Guns apart, the time is coming when Sinn Féin will also have to decommission its special language, writes Jim Duffy.
If politics is all about perception, then it can also be said that it is about words. Words shape perception and context and it was for this reason that Sinn Féin's Mitchel McLaughlin refused to describe Jean McConville's murder as a "crime".
It was the same reason, for what that word symbolised, that others condemned him.
Most organisations have different audiences to deal with; their own members, outside observers and the general public, with all three agreeing on the fundamentals and disagreeing on mere nuances. For Sinn Féin, however, the views of its "republican" and "non-republican" audiences are fundamentally, in some ways, irreconcilably, different. Hence the need for a coded language, Sinn Féin-speak.
Irish republicans see 20th-century history as the story of the subverting of the Irish Republic in 1922 by an illegal seizure of power by "pro-British" forces. Non-republicans see 1922 as marking the appearance of a real independent Irish state (Bertie Ahern himself said in the Dáil that 1922, not 1919, was the real start of independence.)
So, while most of Ireland accepts the existence of two states, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, republicans still hark back to the Irish Republic of the First and Second Dála as if it still existed, as Chinese nationalists looked on the government in Taiwan as the real government of the long defunct "Republic of China".
Until the last decade, Sinn Féin only had to worry about its own republican audience, so it could linguistically dismiss the South as the "Free State" and the North as the "Occupied Counties". But the peace process changed all that. It led to Sinn Féin sitting in the parliaments of the two supposedly illegitimate states. It was de facto recognition of political realities.
But curiously it has not been matched by linguistic recognition. "Free State" and "Occupied Counties" may have been binned (and are now the preserve of other sedevacantist Sinn Féins) but, with the very rare exception, Sinn Féin leaders do not speak of the "Republic of Ireland" or "Northern Ireland" lest that appear to delegitimise their supporters' republican version of history.
Sinn Féin spokespeople instead call the South "the state", "the 26 counties" or, as Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin put it in the Dáil last week, "this jurisdiction". And the North is either the "Six Counties" or "the North of Ireland", the "of" linking it to all of Ireland, not accepting it as separate.
The language use was so subtle that few noticed it. In the aftermath of the ceasefires and the emotion of the Good Friday agreement, those who did allow Sinn Féin its linguistic leeway, understanding its need to keep its republican base "on side", just as unionist politicians were understood to have to talk their communities' language.
However as the peace process stalled, all sides' language became part of the battle, with everyone's nuances being examined to see if they were still on side, or hedging their bets and preparing for failure.
Hence the row over Mitchel McLaughlin's refusal to call the murder of Jean McConville a "crime". In republican theory, as it was done by the army (the IRA) on the authority of the government (the army council), it could not possibly be described as a crime.
In addition, as one senior Sinn Féin figure is alleged to have been the IRA leader in Belfast when it happened, if it was a crime, would that not make him by definition a "criminal"? McLaughlin was caught in a verbal trap where he had to outrage either republicans or non-republicans, depending on his answer.
He did try to give a Sinn-Féin-speak answer - it was wrong, but bad things happen in war, it is time to move on, etc. But the decline in trust that followed the Northern Bank raid meant people were less willing to give the benefit of the doubt, or think "well, they have to say that, but we know they really don't believe it".
Sinn Féin found every aspect of itself, even its language, under greater scrutiny than at any time since the Good Friday agreement. Mr McLaughlin also had the misfortune to face the clinical precision of a Michael McDowell cross-examination, which allowed no scope for linguistic latitude.
Ultimately Sinn Féin may find that the logic of the peace process leaves it with no option but, in effect, to decommission Sinn Féin-speak. As the agreement firms up, so in theory should the language on all sides, with ambiguities a thing of the past.
The question for Sinn Féin is, will its own republican community accept it if it does? And will the majority tolerate it if it doesn't?
Jim Duffy is a historian and commentator