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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The English language today – or why George Orwell would need his mucus recovery unit if he had not experienced a suboptimal outcome
George Orwell’s essay, ‘Politics and the English Language‘, begins: “Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way …”
He wrote that in 1946. If language was “in a bad way” then, what way is it now in? According to John Leo, a writer and contributing editor at The Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, it’s in a “much worse” way.
In a recent article, ‘On Good Writing‘, adapted from a speech he gave at Ursino College in Pennsylvania, he refers to Orwell’s essay and comments: “Orwell offered five examples of sub-literate prose by known writers. But these examples don’t look as ghastly to us as they did to Orwell, because language is so much worse today.”
To back up his claim, he offers some examples and his translations:
commingled containers – (the label on a bin at Leo’s local recycling centre) otherwise known as ‘cans and bottles’
suboptimal outcome – if ‘achieved’ by students, it means that they failed, Leo writes; in a hospital, it means that the patient died.
hull loss – sometimes used by the airline industry, meaning ‘a plane crashed’.
access controller – a doorman
director of first impressions – a receptionist
thermal therapy unit – a hospital term meaning an ice bag
disposable mucus recovery unit – also a hospital term, which, as you’d expect, refers to a miracle of modern technology: a box of paper hankies.
ground-mounted confirmatory route markers – (found in a US government document) yes, you got it: road signs
non-traditional students – older students
Leo also tells of city officials in Oxford, England who decided to “examine the feasibility of creating a structure in Hinksey Park from indigenous vegetation”. They were, he says, “talking about planting a tree to get some shade”. He offers his own version: “a solar-shielding park structure from low-rise indigenous vegetative material”.
All this reminds me of what an English woman, who had just moved to Calgary in Canada, told me years ago: when she was asked for her occupation at a bank, she said “Housewife”, and the bank official wrote down “Domestic engineer”.
In comparison with these horrors, the examples that Orwell gave are mild. If the state of English in 1946 distressed him, he’d have a fit if he could see how pathologically it has declined.
What’s the reason for all this linguistic lunacy? See my next post.
Miriam Alli is a Nigerian woman who lives in Ireland with her five children – who are all Irish-born and Irish citizens. Juwon is 11, Arafat is eight, twins Kenny and Tai are five, and Shukra is six months.
Earlier this year, their father, Kabir, was taken away by officers of the Garda National Immigration Bureau and deported. Kabir is one of many fathers who came to Ireland seeking asylum a few years after their wives moved here and gave birth.
The official and legal justifications
So what did the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, have to say? He said that Ireland operated “probably one of the most progressive immigration laws in western Europe” but “our system must also be robust”.
The High Court rejected a challenge – based mainly on the Irish Constitution’s protection of families and children – to Kabir’s deportation order in December 2009. Judge Maureen Clark said she was satisfied that deporting Kabir would not “impact in an excessive way on the personal and family rights of his wife and children as there were no insurmountable obstacles to their going with him to Nigeria”.
She also said that Miriam would not be “excessively inconvenienced if her husband returned to Nigeria”. After all, she pointed out, Miriam had managed to live without him for three years.
Let’s see what “progressive but robust” immigration laws and “no excessive impact” on the rights of wife and children mean in human terms.
The family’s feelings
The family were interviewed by Irish Times Social Affairs correspondent Jamie Smyth (3 April 2010, Irish Times). Eleven-year-old Juwon said he greatly missed his father. “He used to play football with me every day and help with the local team that I play for here in Lusk.”
Five-year-old Tai said: “I like Ireland and my school, but I miss my daddy. I want him back.”
Miriam does not want to return to Nigeria. “The education they get in Ireland is much better than in Nigeria. My children are also integrated into Irish life and I have to think of them first, so we will stay.”
She added: “The children have cried a lot since Kabir was taken away, and they get angry a lot.”
Barnardos advocacy director Norah Gibbons commented: “One day your father is there with you in the family and then a hand reaches in and removes him. This is bound to make a child feel unsafe. It could lead to disruptive behaviour, poor performance at school and make it difficult for a remaining parent.”
She added: “We claim in this country to cherish all children equally.”
Henry and Gillian
In another case (also reported in the same article by Jamie Smyth), Henry Olabode was bundled on to a charter jet at Dublin Airport in March, and flown to Lagos. He had come to Ireland in 2007 and applied for asylum, claiming his life was in danger because he had campaigned against hostage-taking in the Niger Delta region in Nigeria.
While waiting to be ‘processed’, he met an Irish woman, Gillian, who lives in Athlone with two children from a previous relationship. She and Henry married shortly before his claim was rejected. They lived together for nearly one year.
Gillian told Jamie Smyth: “I met him when I was out for a few drinks with friends, and we clicked right away. They took him away from me without interviewing us or asking any questions about our marriage.
“I’m heartbroken and will fight to get him back into the country. This is unfair. Why can’t an Irish citizen choose who to marry?”
Stop complaining, Gillian. Irish immigration laws may be robust, but they are progressive. And remember: you may be heartbroken, but you are not excessively heartbroken.
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?”
Did you know that there’s an organisation called the Queen’s English Society?
No? Nor did I, until today.
On its website, it shouts out its key message – in capital letters (but gentlemen shouldn’t shout, so I won’t inflict them on you): “Good English matters – the world uses it – we must keep it safe from declining standards.”
The Queen’s English Society was established about 40 years ago, but it has now announced (June 2010) its plans to set up The Academy of English, an English version of the French Academie francaise, aimed at keeping the language pure.
The society’s press release said: “Other languages, French and Spanish for example, have supreme authorities that try, while moving with the times, to define what is good and acceptable usage and what is not. They do not stop the language from changing over the years, but they do provide a measure of linguistic discipline and try to retain valid and useful new terms, while rejecting passing fads.”
The academy would “set an accepted standard of good English” in our “hectic, modern, digitalised world.” It would protect the Queen’s English from alien impurities, bastardisations and text-speak horrors.
Poxridden and pathetic
Stephen Fry was slightly dubious about the idea. He tweeted: “Of all the foolish, ignorant, poxridden, pathetic and tragically misbegotten notions, this one beats them all.”
A London Times report gives an insight into the mentality of the founder of the academy, Martin Estinel; he said he still used the word ‘gay’ to mean ‘happy’ but “grudgingly accepted that its newer definition was now in the dictionary”.
There are a number of problems about this plan, apart from the poor use of English in the press release (what, for example, is a ‘fad’ that does not pass?).
One of those problems is that English is spoken by quite a number of people, who are not, incidentally, subjects of the woman of German origin who sits on the throne of England, such as more than 250 million Americans, 79 million Nigerians and 49 million Filipinos.
It also happens to be a near-universal language, spoken by millions more as a second language.
In their use of the term ‘the Queen’s English’, the people behind the academy seem to think that English is owned in some way by a feudal relic who rules over a small corner of the English-speaking world (and who probably still believes in ‘the divine right of kings’). Not any more, chaps.
The anarchic millions
Certainly, current English displays a lot of sloppiness and execrable jargon, but it’s not likely that a group of stodgy verbal police will be able to exert much control over those anarchic millions. In particular, it’s unlikely that the academy will make much headway in getting all those millions of American linguistic vandals to speak the Queen’s English, since they and their forebears have been doing their own independent thing now for a few centuries. (For Pete’s sake, they can’t even spell ‘colour’.)
No, the new academy won’t even be able to control the tongues of the majority of English people, who refuse to ‘speak proper’ (after all, the BBC has to keep them off the airwaves in case they offend polite people). But they’ll go on doing their thing, committing appalling grammatical and syntactical crimes in strange local accents.
Ah well, maybe English will survive. After all, it’s a uniquely rich language thanks to the fact that it’s really two languages – a Germanic foundation hugely enriched by the French during the century or two when they ruled England. And then there are all those added riches contributed by foreigners who immigrated to Britain and that were absorbed during the centuries that English wandered around the world.
Yes, English will go on growing and changing and surviving linguistic crimes as it continues to spread – and Mr Estinel is going to be very ungay when he realises that there’s nothing he can do about it.
If Professor Michael O’Keeffe, Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon in Temple Street Children’s Hospital, Dublin, is as good a doctor as he is a man, then he’s one of the best.
On 9 July, he was interviewed by Pat Kenny on RTE Radio 1 (‘Today with Pat Kenny’).
What provoked the interview was the cancellation of operations at Temple Street on children with cataracts, glaucoma, etc. Mr O’Keeffe pointed out that such children risk going blind if the operation is not carried out in good time.
One of the children was, in fact, a six-week-old baby with cataracts – and a baby of six weeks, he said, is at a “critical period in visual development”.
Mr O’Keeffe went on to contrast the PR spin – “the statistics” and “the lies” – of those who manage the Irish health system with the “reality on the ground”, which is “a disaster”. The “system is breaking down”, he said: inefficiencies, cutbacks, phones not answered, lists cancelled, outpatients not starting on time or cancelled.
“I think patients have become a nuisance in hospitals,” he said sardonically. “We could run them so well without them.”
Meaningless jargon
He added: “We talk about grandiose schemes … a ‘world-class health system’ and all this sort of thing, this jargon, which is meaningless, because none of the basics are happening.
“I recently got an email from one of the hospitals saying they now wanted to discuss biological management of patient care. Now you tell me what that means, it’s meaningless stuff, this is the sort of garbage we’re into …”
Looking after patients was “really quite simple, but we’re into management speak”, complicating things, and “we’re forgetting the basics”.
Pointing out the current jargon for closing down – reconfiguration – Mr O’Keeffe said: “World-class means nothing down at my level.”
He spoke passionately and with a savage indignation that it’s not possible to convey in print.
‘Transformation and reconfiguration’
After listening to the interview, I went to the Health Service Executive website and had a look at its 2009 annual report: “implementing our transformation and [here we are!] reconfiguration agenda”, “have achieved 70% of our 2011 targets in 23 of the 35 representative areas … we maximised every possible measure to protect frontline services”, and so on.
Then I googled world class state of the art best practice and got three million results. One of the sites listed was a “world-class data center” which uses various “mission-critical systems”, including a “state-of-the-art fire suppression system”.
Another of the sites was that of a “leading” American health-care provider, which asserted: “Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the art care delivery and world-class chronic disease management.”
This health-care provider may actually be quite good but, if you’re fussy about hyphens (or the lack of them), you’ll notice that the phrase “chronic disease management”, strictly speaking, means “chronic management of disease”.
Indeed. After all, what Mr O’Keeffe was surgically cutting into was all the grandiose, high-flying management speak that masks chronic management and ”disaster” at the ground level.
A new rule
With the shakespearean perception “Methinks she doth protest too much” in mind, I now suggest a new rule:
The quantity and grandiosity of management speak is in inverse proportion to the quality of the service provided.
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.
We’ve invented a lot of ghastly new words and phrases in recent decades: ugly, bland, abstract, meaningless jargon. So it’s good to come across some colourful new words on Paul McFedries’s website Wordspy:
churnalism
Churnalism is what so-called journalists do when, instead of doing their own investigations, they churn out articles derived from press releases and wire stories.
Paul McFedries cites Nigel Green, in Media are increasingly relying on police handouts as a basis for crime stories (The Guardian, December 7, 2009), who wrote: “Last year, I highlighted for MediaGuardian how Northumbria police hold back serious crimes from the media. Meanwhile, the force’s £1.5m-a-year corporate communications department pumps out more press releases on falling crime rates, clampdowns, raids, initiatives and other stories designed to produce positive PR. The result, I believe, is that most crime reporting in the north-east is now little more than churnalism.”
The design for a skyscraper in Canada
The design for a skyscraper in Canada
farmscraper
As populations rise and space runs out, it’s proposed that crops could be grown in high-rise buildings, called farmscrapers.
This vertical farming would use hydro- and aeroponic systems in which little water would be needed to raise the crops.
A Google search yields nearly 8,000 results. The whole idea of high-rise crop-growing has also led to the poetically suggestive term sky farming.
late-breaking gay
This is someone who ‘comes out’ at a relatively late stage.
Ralph Slovenko, in Psychiatry in Law/Law in Psychiatry, notes: “Of increasing frequency are the ‘late-breaking gays’ who abandon their spouse and children for a gay partner. It is depicted in films, in Broadway plays, and on the Oprah Winfrey show.”
solastalgia
The Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht came up with this term in a 2004 essay. He defines solastalgia as “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault … a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at ‘home”.
More briefly, “Whereas nostalgia is homesickness for a place, solastalgia is a yearning for the way a loved place used to be.” (Des Houghton, ‘Pain has a brand new label’, The Courier Mail, February 27, 2010).
The word combines the Latin word solacium (comfort) and the Greek root algia (pain).
It’s more specific than eco anxiety. One example is the effect on local people of large-scale, open-cut coal mining in the Upper Hunter Valley of New South Wales – a sense of powerlessness and lack of control.
It’s good to see that people can invent more or less elegant words in an age that comes up with terms such as suboptimal outcome and access controller. The latter, by the way, was once called a doorman.
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?
