Gooder (and Badder) English
Take a big, deep breath before you read this:
At the end of the day, there are movers and shakers out there who step
up to the plate and demand a level playing field as they go to bat for
the rain makers who seize the day with their skill sets to utilize their
passion to hit a home run around the crisises whilst sending out distress
calls about personnel going rogue by scrubbing databases and making other
end runs because they’re not in sync with the power brokers and appeal
to the lowest common denominator—and they’re all doing it on steroids.
Ninety-four words! And it’s a word string that makes no sense at all.
Where did I get all those clichés and how did I learn to pile them up like
that? From listening to TV commercials (especially for the pricey consulting
firms) and pundits, politicians, and experts on shows like
Meet the Press and the
PBS News Hour. Don’t you just love that “crisises”? It’s pronounced
“crisiseez.” I heard a financial expert seriously use that word. In the
same interview, she also said “processeez.” I’ve heard lots of so-called
experts say “processes” that way. Why do they say it that way? I have no
idea. And that “whilst”? Who actually says that?
Another example of verbal nonsense came to me last night before I went
to sleep. (Picture the words parading through my head.)
When we viewed his plan through the lens of our passion for perfection
and drilled down and unpacked it, it was unacceptable, so we hammered that
fact home and hit him where he lived until he shot himself in the foot
and fell on his sword. Forty-six words in another meaningless, redundant
string pretending to be a sentence. Who talks like that? People in corporations?
People who got D’s in high school English? People trying to impress other
people? Maybe it works with them. But not with me.
A month or so ago, when I read a blog with a word string close to this,
how a heteronormative hegemonic discourse is shaped, I went, “Huh?”
The blog was filled with jargon taken from deconstructionist literary criticism,
which is the in thing these days in the academe. Another example:
distinguish between performance and performativity. Again, huh? I’ve
read a lot of this post-modern, lit-crit jargon in theses and dissertations
I’ve edited, too. Lots of people think this is proper intellectual English.
Back in the olden days when I was in graduate school, we wrote in regular
English. Sometimes I have to call my son and ask him to translate this
stuff for me. The regular definitions of the words just don’t add up to
a sentence that makes sense.
Why do we write (and speak) in redundant jargon and clichés? I think we
repeat ourselves to make sure people hear us. Even when we read silently,
there’s a voice in our head that reads out loud. We also repeat ourselves
to make sure people get the point we think we’re making. Jargon marks us
as insiders in an exclusive group marked by social background, profession,
or a common interest. We’re speaking in shorthand to our in-group. We hold
secrets (of marketing, science, astrology, any profession) that the outsiders
don’t share. We’re special, and we have special terms and redefined words
to prove it.
Some of our favorite clichés come from sports and may go back to the English
Victorian public schools, which were actually very elite private schools
for the sons of the imperial ruling class, schools like Eton, Rugby, and
Harrow (and Hogwarts), where sport (they didn’t use the plural form) and
war became metaphors for life among those upper-class gentlemen. Sport
and war were how they ran the British Empire. Here in the U.S., nearly
everyone (except me) is a sports fan, so we all know about home runs and
end runs (two different sports, right?). The martial clichés march right
along with the sporting ones. They’re a useful way to inflict damage on
the other side. Yes, language can be as damaging as real weapons. Just
ask anyone who’s been bullied.
My concern as a reader, an author, and an editor is gooder English. Which
is a phrase I stole eons ago from
Charo, a Spanish-American singer and classical guitarist who was married
to Cuban bandleader Xavier Cugat. But don’t fall for Charo’s act. Like
Carmen Miranda before her, this Latina cupcake was a lot smarter than she acted.
When I was a technical editor, I worked with engineers who were really
smart but lacked skills in written communication. When they turned in a
chapter to be edited for a proposal, I’d meet with them and pat them on
the knee and say, “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll just turn this into gooder
English for you.” I did it, and none of them complained. Not even the scientist
who wrote in Russian and used a software translation program.
Hmmm…let’s see now…here’s the subject of this word string, and…umm, maybe
this is the verb? and maybe this phrase modifies the subject—no, maybe
it’s a predicate nominative, and is this the right word? and I’ll have
to ask him what this technical term means. Software translation programs
seldom speak gooder English. (And yes, grammarians have their jargon, too.)
But you know what? If your intention is to write badly, writing this stuff
is fun! It’s fun
if you want to write ridiculous English. One of the characters in
Secret Lives is Frances J. Swift, the manager of the Center Towers
where some of the women and their friends live. Frances is the compleat
bureaucrat. Writing her dialogue was more fun than writing anyone else
in the book. Here’s a bit of one of her conversations with Bertha. This
takes place shortly before the talking cat turns herself into the Cheshire
Cat and drives Frances into a nervous breakdown. Note that Frances is not
stupid. She’d have to be smart to run a retirement center. Her sins are
linguistic. She talks like a corporate memo. When I worked in corporations,
I knew people who talked just like she does. Now I know smart people who
write like my examples at the top of this blog.
She would accept
no sad stories today, not here, no, sir. Frances regrouped and faced Bertha.
“Now, as you must
know, we cannot tolerate wasteful habits and practices here at the Center
Towers. Our esteemed management, that is to say, our highly trained culinary
dietician, plans our culinary menus with the greatest possible care to
fulfill the daily nutritional needs of our elderly senior citizens who
reside here with us, such as yourself. And we hope and expect that all
meals will be taken in our luxurious dining room, except in the case of
unavoidable illness, that is…of course unavoi—”
“I eat there every
day. I’m almost always nutritionally and culinarilly satisfied.”
“And you…er…carry
purloined food away.” She leaned toward Bertha, peering at her as if to
detect evidence of a guilty conscience. “I’ll come plainly to the point,
Miss Bertha. Are you…ahem…saving, collecting, or hoarding food to save?
So many of our elderly residents feel such a need to hoard, to clutter
their…now you must be aware that hoarding is unnecessary and unsanitary.
It betrays an exhibition of poor citizenship here at the Center Towers,
as it could lead to inexact and imprecise planning and significant overexpenditure
from our already generous nutritional food budget line. And hoarding can…ahem…also
lead to infestations of noxious insects, which would lead to the further
monetary expense of fumigation.” She took a deep breath. “This is only
a teensy hint, Miss Bertha, but if you are in need…if you would wish to
counsel and speak with our good Dr. Kingman, who is, as you must know,
a recognized and acknowledged authority on the gerontological diseases
of the aged, I would be only too happy and pleased to arrange an appointment
for you at your mutual convenience as soon as possible. And,” she finished,
“we also frown upon any wastefulness of our table napkins.”
Bertha couldn’t
help but blink. “Paper napkins?”
“They do add up.
If we watch our pennies, you know, our dollars will…ah…additionally take
care of themselves. We must always strive and reach for fiscal responsibility
here at the Center Towers.”
Hooray for gooder (and badder) English!
