Linguistic Interventions (Et Tu, Bayer?)
By Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) | November 15, 2019 |
Image: Tag line shot from Bayer’s ‘This Is Why We Science’ commercial series
Don’t Call Me in the Morning
Writers are people far better suited than most to do a service to society–even to take on a responsibility–of offering guidance on language and how we use it. But we rarely live up to it.
- Writers are the ones who know that I could care less is precisely the opposite of what it’s used to mean.
- They’re the ones who know that probably 90 percent of the time, literally is used wrongly, as a mere intensifier. If you write, “In making her small donation to refugees, the little girl literally wrapped her arms around the world with love,” you’ve described a young monster with obscenely long arms.
- And writers are the ones who can tell you that “to boldly go” is Star Trek’s gift to the universe of split infinitives.
The critic in me has long longed (sorry) to establish a Bureau of Assaults on the Language by Commercials (BALC, as in for God’s sake, why don’t we balk at this crap?).
My latest target? Bayer. Yes, those aspirins we’ve been taking all our lives. I want my money back.
In a beautifully scored and shot series, just released last month, the company touts many reasons to appreciate its products. From crops to heart health, the imagery is ravishing, the voice-over is superb, the arc of these ads’ vignettes is perfect. And then the company asks you to swallow its new slogan:
This is why we science.
No, you’re not wrong. Let me save you that visit with Merriam-Webster. Science is not a verb. And what Bayer is doing is bashing another hole in correct usage–and so needlessly–for its own purposes of being cute with analgesics. Children will march around talking about “sciencing,” thanks to this over-the-counter insult. And we, as writers, should resent it, and say so.
Here you go, I’ll let you experience the headache of this particular travesty for yourself:
Resistance Is Not Futile
The typical feeling when you see or hear something like this–and this is hardly limited to writers–is “what can I do?” But a group of writers, a week ago today, reminded everyone that a sense of helplessness doesn’t have to be the default.
Don’t worry, we’re not here to thrash out the political moment of the day. Donkeys and elephants can lie down together here–we are a peaceable kingdom. My next example, though, comes from the debate of the moment, so bear with me as we look at a kind of intervention that authors and other writers can and should make more frequently.
Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh
That’s my provocation for you today. Why don’t we speak up? It’s our own carefully crafted writings that are weakened when we excuse linguistic indulgence as the natural evolution of a living language.
Here’s a look at how it can go when someone steps forward.
Roxana Robinson is a former president of the Authors Guild and an unfailingly thoughtful writer of issue-driven fiction. Her most recent book, Dawson’s Fall (Sarah Crichton Books, May), deals with racial and other social dynamics in post-Civil War Charleston. Cost (FSG, 2008) looks at addiction and family. Sparta (Sarah Crichton Books, 2013) examines the terrifying isolation of today’s soldiers returning home from the battlefield.
It’s predictable that Robinson would have spotted–and cared about–the sudden tossing-around of the phrase quid pro quo. She was the writer of the November 8 letter to the editor, signed by 32 other writers, in which she pointed out to The New York Times’ team and journalists at other media that their use of that Latin needed rethinking.
Roxana Robinson. Image: Beowulf Sheehan
“Most people don’t understand what [the phrase] means,” she wrote, “and in any case it doesn’t refer only to a crime. Asking for a favor is not a criminal act; we frequently demand things from foreign countries before giving them aid, like asking them to improve their human rights record.”
She’s right. The Latin translates basically to “this for that” or “something for something else.” A venti Americano for $3.25 is a quid pro quo. What’s alleged to have occurred in terms of Donald Trump’s withhold of congressionally mandated military funding for Ukraine and an Oval Office meeting is, as Robinson and her associates asserted, bribery or extortion.
A week later, much commentary around impeachment-inquiry coverage is touching on this. Most pointedly, for example, as Mike DeBonis and Toluse Olorunnipa at The Washington Post wrote, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, just yesterday (November 14) put the term bribery into play for the first time. Reporters got busy explaining the significance of that shift in the lexicon. In terms of strategy, in fact, it’s being pointed out that Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution names only two offenses specifically for impeachment, citing “treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Of course, we can’t say that the letter from Robinson and her cohorts prompted this assessment of the use of quid pro quo. But their appeal was broadly covered, well-timed, and contributed to the national conversation.
And in my never-humble opinion, we need to see more interventions like this.
We, the writers–the people whose livelihoods, artistry, and commitment depend on protecting shared understandings of how we say and write things–should be the ones making these interventions.
So that’s what I’d like to hear from you on. What commercial claptrap bugs you the most? You can even raise a political gaffe, if you like, we’re all friends here. And shouldn’t we be intervening? (After we send flowers to Roxana Robinson.) How about that Bureau of Assaults on the Language by Commercials? Could you get behind it if it existed? Are you just going to keep sitting there if “We Do Chicken Right?”
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@Porter_Anderson is a fellow of the National Critics Institute. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and independent authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller‘s The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations’ WFP in Rome. is a recipient of London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. PorterAndersonMedia.com
I science. I scienced yesterday. I will science tomorrow. If I had scienced more carefully, that explosion would not have occurred, and I would not have these embarrassing burns on my face and hands. Next week I will have scienced for ten hours every day. Sciencing is getting to be a drag. I think I’ll go back to writing.
Ha! Happy writing (not sciencing), Anna. :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Pithy and interesting, as always, Porter! While lexicographers tell us language is not static, imprecise and/or misused language can lead to dire consequences. Wars have started because of the opposing parties’ word choices. Depending on whom one chooses to believe, imprecise language has brought us to our current political state. As you have pointed out, how we use words is important.
My personal “nails on the chalkboard” language irritant is not so much associated with advertising, but with the pervasiveness of use. Is anyone else bothered by how easily we are amazed these days?
Linda,
Great point about how many of these issues we see wiht the language (amazing!) come from repetition, pervasiveness.
I think one reason I tend to target the marketing/advertising industry is because they’re frequently the ones putting these things into play, in part through the mind-numbing blitz of commercials on television, radio, and the Internet.
Terms such as your example — amazing — are over the top and inaccurate to most occasions in which they’re used because products are waved in our faces all day and night with such hyperbole. Incredible! Phenomenal! Fabulous! Absolutely! Totally! — these are all terms popularized through the commercial media (still a plural word, though they’ve perverted it to a singular noun).
And thus it’s a problem that I tend to see as based in the prevalence of the entertainment media that are carrying them to us … over and over and over and over and over and “yada yada yada” and over and over and over.
Thanks for the amazing note! :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I’m afraid the blame for this usage of science falls on a novelist.
“So, in the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option: I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian
Hi, Jill, thanks for weighing in.
You’re not alone in referencing Weir’s use of “science” as a verb in The Martian.
But I doubt that’s where Bayer’s ad agency gets it (although they might appreciate the cover). I may be selling them short, but were they to have reached into that book for their line, I think they’d reference it — they’d like the aura of a literary connection and basis and could easily afford a rights agreement with Weir and PRH (Crown/Broadway Books), etc.
I also think we can exonerate Weir easily. His use of the term is a perfect fit for the Mark Watney character, tightly encoded in the way Watney talks to us throughout the novel and used with a wink to the reader. In such artful cases, I’m happy to credit a good writer’s handling of a term to the purposes of good storytelling, that’s quite different from blasting a bad usage across the airwaves day after day, month after month, as a big commercial campaign will do, without any such fiction-crafting element to it.
So in my mind, Weir is just fine, Bayer is in a different situation, and there’s likely no connection — nothing I’ve seen of these comemrcials has a reminder for viewers of the book or film.
Happy to be proved wrong if the ad agency wants to weigh in, waving their copies of The Martian in my face, of course, lol.
But I’d still say that the way Bayer is using it lacks the fictional license of Weir’s work and delivers another wrongful use of a good word to a society that’s all too happy to grab and run with bad and hackneyed English every chance it gets.
(I’ll add one from my own profession that drives me up a wall in television news — I was with CNN for years: “Take a listen” when tossing to tape of a newsmaker’s statement. Listen is a verb, not a noun, although a great writer, Rudyard Kipling, once used it as a noun, again to literary effect. In TV news? — that one sends me to the mute button every time.)
Thanks again!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter –
I hope I’m wrong but I suspect the clever lead-in regarding language misuse and writers’ efforts to address is primarily camouflage for your actual provocation.
I’m not interested in the current political theater (“literally” makes me feel sick) but very much with you on the erosion of language.
All the best to you!
Tom
Hey, Tom, thanks for the note.
I’ll not hide, of course, my own concern about “the current political theater,” as you reference it in admirably measured terms. (And I’ll gladly afford you your use of “literally” in how it can make you feel.)
Nevertheless, I can tell you that — not least because I started my news career as a critic (Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, etc.) — I’ve had the desire to set up a kind of rapid response critical medium of some kind to call out commercials’ linguistic transgressions for almost 20 years. One of those ‘if I had another life things,” lol. This whole thing of the commercial industry’s ability to damage the language started getting to me long before “the current political theater” did.
Then again, there are a few cases in which the political world can really pace the commercial industry’s ability to insert things into our national parlance. Remember “weapons of mass destruction?” That one is a textbook case now of establishing something by sheer repetition. (I predict that “No collusion!” will be taught alongside “weapons of mass destruction” years to come.)
In general, though, I think that commercials will have a lot longer and deeper effect than the political fray on how our popuilation uses and often misues terms, although I actually liked seeing Roxana Robinson and her fellow writers speak up in a good way to focus journalists on an issue of correct usage relative to that “current political theater.”
Thanks for reading me and dropping a note!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
When it comes to legalities, absolutely people must be more precise and careful about the words they use. But even then, people must interpret. It’s interpretation of laws and the Constitution, including the fraught exercise of trying to determine for sure what the dead authors of those legal documents meant, that employs many researchers, lawyers, and judges. Their decisions about such things matter, both now and long into the future.
However, in marketing and advertising I give a pass. Clever use of language is essential to getting a message across and getting it stuck in the audience’s collective head. (Of course, I am a copywriter, so I may be biased.)
In terms of the language changing and evolving, it is always a tension. I may stick to my guns about “literally” until I’m in the grave. (Also: the Oxford comma.) At the same time, I allow that at some point I’m going to have to get comfortable with the sudden proliferation of the word “optics” to mean “perception” rather than “the scientific study of sight and the behavior of light,” no matter how much it annoys me.
And in the spirit of your column upholding such high standards of language, I might point out a grammatical error to which I would never normally draw attention in a public way:
“Donkeys and elephants can lie down together here, we are a peaceable kingdom.”
You’ve got a comma splice there. Your sentence might better be served by a semicolon or an em-dash. ;)
Erin, I am so pleased that you’re holding out for the Oxford comma (meet me on the barricades at 7 p.m.) that I’m going back in and getting an m-dash into my peaceable kingdom, and thanks for catching that comma splice!
I was a copywriter, too, shortly before the journalism career kicked in, and I love it when those words do fly, and cleverly, into the minds of the consumers. I’m just always hoping that we (I’ll include myself here willingly) can do it without having to trample the rules — not least because the value of a finely turned phrase is all the better if it’s accomplished without resorting to some linguistic damage.
(I always regretted General Electric’s “We bring good things to life” because consumers were never sure if that last word was “life” or “light” unless they saw it written. In audio, it left you unsure about the genius of the line.)
Here’s to doing it both ingeniously and well. :)
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Using nouns as verbs with zero derivation is jarring, but it’s also vivid and humorous. Which is why the line from the Martian works.
“I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.”
Rewritten, it wouldn’t be as effective.
“Shit. I’m going to have to use science to get out of this.”
My teenage daughter said the word literally fourteen times last night, so that battle might be lost.
Hey, James.
Thanks for this!
Scroll back up to my answer to Jill. She, too, brought up Weir’s use of “science” in The Martian, and as I’ve explained to her in my response, I have zero problem with Weir doing it as he did.
That’s a totally different situation (of a perfect fit of phrase to character in fiction) and not at all what Bayer is doing with the term, and I’m with you on it, no disagreement here.
As for your daughter, I know the feeling. When I managed a group of TV news anchors, I almost blew up our email system chasing them around the building about “literally.” It’s used now as if the word is simply an intensifier, not for its actual purpose, role, and meaning. I fear you’re right that we’ve lost the battle on it. If anything, that’s the kind of thing that makes me so sensitive to the arrival of a commercial move such as the one we see Bayer making here.
And do NOT ask me about the loss of the fact that “media” is a plural word. One medium, two media. I may be the last living person aware of this.
(And yikes, we’re back to Latin!)
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter, as a former teacher of high school students who labored not only to correct their essays, encourage the proper use of language, but also to have them advance their speaking abilities–I believe in rules. And as a former RN, my love of medical terminology and the science that created it, causes me to agree with you. Language has purpose in its usage. These linguistic acrobatics are often the products of advertising folks who sit around trying to change the language. Quick personal note: in college while majoring in English, my biology professor called me in and insisted I go into medicine. When I explained I was thinking of using my English degree in advertising, she laughed out loud. I was naive–she was right.
Hey, Beth,
I love your anecdote about your biology professor’s reaction to your saying you were thinking of going into advertising. Too funny. (And sad.)
It’s interesting to have your viewpoint on this from medicine, one of those fields in which precision in language is understood to be so much more important than (alas) it is in advertising.
I think that Don (in the comment below) is cautioning us against gratuitous rules. And he’s right. But as i’ve mentioned to Erin, I think that one triumph of clever language is on display when it doesn’t require a wrongful usage.
And as he says, “You can’t be impeached for a split infinitive or improper usage. (More’s the pity.)”
Thanks!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Why do we verbize nouns? To use our language in a new way. To be heard. “Proper” usage can be fussy, rule-bound, dull. Where would we be today if Mr. Shakespeare wrote only the English of those who preceded him?
On the other hand, investing words with meaning they do not have can be lazy, vague and even smugly judgmental. Are you “woke”? Is your writing “luminous”, “edgy” or “dark”? How do fuzzy meanings help us? Does imprecision make us sound smart?
Language isn’t bound by laws. You can’t be impeached for a split infinitive or improper usage. (More’s the pity.) However, weak language can obfuscate, cloud, slant, scare, spew, wound, and do all sorts of damage without consequence. It can mask hatred. It is sleight of hand for lies.
So, to answer your provocation, Porter, I suggest that writers speak up not for “proper” English but for improper intent. I don’t mind new usage. I do mind old evils disguised by weak and misused words.
Correct usage to call attention to evil intent. Praise it when it enriches our discourse.
Beautiful response, as always, Don, thanks.
But then tell me. Does Bayer’s use of “science” enrich our discourse? (For that matter, is it important that “quid pro quo” be replaced with “bribery” or “extortion”? Has the Latin been enriching?)
I get what you’re saying, and am no fan of prissiness about “proper” usage.
For me, that means that using “lay” instead of”lie” is a problem far too many times, and I don’t feel prudish about saying so. The words have different meanings and I’d like to see people get the difference and use those words consciously rather than taking the lazy way out and talking about someone “laying low.”
I should point out, too, that here in these comments, I’ve defended Andy Weir’s use of “science” for Watney’s character in The Martian. To me, that was a good choice, nicely turned. It brought us closer to the character and wasn’t blasted into the homes of America by a pharmaceutical concern’s commercials without the context of such a character and story.
So I see no evil intent in the novelist’s use and a fairly callous, cavalier, and gratuitous misuse by the manufacturer.
What say you?
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
On a lighter note, here’s the wording of a sign on an emergency exit door on the sixth floor of the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, MA, that I noticed while at the Uncon.
CAUTION
This door is alarmed.
Frankly, it didn’t even seem upset to me.
Ha!
Thanks, Ray.
Here’s to all that “suspicious luggage” in airports. :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
My pet hate is “I thought to myself”. Who else would you “think to”? Even if all of your characters are telepathic, you can write well enough to avoid this one. Yet it has crept in everywhere.
I suspect those who use it without thinking (because everyone else does) don’t actually know what a tautology is.
I will keep correcting people on it, even when I think they’re annoyed.
You go, Sherryl,
I can ratify your consternation.
I’ve been trying for many years to think to other people with no success whatever. The best I’ve managed to do is “give them the evil eye,” which is phrase I feel we need to bring back into vogue these days. :)
Keep correcting them, take the names of the ones who are annoyed, and send them to me. I’ll aim the evil eye at them.
Thanks!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I share the irritation but found this educational: https://www.npr.org/2017/01/10/509035454/why-its-literally-not-wrong-to-say-literally
Hi, Dani,
Yes, of course, this is the “living language” argument always raised at these moments.
And if it weren’t used as a shield by those who “do chicken right,” I’d feel a lot better about it.
Thanks for the link. Your choice of the word “educational” is most gracious. :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter Anderson, please Bayer with me while I think to myself about your ask and drink a Coke Lite.
Ah, Augustina,
How can I thank you? You may have given us a whole new way to talk about this problem.
I can’t Bayer it, can you? lol
As soon as I put together the Bureau of Assaults on the Language by Commercials, I’ll send you an invite to join.
:)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I’ve been fuming over a word misuse that could produce dire consequences. Everyone on our local news team refers to the perpetrator of a crime as “the suspect.” As in, “The suspect walked into the store and shot the clerk.”
Problem? They train the audience to equate “suspect” with “guilty party.” Later, if the police arrest a “suspect,” the well-trained audience assumes the suspect is guilty. This is exactly the opposite of presumed innocence.
This Provocation is inspiring me to write to our news outlets and explain…
“Perpetrator” – the person who actually committed the crime, but whose identity is not known, or at least not certain.
“Suspect” – a person whose identity is known, but whose guilt is uncertain.
Jan, what an excellent misuse and distinction you’re focusing on here, thank you.
By all means, do contact your news medium.
You might use Roxana Robinson’s approach, too, of doing it as a letter to the editor. Normally, a good editorial staff will be quite receptive to this kind of point–and if they’ll run it, then it reaches the readership as well as the journalists.
In terms of crime coverage, my big frustration is our unthinking use of the term “individual” instead of “person.” News writers tend to parrot law enforcement on this, talking about “the individual arrested in the 7-11″–as opposed to what, taking a whole committee into custody? My guess on this one is that it arrived in law enforcement as a way to try to avoid implying race or gender when talking about a perpetrator. But once we’re looking at a male assailant on camera making the assault, we really do know that this is a person, a male person, and an assailant — and still the police and news folks will refer to him as “the individual.”
Good luck with your appeal to the local news team, they’re lucky to have you in their audience.
Best,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Here’s the thing: languages change. English changes faster than most. And as the old NZ road safety ad had it, “the faster you go, the bigger the mess.”
The rule against split infinitives derives from Latin, where it is impossible to split infinitives, because they are a single word. It has nothing to do with English as it is spoken, or has been spoken; it is a rule artificially imposed on the language by those who saw Latin as the language of civilization and tried to civilize English in its image. (Think of it as Sandy in Grease squeezing herself into horribly restrictive leather trousers in order to gain acceptance from the cool kids.)
But language change is a separate issue to the use of weasel-words: words that by their very nature and use seek to cover up the truth. Most notably found in advertising and politics and the murky overlap between them. Those, I believe, are the enemies of writers and everyone who is a lover of the truth.
Good points, all, Deborah,
And that’s a useful explication of the split infinitive issue in English. Personally, I find that the split infinitive question is one that I appreciate primarily as a symbol–it represents a wider understanding of linguistic issues, an awareness that they exist, in a world that rarely slows down to notice or concede this.
And yes, as I believe Don is saying in an earlier comment, too, the real danger is in purposeful obfuscation. In politics and advertising, we see too much of this — and we need to call it out more frequently.
All the best,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
My linguistic pet peeve is how speakers misuse the phrase “beg the question.” I adhere to the classic meaning, which is what a lawyer might call “assuming facts not in evidence.” For example, “What have you been drinking?” assumes a person has been imbibing. Or my personal favorite, “What kind of idiot do you think I am?”
It literally drives me crazy!
Hi, Christine,
I’m so glad you mentioned this one.
Just last week, I wzs hearing this used wrongly, again, in an interview in which someone said that something “begged the question,” merely to say that it made us want to ask something–not, as you’re clarifying, to say that the truth of an argument had been assumed without being proved.
I’ve just come across an example of (actual) begging the question, and from the same marketing and advertising industry I’m bashing in my column: “Everyone wants the new iPhone because it’s the hottest new gadget on the market.”
Begging the question is one of those concepts that seems to be too subtle for a lot of people today, which is worrisome in itself. Whether we’re unwilling to think things through or actually less intelligent and unable to grasp such concepts, something is wrong in regards to this kind of slippage in linguistic usage.
Thanks so much for the note,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Other commenters have mentioned some of my pet peeves, but what bothers me most is not inaccurate usage but deliberate misspellings. How are children to learn to recognise tham if they are used to seeing words misspelled in signs, books, other media? For example, in the Disney Winnie the Pooh cartoons, almost every word shown is misspelled or has backwards letters. I love the Milne books as much an anyone, but there the childish misspellings are kept to a minimum. I will join you on the barricades!
“Adulting.” Ugh….
I’d like to ask some of the scientists at Bayer if it’s OK to randomly change the laws of science. No? Then don’t change the rules of grammar.
Thank you Porter, it’s therapeutic to find a community of like minded people who feel my pain.