10.07.08
You also betcha
OK, it’s the economy that’s collapsing. Not the language. But the language is taking some major hits in all of this mess. If I had a nickel for every time someone said “I’ll invest a dollar for you in the stock market . . .” Oh, wait. I do have a nickel for every dollar invested in the stock market.
More to the point, a couple of instances of word-spotting:
Here’s Ben Stein with point #1 in his “How to Ruin the U.S. Economy”:
1) Have a fiscal policy that creates immense deficits in good times and bad, burdening America’s posterity with staggering burdens of repaying the debt.
Burdening with burdens is both fiscally and redundantly irresponsible.
Then, of course, there’s the thrill ride known as a Sarah Palin “sentence.” In Slate Kitty Burns Florey writes about Joe Sixpack eloquence (because much of Palin’s grammar sounds like something someone says after enjoying said sixpack—my observation, not Florey’s) and the difficulty of diagramming a Palin sentence.
From the Charlie Gibson interview:
I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people.
I didn’t stop to marvel at the mad thrusting of that pet political watchword “families” into the text. I just rolled up my sleeves and attempted to bring order out of the chaos:
I had to give up. This sentence is not for diagramming lightweights. If there’s anyone out there who can kick this sucker into line, I’d be delighted to hear from you. To me, it’s not English—it’s a collection of words strung together to elicit a reaction, floating ands and prepositional phrases (”with that vote of the American people”) be damned. It requires not a diagram but a selection of push buttons.
And such sentences come from Palin even though she boasts of graduating from journalism school while grumbling about the “media elite” in almost the same breath. (Able to complete a sentence = media elite.) Well, as John McCain said, maybe about “gotcha journalists” but applicable here nonetheless, “you don’t know the context of the conversation, grab a phrase.”
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