"Traitor" and "Treason" In Abundance

 Vahe H. Apelian

 

More than fifty years have come and gone by since I started my Freshman classes in  the American University of Beirut. Surely much has changed in the curriculum. It was rather simple in my days when the students studied arts and sciences for the first two years.  That is how I ended up taking a course in psychology 101 and another course in sociology 101. The number 101 had also become a metaphor for being a beginner or a novice.

Two important social phenomena have stayed etched in my memory from my sociology class. One is the strange phenomenon of Stockholm Syndrome, of which I have written recalling my maternal grandmother’s favorable recollection of the Turkish gendarmes that accompanied their caravan from Kessab on route to their resettlement that never came. 

The other was the influence of language on social norms and perceptions.

The aftermath of the second world war brought much change in the deeply conservative and tradition bound Japanese society. Sociologists wanted to study the post war perceived social change. Two sets of questionnaires were prepared, one in Japanese and the other in English and were administered to two groups of Japanese college students who we were statistically similar in age and in gender. The outcome of the study indicated that the group of the students who had the test administered to them in English exhibited a more liberal social attitude and norms than their fellow student who had taken the test in Japanese. The latter revealed still holding on to traditional Japanese social norms. 

This and such studies indicated that language has a bearing on our societal perception. 

Is it not that obvious for us who are mostly bilingual that language plays such a definitive role ? I have often heard from our sons saying “Dad, I love you.” My father passed away over a decade ago. I could never tell him in Armenian, “Հայր, ես քեզ կը սիրեմ, Dad, I love you.” I bet he would have felt extremely unconfortable hearing it if, in the highly unlikely event, I would have verbalized to him the same in Armenian, “Hayr, yes kezi shad ge serem!!!”.  

Why do I bring this point? Lately postings in Armenian in social media are inundated with the words traitor and treason. It has become rather common place to read a posting referring to the PM Pachinyan as a traitor and his government engaged in treason. Somehow calling an Armenian traitor and characterizing an event  engaged by an Armenian treasonous seem to be rather easily said by Armenians; and it has escalated to a level that is beyond being bearable.

Is the PM Pachinyan a traitor and did his government engage in treason?  

In the end, the perception that the PM Pachinyan is a traitor and his government committed treason is in the eyes of the "beholder" and damned be the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in the courts of the law.