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.” Its rule: never use a short word where a longer one will do. It must be meant to convey some misguided sense of “learnedness” and “scholasticism” — possibly even that dread thing, “intellectualism” — to their talk. Sorry, I mean their “articulation.”I agree. So did George Orwell in "Politics and the English Language," which Cavett really ought to have cited.
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. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Who imposes this phony, academic-sounding verbal junk on brave and hard-working men and women who don’t need the added burden of trying to talk like effete characters from Victorian novels?
And, General, there is no excuse anywhere on earth for a stillborn monster like “ethnosectarian conflict,” as Jon Stewart so hilariously pointed out....
Petraeus’s verbal road is full of all kinds of bumps and lurches and awkward oddities. How about “ongoing processes of substantial increases in personnel”?
Try talking English, General. You mean more soldiers.
It’s like listening to someone speaking a language you only partly know. And who’s being paid by the syllable. You miss a lot. I guess a guy bearing up under such a chestload of hardware — and pretty ribbons in a variety of decorator colors — can’t be expected to speak like ordinary mortals, for example you and me. He should try once saying — instead of “ongoing process of high level engagements” — maybe something in colloquial English? Like: “fights” or “meetings” (or whatever the hell it’s supposed to mean).
Anyway, last night I was reading the most atrocious sentence, written by (the highly acclaimed blogger) Josh Marshall:
Some of it is likely equally demagoguable, but shows up some of the tendentious misconstruals of what he said.Talk about phony, academic-sounding verbal junk and trying to talk like an effete character from a Victorian novels! "Demagoguable" and "misconstrual" are not even words. I'm not saying you can't coin a word, but coin something less ugly. (I mean, those are the Wisconsin and Louisiana quarters of word coinage.) "Likely equally demagoguable"... "tendentious misconstruals"... ugh! That's misconscrewed. Makes me want to demagag.
***
But the actual substance of Marshall's post is excellent. I was going to say, after reading Cavett's post, that we tend to find language especially irksome when we are irked by the message. But Marshall's post is something I would like to link to uncritically. He's found a 4-year-old clip of Barack Obama saying something very close to what he said this week about bitter small-towners:
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48 comments:
Partly, I think Petreus was speaking for his audience. People speaking to Congress aren't taken seriously unless they speak in some dialect of Bureaucrat.
The military does have its own language, full of acronyms and odd word choices. It's a subculture with its own dialect. People have been making fun of the language soldiers use since at least WW2.
Governments have always tried to make the language used by officials seem more important than the common speech. Sometimes they succeed (like in France) but in English-speaking countries they fail comically.
So, it's not really Petreus. He's just playing the game.
Elites do view any degree of conservatism as a mental defect, don't they?
It's kind of funny watching these two poo-bahs condescendingly analyze how not to appear condescending!
Mort, in a virtuoso display of his uncanny detailed knowledge — and memory — of such things, recited the lengthy list (”Distinguished Service Medal, Croix de Guerre with Chevron, Bronze Star, Pacific Campaign” and on and on), naming each of the half-acre of decorations, medals, ornaments, campaign ribbons and other fripperies festooning the general’s sternum in gaudy display. Finishing the detailed list, Mort observed, “Very impressive!” Adding, “If you’re twelve.”
Very unimpressive, if you're a smug lightweight who doesn't know or doesn't care what goes into earning those decorations.
Fuck you, Mort Sahl.
Fuck you, Dick Cavett.
Vehicle is pronounced with a heavy ``h'' in official langauge. A pause is put there to insert air. This is a reminder about proper tire inflation.
You get more official language on the news, where often a suspect robs a bank ; the police generally have an actual perpetrator doing it. The news imitates technical jargon.
Cavett is uncurious about technical jargon. It must be to try to impress people, he thinks. But maybe it's efficient. Maybe, for example, the soldiers know something he doesn't, pretty exactly too, and need to talk about it exactly.
You'd want to mark that this is not ordinary English with its ordinary reach, but something narrow and precise. Precision is given a different shape in technical jargon.
I like the word "ethnosectarian." What a nice clear objective term.
Cavett wants to iterate the poetic constraint of the clear image, but what the poets have forgotten is the big picture.
Petraeus has the big picture, and has to use words that illustrate the larger framework.
Cavett's cavils are creepy. I could understand the language and find it more precise and more objective. I certainly hope that police officers (Cavett would probably prefer that I use the word "pigs")would not listen to a pinko like Cavett for their lingo.
Demagag? I'm agog!
I suspect you wrote this whole post for that gag. Awesome.
My uneducated guess is that "copspeak" arose when police were forced to write extensive reports for every arrest or pursuit they took part in. They have to describe and justify their actions in a way that they know will likely be quoted in a courtroom at some point, often by defense attorneys looking for misconduct or a missed miranda warning, etc.
In other words, I blame lawyers!
"Demagag? I'm agog!"
We all beg for Eggagog!
Dick Cavett is just now learning that every profession has own private, constructed language? Indignation over this point in jus' plain ol' English isn't another form of deception to mask his contempt?
you can lie with 10 cent words just as well as two dollar ones.
Checking Cavett's bio, I see he was the subjected to electroshock for some depressing depression. Maybe the voltage was too high.
"So, it's not really Petreus. He's just playing the game."
No. He's not.
Military really talks like that.
Really.
It's inbetween the "f**k the f**king f**kers."
It's profession specific jargon, certainly, but it's not a put on. "increases in personnel" could never ever be "more soldiers."
After all... soldiers has a specific meaning. As does personnel.
Ethnosectarian means what it means. Why use four words when five syllables will do?
It's also why the military is very fond of acronyms. Why do they say IED instead of "bomb?" Because bomb could be anything at all and an Improvised Explosive Device is just that... but a mouthful to say each time so it ends up IED.
Would Dick prefer his doctor used plain English just because Dick sees no difference between one sort of bleeding and another? It's *blood* dangit... why not just say *blood*?
A "high level engagement" is not a "fight."
Also, the general is a man near the top of his profession, going to a highly public formal grilling. What is he going to use, the blue language (gads, too close to "bluestocking" there!) that soldiers would use in day-to-day conversation? What would be the public reaction if Scalia suggested in an opinion on a murder case the court should "Hang 'em high?" There's a reason big words cause slower reactions!
We, rightly or wrongly, think obfuscatory language creates gravitas!
By the way, Cavett's little excursion into fashion writing wasn't even original; he was beaten to it by Iowahawk, and apparently some nitwit from the LA Times.
And Obama says... "how do I advance my life prospects"
If we want an example.
And on the NYT page someone suggested that Cavett send his article to the "curriculum specialists" at his school.
When it's not someone *else's* jargon, no one even notices.
Caveat and folks like him are hypocrites.
1. You all know that he has a Ph.D in IR from Princeton? his wiki section: Petraeus graduated from West Point in 1974. He returned to the military academy in 1981. He earned the General George C. Marshall Award as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Class of 1983 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He subsequently earned a MPA in 1985 and a Ph.D. in international relations in 1987 from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and later served as an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the U.S. Military Academy. His doctoral dissertation, "The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era," dealt with the influence of the Vietnam War on military thinking regarding the use of force.[20] He also completed a military fellowship at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in 1994–1995, although he was called away early to serve in Haiti.
2. Or that he literally wrote the book on counter insurgency: From late 2005 through February 2007,[21] Petraeus served as commanding general of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (CAC) located there. As commander of CAC, Petraeus was responsible for oversight of the Command and General Staff College and seventeen other schools, centers, and training programs as well as for development of the Army’s doctrinal manuals, training the Army’s officers, and supervising the Army’s center for the collection and dissemination of lessons learned. During his time at CAC, Petraeus and Marine Lt. Gen.James N. Mattis jointly oversaw the writing of Field Manual 3-24 (on counter-insurgency), the body of which was written by a variety of field-grade Army officers and other experts.
3. so he testifies in front of Congress a subject for which he is arguably a leading practioner and world recognized academic expert and you folks complain about him using the technical words.
4. as others said, the Army has a distinct dialect, built over years, to avoid misunderstandings. In the field, misunderstanding literally get people killed. So a bomb is something dropped from a plane, and an IED is not a bomb. and an EFP is a special type of shaped charge, which is a special form of warhead technology.
Lawyers use a professional dialect, so do doctors, as do plumbers. Why do you folks look down on my dialect?
14,200 Google references to "misconstrual":
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=ZhP&q=misconstrual&btnG=Search
14,200 idiots, I suppose.
It's kind of funny watching these two poo-bahs condescendingly analyze how not to appear condescending!
My take on it as well. Notice that they talk about "they" as if we in "Middle America" are some sort of anthropological project. Hmmmm..."How can we talk to these lower class unfathomable natives without talking down to them."
As to "copspeak" Drill Sgt is right. Each profession has its own lingo. When speaking to others in my field I tend to drop into that mode. The real difficulty is to NOT talk "financespeak" to my clients and make economic concepts understandable to people who don't have a background in finance without making them feel that I'm talking down, making the concepts harder than they need be or leave them feeling dumb. Having done this for about 25 years and having conducted many many educational seminars I think I have it down pretty good. My clients always thank me for the explanations (education) and say that they feel more confident and empowered.
This communication skill and the ability to judge your audience, is something that Obama and many other politicians who don't mingle with the hoi polloi, obviously hasn't mastered
"Some years ago famed sociologist Peter Berger made the observation that, "If India is the most religious nation on Earth and Sweden the least religious, then America is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes." Democrats, as a party, as well as many liberals, seem resolved to be Swedes, turning a deaf ear to and jaundiced eye on religion, on many religious people and on their values and concerns."
Where is that original essay?
If Petraeus took out all but the most common acronyms he was already modifying his vocabulary for the civilians.
Theo:
I agree with you- the two current parties are incapable of bringing workable and productive solutions to the economic anxiety felt by many Americans.
Every American should have four commonly held objectives in life:
1- to gain and hone your marketable skills in order to earn a living wage.
2- To own a home.
3- To have a secure retirement.
4- To enjoy a good group of family and friends (or in lieu of that a few good blogs-heh).
The American government today actually is an obstacle to retirement security because it spends way too much and so it has to take way too much from us in social security taxes and we get a negative return on our taxes.
The govt has been pretty successful at the education objective though I would add tax credits for career changes so we can add skills and training periodically throughout life. The credits should be available to anyone every 5-10 years or so. Currently, they offer tax deductions but these have little value when when one has no job and hence no income (you would think our pols would undertand that but as you said they are out of touch).
If the govt succeeds at the education & training objective and is able to cut federal spending, I think the home and retirement objectives will solve themselves for the majority of diligent, responsible Americans.
There is nothing the govt can do for you to give you more friends (if you don't believe me, ask Al Gore).
Mr Stubble with his hip persona of the serious reasoned educated liberal peeking over his trendy glasses, as if he's telling us he is "cutting the bull", and "getting to the real story" that were too fucking stupid to understand without him, is pulling out all the stops for Precious. I noticed the Obama comments were not worthy of front page status at TPM, only Hillary's response whilst he finds the appropriate narrative of how to deal again with What Obama Really Meant, to feed his nod approving audience looking for the daily marching orders.
"On no, some dumb shit in PA might actually vote for Hllary cuz she ran some ad or said something that we weren't there to fully explain it to them! Monster! Whore!"
"On no, some dumb shit in PA might actually vote for Hllary cuz she ran some ad or said something that we weren't there to fully explain it to them! Monster! Whore!"
Hey they are gonna have the Monster Whore Rally at Raceway Park this weekend where they have the tug of war and demolition derby in the mud. Cool. All the NASCAR dudes are gonna be there!
Dick Caveat is not smart enough to clean General Petraeus' boots, much critique the conduct of the war. His attempt to analyze his presentation to Congress has as much validity as Matt Debord's embarrassing commentary on the MNF-I Commanders sartorial presentation; that is to say they both fail miserably; to wit;
Mr. Caveat states:
Petraeus’s verbal road is full of all kinds of bumps and lurches and awkward oddities. How about “ongoing processes of substantial increases in personnel”?
Try talking English, General. You mean more soldiers.[Sic]
No - he means personnel. In the Combined Joint envrionment, we have Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, Airmen, and civilians.
Mr. Caveat, like Mr. Debord, and their intellectual compatriot Frank Rich should stick to things they actually know something about. Whatever that is, it is certainly not leading in a war.
AJ Lynch said... The American government today actually is an obstacle to retirement security because it spends way too much and so it has to take way too much from us in social security taxes and we get a negative return on our taxes.
article The problem is where we're headed in the $44 trillion-plus in unfunded obligations for Social Security and Medicare that's growing $2 trillion plus a year....
Do these numbers scare anyone else? Are the candidates aware of these numbers? If so, why are they proposing billions, trillions?, in new spending? Why is the media derelict in asking hard questions of all candidates?
Bearbee:
They love to play kick the can down the road.
I would add to your point that state and local governments are going broke also because they have to fully fund the rich pensions they give to their employees.
We should vote out of office anyone who has been in Congress for ten years- they have been willing accomplices to the problem.
Badger 6: Thanks for your continued service to our great nation. Stay safe.
Your comment is strangely reminiscent of John the Baptizer. Beware of that brood of vipers out in the desert.
The govt has been pretty successful at the education objective
Seriously? You--anyone--believes that?
and pretty ribbons in a variety of decorator colors
That, alone, marks the writer as a grade-A asshole. Just because YOU don't know what the ribbons mean doesn't make them meaningless, twit.
Obama is, of course, the smartest guy in the room. He also fits the psychological profile of someone who views himself primarily as a "victim", which manifests itself through his insufferable arrogance and condescension towards all of the "little people" he is going to help. Inside this man is a very resentful, egocentric, leftist version of Bill Clinton.
His wife Michele fits the same profile.
Blake:
America has the best colleges and if we take the big city public schools out of the equation, I'd say our grade/high schools are pretty damn good. Regardless of the chicken littles recently seen decrying the grad rate.
Last I checked more than 80% of Amercians over 25 or older have at least a HS degree. And that rate will go up as more and more states allow charter schools and voucher programs.
Before anyone asks - Here is the most recent budget for my locasl school district : School year 2008-2008 , expenditures per student are $17,924!
I am not making that up- suburban school district and it is not the biggest spender in the area- other districts spend even more. And don't get me wrong, I am not complaining.
I was thinking pretty much exactly what "jeff with one f" said:
My uneducated guess is that "copspeak" arose when police were forced to write extensive reports ....they have to describe and justify their actions in a way that they know will likely be quoted in a courtroom at some point, often by defense attorneys looking for misconduct or a missed miranda warning, etc.
Seems obvious, doesn't it? People who put themselves "in harm's way" on a day-to-day basis aren't likely to be worried about sounding intellectual. And cops have to try extra hard to sound objective and use all sorts of caveats like "alleged."
It must be meant to convey some misguided sense of “learnedness” and “scholasticism” — possibly even that dread thing, “intellectualism” — to their talk.
Sez Cavett, the TV "intellectual."
Has he read any grad school papers lately?
Lynch: $18,000 in 3.5 months?--that is high.
My dad, bless 'im, used to say "vee-hickle" for car. When a guard at FRB was giving a seminar on personal safety and said vee-hickle repeatedly, I had to suppress laughing. They also say "utilize" when "use" would do, an economy of two syllables.
Ralph:
That is for one entire year school year; I meant to type "2007-2008 school year".
The highest in this area is Lower Merion Township- it spends $25,324 per student this year which will increase to $26,591 for school year 2008-2009 according to the budgets on their website. Granted that is one of the wealthiest areas in the country.
Perhaps schools must spend a lot today to train kids to go to work where they will typically use a very specialized set of words and acronyms heh. Like Booyaaa!
John Lynch said...
"People speaking to Congress aren't taken seriously unless they speak in some dialect of Bureaucrat."
People speaking to Congress aren't taken seriously unless their testimony provides a fig-leaf for what members of Congress wanted to do anyway.
Cavett has always a been a conventional, snotty liberal. He has all the humility of a Yale graduate, and all the political wisdom of a TV talk-show host.
Too bad he had derail an attack on dishonest, unclear language with some typical Manhattan military bashing.
Generals talk like Petreus for many reasons. If they spoke to congress in honest,clear, strong language they'd be out of job.
Last I checked more than 80% of Amercians over 25 or older have at least a HS degree. And that rate will go up as more and more states allow charter schools and voucher programs.
Before anyone asks - Here is the most recent budget for my locasl school district : School year 2008-2008 , expenditures per student are $17,924!
And yet even with this vaunted degree from our unionized public education system: they still can't write a coherent sentence, write a well constructed paragraph or a business letter. Without using spell check ,they can't proof read what they have written. They are unable to perform more than just basic addition, can't make change in a restaurant or even balance their checkbooks. They don't understand the effect that adjustable rate mortgages may have in a rising interest rate environment, and we all know how that story turns out. They don't know history. What is the Manga Carta is and why is it relevant for today? They don't know jack about the United States history or the US Constitution. They don't know that we have three branches of government or why. Many think that Italy was on our side in WWII. The ignorance just goes on and on.
The high school diploma today is basically worth zip zero nada. It doesn't matter how many people graduate from high school when the level of education is basically that of a junior high school-er of the 1950's. We are spending lots of money to waste our young people's time on education that is propaganda and teaches them just enough to be functional illiterates who are essentially unemployable as more than an entry level McDonalds clerk. I know, I have tried to hire some young people as assistants in my business. They can't even file alphabetically or follow the simplest instructions.
When we teach to the lowest common denominator using people (teachers) who are paid less than the local auto mechanic and who have tenure no matter how badly they perform as teachers.....what do you expect we are going to get.
They don't understand the effect that adjustable rate mortgages may have in a rising interest rate environment, and we all know how that story turns out.
Same with VRDOs.
You tend to wind up with VRDOs if you use an investment advisor.
Dust Bunny Queen said...
"It doesn't matter how many people graduate from high school when the level of education is basically that of a junior high school-er of the 1950's."
If not worse. Measuring educational achievement by the number of people who graduate seems akin to the way that the Soviet Union would cite the year-on-year increases in its steel output as evidence of economic growth, despite the fact that said steel simply sat around on pallets in Siberia. Small wonder that young people think that "change" is a meaningful political statement.
Here's an actual transcript. Doesn't strike me as all that "phony" or "academic-sounding."
Cavett is a clever snot. I think though a similar humor would be to start a discussion about the origins of constitutional law with remarks about how one wonders if all lawyers are gay because the chief justices in England always seem to want to wear wigs. Pretty funny and related to the ordinary meaning of things, No.
I think you are diminishing the depth of the antagonism and condescension BHO showed in his SF remarks in substituting the Charlie Rose interview. Your codescensometer readings in these 2 cases seem affected by how much you identify with the object of criticism.
AJ Lynch said...
Bearbee:
They love to play kick the can down the road.
I would add to your point that state and local governments are going broke also because they have to fully fund the rich pensions they give to their employees.
We should vote out of office anyone who has been in Congress for ten years- they have been willing accomplices to the problem.
I'm aware of the 'kick the can' Washington syndrome but the media appears complicit in keeping information from the general public, or is it a lack of understanding inhibiting hard reporting and questioning? This country's economic health is at risk.
Re: State and local governments going broke, one can only hope that the Alabama municipal bankruptcy is an aberration and not a trend.
The Jefferson County bankruptcy, if it comes, and it's hard to see how it can be avoided, will eclipse that of the 1994 filing by Orange County, California. ``Derivatives'' are at the center of both death-spirals.
Largest U.S. Municipal Bankruptcy Looms in Alabama
I dislike the general concept of 'term limits', preferring to let voters decide, but in the last decade or so have became sympathetic to the idea But after a period out of office people should be eligible to run again, having experienced first-hand the consequences of their various legislation.
Additionly all potential congressional office-holders should undergo testing on and be required to have a realistic understanding of economic principles and a thorough knowledge of the government balance sheet and trends as well as an understanding of the overall financial state of affairs (aka "No Congressperson Left Behind").
I know, I have tried to hire some young people as assistants in my business. They can't even file alphabetically or follow the simplest instructions.
Sweet! My job prospects when I retire next year are greatly increased by their illiteracy! I'll be looking you up.
Ah yes, the Solemn Vapors. My english teacher always warned us not to use them for fear of sounding like Dick Cavette.
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