Advanced reading with English in NY.com

             As you listened to the Watergate Players this past year, were you sympathetic to the suggestion that “the President misspoke himself”? That previous statements often became “inoperative”? Were you perplexed that discussions could “center around”? Or that “plumbers” involved themselves with things other than water fixtures? Were you comfortable in metaphysical contexts such as “time frame(s)” and “at this point in time”?

            Those of us who tend toward cynicism might take perspective from the comic “Grin and Bear It” (Field Enterprises, 10-22-72) in which a caveman perched on a rock chides his peers – and an interested dinosaur – that “Conditions have always been bad… but now that language has been invented you hear more about it.”

            Today, as the language game is played to the hilt on the television screen, most of us forget an important characteristic of language: it was invented. At an early age we learned it through imitation, and through  imitation we have moved toward varying degrees of originality.

            It is that originality which bothers many of us as we listen to the Watergate Players speak their lines.  If we put political preference and moral indignation aside for a moment, who cannot appreciate “the President misspoke himself” or something now wished unsaid should become “inoperative.” Alice in Wonderland, perhaps, but imaginatively original, and - granted the purpose and motivation of the speakers – a natural use of  language to present a new situation.

            Such use of language gets to us because we all intuitively know the rules of the language game. Language should be natural to the speaker; it should be appropriate to the listener; and the speaker should take into consideration the listener’s possibly differing point of view. If these three elements are not kept in delicate balance, the language used will not be effective.

            The Watergate Players too often make the mistake – or take the gamble – that their listeners are attuned to and sympathetic with their points of view. More often they make the more serious mistake of fitting their language to the world and not fitting the world to their language.

            Not long ago, The New York Times ran an editorial which described the use of “low income” in place of “poverty” and such phrases as “protective reaction strikes” as “deliberate misuse(s) of the English language to disguise rather than to communicate facts.”

            To use language to disguise rather than to communicate facts (whatever they are) is not a misuse of the language. There are many situations where such a disguise might be desirable. Language is used to inform, to express, to describe, to direct, and to convince. But a primary use of language is to affect people. It is used to soothe, to arouse, to induce, and to obscure.  All are legitimate uses of language (not misuses); we should be aware that people will use language for these purposes.

            So, as the Watergate Players continue their run, listen carefully. They are not misusing the language; they’re just not playing the game too well.  

                          Bill Reynolds