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The lethal language of tongue-tied immigrants

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For those who feel powerless to transform themselves, the gun can be seductive. It provides power. It speaks in a language everybody understands, across colour lines. It opens doors for the invisible into the public space. Unfortunately, it is the language of annihilation and not creation. It speaks up once or twice, but often the user succumbs to his curse: that of silence.

One Goh, 43, an immigrant from Korea who allegedly shot and killed seven people at a school in Oakland, California, is the latest in a string of inarticulate men who became mass murderers in America. Before him, there were Cho Seung-hui, the Virginia Tech shooter, and Jiverly Wong.

Wong, in April of 2009, locked the back exit of a civic community centre in Binghamton, New York, where immigrants had gathered to learn English, and shot 13 people before killing himself.

In 2007, Cho, a 23-year-old English major, shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech before killing himself. Cho has since entered modern history as one of the worst mass murderers in the United States.

What ticked them off? They have no tongue.

The opposite of a cosmopolitan is a kind of 'aphonic' drifter, someone who fails at articulation. While the former can easily move from one culture to the next, the latter feels disconnected and marginalised by both. The successful border-crosser is blessed with the power of metamorphosis and the gift of eloquence. His counterpart, alas, finds himself tongue-tied and trapped in a defective chrysalis, unable, but deeply desiring, to change.

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