In keeping with the topic of "words we should know" in the post just below, two views on how we speak, the language we use these days.
Dick Cavett writing in the New York Times in reaction to General Petraeus' appearance before a senate committee last week:
"In addition to his own pedantic delivery, there is his turgid
vocabulary. It reminds you of Copspeak, a language spoken nowhere on
earth except by cops and firemen when talking to "Eyewitness News." "No crook ever gets out of the car. A "perpetrator exits the vehicle."
(Does any cop say to his wife at dinner, "Honey, I stubbed my toe today
as I exited our vehicle"?) No "man" or "woman" is present in Copspeak.
They are replaced by that five-syllable, leaden ingot, the
“individual.” The other day, there issued from a fire chief’s mouth, "It contributed to the obfuscation of what eventually eventuated." This
from a guy who looked like he talked, in real life, like Rocky Balboa."
Then there is this from George Orwell from Politics and the English Language:
"Bad writers, and especially
scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by
the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones..." "An interesting illustration of this is the way in which English flower names
were in use till very recently are being ousted by Greek ones, Snapdragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not becoming myosotis,
etc. It is hard to see any practical reason for this change of fashion: it is
probably due to an instinctive turning away from the more homely word and a
vague feeling that the Greek word is scientific."
Orwell's advice to writers:
"(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
