15 November 2016

How to say something without actually saying it

As we have seen in previous posts in this blog, advertising is one of the areas where we see some of the most creative use of English today. This is because the ambiguities baked into the English language allow advertisers to appear to say one thing while the actual meaning may be completely different. (For example something 'up to 99% effective' can be actually 1% effective - 'up to' simply gives a maximum.)

This creative use of English happens even more in politics because, unlike advertising, there is no official body to hold people to even minimum standards. Here's an example. 'Policy X can help to earn the country millions of dollars every year'. The average voter reads this as 'Policy X will earn millions of dollars if its promoter is elected'. However, the weasel word 'help' means that Policy X might contribute only a single dollar, while tax increases do the rest. And the modifier 'can' also means that Policy X might 'help' with that one dollar, but also might not.

Or it may be you once rudely called someone a 'pig' and someone else a 'slob'. Possibly both the people you so described were women. This means that you have called women pigs and slobs. You have not said 'Women are pigs and slobs', but if the charge is often repeated in an election campaign, people will eventually believe that you did.

On the other hand supportive media might point out that candidate A looks better for having no beard, whereas Abraham Lincoln had a beard. In a later editorial the media might mention that 'Candidate A has been favourably compared to Abraham Lincoln', while carefully not mentioning what was compared or by whom. In fact the passive voice is an excellent device for avoiding outright lies because a rival politician can be accurately described as 'an accused [insert heinous offence here]' without the accuser requiring any credibility.

I have, for example, been described as 'a brilliant, award-winning blogger whose posts reach up to a million people every day'. I know this is completely true, because it was I who thus described myself, and I did indeed award me a cupcake in recognition of my talents. Vote Prof!'

15 September 2016

There is a word for that

The Oxford English Dictionary has come out with its new list of words for 2016. Some of these words are upstanding citizens of the lexical world. For example, flerovium, the superheavy chemical element developed in the Flerov laboratory in Russia. Others are stomach-churning denizens of the linguistic gutter which refer to sexual activities and bodily functions which have managed to get through the last thousand years without the need for a single word to describe them. Yet more are slang references to the ever-growing pharmacopoeia of street drugs.

So, unless you are a drug-addled scientist with odd sexual proclivities, how many of these new words do you actually need? Even without the current batch, there's well over 800,000 words in the current OED. If you are a native speaker of English with average reading habits, you know less than one word in twenty of your own language.

Note that the main indicator of breadth of vocabulary is not education, but reading - especially of fiction. It has been shown that a prolific reader of a variety of fiction picks up an average of 2.5 new words a day, and these are words that people actually use, rather than the ephemeral slang of the 'hip' crowd.

However, there is also now a type of slacktivist called a clicktivist. A slacktavist is a person who makes a meaningless contribution to a worthy cause in order to feel good about himself - someone who wears green on Earth day and congratulates himself on saving the planet. A clicktivist's contribution to worthwhile causes is merely to click approval on social media forums.

There's also 'non-apology'; used when politicians and large companies admit they have angered the public and issue what looks like an apology but isn't. ('We regret that people were upset ...'.)

While additions like 'vom' should be ignored with disdain, these new words accurately reflect developments in our times and are worthy contributions to the language.

15 July 2016

Guys in whatever guise

Were I to formally address you, Dear Readers, I would use the term 'Ladies and Gentlemen'. This is an established format which has the weight of tradition behind it. However, in the fast-moving world of contemporary speech there is, by definition, no tradition. So how does one address a mixed group of males and females without offending the sensibilities of the politically-correct members of the audience?

The problem is that it is hard to informally address a group of women without offending someone. 'Ladies' sounds too formal, and, as one blogger complained, 'It makes me think of the word 'ladylike' which has some very outdated and sexist connotations.' If 'ladies' is offensive to some, those same people get apoplectic about being referred to as 'girls' (unless every one of them is under the age of seventeen). And somehow addressing a group as plain 'women' just does not work.

The usual solution is to refer to the group - be they males, females or both, as 'guys'. However, this too has come under fire because (according to a recent article in the Guardian Newspaper) it patronizes females by making them 'honorary males'. So apart from throwing one's hands into the air and walking off in despair, what is one supposed to do? The Guardian suggests using 'folks', but I would argue that, outside parts of the American Mid-west, one can only get away with using this term while wearing dungarees with a corncob pipe clenched firmly between one's teeth. Why not stick with 'guys'?

For a start this term is already generally used these days to address men, women or both, so why change what works? Furthermore, the word originally was used in the 19th century to refer to a grotesquely or poorly dressed person without discriminating by gender. Thus one can argue that women are merely reclaiming the right to be jocularly insulted as men always have been.

But in fact, just as the word evolved from its original derogatory sense to informally refer to a group of men in general, there is no reason why it cannot evolve further to address a mixed gender group.

15 May 2016

The highest star

Recently I read of an internet hoax which claimed that 'superstar Pauley Perrette is dead'. While this information might have stunned some users, I had heretofore - with all due respect to Ms Perrette - been unaware that she was alive. A quick check on the internet revealed that the lady in question plays the part of a forensic scientist in the crime drama NCIS, and both she and the character she plays are both very much alive.

This incident got me wondering what qualifies someone as a 'superstar' these days. Originally the 'star' was the leading actor in a cinematic production. If the leading actress was not sufficiently important in her own right, she was rather patronizingly called the 'starlet'.

Today, thanks to Hollywood promotions, a certain degree of verbal inflation has taken hold. Even people with walk-on roles are called 'stars' while the leading actors are 'superstars', even if the show is an obscure drama on cable TV with an audience of ten, including the superstar's mother. As a result increasingly desperate attempts are made to define people of whom the general public has actually heard. 'Megastar' is the current favourite, though this is less popular with the digital generation to whom a megabyte is actually rather tiny. 'Gigastar' has already been taken by a satiric comedian, so I'll be interested to see what the publicity machines come up with next.

In rather the same way, have you noticed the hunt for rare metals among the credit card companies? Where once credit cards were silver or gold, the new standard is platinum. Unfortunately after that rare metals become rather toxic and obscure. A Gadolinium Credit Card actually sounds rather impressive, but advertising inflation has settled for the more mundane 'Platinum plus'.

15 March 2015

A Good-humoured Blog

Do you have a sense of humour? Actually, you should have four humours, because the ancients believed that the 'humours' were actual fluids in the body. 'Humour' and 'humid' have the same etymological root. Though today we associate humour with fun and amusement, humours need not be so pleasant. Melancholy is also a humour - once believed to be caused by too much black bile in the body. When you think about it, if humour was always pleasant, we would not refer to a personality as 'good-humoured', since 'good' would be redundant.

Even today, although we do not use 'humour' as a class, we refer to character types in that class by their 'humour'. If someone is 'sanguine' about a result, it is because blood as a humour makes one cheerful, optimistic and carefree. On the other hand a phlegmatic person is calm, thoughtful and patient. We have seen that black bile makes us melancholy, but yellow bile was supposed to make a person choleric - restless, irritable and unsociable. These character classes were called 'temperaments', which is why today someone whose mood changes quickly through the classes is called 'tempermental'.

So how did the four humours condense into one idea with the meaning of light, funny and amusing? Well, the change came in the late Middle Ages, when humour started to be associated with mood. If the balance of the four humours in a body changed, the person might become 'ill-humoured', and sad or irritable. However, it was noted that a person's body fluids could be brought back into balance by managing that person's emotions. You just had to 'humour' him.

So humour evolved into something changeable, easily attracted to an idea and as easily distracted. Of course if something was light and amusing, it was more likely to be attractive, and so came to be described as humorous.