English is a fashion item

For a long time, I’ve written down my thoughts about and reactions to the way the English language is used or misused today and it’s time I drew a conclusion or three. I’m not a collector of things. The only collection I have is one of words and languages and usage. To come across the following is a moment of discovery, of pleasure: “It's thought that one in 50 people may have prosopagnosia, or face blindness.” (BBC 010716). The OED defines it as: “An inability to recognize a face as that of any particular person.” What a marvellous word; fancy that, somebody gave it a name, a psychiatrist, of course.

I’ve spent a lot of time expressing horror about things like: “Does the living wage mean less jobs?” (Press Association, 30 Sept 16) or gobbledygook such as: … your back story, rather than your ideas, is of greatest importance.” (Spectator 15.10.16). I used to panic when I saw words like: salacity, to critique, religiosity; they seem to be American creations but they go back a long way in English history. Dangerosity, I always used to think it was an invention of George W. Bush and indeed it must be; the OED doesn’t recognise it. George W. is the President who wanted to do away with all taxes, including syntax. “Rallies of this scale are unusual in Morocco. (BBC).

A major complaint of mine has been that we don’t have any discussion of language and grammar in our media, written or spoken. The one exception I can think of is a weekly column in the Spectator by Dot Wordsworth (sic), my apologies to her; it’s an interesting column, if a little abstruse. Le Figaro published an interview with Julien Barret on 01.11.16, entitled:  «La langue française est discriminante», discriminatory because Il y a une tyrannie du bon usage, there is a tyrannical concern with correctness. Mr Barret says there are several types of French, some more correct than others. Of course, he’s right. He cites the example of those who say, wrongly he claims, une pipe en écume de mer which is a corruption of the popular French expression une pipe de Kummer. Whereas, in fact, écume de mer is literally sea foam or meerschaum in German, which gives us our Meerschaum pipe. Zoologists know this substance as sepiolite. It doesn’t matter that this detail is incorrect; what counts is the discussion about the French language. Le Figaro closes the article with an explanation of how to avoid mistakes with one of the French language’s most troublesome points of grammar, the agreement of the past participle. Most French speakers have problems with this. I take my hat off to them. If only we could have similar kinds of discussion in our newspapers.

I have come to the conclusion that the English language is now a fashion item. By talking about the numbers and going south you want to be identified with the financial community, to be part of a clique. Others talk about the bottom line and begin every sentence with so because they think the American touch is best. But, there again, it’s probably subconscious, like their taste in music, it’s simply just got to be fashionable, or what they take to be fashionable. Ah, well.

Information fatigue

Modern technology has allowed everything to be captured, structured and stored. Artificial intelligence, including machine translation, in both theory and practice, has made extremely rapid progress. The Turing test, to tell from a screen and keyboard interaction whether you are communicating with a real person or a computer, is likely soon to show that it is no longer possible to make this distinction. A project has recently been identified the aim of which is totally to eradicate all diseases within the next few years, showing the power of computing and the ambition of scientists.

Virtually all information is now available, legally or illegally, and language is no exception. If you are in the habit of checking via your web browser that an expression is correct in this or that form, you are certainly going to find examples which justify anything you wish to say. Someone, somewhere, will have used it rightly or wrongly. Vocabulary and usage are therefore expanding incessantly and the user ends up not knowing what to say or write. This expansion takes place often by the adoption of formerly specialist, technical terms.

This leads to information fatigue: too much information, too much choice, too little discrimination. And this leads to communication which is difficult to understand from people who are confused about what they want to say. Lack of discrimination plus a penchant for following fashion means we often don’t understand what some people are talking about.

In addition to ‘different’ or ‘several different’ we now have information from multiple sources provided by multiple people. The problem, or should I say issue, is not the use of ‘multiple’ which until now has been reserved for more technical circumstances like ‘multiple fractures’ but that ‘different’ is going to find itself not sufficiently sexy, too simple, and will become relegated to history.

The bottom-line (net profit or loss to accountants), used with the meaning of anything from ‘result’ to ‘what I mean’. Definitions include ‘the fundamental and most important factor’, ‘the most basic fact or issue in a situation’. Again this seems to be an Americanism and personally I find it problematic to distinguish whether the user means ‘the result’, ‘the required result’ or ‘what I mean is’. I first came across to second guess about thirty years ago. I didn’t know what it meant then and I still don’t know what it means to this day.

Another example is ‘to prink’ which means to groom, smarten up. You have to have a pretty extensive vocabulary to know this. Currently, there is also to prink, meaning to pre-drink, which itself means to drink alcohol, often at home or in a pub, prior to going on to a club with the aim of becoming seriously inebriated. Compare this with to pre-load which has the same alcoholic meaning as to prink. But ‘to preload’ relates in cardiology to the tension in the heart muscle, as opposed to ‘afterload’. I should hate to think that our cardiologists might end up confusing these terms as other people do with the verb ‘to smoke’: are we talking about tobacco or marijuana?

The BBC reported the following on 23^rd September: “playlists account for 31% of listening time across all demographics, while albums lag behind on 22%”. Do we have to have a term straight out of anthropology when we could easily use ‘audiences’? It’s a good thing to help improve people’s vocabulary, but this one reeks of “Look at me, I’ve just learnt a new word”. So far, we’ve been spared the term ‘cohort’ in this context, from anthropology and statistics again, but I predict that it’s on its way.

On the cusp of, the intended meaning being ‘on the point of’, “the cease-fire was on the cusp of being agreed to”; another technical term, from astrology, incorrectly used when a simple alternative exists. The 2005 annotated edition of the OED does not recognise this usage, but if you look for it on the web, sure enough, it’s there: I am sitting on the cusp of middle age;  X's behaviour is only on the cusp of acceptability; we're on the cusp of something really wonderful. Should you use this expression in your next conference paper? What exactly does it mean? It’s a wonderful expression to use when you don’t know exactly what you want to say.

Just out of interest, I saw an item saying that September 24 was “officially National Punctuation Day, and we’re sure that you’re planning to celebrate by wearing “period” costumes and tossing back a few exclamation “pints.” Thank you to Brad Tuttle of Money for that. Now, there’s a most laudable initiative. Punctuation is a matter of precision.

Confusion, all is confusion

Last time, I wrote about men’s and women’s language and since then I have come across some surprising items in the press. Instead of enthusiastic reporting, the following, published in The Express on 11th August, should have been roundly criticised: John Hennigan made the mistake of calling Judge Patricia Lynch, QC, a “c***” as she jailed him for 18 months. In measured tones, Judge Lynch replied: “You’re a bit of a c*** yourself. Being offensive to me doesn’t help.” Hennigan, 50, shouted: “Go f*** yourself!” Judge Lynch simply retorted: “You too.” Instead, the judge seems to have gained a reputation as a no-nonsense member of the judiciary who puts offenders well and truly in their place. Nonsense, she should be reprimanded and told to uphold the dignity of the law.

Not only language, but feminine matters are becoming invasive, too. There was also a detailed article about the clitoris in Le Figaro recently, not just text, oh no, but photos to boot. I know it’s a French publication, but… And lunch-time television adverts seem frequently to be about creams to relieve various irritations that only afflict women. This does nothing for my appetite and makes me think that soon Big Pharma may start to demonstrate the efficacy of their potions on ED, with graphic illustrations of course; now that would liven things up a bit at midday.

Another article in the Daily Mail related how a transgender woman found romance with a man who also changed sex. This really is a most confusing area. LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. The word ‘sex’ as an administrative category on forms seems to be destined to disappear and to be replaced by ‘gender’ which used to be a grammatical term. Sex and gender in grammar and sociolinguistics were used to refer to different things. The debate in the United States at both federal and state level about which lavatories should be used by different people depending on whether they were born male or female but also whether they felt they really belonged to the other sex or neither of those, is going to lead us where? Administrative forms, censuses for example, will they show in future Male, Female, Other (please give details)? What will these details be? What proof will be needed? What will happen to comparative statistics? Will there be universal acceptance of three, or more, sexes? Will same sex marriages become the new normal?

The BBC ran a headline yesterday: “Transgender soldier becomes first woman on Army front line”. The article goes on to explain that the soldier joined the Scots Guards as a man in 2012 but began hormone therapy in the last month, and has officially changed her name. The Army said it was delighted to have its first woman in a close-combat role. The Guardsman, who had official documents changed by deed poll from her birth name of Ben to reflect her new name and status, has now been informed she will be able to stay in the infantry, as a woman. The BBC uses neither the term ‘sex’ nor ‘gender’, but ‘status’. Confusing?

That George Sand was in fact the pseudonym of Amandine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin, a nineteenth century lady writer who fought for women’s independence, is well known. That Jan Morris was born James Humphrey Morris, historian, author and travel writer is perhaps less well known. Jan Morris is described as a trans woman who was published under her birth name until 1972, when she transitioned from living as male to living as female. These examples, in their day, were exceptional. There are new vocabulary items specifically created, such as “trans” woman and the verb to “transition”, which the OED dates to 1993. Nowadays, the sheer number of people involved, the various sexes, genders, statuses generated, leave many people unable to comprehend.

This situation in society will have to be reflected socio-linguistically. What I started by describing as men’s and women’s language reflects social evolution that is not really very complicated, in fact it’s rather trivial; it’s simply a matter of standards, of gravitas. The sex/gender question by comparison is a sea-change. It will be interesting to see how society in general and the different generations cope with it.

Learners of English – BEWARE

Because you hear it on the BBC’s Today programme or said by the Prime Minister’s spokesman doesn’t make it acceptable English. John Humphrys, one of the presenters on the BBC’s Today programme has written at least two books on the English language: Lost For Words: The Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language’ insists that laBeyond Words’. He is a much-respected journalist and broadcaster, he’s Welsh and therefore knows a thing or two about language. All this does not stop him from using a bunch and stuff as well as give us a sense of. I wish he wouldn’t. One of his colleagues, Sarah Montague, when asked the other morning: how are you? replied: Good. I really wish she wouldn’t. John Humphrys is guilty of using sloppy Americanisms and Sarah Montague of using sub-standard English. I should like them to be role models for what used to be known as the Queen’s English, to be people that learners of English could use as a reference.

nguage should be simple, clear and honest, and ‘

By drawing attention to the following points, a few among many, I hope that learners of English will resist the temptation to imitate the unfortunate habits of rather a lot of native speakers who don’t care or who don’t know any other way of expressing themselves. They follow verbal fashion and are often difficult to understand. I know that sounds conceited, but that’s because I feel strongly about good English. An (*) indicates an incorrect form, a solecism.

Fewer / less

*The less people who know, the better. *He made less mistakes in the previous match.

This one is a marathon-runner; it just keeps on going. In 2008, Tesco raised the hackles of many people by putting up a sign at a till saying *10 items or less. They chose to replace it by “Up to 10 items” rather than “10 items or fewer” on the grounds that it was easier to understand. I suppose this might be called dumbing-down and may explain why a lot of people have a problem with this distinction.

It's interesting to note that "The less people know, the better" is grammatically a perfectly good statement. So it's not simply a question of collocation.

Figures / numbers

It is now fashionable among some financial journalists and analysts to talk about “the numbers” and nothing but the numbers. There are stock market numbers, companies publish their numbers, numbers are good or bad. Figures are disappearing. Why? This is American influence again. Perhaps they think it sounds more professional or with it to say numbers all the time. Numbers are mathematical symbols. When they have been processed in some way, they magically become figures. Companies publish figures or why not results? Numbers are things you dial on a telephone, or they identify the house in the street where you live.

Station / train station

More transatlantic influence. There is a concept known to linguists as “marked / unmarked terms”. It’s a most useful idea, beautifully illustrated by this present pet hate of mine. In British English, Station is unmarked, it’s neutral, it's the place where you go to catch a train. Marked forms of station are bus station, power station, police station. If you want to use a marked term to make sure there’s no misunderstanding about where to meet somebody, why not call it a railway station like we always have done.

Queue / Stand in line

This is moving in at a rapid pace. Admittedly, queue is a funny one to spell but is that an excuse for everybody to stand in line?

*For John and I

This is said by people who care about the language, who have been taught at school that there’s something to be careful about here but have forgotten what it is. What they were told is that John and I are great mates, but they don’t like John and me. They explained this to John and me, but we didn’t understand. After a preposition or as the object of a verb I becomes me. It happens with the other pronouns, too: he/she/we/they become him/her/us/them. It doesn’t drive me mad, but when I hear it used correctly, I always mentally give the speaker a couple of gold stars. A current TV advert for mis-sold insurance claims, includes the following:..that have been sold to you and I.

Out there

Out there is a very frequently-heard thinking-stopper. It means everything and nothing. Its precise meaning is what its two words indicate and no more. It’s best to leave it out.

Stuff

What can I say about “stuff”, except “ouch”, another thinking-stopper. It seems to have completely taken over from “things”, our own British home-grown thinking-stopper.

How are you? – *good

Another one moving in fast under American influence. The cost of this type of fashion is that a pair of words, in this case good/well, is reduced to one. The other one disappears in a relatively short space of time and we have permanently lost a useful shade of meaning.

Meet with

Nobody meets anybody anymore, but they constantly meet with somebody. This has now got its feet under the table. When I hear that somebody has met somebody, I pause for a few seconds and give thanks.

Basis points

The British fashion-oriented financial brigade ought to sort this one out. It's been around for a while, but some of them still seem to think it's smart to use this American mumbo-jumbo. Do 50 basis points better or more clearly express one half percent? Are 30 basis points 0.3% or not? Is it supposed to be simpler? It's nothing but another useless layer of jargon

Sense

I am now finding the use of sense enervating: give us your sense of the situation, which has the value of understanding or feeling, is as annoying as give us your take on the situation, another horror. If this continues much longer the verbal use of sense: do you sense that this situation is getting out of control? and the nominal use: common sense, the five senses, what sense are you giving to this expression? are going to become confused. People will begin to hesitate and possibly even avoid using the word.

If you listen to journalists, there are specialists of the “one sense fits all” school, like Norman Smith on the BBC. His excellent reports and analyses contain lots of my sense of the situation, which is a pity. This usage is taking over at the BBC.

To Grow a company

Growing companies now happens all the time. Tomatoes or potatoes, yes, but companies, no.

Deliver

Everything is now delivered, including education, policing and government. Provided? Nothing at all?

Impact

Earnings were impacted by the decline in oil prices, hit or affected will do the trick. French needs this verb and has taken it. English doesn’t. Used as a verb, there is a sense of physical contact, collision.

Bunch

A bunch of grapes, bananas, even a bunch of fives or hooligans, but not a bunch of files, companies or books.

Key

When I was at school, we were not allowed to use the adjective nice, felt to be lazy, over-worked and almost meaningless, and we had to find another word. I feel the same way now about the adjectival use of key. It has traditionally been used attributively as in key player, key industries, key factor. It began to be used predicatively around 1970 and, like knotweed, is now all over the place. Everything is key, factors are key to our success, the use of military force is key in this strategy. Hardly anybody says vital or crucial any more. These two adjectives are under threat.

To gift

27 per cent said they had gifted their items in the last month (given away?)

To Pause

As a precaution the UK's A400M aircraft are temporarily paused (grounded?)

Referencing

Referencing Conservative pledges to cut the welfare budget (regarding?)

Post

Post 1945. Post bellum, post hoc. But, Post the EU referendum? Post lunch?

Multiple

It’s everywhere, multiple sandwiches, multiple buses, multiple pairs of shoes. This used to be very restricted in use: multiple injuries, fractures etc. Several and many are going to disappear.

Firefighters

Firemen have disappeared.

First responders

Emergency services says it so much better.

Shooter

This is slightly ridiculous; makes me think of pea-shooter or the dated slang word for a pistol. Have Americans forgotten the word gunman or sniper?

It’s all about a lack of elegance, style. Standards unfortunately only go in one direction, South, and that’s another one that should be on my list.