The Discouraging Word

Many, many — far too many — years ago we here at TDW began putting together a little thing that today would be called a blog and back in 2001 was called…well, a blog, but it was much more novel back then. It might have even been called, very gravely, a weblog, simply because the word blog might have seemed too flip. Or too incomprehensible.

Back at the beginning, we were also using a crude ancestor of WordPress that made creating and posting items difficult at best. It also had a charming manner of archiving posts such that our readers could never link directly to our posts, not least because the URLs to which our archives were saved were forever changing. One year a post might be at, say, http://www.thediscouragingword.com/archives/arc11.shtml ; the next year it might have migrated somewhere else entirely.

We kept TDW going for several years, until life overtook us and deprived us of all of our free time. But this month we developed a strong sense of nostalgia about our younger days. And now that this blogging thing has become so worryingly simple, we looked at each other and said, “Why don’t we repost all of this marvelous stuff for a new generation?”

Then we laughed, because we never produced any marvelous stuff.

In any case: we’ve now made the decision to do TDW right, for once, and so over the next month or so we’re going to repost our archive using this newfangled WordPress thing. You’ll notice that we’re backdating all of these posts so as to echo their original publication date. This feels vaguely dishonest, but…well, history must be served.

And, boy, how cringe-inducing history can be. We hope that you, dear readers, appreciate our honesty in reposting some of the nonsense we had on our original site.

And what’s that you ask? About new material? About posting new material? Did you even read that paragraph about free time? We let our subscription to the OED lapse long ago anyway. And without that, we’d be no good at all. But if you’d like to make a generous contribution toward a new subscription…

Back on 19 Sept 2002, we mused on an article in the New York Times (”I Think, Therefore IM”) which surveyed the place of instant-messaging abbreviations in English composition. The article trotted out the usual array of opinionators, as we noted then, from the grade-school teacher horrified by the use of IM in any piece of writing to the young academic at a prominent US university who lauded IM as a pedagogical godsend. (Our pathologically faithful readers may even recall one of her more astonishing quotes in that article: “Imagine Langston Hughes’ writing in quick texting instead of ‘Langston[-]writing.’ It makes teaching and learning so exciting.”)

We had this article on our mind again last month when faithful reader David e-mailed us to ask our view on the relationship of literacy to instant messaging. We replied that we believe it more productive to understand the argot of IM as an expression of one of many literacies. What students need to learn, we thought aloud to David, is when to deploy the various literacies that they — and all of us — possess. An essay written for an English class, then, should not be a place for (unself-consciously used) IM abbreviations just as, say, that same essay should not be written on a stenographer’s machine.

Nuance seems to us to be key to this issue: there is no one Literacy, high and inviolable, nor are there infinite literacies that are all of equal value, as our young, Langston-writing academic believes. These two extremes are essentially indistinguishable in content, although they have radically different politics: the first position is irredeemably conservative and simplistic, the second blissfully avant-garde and sophisticated. We, as should be clear, find both worthless.

But whereas we had found an example of the latter in the NYT article, we had not yet found a full, coherent statement of the former position — until today. And, happily, the ever-reactionary Daily Telegraph has come to our aid. In today’s edition, this looming headline appears: “Girl writes English essay in phone text shorthand.” Horror of horrors! Just read the lead:

Education experts warned yesterday of the potentially damaging effect on literacy of mobile phone text messaging after a pupil handed in an essay written in text shorthand.

This, we must say, is a fabulously rich article to subject to cultural analysis because it works on so many levels. First, the anonymous Girl is from Scotland, which means that those middle- and later-aged representatives of Middle England reading the paper may dismiss this incident in part as an expression of Scottish barbarism. Second, the clear failure of the Scottish educational system likely has something to do with devolution. Yet, third, this failure does echo other failures in the English/British educational system (e.g., A-level scandals, university fees) from recent months; these failures, however, should probably be blamed on Labour. Fourth — well, you see how delicious this exercise in analysis could be.

We are tempted to ask how an essay plagued with (again, presumably unself-consciously used) IM lingo is worthy of being described in a nationally distributed broadsheet. The NYT article, at least, had the justification of claiming to have identified a Cultural Trend, not an individual instance. But that question, we know, is naïve: the article is pure ideology, which has every right to be in a newspaper. (And Cultural Trend, we suppose, another ideology in its self-professed objectivity.)

So what was the essay that sparked such revulsion and panic and also required reactions from the Scottish Qualifications Authority, Judith Gillespie of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, and Dr Cynthia McVey, a psychology (??) lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University? We shall quote the article’s final paragraph in full:

The teenager’s essay began: “My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we usd 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kds FTF. ILNY, it’s a gr8 plc.” Translation: “My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York, it’s a great place.”

We do find this rather horrifying if indeed, as the article claims, the offender used IM abbreviations because “she found it ‘easier than standard English’.” We said as much in our 19 Sept posting. But we find the content of this paragraph even more horrifying — or, indeed, if this jumble can even be considered a paragraph.

Yet what was the assignment given here, anyway? Is this nothing more than a what-did-you-do-over-your-summer-vacation paper? Perhaps a teacher so unimaginative as to offer this assignment should be the cause for revulsion and panic; perhaps the student should be praised for thinking so disdainfully of a trite topic and expressing that disdain so clearly in content and form. Any student who feels deeply engaged by a topic will think through it deliberately and produce good work, we know from our limited teaching experience; any student who receives a half-assed, last-minute, poorly constructed assignment will respond with a half-assed, last-minute, poorly written essay.

We would be most interested in learning the classroom context of this essay. But then nuance would enter the Telegraph’s article and it would lose all entertainment value. And that, we think, would be a shame.

On Monday, in the midst of a New York Times article that gripped our attention — as the cliché goes — like a car wreck, we ran across this sentence:

ABC is also considering a show in which hopeful palooka boxers will work toward a Rocky-inspired match with Mike Tyson.

Yes, indeed, the article was describing the crop of almost two dozen reality shows slated to be broadcast this summer. But palooka? The context makes the meaning of this (seeming) adjective eminently clear, of course: dumb, stupid, shamelessly greedy, etc. We can’t recall having seen this word in print before, although it seems to activate some sort of aural echo for us.

Then again, we might simply have a word like hookah rolling around in our head.

In any case, when we pursued this interesting word, we found that our trusty dictionaries suggest the construction palooka boxers tends toward tau[n]tology. Take the OED, for example: it defines the word as “an inferior or average prizefighter” — which does indeed make this usage redundant. But it also claims a more general use for palooka, viz “any stupid or mediocre person; a lout.” M-W takes an identical route: first, “an inexperienced or incompetent boxer”; then, “oaf, lout.”

If the primary sense of palooka means a bad boxer, does that make palooka boxers wrong in the same way that tautological repetitions is? We’re not sure. Perhaps we’re being too indulgent, but palooka seems a word in need of some explanation to a younger audience. A brief hunt around the web revealed to us that a US cartoon by Ham Fisher, begun around 1930, had as its central character a certain Joe Palooka, a rather slow-witted boxer who came to be depicted in low-budget movies from the 1930s to the 1950s. (Read more about the strip and its afterlife here.) But the word was evidently in wide usage before the cartoon — or, at least, so explains one of our fellow language pseudo-bloggers, Michael Quinion at World Wide Words. He explains via a few citations the link between the word and boxing, but he dismisses Fisher as its inventor. Instead, he suggests, Jack Conway, former editor of Variety, might be responsible for it.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Quinion doesn’t try to make a strong case for Conway or, really, anyone. Disappointingly, both the M-W and the OED punt on the issue of etymology: both claim it’s unknown. But both also suggest that Fisher’s strip is not responsible. M-W claims a first use in 1924. And the OED cites a first source from 1925, a rather odd one from H.C. Witwer’s Roughly Speaking: “Ben will make at palooka’s pan over for you in any style you wish, Reverend Jephtha.”

Huh?

The next citation comes from Dashiell Hammett’s Black Mask (1927) and, in contrast, is downright lyrical in its brevity: “A paluka who leads with his right.” But we get no palooka boxers among these citations. And we also get no definitions or usage examples that use palooka as an adjective, as it is being used in this Times article.

So is the Times — or, rather, reporter Bill Carter, or perhaps the copyeditor of the Business section — being pedagogical or redundant? Again, we can understand a certain amount of anxiety about leaving palooka to fend for itself in front of younger readers. (Although not necessarily indicative, the OED’s last usage example comes from a very distant 1976 — from the Times, no less.) But doesn’t the mention of Mike Tyson and Rocky explicate the word sufficiently for those readers?

Perhaps we’ve been too worn down by our week’s work, but for now we’ll turn agnostic on the question. But we do feel we’re leaning toward finding hopeful palooka boxers an awkward, stmbling formulation.

(On the other hand, we suffered an unusually immediate outbreak of prudishness when, elsewhere in this same article, we read citizen Bibi Prival’s accurate yet sexually explicit analysis of the true appeal of reality shows. And, no, we aren’t referring to her use of the word sluttiness. A matter to be addressed another time, perhaps.)

[A few hours later: In a review of the movie Poolhall Junkies in Friday's NYT, we find this sentence:

Mr. Steiger, playing a crusty and benevolent pool hall manager (is there any other kind?), dispenses hard-won street wisdom as if his words were the only thing standing between Johnny and a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

Did we only notice this sentence because we are newly aware of palooka? Does the word actually appear everywhere all the time, and we simply haven't noticed it? Or do words move like ripples, with A.O. Scott having read Carter's article and internalized palooka? An interesting question. Back on 15 Dec 2002, after all, we noted a similar migration of blingbling through the paper...]

We have been distracted these past few days with efforts to pay our rent, but we want to assure you, faithful readers, that we have two words now pressing down on our curiosity: palooka and rodomontade, both culled from our recent reading. A cursory spin around our dictionaries for the first, at least, seems to indicate we shall have much to say. And we hope we shall have that say in the next few days. (We have also added one final note on the Chirac issue, if you haven’t already spotted it below.)

Faithful reader languagehat was kind enough to respond today via e-mail to our plea for help on the Chirac matter. His answer: keep quiet and good are the best translations. His explanation, which includes yet another phrase that can exert control over others’ mouths:

Chirac said the nations in question had “manqué une bonne occasion de se taire”: “missed a good opportunity to keep quiet” would be the best translation in my opinion. “Shut up” is plainly wrong; the French equivalent of “Shut up!” is “(Fermez) ta gueule!” But I remember in the first years of studying the language, before we had any chance to learn actual colloquial French, we mewling and puking students were firmly convinced that it was “Taisez-vous!” (which was, after all, what our teacher would bark at us when we got a bit too rowdy), and that’s what we mewled at each other, convinced we were being appropriately nasty. And “great” is equally wrong; “bon” is “good,” plain and simple. Et voilà — you are now enlightened, n’est-ce pas?

We do know the proper response to that: oui.

Now we are left to muse upon the why of these variants: does shut up simply make better copy for the English-speaking world? Or were Reuters et al trying to capture something about the tone and immediate context of Chirac’s comment? Ah, the inescapable quagmire of any translation task…

[24 Feb: And, finally, for those of you registered at nytimes.com, you can read from yesterday's Times the final word on this Chirac issue by clicking here. In a brief and useful piece, Eleanor and Michel Levieux explore the various high- and low-road alternatives to Chirac's se taire, including the two rude-tending options that faithful reader languagehat has already identified. Their conclusion? "The verb Mr. Chirac chose, se taire, was neither elegant nor rude, simply neutral."]

Whatever your position on the continuing question of Iraq, we assume that you, faithful readers, would agree with us that clear and precise communication between all nations involved is essential. But what are we to make of the varying translations of French President Jacques Chirac’s remarks to reporters on Monday? Take, for example, the AP’s summary report:

In an extraordinary outburst, Chirac publicly lambasted eastern European nations seeking to join the EU for their support for Washington over the Iraq crisis.

“It is not really responsible behavior, it is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet,” he told reporters.

Reuters translated this rebuke in a different manner:

But [Chirac] launched a stinging attack on east European candidates for EU membership who had signed pro-American open letters on Iraq, branding them reckless and ungrateful, and saying they had “missed a great opportunity to shut up.”

The difference in tone between keep quiet and shut up is, we would say, rather significant — or, at least, significant enough that a translator should think carefully about the best rendering. There can be no easy equivalence here.

But which is more accurate? (Or is that simply a naive question?) Sources beyond those which simply reprint these wire stories seem to have reached no consensus. Among the British media, take the Guardian:

“They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet. When you are in the family, after all, you have more rights than when you are asking to join and knocking on the door.”

The BBC:

“They missed a great opportunity to shut up,” he chided the candidates, and their pro-American stance could feed public hostility to EU expansion.

The Daily Telegraph throws in a third variant:

“They missed a good opportunity to keep silent,” he said, referring to their signatures on two sets of statements demanding that Saddam Hussein comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1441.

“These countries are very rude and rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too quickly with the Americans. Their situation is very delicate. If they wanted to diminish their chances of joining the EU, they couldn’t have chosen a better way,” he added, reminding these governments that a referendum in any one EU state could still block the entire enlargement process.

Likewise, what about the varying uses of good vs great?

We admit that we do not have enough French to either hunt down Chirac’s original remark or to translate it accurately. (We would be intensely grateful to any readers who can help us out.) But perhaps our ignorance doesn’t matter: this is, as the AP states, an extraordinary rebuke, one that can only deepen the divide between what has now, for better or worse, come to be known as “old Europe” and “new Europe.” If the latter was already suspicious of the Franco-German axis of power, surely this peevish outburst can only intensify those feelings.

[18 Feb, 16 hours later: Chirac's quote has spread still further since we posted this item very early this morning, so we wanted to add a few additional citations. Among the shut up partisans: CNN and the Financial Times. Neither keep quiet nor keep silent have been widely used beyond the continuing keep quiets of AP wire stories.]

[19 Feb: One final addition: the New York Times today used keep quiet in its front-page article about reaction to Chirac's outburst. The opening words of the article: "'New Europe' barked back at 'old Europe' today [...]“.]

Our long-time readers know that we do not count gloating among our habits. We do not point out others’ language errors with great glee and delight; we well know how often we may be accused of the same errors. Thus, faithful readers, do not read our posting of an e-mail we recently received from faithful reader Dan as a outburst of gloating. We are simply vindicating our belief, which we expressed in our diatribe against Lake Superior State University’s list of banished words, that the words frozen tundra are not at all redundant. (See our “The usefulness (or not) of LSSU’s Banished Words,” posted 4 Jan 2003, to refresh your memory, if necessary.)

Thus, the note we received this weekend:

Regarding the misconception that “frozen tundra” is redundant.

Tundra is the area of nearly treeless ecosystems north of the boreal forest. It is not a perpetually frozen land. You could call it a biome where it is often cold and dry (not always), but one that does have summer (when tundra is not frozen). You can also have tundra at high elevation, which is certainly not frozen in the summer, although you can find ice if you search hard enough and do some digging. Large expanses of tundra are often referred to as barren land, although this is a judgment made by people who are accustomed to more southern forests and grassland. Tundra is not always frozen, for example in summer. I’ve spend summers there in which it was considerably more productive and alive than parts of the US.

I sent them a letter a while back and they seemed to have removed it from the list of banned words.

Now why, you may ask, should you defer to Dan’s judgment? Because he is a professor of a relevant scientific field in Canada, where, as he points out in his closing, “we oughta know.”

And take heart, faithful readers! Dan has proved that poor language use can — nay, must be reversed! If you once more visit LSSU’s “complete 2003 list” of banished words — via the very same link that we ourselves provided back in January — frozen tundra has indeed disappeared. Kudos, Dan! We are delighted that someone with the appropriately weighty authority was able to correct this shoddy list.