ABSTRACT
The metaphorical description of the city as an eyesore is an efficient rhetorical move that kills several communication birds with one stone: it shifts the attention from military action with all its risks and ethical problems to the ‘solution’ of a quasi-aesthetic problem, it belittles and demeans the victim of the planned attack, and it presents the attacker, i.e. one’s own side, as a problem-solver rather than as an aggressor. The eyesore metaphor thus works as an efficient means of legitimizing war not only at the representational level but also at emotional and interpersonal levels (Halliday 1978) insofar as it relieves misgivings about the rightfulness of one’s own actions and at the same time serves to intimidate the victim as well as third parties.
