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While these authors show how successful the press was at conveying useful information about the Armenian Genocide to the Canadian public, like me they remain finally doubtful of the efficacy of words when tasked with describing an attempted human annihilation. Notwithstanding the importance of documenting and explaining atrocious human experiences, we need to be constantly aware of what the Holocaust historian Saul Friedlander once termed the “limits of representation” (Friedlander, 1992). Such awareness obliges us to acknowledge the deep contingency of our languages, genres, and media: their tendency to alter and adapt over time in response to a wide variety of concerns often extrinsic to the circumstances under description.

I have been trying to suggest that this symbolization problem is a significant one for anyone attempting to grapple with experience of the horrors associated with genocide, perhaps most especially the survivors themselves. As Améry aptly observes, “acts of extreme violence mark the limit of the capacity of language to communicate” (Améry, 1986: 33). This is one of the senses in which they are “beyond the pale,” the term “pale” traditionally designating a fence or boundary separating the village from the wilderness, and thus the known from the unknown, the familiar from the uncanny, the morally acceptable from the barbaric.

Müge Göçek, & N. M. ), A Question of Genocide. Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 276–286. Entman, R. (1993) Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm, Journal of Communication, 43(4): 51–58. Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power (Harlow: Longman). Foucault, M. (1980) Prison talk, in C. ), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interview and Other Writings 1972–1977 (Brighton: Harvester Press): 37–52. Gauthier, G. (2005) La réalité journalistique.