July 1964 — Vol. 45, No. 7 —
The Discipline of
Language
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There is magic in words properly
used, and to give them this magic is the purpose of discipline
of language.
Some quite intelligent people have been lured into thinking
that a concern for words is out of date. Others allow themselves
to believe that to speak and write sloppily is somehow an
emblem of the avant—garde.
The truth is that in no other time in history was it so
important to use the right words in the right place in the
right way to convey what we have in our minds. We need the
proper use of language to impose form and character upon elements
in life which have it in them to be rebellious and intractable.
A glance at our environment will show that our high standard
of living, brought about by our mastery of science and technology,
is menaced by the faulty use of signals between men, between
ideologies and between nations. By misinterpreting signals
(which is all that words are) we create disorder in human
affairs.
Communication of ideas is an important human activity. When
we invented writing we laid the foundation—stone of civilization.
In the beginning the power of words must have seemed like
sorcery, and we are compelled to admit that the miracles which
verbal thinking have wrought justified the impression.
Words underlie our whole life, are the signs of our humanity,
the tools of our business, the expressions of our affections,
and the records of our progress. As Susanne Langer says
in
Philosophy in a New Key: "Between the clearest animal
call of love or warning or anger, and a man's least, trivial
word, there lies a whole day of creation ( or, in modern
phrase, ) a whole chapter of evolution."
This language has such transcendent importance that we must
take pains with its use.
In business there is no inefficiency so serious as that
which arises from poverty of language. The man who does not
express himself meaningfully and clearly is a bungler, wasting
his time and that of his associates.
The key word in all use of language is communication. Thoughts
locked up in your own breast give no profit or pleasure to
others, but just as you must use the currency of the country
in which you are travelling, so you need to use the right
currency in words if you are going to bring your thoughts
into circulation. Many centuries ago Paul the Apostle wrote
in these cautionary terms to one of his churches: "Except
ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall
it be known what is spoken?... ye shall speak into the air."
Importance in business
The workmen engaged in building the Tower of Babel were
craftsmen, skilled in their trades. Take away their tools:
they will replace them. Take away their skills: they will
learn anew. But take away their means of communication with
one another and the building of the Tower has to be abandoned.
How serious the problem of communication is in business
may be revealed in this sentence: your letter's only justification
is the critical three minutes when it must stand, naked and
unexcused, fighting the boredom and inattention of the reader.
The environment of your letter —— up—to—date letterhead
with embossed symbol, double weight paper, deckle edges——these
do not amount to much. Sour notes in music do not become sweet
because the musician is in white tie and black tails.
What counts is simply this: to say what you mean with precision
and accuracy in plain language. A true definition of style
is "proper words in proper places with the thoughts in proper
order." A scrupulous writer will ask "What am I trying to
say? Do these words express it?" A word does not serve well
which does not excite in the reader the same idea which it
stands for in the mind of the writer.
There is no easy way of choosing words. They must not be
so general in meaning as to include thoughts not intended,
nor so narrow as to eliminate thoughts that are intended.
Let the meaning select the word.
A word is ambiguous when the reader is unable to choose
decisively between alternative meanings, either of which would
seem to fit the context.
A great deal of unclear writing results from the use of
too many broad, general words, those having so many possible
meanings that the precise thought is not clear. The more general
the words are, the fainter is the picture; the more special
they are, the brighter.
Socrates pointed the way toward clarity in the use of language
when he demonstrated to his disciples that they would get
nowhere in their dispute about justice unless they agreed
upon clear definitions of the words they used. He made sure
that they were talking about the same things.
If you look back over the past week's differences of opinion
expressed in conferences, memos and letters, you will be surprised
by the number of times you said, or someone else said: "Why
didn't he say that in the first place?" That refrain is monotonous
in business offices and workshops.
There is only one way to make sure of the communication
of ideas: to demand that what is being said to you shall be
said in terms understandable to you, and to discipline your
own language so that it says what you want it to say.
If you are just beginning to write, make it your first rule
to be plain. If nature means you to be a fancy writer, a composer
of odes or a trail—blazing author like Joyce or Stein,
she will force you to it, but whatever of worth you turn out
even then will be based upon your developed skill with words.
Meantime, say what you have to say, or what you wish to
say, in the simplest, most direct and the most exact words.
Someone who has no better employment may pick holes in every
third sentence of your composition, but you have written in
such a way as to satisfy the common sense of those who read
to find meaning.
The plain way of writing conceals great art. By avoiding
pomposity, ambiguity and complexity you attain simplicity,
which is the greatest cunning because it conveys your meaning
into the mind of another straight away, without effort on
his part. It carries with it, too, a feeling of sincerity
and integrity, for who can be suspicious of the motives of
a person who speaks plainly ?
What words are
Words are the only currency in which we can exchange thought
even with ourselves. It is through words, which are the names
for things and actions, that we perceive the events of the
world.
Because of this universal importance, we need to be as clear—cut
as we can in their use. Inexactness to some degree is inevitable,
because thought can never be precisely or adequately expressed
in verbal symbols. Words are not like iron and wood, coal
and water, things we see and touch. Words are merely indicators,
but they are the only sensible signs we have, enabling us
to describe things and think about them. In the darkness of
night we talk about the sun, knowing that the word "sun" presents
a picture to our hearer; we write about the "sparkling ripples"
caused by the stone we cast into a pool, knowing that our
description presents a motion picture to our reader.
What we need to do is keep our thinking and speaking language
under the discipline of meaning. We cannot shape ideas and
develop an argument without choosing and ordering our words.
Many people have far better ideas than anyone knows: their
thoughts either beat about in their heads, finding no communication
package in which to emerge, or they come out distorted and
in fragments.
A big vocabulary
Knowledge of words is not burdensome. Words are pleasant
companions, delighting in what they can do for you whether
in earnest or in fun, in business or in love. The true dimension
of your vocabulary is not, however, the number of words you
can identify but the number of words you can use, each with
its appropriate area of meaning.
With an adequate vocabulary you are equipped to express
every shading of thought. Too often in the ordinary intercourse
of life we let this wealth of words lie inert and unemployed.
We work a limited number of words to death. We exist in voluntary
word poverty. We do coarsely what might be done finely.
One road to language mastery is the study of synonyms, words
that are similar yet not identical in meaning. Two words that
seem to be the same may have very much in common, but also
have something private and particular which they do not share
with each other, some personality natural to the word or acquired
by usage.
Everyone recognizes the difference between child and urchin,
hand and fist, mis—statement and lie. There is an overtone
of meaning which causes a mother to resent your calling her
child "puny" instead of "delicate." People persist in confusing
"instruction" with "education" when discussing our school
system. The former is furnishing a child with knowledge and
facts and information; the latter is a drawing forth from
within, opening up fountains already in his mind rather than
filling a cistern with water brought from some other source.
Study the different shades of meaning expressed by the synonyms
of a general word like "said." When should you use "maintained"?
Under what conditions would "claimed" be more appropriate?
Look at the different effects produced in your mind by substitution
of these and other words for "said" in this sentence: "He
said (asserted, implied, assumed, insisted, suggested) that
the police were doing a good job." And try the substitutes
for "looked" in the sentence "John looked at Mary"... glared,
gazed, leered, glanced.
We may use "arrogant," "presumptuous," and "insolent" almost
interchangeably in loose talk, but when we examine them with
care we find three distinct thoughts: claiming the homage
of others as his due; taking things to himself before acquiring
any title to them; breaking the recognized standard of social
behaviour. There is a world of difference between the meanings
of misconduct, misbehaviour and delinquency, and between vice,
error, fault, transgression, lapse and sin.
This discrimination may appear trifling to some and tiresome
to others. The writer who wishes to think clearly and express
his thoughts clearly ( and is there anyone who will admit
that he wishes to be a bungler in thought and speech? )
will see its virtues.
New words
A man should revise his language habits from time to time
in order to keep pace with life and custom. There are more
things to think about and to communicate about every day.
It may seem wise to some pedants to say that the words of
a century ago are the best words, but we cannot go through
life using the language of the last century any more than
we can get along with the language of Cicero. Imagine that
superb orator standing before our Senate to explain a bill
having to do with nuclear war—heads and the probes into
space. The point is that if Cicero were alive today and had
words for these things he would use them so as to make his
meaning crystal clear.
Good writing demands more than the addition of words to
our vocabulary and the breaking of slovenly habits. It requires
interest in language that inspires us to seek the best instead
of muddling our thoughts and our communications by using the
second—rate just because it is handy.
Besides concerning ourselves with individual words, we need
to be careful to use the proper sort of language fitting the
occasion. If a lawyer talks over the bridge table as he does
to a jury; if the electronics engineer uses his trade language
to explain to his wife how to change a fuse; if a business
man uses factory language in writing to a customer: these
people are pretentious people, or people who are not interested
in their purpose of communicating ideas.
Every business, every profession, every trade, and every
sport has its jargon. Specialists acquire words and ways of
saying things which are handy in their work, and this is quite
natural and proper. Jargon has its place within the interested
group, but use of it makes communication with outsiders difficult.
Wilful offences
Besides the imperfection that is naturally in language,
and the obscurity and confusion that is so hard to be avoided
in the use of words, there are several wilful offences and
neglects which men are guilty of, whereby they render these
communication signs less clear and distinct in their meaning
than naturally they need to be. Politicians, particularly,
should pay attention to the niceties of language so as to
address us meaningfully.
The deformation of meaning for political ends has become
a common practice. Every cautious reader has to pick his way
carefully through a sea of adjectives which qualify and change
words of which he knows the accepted meaning. The political
interchanges in newspapers and in Hansard contain words
which are obscure and undetermined in their meaning. Skill
in disputing is not the same as skill in communicating.
A man is specific when he walks into a store and asks for
a tube for his radio, television set or movie projector. He
says: "PAT 1673", or whatever the number may be. It is evident
that when we learn to talk about social matters the way we
talk about electronic tubes we shall begin to manage our political
and moral affairs as efficiently as we now deal with technical
matters.
Our language has become a tired and inefficient thing in
the hands of journalists and advertising writers. Their abuses
and misuses are not the slapdash errors of unlettered hacks,
but the carefully conceived creations of educated men and
women. Their distortions are conscious devices, gimmicks to
catch attention.
E. B. White, the distinguished essayist, wrote of Madison
Avenue language: "With its deliberate infractions of grammatical
rules and its crossbreeding of the parts of speech, it profoundly
influences the tongues and pens of children and adults ...
it is the language of mutilation."
A survey of words used in national magazine advertisements
was made a few years ago. The most frequently—used
words were what are called the "floating comparisons" (
words which are meaningless without points of comparison
). Samples are:
"new", whatever the reader imagines that to mean; "more,
faster, longer lasting" without stating "than" something; "easy,
wonderful, famous, magical, gentle," and the so—called "proofs"
like "tests prove, doctors recommend."
In newspaper headlines the short words, not the correct
words, are sought. They reduce "treaty" to "pact" and also
refer to contracts, agreements, conventions, covenants, armistices,
pledges, and truces as "pacts." They make any attempt or offer
a "bid" and every superintendent, admiral, governor, manager,
director and gang leader a "chief." A proclamation or enactment
is an "edict." Every thief, robber, embezzler, swindler, housebreaker
and pilferer is a "bandit." Such looseness is not the soul
of wit but it is the death of meaning.
A pomp of words
Grace and style ( the pomp of words ) do not make a letter
or an article wise, and yet the conviction that profundity
of thought is evidenced by complexity of language is astonishingly
widespread. This advice is quoted jocularly in So You
Have To Make a Speech by Daniel R. Maué: "When
you don't know what you mean, use big words ( that often
fools little people.)"
Some writers, more interested in words than in ideas, fall
in love with a word and make excuses to use it. They have
even been known to make lists of pompous words to which they
refer when dictating letters, imagining that they are thereby
impressing readers. More than two centuries ago the Commissioner
of Excise in England wrote to one of these searchers for novelty:
"I am ordered to acquaint you that if you hereafter continue
that affected and schoolboy way of writing, and to murder
the language in such a manner, you will be discharged for
a fool."
To help us to discipline our language we have devised semantics
and syntax. The first is defined as "the science of the meaning
of words," and the second is concerned with the manner of
putting words together properly.
To make even a small venture into these branches of knowledge
is to gain a lesson in humility and patience, and new ideas
about the use of words to communicate the thoughts we have.
The brave new science of General Semantics, still in its swaddling
clothes (its textbook, Science and Sanity, was written
by Alfred Korzybski in 1933) already has many interesting
results to show. Its enthusiastic followers are actively exploring
its implications for logic, aesthetics, education, psychiatry
and other subjects.
The needs of the day
A youth may fail in mathematics or economics, which means
only that he is deficient in those subjects, but if he fails
in language he is fundamentally uneducated.
Yet the current passion for pictures and sounds, and the
growing aversion to reading, have produced a generation of
students who are finding it difficult to speak and write with
sufficient accuracy to meet modern job requirements.
Afraid of loading children with too much learning, the fourth
grade teacher in the United States uses a primer with some
1,800 words. A Russian child has a primer of 2,000 words in
the first grade and of 10,000 words in the fourth. He is,
moreover, reading Tolstoy in the first grade while his opposite
number in the United States is working his way through a book
entitled "A Funny Sled." This charge is made in an article
in Horizon of July 1963.
Add to that the fact of multiple—choice examination
papers which toady to our natural desire to avoid work. All
the pupil need do is put an "X" in the appropriate square.
He avoids all intellectual effort involved in marshalling
his thoughts and expressing them coherently.
Some teachers go so far as to deny any standards of "right"
or "wrong" in the few essays they give their pupils. They
put this anarchical philosophy into the phrase: "Correctness
rests upon usage." They are followers of the Humpty Dumpty
school: "When I use a word it means just what I choose it
to mean."
We are in danger of falling into the terrible plight of
having a high technology unsupported by people who can discuss
it or operate it understandingly ( a sophisticated savagery).
Language goes deeper than technical literacy. It is not
only being able to read newspapers. It has to do with forming
us as human beings, with the qualities of civilization. Without
discipline, language declines into flabby permissiveness,
into formlessness and mindlessness. It deteriorates into what
the late James Thurber called "Our oral culture of pure babble."
What is the remedy?
To be a good writer a person must spend much of his time
at a table in the toilsome act of writing. You cannot develop
a word sense haphazardly any more than you can pick up by
casual or chance acquaintance the facts in physics and chemistry
and mathematics needed in today's manufacturing.
After writing thoughtfully and correcting critically, you
still need to read what you have written to ascertain that
it is free from ambiguity, that the message is right, the
words right, and the tune right.
Next to practice in writing, a writer needs bountiful exercise
in reading. Language comes to us enriched by the insight,
imagination and experience of generations before us. We need
to see how acknowledged masters used words. The more you immerse
yourself in the work of great writers of good language, the
broader and more accurate your vocabulary will become and
the more vigorous your style.
Today's life is passing by, and some are trying with a pen
or a typewriter to put a bit of it on paper. The great tragedy
of many people is that their vision is sublime while the means
of expressing it escapes them. We need not be of that sort.
By putting forth a little directed effort in study we may
learn to tell our thoughts and ideas with dexterity.
Writing is not yet like an automated factory. It is still
in the handicraft stage. People have to do it themselves.
It is wretched taste for them to be satisfied with the commonplace
when the excellent lies at their hand.
The power of words rightly chosen is very great, whether
those words are used to inform, to entertain, or to defend
a way of life. Confucius summed up the need for right choice
when he said: "If language is not correct, then what is said
is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant,
then what ought to be done remains undone" and as a consequence
morals, art, justice and the business of life deteriorate,
and "the people will stand about in helpless confusion."
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