George Rebane
[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 28 September 2016.]
‘The blue of the grass’ is the color green in an African language. That’s a lot of letters compared to the five letters in the word ‘green’ to get across the same message. But it’s also getting harder to communicate in English. In the last several decades English has lost much of its ability for clear, concise, and complete delivery. Techies call this ‘information carrying capacity’, and the capacity of everyday English has been going down. We are paying a price for this loss in our public dialogue.
Disabled or handicapped people aren’t disabled or handicapped. They are ‘challenged’. And if a person has a problem with math, they’re math challenged. Hell, I’ve spent my life being math challenged. But if I said that to someone, they would never know that math has always been my strong suit, and the basis of a rewarding career. Nevertheless, I and others like me have been stumped by math problems many a time. Today ‘challenged’ has so many meanings that we have to tell a story instead of simply using the proper word.
Speaking of problems - people and organizations no longer have them. They’ve traded them in for ‘issues’. So if a meeting agenda has on it the discussion of certain issues, you have no idea whether it calls for a group problem solving session or simply a boring report. Again, more explanation is necessary to avoid confusion.
The same disease has struck a passel of other words like ‘discriminate’, ‘racist’, ‘right’, ‘prejudge’, and ‘immigrant’. The name of the disease is political correctness. People afflicted with this malady seek to convey a flattened world that has no distinct edges or shapes that efficiently define the specifics of a linguistic landscape. Doing that would expose them to being ‘judgmental’ – and heaven forbid, no PC person would want that tag hung around their neck. Nice people are non-judgmental, they never decide that this is not that. Or do they?
Today we are told that immigration reform season is here again. But our handicapped language no longer supports a clear discussion of the illegal alien problem. We have decisions to make about 11 million of them here in a country that has thrived from liberal immigration policies.
For the record, immigration is a two party process. An immigrant is a foreigner who receives permission from the welcoming country to enter, work, and make it their new home. He becomes an illegal immigrant when he violates the conditions of his lawful entry while remaining in-country. Our laws say that such individuals are not in the same category as those who enter our country illegally. But for us to talk about the latter requires that they have a unique label. Historically that has been ‘illegal alien’. Today the PC disease has banished the label and its clear meaning.
For political purposes illegal aliens have been softened to ‘undocumented immigrants’. Everyone knows immigration is as American as apple pie, and these so-called immigrants are merely challenged by the lack of a few pieces of paper with some words on them. Why should we discriminate against their ability to work or receive government benefits because of this bureaucratic inconvenience? And so we continue talking past each other, because we have purged the correct words from a once-rich language.
My name is Rebane, reprising an edited commentary first aired in April 2010. In this season of ideologically charged debates it’s time once more to reflect on how tongue-tied we have become since then. The addended transcript on Rebane’s Ruminations expands on this and other views not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
[Addendum] The types of wound that English has suffered during the last half century are many. Academic papers could be written on the topic were our academe still capable or in the mood to expose what it has been a prime agent in promoting. Today’s list of semantically castrated words is almost endless.
Take another egregious practice that has become endemic. It is the gathering of multiple words under one semantical umbrella claiming that the different labels which formerly communicated exquisite nuances no longer do so because they are ‘synonymous’. For example, consider ‘reject’, ‘decline’, ‘refuse’ as versions of denying something. Some deem these words synonymous because they all have the same ‘ring of finality’, which, of course, they don’t – an invitation ‘rejected’ conveys a stronger sense than one ‘refused’ which is still stronger than an invitation ‘declined’. Any competent wordsmith will not confuse these forms of denial, and will use them appropriately to convey the desired shade of meaning.
In the workaday mind ‘invest’ is no longer understood to mean the risky transfer of time, talent, or (mostly) treasure by an investor for some uncertain downstream gain. Since progressive politicians started camouflaging tax increases and spending policies under the rubric of ‘investments’, the average Joe easily confuses that with astute expenditures by knowledgeable and experienced investors who have demonstrated a successful history of making profits. The fact that the investors in the case of government ‘investments’ are politicians who take no risk in buying votes with other people’s money never penetrates their distracted and unprepared minds.
Another successful progressive ploy is the use of ‘hate’ and ‘hatred’ to brownwash anyone who disagrees with any tenet from their revealed scripture. If you oppose federal funding of abortions, then you hate women with the double whammy of opposing their ‘right to choose’. If you criticize our mulatto president or the culture of crime in black inner city neighborhoods, then you harbor ‘race hatred and are easily designated a white supremacist. And being called a ‘racist’ is a genre all of its own previously covered here.
Finally, we have more than a touch of lexicographic insanity leaking from the halls of ivy. Vanderbilt has introduced a new modus lingua in its ‘What should I call you?’ campaign. This is so bizarre that I encourage readers to just go to the links listed to find out what their academic senate is now promoting to augment and assure civil discourse. (more here and here)
We of the politically benighted must always remember that whatever we may say or whichever words we may use, our betters on the Left always know what we really mean and what we really meant to say (here). When the lamestream is yours and you own the words (more here), newspeak is easy.
Hugo Lindgren tweeted:
Is there a word in the English language that more reliably means its opposite than ‘amicable’?
Twitter responses included: “moot,” “humbled,” “nice,” “my friend,” “nonplussed,” “cordial,” “priceless,” “tolerance,” “literally,” “spry,” “sincerely,” “honest,” “pal,” “sure,” and “”Fine” particularly when given as a one word answer.”
Tyler Cowen's favorite was “spry.” Is there a word for such words? Are there other examples?
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/which-words-in-the-english-language-most-reliably-mean-their-opposites.html
Posted by: Russ | 28 September 2016 at 07:30 PM
Oh, good Lord - you forgot 'tolerant'.
The left pride themselves as tolerant whereas I, as a conservative, am intolerant.
Tolerant of what? And intolerant of what?
Never mind, I'm better than you because I'm tolerant and you're intolerant.
I had to laugh at that college in Oregon that proposes to offer a major in 'social justice'. The spokes-idiot admitted they didn't even know what social justice was.
The definition was - get ready for it: "A work in progress".
Posted by: Account Deleted | 29 September 2016 at 05:45 PM
ScottO 545pm - Indeed I did, and as confessed,"Today’s list of semantically castrated words is almost endless." Added contributions are most welcome.
Posted by: George Rebane | 29 September 2016 at 06:48 PM
What shall I call you? Glad you asked.
Favorite quote:
#UMPronounChallenge You shall now refer to me as "The Exalted Reverend Doctor Architect," & everyone else shall refer to themselves as Mary.
Works for me.
http://heatst.com/culture-wars/u-of-michigan-student-successfully-changes-his-preferred-pronoun-to-his-majesty-on-class-roster/
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 29 September 2016 at 07:54 PM
Been thinking. Once the snowflakes leave the safe places of higher education and Shangri La, they enter the real world......unless they land a job of low expectations for the gobberment. So, the Pro-noun police person applies for a job in the cruel unimformed hostile private sector. During the interview the employer asks what extra curricular actives was the applicant involved in at college. The young snowflake replies "I was the Chairperson of the Student Body Pronoun Committee."
"You were the chairman of a student body committee?" asks the employer not familiar with what pronoun group functions entail.
"Chairperson! Chairperson of the Pronoun Committe" snaps back the interviewee
Don't call us, we will call you. Thank you for your time. Next. .
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 02 October 2016 at 08:47 AM
IMHO one of the most widespread and therefore egregious rapes of the King's English is the misuse of the personal pronoun in the predicate of a sentence. It appears that almost no one knows where and how to correctly use 'I' and 'me', especially in compound direct objects. There 'me' is now banished to the Mongolian hinterlands, and people - including teachers and professors - attempt to sound educated with garbles such as, 'Then he asked Bob and I to accompany him.'
The rule is simple - 'I' in the subject (He and I went ...), and 'me' in the predicate (... gave it to him and me.) - and its recall is even simpler, just drop one of the pronouns and see if the sentence still sounds right. Nobody would accept 'Then he asked I to accompany him.'
Oh were that such atrocities be the country's most serious expression of national dumbth.
Posted by: George Rebane | 02 October 2016 at 11:40 AM
Beyond proper grammar construction, the gist of Dr. Rebane's post is the dilution of the meaning of particular words and, by extension, lumping together distinct differences in the words as synonyms. Hero was a good example. A child may look at his drunken deadbeat Dad as a hero, but hardly anyone else would. Sobering up and swearing off the bottle is not an act of heroism, but one would think it is akin to doing an heroic act listening to psychobabble.
My pet peeve lately is the word violence. Non threatening words are called violence in and off themselves. Remember when practically anyone/everyone was labeled prejudice if one did not hire or agree with someone who was different than them? Now it's called racist. As I have pointed out, illegal immigrants are not a race, neither are Romans or Mexicans. Calling some long hair smelly freaky dude an "old hippy" is not violence or racist. It may be bigoted or prejudice, but not violence.
It took a review court, lawyers, and a letter from the head of the NAACP to reinstate an expelled U of Penn student to prove both historically and in current lingo that the student did not yell a racial epithet at a group of black co-eds. Seems the co-eds got extremely drunk and boisterous outside the student's dorm window at 3 am on a school night, thus the student yelled out "Shut up!, you water buffalos" (or rhinos?) The student was white. The drunk partiers were fat drunk black female students. No fat shaming (elephants/pigs/hippos) or racial slurs, yet he was immediately expelled from Penn for hurling racial epithets. He was reinstated the following school year. That was years ago and it has not gotten better, only worse. Words do have meanings, but they knew what he really meant, lol. It's this attachment of motives and other nuferious deeds to words that gets me. Taking away a smile on your face or "stealing your peace of mind" is not burglary.
Granted, words do change their meaning over time. The King James Version of the Bible was written in 1611, about 400 years ago. The word "conduct" then now means conversation. "Wholesome conversation" is a watered down version of "wholesome conduct", IMHO. Today, conduct and conversation are not synonyms. Apprehend of 400 years ago is today's comprehend. Again, watered down. Apprehending something means you really got it. Comprehend something means you understand it. World of difference to both the listener and speaker.
I reckon they had to come up with the term "micro-aggression" because anybody with two brain cells left could not defend encountering a disapproving face or eyes glancing away as aggression...Ah, screw then laughing hyenas.
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 02 October 2016 at 01:12 PM
Proper use of the personal pronoun is important if one is trying to woo an English teacher. Other situations, not so much.
Posted by: Gregory | 02 October 2016 at 02:44 PM