique and reverberates across other wars.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is centred around the notion of ‘wooden phrases’, a term I borrow from Merridale’s book 'Ivan’s War'. This comprehensive history of the Red Army’s rank and file is based on ethnographic work with veterans of the Great Patriotric War. Other data emerged from previously closed military and secret police archives, and the private letters and diaries of soldiers. At the Eastern front, men and women of the Red Army, an underfed and ragtag mass of soldiers, confronted Hitler’s advancing troops. Relentless shelling, marching, terror, and sleeplessness brought many to a breaking point. ‘Ivan’ – as the ordinary Russian soldier was called – was surrounded by formulaic nonsense, ‘wooden phrases’. This linguistic predicament is far from unique and reverberates across other wars. An anthropology of the language of warfare is well-placed to engage in a comparative dialogue about other conflicts including the current Russo-Ukrainian war. This paper unpicks such linguistic realities step by step. A distinction is made between wooden phrases and propaganda, whilst ethnographic material is presented to document unfettered formulaic speech. The formulaic has long been studied as a form of self-evidence that can be judged instantly, based on intuition, guts knowledge. Here snippets of self-evidence are scattered in an impoverished linguistic landscape, far from centres of ritual and political authority. Such an excess of wooden phrases has consequences. I rely on the work of Bakhtin and Polanyi to portray a loss of our ‘sense of language’, and the ‘impressions’ wooden phrases make as people endure war.