I haven’t noticed much mention of it but in the recent maelstrom emanating from Donald Trump’s run at the US Presidency, it is striking how much the choice of words coming from various persons in the campaign confuses the issues completely. Time and again, one finds it’s not so much the words being used but the often diverse, or even contradictory, meanings being assigned by those using them. In one recent instance, a female American voter, questioned about the continued caustic views presented by Trump, made this comment: “Well, I heard what he said, but that’s not what he meant; I know what he meant, so I continue to support him.” Indeed to step back from the political arena and look at our societies generally, is to notice the almost cavalier attitude we take to the meanings of words these days; we seem to be able to twist the meaning of a word to suit our purposes in all sorts of areas. In a time when we are inundated with infinitely more information than ever before, we have become casual in public about precise meanings and while the contortions sometimes provide us with a good laugh, the damage that is being done to credulity has to be very significant.
A parallel situation has been the tendency in recent years to avoid certain words because they may be less than politically correct and to substitute other words to hopefully make the comment palatable. In this vein, no one is described as “late”; he/she is simply “flexible with time”. Instead of being “poorly dressed”, a person is “sartorially negligent”. Instead of being described as “short”, we are told the individual is “vertically challenged”. Instead of being specific we’re engaging in cop-outs.
In the process, though, it seems that instead of getting more accurate information what is taking place is that the parameters of wordage are becoming more and more obfuscated to the point where even persons who speak to the press, or from the press, as part of their work are delivering some of the most bewildering twists imaginable. In a television ad for a recent health product, the promoter informed us that “it makes smoking unharmful”. (Not “harmless”, mind you, but probably the stage short of that which is “unharmful” perhaps? And Trump, this week, said he was “not unproud” of a particular stance he had taken on an issue.) In the same way, while we grow up learning that “quality” is a noun, and requires an adjective to determine the degree, of late the word has somehow morphed into an adjective, so that we refer to a “quality individual” or a “quality product”; in other words, “quality” now means “high quality” so the adjective is already in place when one uses that word. It’s as if we’re on a declared mission to change the meaning of words to suit our interpretation, as the lady’s comment about Donald Trump clearly shows.
Mind you, while we suffer from this mangling of information, we benefit from the hilarity some of the responses provide. In an online story on sport during the Rio Olympics, NBC showed us the gymnast Paul Hamm saying, “I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.” In that same Brazilian event, a colour commentator in a boxing match argued, “Sure there have been injuries, and even some deaths in boxing, but nothing really that serious.” And a recent baseball announcer, obviously searching for something to say about the pattern of a particular game, predicted: “If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again.” In the 2015 NFL season, with his team on a downward slide, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, known for his unorthodox expressions, was asked about the future of coach Jason Garrett as the team continued to lose. Said Jones: “That’s easy to answer. Jason’s future is ahead of him.” And with the US election in the air, a CNN sports anchor solemnly told us this after the NFL’s Washington Redskins lost their game recently: “The historical record in American politics is that if the Washington football team loses its game just before the election, the present administration loses in the voting. That’s the way it’s gone, 17 out of 18 elections.” How can supposedly competent reporters generate such journalistic nonsense, and, even more astonishingly, how does a supervising editor allow the remark to air?
For me, someone who has spent much of my life engaged with words, there is a feeling of loss in the deterioration. Publicly spoken language is often showing a lack of precision and flow. A pet peeve of mine is the common practice these days of a string of “you know” interjections coming from someone engaged in conversation. Sometimes, in fact, the responses often begin with “Well, you know” and we get another irrelevant “you know” interjection every nine or ten words. In a recent feature on concussions in contact sports, we heard, “This situation is developing, you know, rapidly, and, you know, there is clearly, you know, a need to take measures, you know, to protect the players in this very, you know, violent sport.” One gets the impression from some of these speakers that they would be struck dumb if by chance the words “you know” were to disappear from the language.
As someone I complained to recently put it, perhaps this condition is simply a result of the more rapid pace of our lives, where we’re in such a hurry that precision suffers. That sounds, you know, logical enough. What I should be doing therefore, you know, is taking a cue, you know, from the person above, and accepting that “if history repeats itself I should be, you know, expecting more of the same…you know. After all, you know, my future is ahead of me….you know.”
