Literary Legs

Sure, Joannie Rochette Was Courageous. But She Was Also a Freakin' Animal.

Last week I discussed Joannie Rochette's performance at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, where she won a bronze medal in figure skating only days after her mother died suddenly of a heart attack. For a while, Shaun White's performance was the most impressive of the games, but after Rochette, no one comes close to her.  Hands down the best.

Reading some of the online news stories, I was struck by all the words and phrases used to describe Rochette and her performance.  Phrases like grace under pressure (10,800 Google hits) and words like courage (122,000 Google hits) were thrown around. In the Boston Globe, Bob Ryan said that "the gold medal for Grace Under Pressure went to Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette, whose mother died of a heart attack hours after arriving in Vancouver. She skated a truly elegant short program and followed with a top-notch long program and she skated off with the bronze."

Dr. Robert Quinlan Costas, a psychotherapist, probed Rochette's innermost feelings in an interview on NBC.  Held in front of a toasty warm gas fireplace, this interview no doubt fueled the perception of Rochette the Courageous. 

True, Rochette was courageous, and she displayed enormous grace under pressure.  But how many of these words were used because she was a dainty female figure skater?  (I am assuming that those who said she exhibited grace under pressure were not using it according to the Hemingway definition: guts.) Now, I am not saying that it would be proper to write that Ray Lewis from the Baltimore Ravens exhibits grace under pressure when he pulverizes a quarterback.  But, to me, courage is something you have when you withstand something.  It's not the same as aggression. 

So when I saw Rochette's performance, what came to my mind was her ability to attack, to grab her routine by the rhinestone-studded lapels and destroy it.  That's what separates professional athletes from the rest of us: their aggression--whether internal or external--and fiercely competitive nature.  But most of the news stories focused on her ability to withstand what was coming at her, rather than this ability to attack.  Rochette did not merely overcome adversity; she annihilated it. In his interview, Dr. Costas read a quote from Rochette in which she said that in order to focus, she had to become, in her words, "cold"--just two days after her mother's death.  Rochette may have been graceful, but those are the words of an assassin, someone who wants to crush her routine, and probably her competitors (though the Christian Science Monitor says she was "buoyed by love"). I can't help but wonder if someone like Bode Miller would have been called "courageous" had the same thing happened to him. 

Note to teachers: easy paper topic!

Kevin Pollak Tells Attorneys Why Adverbs Are Bad

I recently wrote about why the word clearly is such a worthless intensifier in any type of persuasive writing.  In legal writing especially, it adds nothing to one's ability to persuade.  No judge reads the phrase clearly mistaken, for example, and thinks, "Well, I didn't think that your opponent was mistaken, but since you told me that he was clearly mistaken, I have to agree with you."

Clearly is an adverb, and there are those who say that adverbs are ineffective intensifiers in general because they are so vague.  They can also be bad because they accompany wimpy verbs.  For example, instead of she ran quickly, why not just say she sped?  The latter example is also more concise.

Of course, I am just a lowly English PhD offering you my advice.  You're probably much more likely to listen to a celebrity spokesperson give you a tutorial on why adverbs are often ineffective.  Especially when that celebrity spokesperson is a Hollywood actor who happens to be an attorney.  Or at least plays one in the movies, as Kevin Pollak does in A Few Good Men  (click on the link for the video, which I am unableto embed).  He discusses how the phrase strenuously object has no more punch than plain ol' object.  Accoording to Pollak's character, the judge is not likely to say, "Wait, you are not just objecting, but strenuously objecting?  Well then, let me take a moment to reconsider."

Let's Hope They Don't Look Up "Scumbag"

The Menifee School District in California responded to a potentially graphic text, brought to their attention by one parent, by banning the book from all school shelves.  This book is the dictionary. (see here and here)

Yes, you read that correctly. 

The Merriam Webster 10th edition is now a banned book after one parent, shocked at seeing a child actually reading the dictionary for fun, became even more shocked when the child stumbled across the definition for "oral sex."  Outraged that the dictionary would contain definitions of things that actually happen, the parent asked that the book be removed and that children no longer be able to improve their vocabularies.  Somehow, the school district caved to the wishes of one person. 

No word on whether the dictionary contains an accompanying image.

I guess if you have to ban one book, it should be the dictionary.  After all, it does contain every word in the language.  You'll certainly cover all your bases by banning it.  This makes sense, since if children can't use a dictionary,  they'll probably stop being curious.  There is no way--no way--that they will Google the term "oral sex."

In my opinion, this parent did not go far enough. We should not stop with "oral sex." We should ban access to any source that describes less-than-ideal behavior: murder, stab, shoplift, cheat, steal, gay*, lesbian*, karaoke, Electric Slide, flashmob, etc. Just get rid of all the deadly sins as well.  Certainly we should ban plagiarize from every reference source. If kids don't know what it means, they won't do it.  

But we have much more to be worried about than oral sex.  I can only imagine the logical next step for kids: Dictionary.com will be the new source for porn, where kids can delight in the salacious definitions of such words as

• Brown nose: "from the image of an obsequious person whose nose becomes soiled in kissing the rump of someone from whom favor is sought" (American Heritage Dictionary)
• Scumbag: "a condom" (Random House Dictionary)
• Putz: "a penis" (American Heritage Dictionary)

*this is sarcasm

This is Clearly Overuse

One of the common traps into which attorneys fall when advocating is the use of the word clearly.  Eliminating this word is one of the easiest revisions to make, since it means nothing.  If you use clearly, take it out.  Even better, don't start using it in the first place.  Clearly is an ineffective intensifier.  No judge reads a brief--or for that matter, no one reads any piece of advocacy, legal or not--and says, "Well, your opponent says that the evidence 'proves his guilt,' but since you said that the evidence 'clearly proves his innocence,' you must be right."  In other words, clearly never pushes your readers one way or another.  They do not say, "You said that something was erroneous, but had you said it was 'clearly erroneous,' I would have supported you.  That's a whole different story!" 

But don't take my word for it.  Here's what Chief Justice John Roberts told the Northwestern University School of Law back in 2007:

"We get hundreds and hundreds of briefs, and they're all the same," Roberts told a crowd of eager law students and faculty members last week at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago. "Somebody says, 'My client clearly deserves to win, the cases clearly do this, the language clearly reads this,' blah, blah blah. And you pick up the other side and, lo and behold, they think they clearly deserve to win."

In short, clearly smacks of desperation.  I was reminded of this in a recent article by Alec MacGillis and Paul Farhi in the Washington Post entitled "In Obama's speeches, one favorite phrase: "Let me be clear.'" MacGillis and Fahri discuss Obama's overuse of this set-up in his speeches. They write that "in a presidency in which everything is murkier than Obama could have imagined, the 'let me be clear' preface has become a signal that what follows will be anything but."  Has Obama used the phrase so often that it is now cliche, a metaphorical device that once was to be taken literally but through overuse has lost all meaning?  

In the beginning, when he was still a presidential candidate, Obama used the device to say, "Listen to what I am about to tell you.  Sometimes what I say might be opaque, but I tell you this with no trace of ambiguity or shred of doubt."  MacGillis and Fahri say that once Obama became president, he used the phrase to defend against his detractors, to rebut them when things were really not that clear.  His opponents saw the phrase "as a sign of indecision to follow."

Of course, the other problem with overusing the phrase "let me be clear" is that it implies that there are times when he is not being clear, when he is not as assured or unambiguous or decisive. In his November speech announcing the troop increase in Afghanistan, Obama pronounced his clarity eleven times.  Not only does he risk tiring his audience with the phrase, but he also risks removing the power from the phrase when he really does mean to be clear. 

To sum: don't overuse any stylistic technique or rhetorical device.  When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing. 

 

A Lesson in Writing With Style: Using the Isocolon

The best tip for improving your writing: read everything you write out loud.  You'll catch weak areas--awkward sentences, unintended repetition, punctuation and grammar mistakes, poor sentence construction--that you would never catch reading silently. 

Good writing, as I've said before, is euphonic: it sounds good. One way you can achieve euphony is through isocolon, a method of parallelism in which the clauses in a sentence are of equal length.  Everyone likes harmony and parallelism, and balanced clauses are easy to read since they reinforce these two concepts.  Probably the most famous example is Caesar's veni, vidi, vici (which is also a tricolon, or the use of three parallel members).

So imagine my glee when I found this fantastic example of isocolon in Nick Paumgarten's essay in the January 4 issue of the New Yorker entitled "Food Fighter." It's a profile of John Mackey, the Whole Foods CEO.  Here's the sentence:

"Depending on where you are on the spectrum of epicurean cultural politics, you may consider Whole Foods to be a righteous grocer or a cynical con, a prod to self-improvement or a gateway to decadence, a neighborhood boon or a blight, a force for social good or a place to pick up chicks."

Let's break this down.  Each item in the four pairs below contains the identical number of syllables on either end of the coordinating junction or:

• a righteous grocer or a cynical con: 5 syllables
• a prod to self-improvement or a gateway to decadence: 7 syllables
• a neighborhood boon or a blight: 1 syllable (you have to use boon and blight here)
• a force for social good or a place to pick up chicks: 5 syllables

This, my friends, is what good writing looks like.  When we talk about good writing having style, this is what we mean, and it's tangible examples like this that teachers of writing--on any level--should be showing their students.  Your use of grammar and punctuation can be flawless, but you are nothing without style. 

The Surprisingly Brief History of "To Overdose"

The Washington Post is currently covering a story here in metro DC about a five month old baby who ingested heroin (and survived).  What struck me as odd was that most of the headlines about the case and the accompanying text say that the baby "overdosed" on heroin.  Since to overdose means "to take too large a dose of something," this got me wondering: is there really any acceptable level of heroin use for a five month old that would not be considered an overdose?  The Post's use of the verb would seem to imply that.  

Then I thought a little more and went to my favorite online resource, the Oxford English Dictionary. And what I found was quite surprising: that for most of its life--since around 1700--to overdose was a transitive verb meaning to "give too large a dose to."  In other words, it required an object, and it was not restricted to medicine.  The OED cites, for example, a 1977 Washington Post article cautioning readers that "Iceberg lettuce salad cannot be saved by overdosing it with garlic and oregano" and a journal that mentions "a diabetic patient who has been overdosed with insulin."

The first entry of to overdose as an intransitive verb--one not requiring an object--is only from 1973, surprisingly. It's from a Robert Ludlum book where he writes, "The doctor told me that he'd prescribe heavier ‘medication’ but warned me not to overdose." As we can see, the old definition, as an intransitive verb referring to any substance, has been largely replaced by its current use as transitive verb referring most often to taking too large a dose of medicine or some other pharmaceutical substance. 

Why such a change?  Look at the date: 1973.  This was the early 1970s, a time when illegal drug use was becoming mainstream as more and more people started experimenting with marijuana, LSD, and other mind-altering substances.  And as the popularity of these drugs increased, it would follow that people began to ingest far too much.  Thus, to overdose took on a new meaning as people looked for a word to describe such as action. 

 

A Disinterested Account of an Execution

My post two days ago on subtle bias in a death penalty article elicited considerable dialogue.  The post was not intended to be--as some perceived it--an attack on left-wing media bias.  What I tried to show was that unintended bias is almost impossible to overcome, despite our best intentions.  For example, saying that someone was "electrocuted" is a much more graphic way of saying someone was "put to death."  Perhaps a writer may intend no difference in meaning, but to me there is a difference in how these two terms are taken.

Similarly, writers use angle of vision. They are in complete control of what the reader sees--and does not see.  And this absolutely impacts the reader's perception of an event.  For example, had White simply written that "Elliott was strapped to the chair, the switch was thrown, and five minutes later he was dead," such a sanitized version probably would not have moved many people.  However, had he gone into greater detail about Elliott's convulsions as the current flowed through his body, the bodily fluids streaming from his mouth and skin, the smoke, and other sensory images, many people would have been repulsed by what they perceive as barbaric behavior.  This is angle of vision: same event, different versions.

Josh White, the author of the Washington Post article I discussed on Monday, wrote a follow up blog post, a first person account of Larry Elliott's execution.  White was one of the witnesses, and I think he does a fantastic job of describing an emotional experience with impressive disinterest.  This is what White wrote about the moment the current hit Elliott's body:

Another officer, concealed in a room adjacent to the death chamber, hit a button marked “execute” on a machine that was described as being about the size of a domestic clothes dryer.

It was clear when the electricity hit Elliott, as his body jerked bolt upright in the chair and his hands appeared to tightly grip the oak arms. A large blister formed on the inside of his right knee, just above the electrical contact. Smoke rose from both his leg and his head. Spit bubbles formed below the left side of his face mask, near where the corner of his mouth would have been.

This is a strong piece of writing about the moment a man dies (or is killed, depending on your view, right?).  There is not much here that gives away White's position.  Remember: White has witnessed a pretty graphic death.  It would be easy to descend into hyperbole, but he writes just the facts.

If you teach argumentative writing, a good classroom exercise would be to take a passage (like the one above) and make it more persuasive by adding details to alter the angle of vision.  If you have a particularly morbid curiosity, plenty of websites can explain just what happens to the body when the "execute" button is pushed. 

Subtle Bias in a Death Penalty Article?

Few issues are as difficult to write about from an unbiased perspective as capital punishment.  The debate invokes a lot of passion when a person's life hangs in the balance. (See here for my recent post on print media's varying reactions to Manson family member Susan Atkins' death.)

Reporters who cover executions no doubt are susceptible to the emotions that accompany seeing someone die. Still, they must cover these events in an impartial fashion.  And try as they might, sometimes we can still see elements of subtle bias in their reporting.  The biased language is probably not intentional.  From an argumentative or legal writing perspective, performing a close reading of a text like this can help uncover subtle or hidden biases in your opponent.

Last week in Virginia, Larry Elliott was executed for the murder of a couple in 2001.  Elliott, a former Army counterintelligence officer, denied that he was the killer.  A close reading of the Washington Post's coverage of his execution can be an instructive lesson in hidden, and quite possibly unintended, bias.  I have no idea if the author of the piece, Josh White, supports the death penalty (though White said in a blog post, "Let me say upfront that I do not have strong views on the death penalty in general."  I find this hard to believe).

First, let's look at the narrative structure. We open with a two paragraph lede, the five W's of the actual execution.  The third paragraph, however, paints a somewhat sympathetic picture: a confused Elliott, hardly defiant, strapped into the chair: "Instead of making an oral statement, Elliott said he didn't know how much time he had to speak, so he gave a written statement to his attorneys." 

The next three paragraphs detail the statement in which he professes his innocence.  In this statement, Elliott says, "In this great country, we should not arrest and convict innocent people of any crime, let alone capital murder, nor should we kill innocent people as the Commonwealth of Virginia has done today." So far, then, this is what we have: a confused man not able to comprehend why he is being executed.

A Good Example of Evasive Language: Did Daniel Snyder Really Apologize?

This week Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, tried to calm the masses here in DC by offering an apology for the dismal performance of the team this year.  

But did he really apologize? 

Snyder said he was apologetic. But he never apologized.  And that is the difference between direct discourse and evasive language.  He described his state of mind using an adjective, but we never actually saw him commit an action. 

This is what Snyder said:

"And I think we have an opportunity the rest of the season to hopefully get it going. But to date, we've let everyone down -- including ourselves. We know that. We're just apologetic."

Look at the final sentence: "We are just apologetic."  What Snyder is describing is not an action but a static state of being. In other words, there is nothing active in what he is doing--he just is.  Good writers know to avoid the weak to be verb (am, is, are, was, were). Instead, they use concrete, workhorse verbs that vividly describe an action.  The to be verbs, on the other hand, are neither actionable nor tangible.

It's much better to use a verb that you can picture happening. I can't picture someone in a state of apology, but I can picture someone apologizing.  Had Snyder said, "We apologize," it would have been much more direct. 

But Snyder did not want to be direct.  He did not want to be vivid. Instead, he wanted to be evasive and vague, and he certainly was not willing to be humble and contrite. Standing in front the cameras, had he said, "We apologize," Snyder would have displayed a deliberate, tangible action.  Instead, he used language that merely described an intangible and internal state that's impossible to witness. I give Snyder credit for his deft use of the language. 

While this is not an example of passive voice, it is an example of one way persuasive writers can minimize responsibility if it's something they need to do. 

 

Verbification in the Corporate Setting

This week in a washingtonpost.com blog post entitled "The Joy of Meetings" (a contradiction if I've ever heard one), Marie Wilson writes:

The key to meeting effectiveness is a good agenda. A well-agendaed meeting where all participants get to the point succinctly, and leave the room with tasks in hand (or in Blackberry, as it were) is productive, creates an essential esprit de corps, and hopefully precludes the need for several future follow-up meetings!

Notwithstanding the poor sentence construction, I was struck by her use of well-agendaed, an invented phrase. No dictionary lists agenda or any of its related forms as either a verb or an adjective.  A Google search, however, lists about 4700 hits for agendaed in its verb form. 

This process of turning a noun into a verb is called verbifying.  To verbify has its earliest use in 1813, according to the OED. Is agendaed another example of business jargon?  Its use reminds me of the verb onboard in the corporate setting, a use I never heard until I joined the corporate ranks three years ago after spending 12 years in academia.  Its use is simple--instead of bringing a new colleague on board, you just onboard them. 

People normally rail against corporate jargon, but in defense of the two examples above, both make the writing more succinct--something that most writers in the corporate world should learn to do.  Taking another example, the verb tase has quickly entered mainstream communication, much to the chagrin of the makers of the Taser. Using the verb makes for a quick and direct sentence:

• Don't tase me, bro!
  OR
• Don't use the Taser on me, bro!

So sometimes corporate jargon has its use, much to the consternation of prescriptivists who would prefer that language stays frozen in time (at least frozen in their lifetime).  But that doesn't take agendaed off the hook; what bothers me about it is the -ae combination that we rarely see in American English. 

Is it wrong?  We won't know for several years, when it will either enter mainstream communication or fade away.  And if you want to see verbification in action, "Don't tase me, bro" is uttered at 1:56.