Terror attacks bring new language to classroom

The September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States have brought a new language into the classroom.

Now US students call their bedrooms Ground Zero - a total mess. An unpopular teacher is ‘‘such a terrorist’’.

Petty concerns? ‘‘That’s so September 10.’’ And out-of-style clothes? ‘‘Is that a burqa?’’

It is only six months since September 11, but enough time has passed for the vocabulary of America’s most frightening day to become slang for US teenagers of all backgrounds, reported the Washington Post.

‘‘If you’re weird, people might call you Taliban or ask if you have anthrax,’’ Najwa Awad, a Palestinian American student, told the newspaper.

‘‘September 11 has been such a stressful thing that it is okay to joke a little bit.’’

‘‘When you have adolescent bravado and nothing can hurt you, underneath that is really a tremendous fear that everything can hurt you,’’ said Alan Lipman of the Centre at Georgetown for the Study of Violence. ‘‘What better way than humour to take these horrific ideas and make them go away?’’

‘‘Terror humour,’’ as it is called, will even be the subject of a special panel organised by Paul Lewis, an English professor at Boston College, for a conference on humour studies in Italy.

‘‘If you do something to offend someone, then that’s cold,’’ said Washington student Ryan Hoskin, 17. ‘‘But a lot of times we don’t, and we are just looking for a way to deal with the crisis. It’s like you need comedy.’’

Hoskin said if a white student tells a joke involving Arabs, he expects to hear one back about the white students involved in the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.