The world has changed. The way we communicate as organizations and individuals will never be the same. So what do you do about it?
You recognize that you have a tremendous power to create and distribute content. And that’s what this class is all about. [...]
I believe we just entered what I call the Third Wave of Literacy. It’s tough to pinpoint this occurrence exactly – it’s not like anybody blew a whistle – but as I look back from the dizzying technological height of 2010, here are the divisions I can see.
The First Wave
In the first wave, only a very few people could read and write. The ones who could were scholars, priests and magicians. I add Magicians because, if you are in a pre-literate culture, really, what’s the difference between a priest and a magician? (Okay, maybe Magicians get cooler hats.)
The Second Wave
Around the 14th and 15th century the masses started to read. Dante made the very unusual choice to compose the Divine Comedy in Italian rather than Latin. In 1382, John Wycliffe was heretical enough to translate the Holy Bible into English. And to cap it off, in the 15th century, Gutenberg cranked up his printing press.
The Third Wave
As dramatic and world changing as the Second Wave was, it was still limited. Sure, everyone could read, but only a few could publish. As much as communication media have multiplied throughout the 20th century, a few people were in charge of what got produced/published/broadcasted/distributed. Around 2002, that all changed.
We are living in a time when everyone can consume media and everyone can create and distribute media. In essence, a six year old kid is on the same footing as the Pope, the President of the United States and a book editor. The next email you send can be forwarded to everyone in the world in under a second for free.
The opportunities and the perils of communication have never been greater. Welcome to the communications tsunami that is, the Third Wave of Literacy.
This is the oldest example that I know of where the the quality of a person’s language is used to single them out. And as strange and bloody as this passage from the Old Testament is, the use of language as an identifier, or Shibboleth, is still very much with us. Consider what would happen to a candidate in a job interview who, in deadly earnest, said, “Lemme axe you a question.” Unless the interview is for fry cook at McDonald’s, this non-standard use of language would put a serious dent in the interviewee’s chances. It’s not worth trying to argue with this linguistic prejudice. It exists and we all have to deal with it. We are judged by the way we speak and write. Sadly, there ain’t much rational about these kinds of judgements. You know exactly what I meant by that last sentence, but, chances are, you had an emotional reaction to my use of the word “ain’t”. To write well requires a sensitivity to these nuances of language. Ya’ll know that. In fact, most of us manage our spoken diction very well. We don’t swear in church. We don’t curse around small children. I favor a kinder, gentler, more forgiving, New Testament approach to language. I appreciate people who are direct and clear in all of their communications, and try very hard to pay more attention to the substance of any message than the wrapping. To me, that’s the only sane way to look at business communications. In a more perfect world, that’s how I think things would be. People who spoke and wrote correctly, yet had nothing to say would be ridiculed. But the world is not like that. In fact, I’m not sure people have changed much since Biblical times. Trip up on one of these Shibboleth terms and you probably won’t get killed. But your career might.Judges 12:6 Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce [it] right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
Nowhere is this more evident in the use and abuse of language. Language of any kind is a slippery, imperfect instrument at best. And if we want to get good use out of the tool of language, we should take some pains to see that our language stays in good condition.
This is George Orwell’s first point in his wonderful essay “Politics and the English Language”
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.
To be sure, this essay is a source of wonderful, practical advice for anyone who wants to use, as he puts it, ”language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.”
And to this end Orwell offers these six rules:
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use 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.
But as you can see from the first quote, for George, the stakes are considerably higher than the marks on your next term paper. Or the stylistic considerations of your next memo. He points out that allowing this kind of sloppy language to advance unchecked also allows people to defend the most horrible of acts.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless 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. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
“While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”
We can easily come up with additions to Orwell’s 1946 list of atrocities (to both persons and language). Most obviously, the President of the United States is to receive the Nobel Peace Prize while his country is engaged in two wars. One of which he has just escalated. More generally, the United States has a “defense” budget that is 48% or almost half of the world’s combined military expenditure. Observing that offense is more costly than defense, and that the United States spends 71% more than Russia, China, Korea, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Syria combined, one is moved, at the very least, to begin the search for a different adjective to couple with that use of the word budget. More subtly, Social Security is bankrupt. Those who place their trust in it will find no security at all.
The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.
To appreciate the timeless insight of George Orwell, you only need to remember that in Saddam Hussein’s interview with Dan Rather, Saddam claimed that he was the democratically elected leader of Iraq. He proudly told Mr. Rather that he had received 100% of the vote. Dan was skeptical of the percentage. But what he couldn’t do was refute Saddam’s claim. For there is no agreed definition of the word democracy.
Ideas have consequences. And insofar as each of our words is an idea in a more crystalline form, we should take care with them. Orwell understood this and argued for it with brilliance and passion in his essay “Politics and Language.”
The complete text of “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell is available here: http://langs.eserver.org/politics-english-language.txt
8:30am-11:30am
Class includes:
There is a lot of hype about the iPad. I am skeptical for many reasons, but all of my fancy arguments were just trumped by an email Apple just sent me. At the very top was this:
After reading this sentence I have become afraid for Apple. It smacks of sales-ly desperation. Because if that’s the best thing that Apple can say about what’s supposed to be a game-changing product, then they are in trouble. Let’s examine why.
Carl Sandburg wrote, “The I older I get the more suspicious of adjectives I become.” This bit of marketing is a wonderful example of why you shouldn’t trust them either. In this sentence, it’s not clear that the adjectives mean anything. Let’s break it down.
One of the best ways to see if a sentence has any sense to it is to cross out all of the adjectives and adverbs and see what you are left with. If we do that with this gem we have: “Our technology in a device at a price.” Totally underwhelming. Compare this to the words Jobs used to introduce the iPhone, “a new iPod, a new phone and an Internet communicator” — all in one. If we use this logical structure to describe the iPad it becomes, “a new iPod and an internet communicator.” But that sounds underwhelming, so somebody tried to cover it up with deceptive adjectives. If you want to argue that this is a new category of device that changes everything, I will disagree with you. But that’s not why I’m scared. I’m scared because Apple is scared. And the fear is manifest in those bullshit adjectives. If that’s the best they can do to explain why the iPad is a game changer I’m not buying it.January isn’t even over yet and I can already see that 2010 is going to be a HUGE year. One of the things that I’m very excited about is that I’m going to get spend most of my time helping people improve their writing. This is a move that’s been four years in the making and I’m excited that it’s finally here.The coolest part of this shift (for me) may be the marketing. I have been trying to explain to companies for years that marketing is no longer a matter of spin. For a person or company to market effectively value must be provided in every interaction. This value is provided by good content. When I talk about this subject I get a lot of smiles and head nods. But very few people implement. That’s what I get to do with good words (right order) http://www.goodwordsrightorder.com — I get to make great content that helps people with their writing. After all, product demonstration is the best kind of advertising.
So, in lieu of a post or a podcast, I offer to you the first of what I hope will be many e-books on writing, “The Road to Hell is Paved with Adverbs.”
As far as I am concerned, this wonderful guide from theoatmeal.com is the definitive guide to apostrophes. And by definitive I mean correct and funny enough that you will remember it.
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