Language Follies 19 (Tell it like it isn't)

We start off today rather liquidy as we gaze upon the walls of sports arenas. At one venue the host soccer team advises us that it has an “Official Water Technology Partner.” At another British site, we discover a company called “Victorian Plumbing.” But I guess if you had to wet your whistle there’s always “Pipeline Punch.”

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Call Me By My Rightful Name (Or Not) Dept.

The shameful messes that control European football (i. e., soccer) (UEFA) and world football (FIFA) impose a strict censorship over product mentions during competition broadcasts. That goes as far as preventing announcers from correctly naming the venue if the stadium’s naming rights conflict with a competition sponsor. An example of this took place this past week when Arsenal hosted Shakhtar Donetsk in the UEFA Champions League. Arsenal’s stadium in North London is named after Emirates Airlines, but because of a conflict with a UEFA sponsor (Qatar Airways), the television announcer was made to call the venue “London Stadium.” One big, stupid problem: There is a London Stadium; it is the home field of West Ham United Football Club.

Of course, all this is minor compared to the use of euphemism that seriously undermines political reality. Here’s George Orwell in his essay “Politics and the English Language” 1946:

Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. (1)

Whitney Darrow, Jr. contributed this two decades later:

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While we’re on the truth front, here’s J. D. Vance about his involvement in the Haitians' eating cats lies:

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” (2)

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Here from The New Yorker, Oct. 12, 1968, about Alabama's racist governor:

One thousand three hundred and twenty-four innocent citizens were recently cornered by employees of Louis Harris seeking their opinions on the third-party candidate for President, and, according to the results, which were published on September 30th, eighty-six per cent, or one thousand one hundred and thirty-eight and sixty-four hundredths, of those consulted claimed to admire George Wallace for his"courage to say what he really thinks.”

 

And here from a recent Los Angeles Times story:

Donald Trump’s supporters often say they admire him because he always speaks his mind. (3)

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“Zero-morpheme growth” is the term used to describe the metamorphosing of one part of speech into another without a change in form. Because English does not have the complicated case endings that many other languages have, it is easy for English speakers to turn nouns into verbs or adjectives into nouns, for example. Of course, this can lead to some people pulling out their hair. Anyway, here are some recent examples:

“Let’s find your rich”;

“Our goal is to give every kid incredible”;

“A new way to cloud”;

“No one Carolinas like we do”;

“How to business differently.”

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Need a lawyer? How about the firm that calls itself “The Unicorn of Injury Law”?

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Or maybe you need today’s worst bargain:

Ashaway Squash Strings – SquashGear.com

 

SquashGear.com

https://squashgear.com › collections › ashaway-squash-st...

Ashaway SuperNick XL Squash String, 17g, White with Blue Spiral, REEL. Regular Price $115.25 Sale Price $115.25

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Or perhaps you’d like grandma’s noodle kugel recipe—straight from the old world, one suspects, if the old world is South East Asia:

 

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Headline in The Atlantic:

TRUMP: ‘I NEED THE KIND OF GENERALS THAT HITLER HAD’(4)

MEMO: To Donald J. Trump 

Hitler’s generals tried to kill him. (5)

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(1) https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/

(2) https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/15/politics/vance-immigrants-pets-springfield-ohio-cnntv/index.html

(3) https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-05-27/column-trump-has-a-reputation-as-refreshingly-plainspoken-on-some-subjects-hes-anything-but

(4) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-military-generals-hitler/680327/

(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot 

Restraining The Inner Man

[I]n Otero County, New Mexico, County Commissioner, Couy Griffin—recently sentenced to 14 days in jail for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol—refused a state Supreme Court order to certify his state’s June 7 primary results. Reached by phone Griffin told reporters: “My vote to remain a no isn’t based on any evidence, it’s not based on any facts, it’s only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition, and that’s all I need.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/trump-plan-jan-six-lady-ruby-freeman.html

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Going back to the 1950s and 60s and the struggle for civil rights and against segregation, I recall a great deal of noise was produced about “hearts and minds.” There were those, for example, who suggested that black people should not push too hard for equal rights but should bide their time until the Earth spins around a few times and segregationists will have changed their hearts and minds; then all will be well. These people did not reckon with the likes of Alabama governor George Wallace, who proclaimed in 1963:

“I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Somehow the idea that the exercise of their fundamental rights by American citizens depended upon the innards of their fellow countrymen always struck me as more than faintly absurd.

“Yes, sir, you may vote, but only when my spleen, kidney, and bladder say you may.”

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“If I get ‘em by the short and curlies, the hearts and minds will follow.”

Lyndon Johnson*

“The short and curlies” is the law. While legislation may or may not change hearts and minds, it changes people’s actions. They want to stay on the side of the law. I may in my heart and mind believe that it’s my God-given right to drive 100 miles an hour on the NJ Turnpike; however, I recognize that if I do so, I will have a super trooper on my tail very soon, and there will be consequences due to my breaking the speeding law. 

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Linda C. McClain: 

New Jersey Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr. stated: As Martin Luther King said: “Morality cannot be legislated; but behavior can be regulated. The law may not change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.” We have seen this in so many areas where we know we can’t change the heart of man, the mind of man, but we can regulate his behavior.**

Whether or not positive legislation changes people’s innards, the important thing is that it forces change in their external actions. Whitey in Mississippi may not have liked having a black man sitting at the next restaurant table, but if he wanted to eat, he had to swallow his prejudice.

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*I always thought it was Richard Nixon who said it.

**THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964 AND “LEGISLATING MORALITY”: ON CONSCIENCE, PREJUDICE, AND WHETHER “STATEWAYS” CAN CHANGE “FOLKWAYS,” LINDA C. MCCLAIN

https://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/files/2015/05/MCCLAIN.pdf