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April 08, 2005
Unkindness of Mavens
I was surprised to see that Fay Weldon has taken up language mavenry. Weldon is the author of a good and disturbing novel called Down Among the Women, which holds the curious distinction of being one of three texts ever to have made me feel physically sick. I recommend it. (Yeah, really. The other two are Kafka's "Der Heizer" and Brett Easton Ellis' "The Rules of Attraction" - I seem to be able to stomach graphic physical violence, but not social confusion. Yes, I know that's stupid.) But Weldon has also just written a totally lame-arse opinion piece for the most recent Sunday Times, called "Language - Not Another Euphemism" and it combines all the usual elements:
1. unsupported and wild claims about the influence of language on thought:
Our ideas of what we are and what we want to be are limited by the language we use. The hanging, dangling participle has no conclusion [...] We ourselves, not just our participles, are hanging, dangling, and strangling in verbiage and euphemism.
2. tiresome (and in this case, tasteless) exaggeration:
It’s all velvet-glove stuff, I fear, disguising the fingers at the throat. It has been going on a long time. Today’s version of Work Makes You Free over the camp gates turns smoothly into Making Work Choices Easier.
3. and all this based on complaints about utterly trivial things, in this case, a trend in advertising:
It’s the “ing” word I’m talking about; not a participle hanging on its own, or dangling likewise, it’s the “hanging and dangling participle”. I claim it as a new grammatical usage, and it’s everywhere. It’s the Home Office logo: Building a Safe, Just and Tolerant Society: it’s there on the social-services minibus: Driving for the Caring Community. (How about “Caring for the Driving Community” on your parking ticket? Coming soon, no doubt.) Creating Opportunity Worldwide, claims the British Council (Really? Sounds like a business plan). ACAS: Making Work Work (hello, in there? Anyone?).
Weldon reminds us that Orwell was doing this before her, in Politics and the English Language. But Orwell's essay was great. (Yes, even though Geoff Pullum despises it. He's right about everything else, he's just wrong about Orwell.) The basic message of Orwell's essay is STOP BEING SO FUCKING PRETENTIOUS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE SAYING. Lots of brilliantly clever people needed to hear that message at some point. But that is a long way from the message that the "hanging, dangling participle" is going to lead them straight to the concentration camp.
Meanwhile, this weblog's favourite Maven is on topic this week, with a column entitled "Der Pabst ist Tod! Der Pabst ist Tod!" (the pope is death, the pope is death!) This is, naturally, a long awaited opportunity for him to go all editor-y on your German ass, because you should have written "der Pabst ist tot! Der Pabst ist tot!" Yep, the Pope is death, and the German language is vollig durcheinander geraten and Sick's the man to sort us all out. (And in doing so he provides so many euphemisms for "almost dead" that I could probably rewrite the dead parrot sketch in German with an ecclesiastical twist...)
Posted by logican at April 8, 2005 01:47 AM
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Comments
Re: Orwell's essay:
I find it hard to take seriously a writer who prefers Anglo-Saxon words to those of Latin or Greek origin, a full 2000 years after the Roman occupation of Britain. Nothing Orwell says makes me believe this is anything but plain, old-fashioned racism.
Posted by: Peter McBurney at April 8, 2005 04:12 AM
Orwell's more subtle than Pullum thinks...
Check out Scott McLemme's excellent commentary Orwell's Voice, Orwell's Presence:
This is, I think, a more radical Orwell than the one who taught the now-familiar lesson about the debasement of communication by the systematic lies of the totalitarian state.
(from my diary entry #140)
Posted by: Charles Stewart at April 9, 2005 05:52 AM