Quotulatiousness

July 20, 2013

Orwell’s rules of writing

Filed under: Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

George Orwell wasn’t a perfect writer, but most of us could stand to be able to write more like he did. Here, from his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language”, are the rules he recommended to produce clear, understandable writing:

To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a ‘standard English’ which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a ‘good prose style’. On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one’s meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one’s words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

  1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
  2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
  3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
  4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
  5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
  6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.

However, as Tom Chivers points out, even Orwell could be wrong:

One: never use a figure of speech which “you are used to seeing in print” is a bit weird. For example, you could make the case that “figure of speech” is a figure of speech, since the things it refers to are not literal figures, ie physical shapes or written symbols, but metaphorical ones. And you’ve definitely seen it in print lots and lots. And there’s nothing wrong with it. “Don’t resort to cliché” is what he means, but it’s so obvious it doesn’t need saying.

Two: Language Log nails the “Never us a long word” and the “Never use a foreign phrase” one neatly by pointing out that “when a shorter one will do” or “an everyday English equivalent” are entirely subjective terms. In the very same essay, they point out, Orwell talks of “scrupulous writers”. Could he have said “careful”, Language Log wonders: “Not quite the same meaning, of course. But would it have done?” Similarly, foreign and technical words have subtly different meanings to the English equivalents: there are no true synonyms. “Don’t show off by using needlessly fancy language”, again, is so obvious and unhelpful that it doesn’t need saying; it’s little better than saying “write well”.

Three: “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out” should, by its own rule, be “If it is possible to cut a word, cut it.” Or even “Cut words where possible.” Is that better?

Four: “Never use the passive” is complete nonsense and Orwell uses it regularly himself because there is nothing wrong with it.

Five we’ve dealt with; see two.

Six: So what you’re saying, Mr Orwell, is that applying rigid rules to writing is unhelpful and silly? At last we agree.

All Orwell needs to say is that we should take care over writing, and that cliché and needlessly showy language are worth avoiding. That’s great, if largely empty (“Be better at the things you do” is rarely helpful advice). But the Six Commandments on their tablets of stone are all ridiculous, and if you go through your prose sternly applying them – or worse, if your editor does – then it is very unlikely to make it any better.

July 4, 2013

That distinctive society

Filed under: Cancon — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:05

Richard Anderson on the most recent language flap in Quebec:

One of PET’s few redeeming characteristics was his understanding of Quebec nationalism’s intense parochialism. This was not simply a minority wishing to preserve its culture, the Quebecois of 1960 were among the most successful and secure ethnic minorities in the world. The tribalists who sought the province’s independence were driven by a fear and hatred of the Other. That Other was mostly the English in the 1960s. But Canada, even Quebec, is now a more diverse place. If this was just a matter of holding a grudge against the Anglos it would stop and end with the English. But the die-hards don’t seem be fond of anyone but their own kind.

Ethnic nationalists are like that.

Now let us imagine a scenario. Indeed a great deal of imagination is required to keep the kabuki theatre of Quebec nationalism going. Let us think of a retail manager in Toronto who, for the sake of preventing ghetto formation in the world place, decided to insist on employees speaking only English. How long do you guess before the cops show up? Minutes? The camera crews would probably be there faster. The Toronto Police Service is renowned [both] for their zeal in traffic enforcement and their obsequiousness toward politically correct nostrums. Chief Blair would be hailing the arrest as a victory for diversity by late afternoon.

[. . .]

In the wake of this story the Quebec government was clear that it was not illegal to speak English in Quebec. Not yet anyway. A pure laine nationalist can dream, can’t he? This story has resonance because it captures the status of Anglophones as second class citizens in their own province. It’s linguistic bigotry that would be tolerated nowhere else in Canada. The last acceptable bigotry in modern Canada.

All Canadians are equal. Those who speak French are just more equal than others.

June 5, 2013

The “threat” of American English

Filed under: Britain, History, Media, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:53

Things must be pretty quiet over in Britain, if some of the concerns being aired are about the baleful influence of American English on the language used in the Mother Country:

Does this actually matter? No. On the contrary, we should welcome American English, as it bequeaths to British English more synonyms. English is such a brilliant language for the very reason it has so many different words for similar things, a result of its dual Germanic/Latinate parentage. In the language of Shakespeare, Dickens and Hollywood you can describe someone as hungry or famished, fast or rapid, good or benevolent, bad or malevolent. It’s no coincidence that the first modern thesaurus was in English — Roget’s, in 1805.

In any case, many alleged ‘Americanisms’ are merely old English words that fell into disuse, notably ‘fall’ for autumn, ‘diaper’, ‘faucet’, ‘candy’ and ‘gotten’. The latter is especially useful, as in British English ‘got’ has to double up as a present tense verb for ‘possess’ and a past participle for ‘attain’ and ‘become’. The prohibition on ‘gotten’ is both chauvinistic and illogical when you consider the uncontroversial ‘forgotten’. Instead of complaining about American English, it would be more interesting to explore why Americans speak the way they do. For instance, New England was settled by people from south-east England, which is why Bostonians also don’t pronounce the ‘r’ in ‘car’ (think Cliff from Cheers propping up the baa). Much of the rest of America was settled by Irish and Scots, which is why they also articulate a strong ‘r’ in ‘Iron Maiden’. And Americans say ‘I’m good’, not to boast of their moral worth but to indicate their state of being, because Germans — another emigrant people — use gut as an adverb as well as an adjective.

Everyone in the world — except Dutch and Scandinavian footballers — learns American English because it is today’s lingua franca. It’s the principal means for disseminating ideas and getting work, as Latin used to be. As Luc Ferry of Le Figaro, writing approvingly of the new French legislation, noted last week: ‘Si Descartes n’avait pas écrit en latin, come le feront encore après lui Leibniz ou Spinoza, il n’aurait jamais été lu dans le monde entier.’ People stopped using French when that country went into decline and lost influence in the nineteenth century, and it was the same story for British English in the twentieth. But neither language has disappeared, and neither is ‘threatened’ by American English. It’s also worth remembering that as America declines, so will its influence and the importance of its language. No empire lasts for ever.

If any English-speaking country has to be concerned about the invasive nature of Americanisms, it’d be Canada. So far, thank goodness, nobody outside Quebec seems to feel that we need to get the government involved in defining what is and isn’t proper in Canadian English (and Quebec’s linguistic worry-warts don’t give a rat’s ass about English anyway, except where it starts filtering into their version of French…)

May 19, 2013

Modern terminology update from Chris Kluwe

Filed under: Humour, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:35

Even though he’s moved on from the Vikings, I still follow Chris Kluwe’s twitter feed. Here’s today’s terminology lesson from @ChrisWarcraft:

May 8, 2013

Repost: Wine without whining

Filed under: Humour, Wine — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:01

Originally posted 27 September, 2007:

Scraped off the bottom of rec.humor.funny, from August, 1996, and attributed to “PiALaModem@aol.com”:

The Down And Dirty on The Fruit of the Vine

I’m going to do you a big favor. I’m going to free you from feelings of inadequacy that have been haunting you since sometime in your teens. I’m going to fill you in on the greatest scam ever perpetrated upon the consuming public. I’m going to tell you what I know about wine.

The bottom line is that wine tastes awful. It’s just grape juice gone south (forgive me, dixiewhistlers). All the millions of poor slobs dutifully disguising the revolted pucker behind looks of thoughtful analysis, parroting gibberish of which they’ve no idea of the meaning, studying for hours so as not to be humiliated by menial restaurant employees once again, have fallen for a complex and insidious canard (see COLD DUCK). An “acquired taste” they call it. Well, you could acquire a taste for Ivory soap.

Herewith is a glossary of selected wine terms and what they really mean:

APPELLATION CONTROLEE: French for “Trust me”

AROMA: A bad smell that comes from the grapes; See BOUQUET

BEAUJOLAIS NOUVEAU: Wine so awful that it isn’t worth aging.

BOUQUET: A bad smell that’s added during processing; See NOSE

BRUT: Describes a wine that sneaks up on you and stabs you in the back. Or a wine dealer. From the Latin, “Et tu, Brute”

CHATEAUNEUF DU PAPE: The pope’s new house was paid for by swindling buyers into paying the price for this wine.

DRY: Hurts your throat while swallowing.

FRUITY: Tastes like children’s cough medicine. See ROBUST

NOBLE ROT: What well-born wine snobs talk.

NOSE: The total effect of AROMA and BOUQUET; something you wish you could hold while drinking.

ROBUST: Tastes like cough medicine. See FRUITY

ROSE: Many people mistakenly pronounce this to rhyme with Jose. A term for a pinkish wine, named for what an early commentator said his gorge did when he tasted it.

VARIETAL: Having the worst qualities of a single type of grape, rather than a mixture of sins.

VINTAGE: How many years we’ve been trying to get rid of this rotgut.

April 27, 2013

“Nazi” is a word that leads to intellectual laziness and misunderstanding

Filed under: Germany, History, Media, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:00

In History Today, Richard Overy explains why the word “Nazi” has been over-used and has become an obstacle to historical understanding:

Few words in regular use in historical writing can have been abused as much as the word ‘Nazi’. At the very least it has proved a persistent grammatical challenge for generations of students who fall into the trap of writing ‘Nazi’s’ or ‘Nazis’ ‘ as the plural of Nazi and ‘Nazis’ as the possessive without an apostrophe, when it should be the other way around. This has become so widespread a practice that the mistake profits from a growing linguistic inertia. Soon it will be designated as an anomaly we can all live with, like the misuse of ‘impact’ as if it were a verb — as in ‘the Nazi’s impacted the German political system’.

In truth this is the least of the problems. The real issue is the indiscriminate use of the term ‘Nazi’ to describe anything to do with German institutions or behaviour in the years of the dictatorship between 1933 and 1945. It is common practice to talk of the ‘Nazi Army’, or the ‘Nazi Air Forces’, or ‘Nazi atrocities’, or ‘the Nazi economy’ as if everything in Germany under Hitler was uniquely and unambiguously National Socialist. The result is a complete lack of historical precision. ‘Nazi’ becomes a shorthand term that obscures more than it explains. Historians who write about the Soviet Union under Stalin do not usually describe its features as ‘Commie this’ or ‘Commie that’, any more than historians of British party politics in the interwar years talk about ‘Tories’ and ‘lefties’ rather than the Conservative Party and the Labour Party.

The term originated in the 1920s when contemporaries searched for some way of getting round the long-winded title of the party — the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). It was used chiefly by the enemies of the party and never by the regime itself. The term ‘Nazi’ or ‘the Nazis’ had strongly negative associations; it was employed as a quick way of describing a movement popularly associated in the mind of left-wing critics outside Germany with authoritarian rule, state terror, concentration camps and an assault on the cultural values of the West. Psychologists even suggested that there was such a thing as a ‘Nazi mind’ to explain why members of the party were so brutal, aggressive and mendacious. The term then, and now, was loaded.

April 18, 2013

QotD: J.R.R. Tolkien on the power of oratory

Filed under: Media, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell. For some the spell lasted only while the voice spoke to them, and when it spoke to another they smiled, as men do who see through a juggler’s trick while others gape at it. For many the sound of the voice alone was enough to hold them enthralled; but for those whom it conquered the spell endured when they were far away, and ever they heard that soft voice whispering and urging them. But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it.

J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Voice of Saruman”, The Two Towers, 1954.

April 8, 2013

Words as weapons, words as tools

Filed under: Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:37

The agreed meaning of words is critical to communication. Redefinition of meaning can be a useful political tool to shift an argument or to delegitimize an opponent:

A huge quotient of the seemingly endless cultural and ideological wars hinges on how terms are defined. Those who claim authority to declare what words mean are able to shape public thinking like a sculptor molds clay. Although facts — which are what news organizations are supposed to peddle — seem immutable, words are forever in flux. Both “liberal” and “progressive” now mean almost the opposite of what they did a century ago. Such semantic squabbling also leads to absurdities such as how the phrase “colored person” was deemed hateful and replaced with the far more sensitive “person of color.” Terms such as “racist” are almost never applied to nonwhites, and if you dare tell a militant feminist that she’s “sexist,” she may scratch out your eyeballs. And don’t even dare to ask for a quantifiable and consistent definition of “Semite” lest you be deemed “anti-Semitic.”

What’s worse, many of these politically charged terms never seem to achieve stasis. Over the past generation there’s been a ballooning expansion of terms such as “racism,” “sexism,” “white supremacy,” and, the granddaddy (sorry — Earth Mother) that supposedly spawns them all, “hatred.” Yet if you dare to ask anyone for a concrete definition of such terms, they’ll consider you automatically guilty of all the cultural sins these derogatory terms are intended to describe. As US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously explained, although “obscenity” may not be readily defined, you’re supposed to know it when you see it.

And if you persist in claiming that neither do you know it or see it, these words will be used as hammers to pound you into submission. In the sort of foam-flecked hyperbolic insanity that seems to suggest a culture either ready to implode or finally yield to ideological totalitarianism, you will be accused of ranting, slamming, bashing, and scaremongering merely for asking questions — even if you ask them in a timid and sincere voice without a wisp of malice.

March 19, 2013

QotD: “It was clear that both the professor’s detractors and supporters were, overwhelmingly, nuts”

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Free speech was alive and well at the University of Toronto last night, but in that moment I’d have welcomed its death with open arms.

It was clear that both the professor’s detractors and supporters were, overwhelmingly, nuts. And Dr. Fiamengo herself, was, standing at that podium, a buoy of relative reason in a sea of everything but. “Any movement can attract hysterical detraction and unsavoury allies,” she would tell me over the phone the next morning. “That is the risk one runs.” She’s right. Take this little Facebook diatribe from an active member of A Voice for Men, one of the men’s rights groups who support her.

    There has never been a great female composer. Throughout history there has been plenty of privileged woman, who have had access to pianos, and violins, yet somehow we are expected to believe that men have somehow stopped them for being composers? Woman have the big lovely eyes, big tits, but mean [I think he meant “men”] are far more beautiful, they are more beautiful where it counts. In their wonderful creative souls.

Unfortunately, though, the other side is no more intelligent. They just use bigger words.

Almost every pro-women’s studies person who approached the mic last night, spoke another language, a jargon you might misconstrue as scientific – only the words they used weren’t shortcuts meant to simplify or summarize complex concepts, they were used to make simple concepts sound complex: Hegemonic, racialized, problematic, intersectionality. It was pure obfuscation, 1984 with tattoos and septum piercings. Some of the students couldn’t even string together a single lucid sentence. All they had were these meaningless, monolithic words. I felt like I was on a game show, the exercise being how many times can you say patriarchal, phallocentric hegemony in 45 seconds or less. It was frankly, for a feminist, depressing.

Slogans don’t make scholarship and being self-righteous does not make you right.

Emma Teitel, “Why women’s studies needs an extreme makeover”, Maclean’s, 2013-03-11

March 8, 2013

Jack Layton biopic provokes outrage … because there isn’t a French version

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:03

I’ll let Paul Wells explain this one:

February 19, 2013

Orwell updated: how politicians lie in “plain speech”

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:25

Ed Smith shows how Orwell’s warning about politicians lying is now out of date because they’ve mastered the art of using “plain language” in aid of untruth:

Orwell season has led me back to his famous essay “Politics and the English Language”, first published in 1946. It is written with enviable clarity. But is it true? Orwell argues that “the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words.”

I suspect the opposite is now true. When politicians or corporate front men have to bridge a gap between what they are saying and what they know to be true, their preferred technique is to convey authenticity by speaking with misleading simplicity. The ubiquitous injunction “Let’s be clear”, followed by a list of five bogus bullet-points, is a much more common refuge than the Latinate diction and Byzantine sentence structure that Orwell deplored.

We live in a self-consciously plain-spoken political era. But Orwell’s advice, ironically, has not elevated the substance of debate; it has merely helped the political class to avoid the subject more skilfully. The art of spin is not (quite) supplanting truth with lies. It aspires to replace awkward complexities with catchy simplicity. Successful spin does not leave the effect of skilful persuasiveness; it creates the impression of unavoidable common sense. Hence the artifice becomes invisible — just as a truly charming person is considered nice rather than “charming”.

February 6, 2013

English accents, circa 1483

Filed under: Britain, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

I’m afraid the coverage of the discovery and identification of the remains of Richard III have done bad things to the newspapers. We’re starting to see articles like this posted:

King Richard III was ‘a brummie’
King Richard III would have spoken with a Birmingham accent, according to a language expert.

Dr Philip Shaw, from the University of Leicester’s School of English, used two letters penned by the last king of the Plantagenet line more than 500 years ago to try to piece together what the monarch would have sounded like.

He studied the king’s use of grammar and spelling in postscripts on the letters.

The university has now released a recording of Dr Shaw mimicking King Richard reading extracts from those letters.

Despite being the patriarch of the House of York, the king’s accent “could probably associate more or less with the West Midlands” than from Yorkshire or the North of England, said Dr Shaw.

Wow. This must have been a long, painstaking effort to pin down the linguistic “tics” that help indicate a person’s natural speaking habits. What were the key elements that indicated Good King Richard was a “Brummie”?

“… there is also at least one spelling he employs that may suggest a West Midlands accent.”

That’s it? One spelling variation that “suggests” he would pronounce that one word in a similar manner to the modern Birmingham style? Gah!

December 7, 2012

US student vocabulary tests show disappointing results

Filed under: Education, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:49

At the Wall Street Journal, Stephanie Banchero reports on recent tests of vocabulary that show US students are not as well-informed as expected:

U.S. students knew only about half of what they were expected to on a new vocabulary section of a national exam, in the latest evidence of severe shortcomings in the nation’s reading education.

Eighth-graders scored an average of 265 out of 500 in vocabulary on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the results of which were made public Thursday. Fourth-graders averaged a score of 218 out of 500.

The results showed that nearly half of eighth-graders didn’t know that “permeates” means to “spread all the way through,” and about the same proportion of fourth-graders didn’t know that “puzzled” means confused — words that educators think students in those grades should recognize.

Most fourth-graders did know the meaning of “created,” “spread” and “underestimate.” At eighth grade, most students knew “grimace,” “icons” and “edible.”

The new vocabulary test was embedded in the biennial national reading exam, known as the NAEP. Last year’s scores were in line with those posted in 2009, the first time vocabulary scores were broken out, but the latest results are the first to be made public. Experts noted that the results mirror the performance on the national reading test, which has yielded fairly static scores for a decade.

December 5, 2012

Finland’s excellent education system can’t be exported

Filed under: Asia, Education, Europe — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:46

Finland frequently comes in at or near the top of the rankings for quality of education, and some countries are tempted to replicate the Finnish model to improve their own domestic school systems. Unfortunately, as Eero Iloniemi points out, the model is actually more cultural than educational:

One such similarity is orthography. Both languages are written almost exactly as they are pronounced. Therefore, a child who can spell one word will be able to spell every word, even when they hear it for the first time. An eight-year-old Finn will have no trouble identifying every letter when he hears the word ‘kertakäyttösyömäpuikkoteollisuus’. So while native English speakers practise spelling well into their teens, Finnish and Korean kids are busy brushing up on other subjects.

Another thing Finland and Korea share is a fairly homogeneous culture. Ethnic minority groups are small and immigration to both countries is conspicuously low. As Horst Entof and Nicole Miniou of Darmstadt University of Technology noted in their 2004 study, PISA results are higher in countries which have strict and/or highly selective immigration policies than they are in countries with more liberal immigration policies. The name of the study says it all: PISA Results: What a Difference Immigration Law Makes.

This point is underlined by the fact that Finland performs significantly better in PISA studies than neighbouring Sweden. Why? Sweden has an immigrant population that is 10 times bigger. When these socially and economically similar countries are compared, omitting first and second generation immigrant children from sample groups, the results become almost identical.

Update: Oh, and it’s also a myth that the Finns pay their teachers at the same level they pay their doctors.

November 28, 2012

Is English really a Scandinavian language?

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:14

ESR on some recent linguistic speculation:

Here’s the most interesting adventure in linguistics I’ve run across in a while. Two professors in Norway assert that English is a Scandinavian language, a North Germanic rather than a West Germanic one. More specifically, they claim that Anglo-Saxon (“Old English”) is not the direct ancestor of modern English; rather, our language is more closely related to the dialect of Old Norse spoken in the Danelaw (the Viking-occupied part of England) after about 865.

[. . .]

Previously on this blog my commenters and I have kicked around the idea that English is best understood as the result of a double creolization process — that it evolved from a contact pidgin formed between Anglo-Saxon and Danelaw Norse. The creole from that contact then collided, a century later, with Norman French. Wham, bam, a second contact pidgin forms; English is the creole descended from the language of (as the SF writer H. Beam Piper famously put it) “Norman soldiers attempting to pick up Anglo-Saxon barmaids”.

This is not so different from the professors’ account, actually. They win if the first creole, the barmaids’ milk language, was SVO with largely Norse grammar and some Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. The conventional history of English would have the girls speaking an SOV/V2 language with largely Anglo-Saxon grammar and some Norse vocabulary.

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