From a youth in Saints, dealing with Mr Singh and Mr Stanley Fernandes who taught us English, I was drawn to the intricacies of words and the shades of meaning that one could extract merely from word choice. It was a disposition that came strongly into play in later years as I dove headlong into the song-writing craft in Canada and subsequently with the songs I started writing for Tradewinds.
It was frequently the case that I would find myself labouring over the choice of a particular word. I would reject, I would revise or reword, sometimes spending hours over a single sentence.
There were occasions when all my efforts would fail, and I would discard a line completely, sometimes even an entire verse, because the right word combination was not falling into place.
The trait remains. Just this week, as I tackle a song idea that came to me, I have been spending hours in that same pursuit of the precise words to convey the thought, to express the humour, to relay the suggestion. The clarity that comes from precision is always there; you just have to be persistent to find it.
It is a fundamental characteristic of who I am as a writer, and it is obviously at play when I see some of the paroxysms (there’s one of those specific words) that appear in the media as persons try to evade or deflect or dismiss a point or a matter.
In this day of more information than ever, and more resources than ever, and more transparency than ever, we have somehow become disposed to obfuscate rather than admit.
A common example, and a pet peeve of mine, is the practice of those in the business world who avoid the possible damaging aspects of the word “loss” appearing in a financial statement by referring to it as “negative growth.” It is a classic oxymoron. “Growth” is a positive measure so how can the firm be growing downwards, but such is the practice in these distortions as we struggle to cloud the unpalatable. Another irritant is the expression “ethnic cleansing.”
The term is avidly embraced by political writers. It pops up in television interviews, and is frequently used in news reports by eminent broadcasters. I fume every time I encounter it. It is a travesty. In fact, the behaviour referred to is actually the killing of one ethnic group by another, but that expression is sanitized to mean a cleansing, and we calmly accept the corruption. Killing has suddenly come to be presented to us a cleansing.
The formula is widespread. The world no longer has any short people; those individuals are simply “vertically challenged.” A caustic US writer, who recently described a prominent US politician as “dumb as an ash tray,” was chided by another writer: “It would be preferable to refer to the gentleman as intellectually disadvantaged.”
It has become rude to describe someone as “overweight,” or, Lord forbid, “fat”; the politically correct term now is “inappropriately proportioned” or some such avoidance of what is clearly in front of you.
Just this week in Guyana, with the furor over the stoppage of calypsoes on the government radio station, the explanation was given that no ban had taken place; the offending songs were simply “under review.” One media outlet said the action was not a ban but a “prohibition.” Similarly, I relay an explanation from an accountant friend here who defended an accusation of fraud, by referring to it as “a yet unexplained interruption of monetary supply.” Or, to borrow a term, “the matter is under review.”
Although the contortions can be irritating, there can be a humorous side to them.
I heard two Trinis in Toronto airport debating the use of the word “big” as it related to a shoe. 1st Trini: “Yuh jus buy de shoe. Yuh does wear 8; de shoe is a 8. How you could say it big?” 2nd Trini: “I know it big, padna. When ah walkin, de foot comin and de shoe stayin.” No obfuscation there. A classic example, from many years back, was the popular calypso about a trial where a man was accused of having “improper relations” with a goat.
Although the term was itself an evasion, the calypsonian took the matter even further with the accused man testifying, “I’m not guilty, your honour; is the goat back back on me.”
Similarly, in the annual comedy/music revue I wrote when I was in Grand Cayman, there was a skit involving a black man who was picked up as a suspect in a case where the eyewitness described the thief as “a middle-aged black man, wearing spectacles and carrying a large briefcase.” The suspect says the description does not match. “Yes, your honour, I regularly carry a large briefcase, I’m a government lawyer; and yes, I wear spectacles, but I am not black.” Says the astonished magistrate, “You’re not black?” The suspect comes back, “No, sir. I’m not black; I’m just a very dark white.”
It must be admitted, however, that many of us use this semantic tactic to our own benefit in our everyday life. A friend invited to your house for 8 o’clock will call at 8.30, but nowhere in the conversation does the word “late” surface. The explanation is, “Ah comin’ jus’ now.”
As anyone who lives in the Caribbean can tell you, the term “jus’ now” can mean anything from half an hour to several. It is a useful linguistic dance being so vague that it means whatever you wish it to mean. It is a magnificent cover.
It might be useful to remember that some of these ridiculous semantic manoeuvres can be applied in domestic situations. To the complaint from your mate, for example, that “dis coffee col’ bad,” one can haughtily contend, “It not col’; it just have negative heat.” As to whether I believe that kind of subterfuge will pass muster, I can only say, the matter is under review.
