"The trouble with so much modern language is that it doesn't represent real thought; it's prefabricated construction, lowered into place with no regard for its surroundings."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,664557,00.htmlThus reads the start of Simon Hoggart's latest attack on mondern language. I am sure that many of you may agree with him - as I do in many respects. But haven't we gained anything from the new ways in which we use language to communicate? There are some positive sides to the use of cliches, argot, the catch phrases, and the over use of business jargon in normal conversation, arn't there? There must be a deeper scrutiny of the roots of language available to us than ever before, some kind of deeper insight, right?
Please help me refutate or alleast find redeeming sides to living in a world where language is used and misused as just another commodity.
Please help me refutate or alleast find redeeming sides to living in a world where language is used and misused as just another commodity.
I wasn't familiar with Hoggart, but I can't help agreeing with much of what he says. However, he does go on a bit. I can't help thinking that Orwell covered much the same turf, but to greater effect, in Politics and the English Language.
Today most of us take it for granted that everyone around us is to some degree literate. We've all been to school and tackled readin' and ritin'. But using language with precision and imagination is another matter altogether. Personally speaking, I find it terribly difficult to come up with original metaphors and to avoid clichés. The same old words and phrased come rolling out. How did people like Addison and Steele or the framers of the American Constitution manage to get it so right? For one thing, they weren't bombarded from morning to night (there I go) with the language of hucksterism. And having some degree of formal education separated them from the less literate masses. Even more impressive were those, such as Abraham Lincoln or Bartolomeo Vanzetti, whose natural facility with language trumped their humble beginnings.
Dear BY: A valid observation of the obvious by the author, but he started with a cliché "a far cry".
I seriously doubt if any language has ever been deliberately structured in a way which promotes the expression of abstract thought. Most, if not all, languages are responses to externalities - the need to cooperate, to describe physical issues, to grease the wheels of human interaction. The current predeliction for using business terms works two ways. I don't know how many times I've heard "bottoming out" used since hitting Blighty's palsied shores. Whatever happened to "getting to the bottom of"?
"Even more impressive were those, such as Abraham Lincoln or Bartolomeo Vanzetti, whose natural facility with language trumped their humble beginnings."
Dear slithy toves: Your juxtaposition of Abraham Lincoln and Bartolomeo Vanzetti surprised me. I have never seen any of Vanzetti's writings. I do remember the bombing of the judge's house. I remember seeing an article in which a relative of one of the two men about twenty years ago stating his belief that they were guilty. Perhaps other members of the board would also welcome your giving some samples of Vanzetti's writings.
P.S. I found on Internet a discussion by Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter of the Sacco and Vanzetti case. They obviously had an incompetent lawyer. There was obviously far more reasonable doubt than I had known before. Vanzetti was described as speaking "broken English" in early stages. But having been inmprisoned for about seven years, was able to write quite well. However, I can't quite accept his being favorably compared with Abraham Lincoln.
"I don't know how many times I've heard "bottoming out" used since hitting Blighty's palsied
shores. Whatever happened to "getting to the bottom of"?"
Dear CK: To me "bottoming out" means to be approaching a low level, as when stock market values rate of decline becomes small, and an upturn seems likely.
"Getting to the bottom of" to me means accumulating enough evidence to give an answer to a problem.
Yes, Bill. Thank you for that.
Need I add that you sounded as though they meant the same thing.
"This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the most low or misfortunate creature of the earth --- I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. But my conviction is that I have suffered for things that I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I have suffered more for my family and for my beloved than for myself; but I am so convinced to be right that if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already.
I have finished. Thank you."
---Bartolomeo Vanzetti, to Judge Thayer, upon being sentenced to death, April 9, 1927Bill: For some samples of Vanzetti's writing I would refer you to:
http://va.crimelibrary.com/sacco/saccomain.htmslithy
In Hoggart's defense, if the Guardian is like other papers the headline was probably written by an editor and not by the author.
That aside, the problem with people like Hoggart is that they have no respect for the language; they have no problems as long as the language lives up to their expectations but they can't take the language on its own terms.
Need I add that you sounded as though they meant the same thing.Well, in fact, I thought I'd posted the complaint on account of them meaning precisely something different!
Twist and turn though I might, Cap, I cannot see that you were doing what you claim to have been doing nor can I see how Max understood that he had misconstrued it. Your last sentence seems a non sequitur to this poor blighted pal.
Thank you slity...for nearly 30 years a song has been periodically popping into my head about Sacco and Vanzetti.
It was in a movie I saw at my grandmother's home when I was around ten years old. BUT I never knew it was about real people. I don't know why the bit of song has stuck with me all those years. I still only remember two gents being dragged away at the end, somebody yelling nooooo and that soulful song.
I wish I could find the movie again but in French Québec, finding an old English movie is somewhat out of the question.
bel: There was a movie, made in Italy, called Sacco e Vanzetti, that came out in 1971. It was eventually released in the US--in Canada? I don't know. Nor do I know if it's available on video.
slithy
OK, I can see your interp, Max. Still can't see Cap's.
I don't know if it was ever made into a movie, but.
Why yes! What do you know? http://us.imdb.com/Title?0121411The musical
Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris has a song, Marathon, about the turning of the decades. Sacco & Vanzetti are mentioned in that, but one of the most memorable lyrics to me is:
And the seventies flash and the eighties bang
And the nineties whimper and the century hangs...
Finally noticed your correction, Dr. Bill--thanks! [relief]
My favourite line, if I remember it correctly, has to be: "Call your broker and buy marzipan"
Reminds me of a radio show announcer on CBC who says/said "A day without Mozart is like a day without marzipan"
A day without Mozart is like a day without marzipan
Ooh, where's that ten foot pole that I don't touch things with now that I really need it?
In a related story, the Florida Orange Juice Council used to have an ad slogan, "Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine". Sometime later, to increase the sales of their product they got a new slogan, "Orange, juice; it's not just for breakfast any more". This prompted me to recast their older slogan, "Orange juice without breakfast is like sunshine without a day".
Thanks slithy. The timing would be just about right on the release of that movie. I was 10 in 1971. I think I'll go searching for it.