In my last post, I quoted some examples of linguistic lunacy – commingled containers, access controller, disposable mucus recovery unit, etc – and wondered what Orwell would think.
In his ‘Politics and the English Language‘ essay,he offered “five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written”. Apart from their “avoidable ugliness”, he wrote, two qualities were common to all five examples.
“The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision.” What was most characteristic of modern English prose, he added, was a “mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence” – abstractions, hackneyed turns of phrase, phrases “tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse”.
He uses three categories to define the problem: dying metaphors (eg, stand shoulder to shoulder with), operators or false verbal limbs (eg, serve the purpose of), and pretentious diction (eg, phenomenon, constitute, expedite, ameliorate).
Innocent days! Is that really the worst he could come up with, back in 1946? No commingled containers and suboptimal outcomes?
Our speciality – pretentious diction
What is striking, though, is that our current linguistic disease fits mainly into his third category, pretentious diction. Yes, we have our plethora of hackneyed words and phrases (touch base, take a rain check, push the envelope) and love our false verbal limbs, but above all we specialise in pretentious diction.
Often, it’s because we’re using words to (as Orwell puts it) “dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements”. Leo gives an example of this: the terms ‘intellectual harassment’ or ‘semantic violence’, used to describe simple criticism.
There’s no biased judgement, though, behind ‘disposable mucus recovery units’ and ‘ground-mounted confirmatory route markers’. There’s just an insane compulsion to load ordinary things with a huge weight of scientific and technological credibility.
In the Leo examples quoted in my last post, that is the common trend. Orwell’s “pretentious diction”, in its virulent modern form, is ‘pretentious scientifico-technological diction’. We might expect it in one of the more insecure disciplines such as sociology, but some of the worst sinners are people writing about English literature.
To explain it all, I expect we’d have to examine our worship of science and technology, and of course our analysis would have to be rigorously evidence-based. But that will have to be for another day, because I’ve got to go and do some domestic engineering.
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Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary is a remarkable character (love him, hate him or love/hate him). He’s remarkable both in what he’s achieved (love or hate his methods) and in the way he talks to the world. Here are some examples:
Plane English a la Michael O’Leary
“We need a recession. We’ve had 10 years of growth. A recession gets rid of crappy loss-making airlines and it means we can buy aircraft more cheaply.” (3 November 2008)
In economy no frills; in business class it’ll all be free – including the blowjobs. (Talking of plans for a transatlantic service: 2008)
You don’t see the government confiscating lipsticks and gel-filled bras on the London Underground. Most of them couldn’t identify a gel-filled bra if it jumped up and bit them. (Complaining about increased airport security checks: 2006)
At the moment the ice is free, but if we could find a way of targeting a price on it, we would. (October 2005)
Every idiot who gets fired in the industry shows up as a consultant somewhere. Shoot consultants and advertising agency specialists. (October 2005)
I’m probably just an obnoxious little bollocks. Who cares? (2006)
Some people are so ideologically opposed to O’Leary that nothing he says could amuse them. Perhaps, though, they might admit that he always achieves rapid lift-off.
Official spokespersonese, Ryanair-style
In contrast, some of his spokespeople indulge in the kind of officialese that is so loaded with heavy baggage the verbal machine remains firmly stuck on the ground.
Recently, a 52-year-old ex-Viking from Norway had a little problem about a “chicken premium sandwich” he was presented with on a flight from Berlin to Rygge. Since the meat was made out of rubber, he refused to pay for it. The flight attendant threatened to call the police. He assumed she was joking and fell asleep.
At Rygge airport, three men in orange police jackets came on board and took him off for questioning. The Rygge police confirmed later, reportedly with chuckles (yes, Norwegians are capable of chuckling), that they’d never been called out for a passenger complaining about a sandwich. No charges.
A Ryanair spokesperson explained: “The captain on flight FR8904 requested police assistance on arrival after a passenger became disruptive in flight. This matter was addressed with the passenger by police on arrival. Ryanair crew only request such assistance when deemed absolutely necessary based on their assessment of the disruptive passenger behaviour and their reading of the situation.”
No, it’s not the worst example of officialese, but it’s surprising (and inconsistent) that bossman O’Leary doesn’t charge his spokespeople for each wasted word, and also for each long word that is not “deemed absolutely necessary”.
How would O’Leary himself have put it?
“We had to call the police to deal with this Norwegian bollocks who’d refused to pay for his *x!king sandwich. Yeah, maybe we flew off the handle a bit, but what do these gobshites expect on a Ryanair plane – a Michelin five-star?”
Back in 2006, it was reported that Malaysia planned to fine people who mangled the national language on posters and signs.
Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Rais Yatim warned that billboards and posters showing “mutated” forms of Malay would lead to those responsible being fined, if they had already received a warning.
The aim was to make sure that “the national language was not sidelined in any way”.
Most Malaysians speak Malay, or Bahasa Malaysia, but many also speak English – which results in Manglish, a mishmash of the two languages.
The Malaysian government wanted to root out English words used in Malay and replace them with Malay substitutes. Mr Rais said a national language unit would be established to reduce the extent of Manglish.
A police chief said he would like to see commonly used terms such as ‘touch n go’ and ‘boulevard’ replaced with Malay words. Seeking to ban ‘boulevard’ is a nice irony, given that the French have long sought to eradicate English terms from French. (There’s an opportunity here for some linguistic scholar looking for a topic – a comparative study of Manglish and franglais.)
Serial offenders
I haven’t been able to get an update about this linguistic cleansing campaign, but the notion of fining people for mangling the language is an attractive one.
After all, if the language police had been operating in the US during George Bush’s time, he would probably have ended up in jail as a serial offender.
Closer to home, Bertie Ahern would (at least in theory) have suffered the same fate, and we might have been spared some of the financial mess we’re in.
US military strategy on Afghanistan - a rare example of PowerPoint complexity
“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.”
That’s what General Stanley McChrystal, leader of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, reportedly said when shown this PowerPoint slide in Kabul a year ago.
If the slide, titled ‘Afghanistan Stability/COIN Dynamics – Security’, had been intended to show the complexity of US military strategy, it presumably succeeded admirably.
It was certainly a change from the usual bang-bang bulletpointing and straight-line simplicity of many PowerPoint presentations.
It looks as if President Obama’s July 2011 date for starting to withdraw troops from Afghanistan is optimistic. Referring to these plans, a senior Administration said: “There’s some evidence that reminds us that this is not going to be a straight line of progress. It’s probably best described as zigs and zags.” (NYT report of 14 June 2010).
Indeed, but the problem is that the PP presentations said to have invaded military activities usually omit the complexities and the zigs and zags.
Old-fashioned human speech
When British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was touring Afghanistan earlier this year, he was shown a nicely bulletpointed, tidily optimistic slideshow about the battle for hearts and minds in Helmand. This upbeat show left him and his party with their morales boosted – until an official with knowledge of the region (that owes nothing to PP slideshows) summarised the situation in Helmand in the joined-up phrases of fluent human speech. In brief, he made it clear that Helmand was a disaster.
No doubt, PP is useful for gung-ho military men and can-do corporate communicators with a liking for bullets and bulletpoints. But one wonders how far the way it encourages over-simplification and excludes elusive complexities and nuances leads to disastrous military and corporate decision-making.
PP is one of those many tools and techniques that normally intelligent people have allowed to get out of control in a way that stupefies us and leads us into trouble. The ubiquitous slideshow, it seems, does not lead only to a dimming of the lights.
General McChrystal apparently is treated to two PowerPoint briefings in Kabul every day. In so far as these bulletpointed briefings simplify things, they must lead to military mistakes, which tend to be quite costly. ‘Death by PowerPoint’ is probably a literal reality.
It’s odd how many people, once they become corporatised or bureaucratised, lose their powers of strong, effective, colourful speech.
Here’s an interesting exchange of letters. It’s from a few years back, but it’s worth recalling because it illustrates the difference between two kinds of communication.
In one kind, it’s not considered odd to refer to “the above referenced parcel of property“ or to “a rain event”.
In the other kind, you hear the vivid speech of a human being.
Letter one
Here are some extracts from the first letter. It’s from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to a man called Ryan DeVries.
SUBJECT: DEQ File No.97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec. 20; Lycoming County
Dear Mr. DeVries: It has come to the attention of the Department of Environmental Quality that there has been recent unauthorized activity on the above referenced parcel of property. You have been certified as the legal landowner and/or contractor who did the following unauthorized activity:
Construction and maintenance of two wood debris dams across the outlet stream of Spring Pond.
A permit must be issued prior to the start of this type of activity …
The Department has been informed that one or both of the dams partially failed during a recent rain event, causing debris and flooding at downstream locations. We find that dams of this nature are inherently hazardous and cannot be permitted. The Department therefore orders you to cease and desist all activities at this location, and to restore the stream to a free-flow condition …
Sincerely,
David L. Price
District Representative and Water Management Division
If he fails to comply, Mr DeVries is threatened with “elevated enforcement action” – does that mean that he will be hanged?
Letter two
Mr DeVries replies, confirming that he was the “legal landowner but not the Contractor at 2088 Dagget Lane, Trout Run, Pennsylvania”. He added:
“A couple of beavers are in the (State unauthorized) process of constructing and maintaining two wood ‘debris’ dams across the outlet stream of my Spring Pond. While I did not pay for, authorize, nor supervise their dam project, I think they would be highly offended that you call their skillful use of nature’s building materials ‘debris’ …
As to your request, I do not think the beavers are aware that they must first fill out a dam permit prior to the start of this type of dam activity …
‘Please contact the beavers’
If you want the stream ‘restored’ to a dam free-flow condition please contact the beavers …
In my humble opinion, the Spring Pond Beavers have a right to build their unauthorized dams as long as the sky is blue, the grass is green and water flows downstream.
They have more dam rights than I do to live and enjoy Spring Pond …
So, as far as the beavers and I are concerned, this dam case can be referred for more elevated enforcement action right now …
In conclusion, I would like to bring to your attention to a real environmental quality, health, problem in the area. It is the bears! Bears are actually defecating in our woods. I definitely believe you should be persecuting the defecating bears and leave the beavers alone …
Being unable to comply with your dam request, and being unable to contact you on your dam answering machine, I am sending this response to your dam office.
THANK YOU. RYAN DEVRIES & THE DAM BEAVERS
So, which of the two would you prefer having a chat with? Mr David L Price, or Ryan DeVries?
