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Show Spring 1976 Signpost Supplement Page 3 Officialese : Language of the Pompous Cont. from Page 1 ficialese can be found much closer to home than this. Watergate and the war in Viet Nam gave the government of the Unites States opportunity to use officialese as the defense of the indefensible. Indeed, the Viet Nam war was so controversial that an entire dialect of officialese developed, which Paul Dickson, in his essay "The War of the Words" called Vietlish. In the early part of the war, troops were called "advisers." Later, when the government admitted the existence of the war. the use of officialese was "escalated" to cover every possible situation or weapon. Some examples of this bureaucratic bilge: 'Area Denial' was a 'concept' invoked to describe a variety of acts ranging from the incessant use of 'anti -personnel devices' (which Mario Pei calls the total euphemization of the term 'killer weapon' (to the wiping of villages off the map. ) South Vietnamese families were given thirty-four dollars if one of the family members was killed by accident. These were called "condolance awards." Errors in bombing were never more incriminating than "navigation errors," "misdirections," or "technical errors" The term "defoliation" was used to describe the clearing of foliage using a "herbicide" (herbicide is a deadly, poison gas used to clear areas of ALL life, plant and animal) to ensure better visability for ground troops. "Routine, limited-duration, reinforced, protective reaction air strike sounds more like theliame of a paper given by a theoretical physicist than what it is an air attack." But the most quoted example of language abuse from the Viet Nam war was the American officer explaining to his superiors that "It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it. While American actions were linguistically whitewashed, the names and actions of the enemy were made more imposing and sinister. "Viet Cong" became "hardcore Viet Cong," and -the "National Liberation Front" was given the prefix "so-called," giving them the credibility of an unruly pack of gangsters and criminals. These overcomplications and abstractions are not entirely accidental. The North Vietnamese are no doubt guilty of propagandizing too. But it can be safely assumed that they did it in a much more limited way, since their cause was more popular and did not require the whitewashing that the United States cause warranted. The language that accompanied Watergate has left many Americans with a cynical, almost paranoid view of government. Often such language warrants a distrust of government, because the purpose of such language is to deceive the public and conceal the truth. When President Nixon was caught in a lie, he explained by saying "I misspoke myself." And the refusal to release information became the policy of "containment." Mison was justifiably fearful. And thus, another reason for officialese in government fear fear of being pinned down and made to account for a previous statement. Often the policy statements are made in a passive voice. No one seems to be responsible for the policy it just happens. This is especially true of the armed services. Any military paper is replete with sentences in the passive voice. An example of this : "ReqiiisitionswUTbe submitted? ' The questions must be asked, Who will submit these requisitions? "Reports have been received." Again, who received the reports? The people seem to have disappeared from the military writings, leaving only a lumbering, inorganic machine that will not claim responsibility for any action. Military writing is also crawling with wordy and unnecessary phrases, such as "affords an opportunity," which means "allows," or " experience has indicated that," which means' "learned." Sometimes entire paragraphs become unnecessary, such as aone-hundred-nine-word paragraph that was replaced by ten words: "When you plan a military operation, consult a weather forecast." Military writing is often inhuman, abstract and pompous. The human aspect is withdrawn and the reader is unable to place responsibility on any one person. The next institution that appears highly susceptible to unnatural redundancy and pompous language is that of academia, particularly social sciences and art criticism. It takes an extremely analytical and organized mind to understand the psychology texts that are being written today. The impenetrable jargon is hardly conducive to learning (or, "learning situation," if one prefers the officialese term.) An example is quoted from The Journal of Educational Psychology: Both the black and white teachers studied emitted few reinforcements and those emitted tended to be traditional (distant reinforcers), although most teachers stated a preference for proximity reinforcers (material rewards and close personal contact. When reading art criticism or criticism of any kind, it is very easy to become lost or confused, to miss the entire evaluation of a certain work of art. Many critics become so involved in their pseudo-intellectualism that they fail to make clear whether an object of art is beautiful or pleasing. Occasionally this cloudiness is intentional because the critic fears making a wrong judgment. Time Magazine is notorious for this type of hedging. In a book review of Saul Bellow's novel, "Humboldt's Gift," the conclusion is never reached. In comparing this review with reviews of other, less popular books, one gets the impression that the critic is hedging because he fears time will prove him wrong. Most often, though, it is not hedging that causes officialese in critical writings, but abstract, unclear thinking. Even though the essayist of Second Place Fiction Halfway There by Pam Taysom Susan leaned her head against the cold bus window and watched as the telephone poles rhythmically slid past. The vibrations from the window buzzed behind her eyesand made the insides of her ears tickle. She squinted as the sun suddenly peaked out from behind one of the large, gray, curling clouds. It was funny how things still looked the same, only in a different way. Had the countryside always been so barren, so nothing? But there were the same farm houses off in the distance and the same old billboard that read, "Food, Phone, and Gas at Mac's. 2 Miles." You could hardly read the once red letters and the left corner of the sign had peeled down and fluttered softly as the bus sped by. It was funny that the sign still stood when Mr. Mi-Garry had been dead all these years. You'd think someone would have taken it down. Susan leaned back in her seat and a half smile broke the tenseness of her mouth. They had always stopped there for lunch when they traveled to Aunt June's, she and Mom and Dad. Mom had called it the halfway stop. Things had been different then, relaxed and sort of warm. Of course Mom had been there. Susan stared hard out of the window. Yes, there it was coming up on the right, Mac's. She strained her eyes to catch every detail before the bus sped by, but all she saw was a dusty cloud of tumble weeds, dirt smeared glass, and faded red gas pumps. "Wake up, Susan," her mother nudged, "we're at the halfway spot." Susan rubbed her eyes and sat up. It was fun to stop at Mac's because she always got to play the juke box and buy gum out of the vending machines. Susan's mother grabbed her hand, and, crunching across the parking lot, they entered the cafe where her father was already talking to Mr. McGarry. Susan's mother's heels clicked hollowly against the wooden floor as they walked up to the counter and sat down. Susan loved sitting at the counter because the red bar stools spun around. "Why, is this Susan?" Mr. McGarry bellowed out between two puffy cheeks. "She must have grown a foot since I saw her last. How old are you now, honey?" Susan stared through his wrinkles to the gray eyes of Mr. McGarry and held up six fingers. "Six years old! My word! Before you know it she'll be flirting with the boys, and asked, "Well, what'll it be, S.O.S.?" He winked at Susan's father "Yeh," her father grined, '.'same old stuff." Before long Mr. McGarry had spread hamburgers before them, and orange soda pop in clear, ridged bottles.' Susan loved having her own bottle of soda pop, even if she couldn't drink it without having her tongue sucked through the top every few swallows. Her Mother and Father laughed and told her to open her mouth and just sort of pour the soda pop down, but her tongue always seemed to sneak its way back into the bottle. Susan leaned back in her seat. She wondered what it would be like to spend Christmas alone with her father. It had been okay when her mother was there, but for some reason when she was . alone with her father she couldn't think of anything to say. After nineteen years, he was still a stranger to her. Had it always been like that? Susan let out a heavy sigh. The sun was beginning to drift down in the west, painting pink and orange strips of light transparently on the crusted snow. Victorian England held its readership in contempt, he clarified his writings and always stood on firm ground. The modern critic often has ,no distinct readership to write for, and consequently uses the jargon of criticism from Bernstein: Motherwell seems to have several kinds of courage; one of them is the courage to monumentalize the polymor-phus perverse world of his inner quickenings. He is the architect of a lyrical anxiety, where Gorky was its master scrivener; the liquified tick of Gorky's id-clock becomes in Motherwell the resonant Ver-saillean tock, the tall duration of a muralizing necessity that strains to leap its pendulum's arc while carrying a full weight of iconographic potency. For a supposedly educated man of letters to write like this is inexcusable. The passage reeks of pseudo-intellectualism and absurd abstractions. With such writing, it is no wonder the American public feels a throbbing contempt for critical writers. These, then, are the reasons for and institutions that use officialese. The future of officialese looks good. The future for language looks bad. As long as there is unclear thinking or political insecurity or pomposity, officialese will exist. But the problem of cloudy, pompous language is never a static one. Officialese is always on the incline or decline, and unfortunately, it is a self -perpetrating problem. When thoughts are cloudy, then language is cloudy; when is cloudy, thoughts become cloudy, and so on, until eventually the nearest thing to linguistic symbolism that man will be able to produce will be a belch, signifying that his belly is full. Many writers recognize this growing obscurity in language, and fear the worse. The first sentence of Edwin Newman's Strictly Speaking is very pessimistic. "Will American be the death of English ... mywell-thought-out mature judgment is that it will. The outlook is dire .. .." Orwell is more optimistic, perhaps because he wrote his essay after the Second World War, and officialese was not as proliferated as it is now. Yet, Orwell states the fear that original thought will cease if language abuse continues; but he submits a plan to help people break the habit of prefabricated language, and by doing so they will be able to break the habit of prefabricated thought. His rules are as follows: (1) Never use a metaphor, simile or 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 will be helpful, but following them is not the panacea that will cure this type of language abuse. These rules treat only the symptoms. A possible cure would be to make officialese unfashionable, and thereby educate the users of officialese to its true nature that is, a form of subtle illiteracy. "Who wants to ride to the post office with me?" Susan's father's voice drifted into the kitchen where she and her mother were rolling out sugar cookies. "Go with your father," her mother's voice whispered. "Go on, tell him you'll go with him." Susan felt a sudden jerk of nerves inside her stomach. "Can't you come too, Mother? I don't want to go alone." "Susan," her mother's voice was soft enough but her eyes pleaded. "He'll feel bad if you don't go. Come on, you're ten years old now. Don't tell me you're afraid of your own father." Susan bit her tongue nervously. Why was she so afraid? Her father had never been really' mean. He didn't holler all of the time like Mary Jane's father, and he hadn't spanked her for years. It was just that she always felt so awkward around him, always managed to say the wrong things. Susan could always tell when she had said the wrong thing because her father's cool blue eyes stared out at her and made her squrim. But somehow squirming didn't help. You couldn't estpt Ihose eyes. Cont. on Page 4 |