by Nance
I'll be the linguistic equivalent of those old men I used to see in the late eighties who bagged groceries at the military commissary wearing Donald Trump comb-overs and baby blue polyester flare-bottoms with white pleated flare inserts that zipped down from knee to ankle. In 2023 I'll be using phrases I heard in 2004 and expecting somebody at the assisted living facility to compliment me on how hip I still am. Past a certain age, we just don't take in new trends. We don't see the need; there have been plenty in the previous sixty or seventy years. When is enough, enough? I hereby declare a moratorium on catchy phrases. Right on.
The Online Dictionary defines a buzz-phrase as, "A word or phrase connected with a specialized field or group that usually sounds important or technical and is used primarily to impress laypersons." All you laypersons out there, are you impressed yet? Insider jargon just gets my goat.*
The phrase that's been bugging me lately is, "Everything is on the table." I just can't seem to grok it no matter how I try. And neither, apparently, do most people who use it. I've been hearing about this laden table more and more frequently over the past few years, but it reached a personal tipping point (oh, dear) in April, when I heard Alan Simpson sling it into his gleeful, garbled, phrase-hashing announcement on the President's Budget Reduction Commission, which he'll co-chair with Erskine Bowles. From his NPR Talk of The Nation appearance on April 1st:
This is a suicide mission for a couple of old coots who believe more in their grandchildren than they do in other words, it's not the current election that's important, it's the next generation. So when we were asked to do this by the and Erskine, a very marvelous man, a splendid gentlemen, immediately the cry went out we were stalking horses for taxes. I said, I'm not a stalking horse for taxes. I'm a stalking horse for my grandchildren, and unless we get serious here, everything is on the table. So of course, you know, they come shrieking, you know, like the hounds of hell and the harpies from the cliff at me, and here, I've dug up my record on taxes, and I'm going to slip it right to them.Those pronouncements had me as worried as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I'll bet Alan Simpson wears plaid bell-bottoms. As Rush Limbaugh has put it, "button your seat belts" for a full-frontal assault (dang it) on Medicare and Social Security. I think that Mr. Simpson is using the phrase everything is on the table, which came directly from Obama's instructions to his commission chairmen, to mean that, in a desperate search for solutions, no stone should be left unturned. Apparently, he was also instructed to pair off in threes, line up in a circle, alphabetically by height. I'm afraid I don't think of Simpson as the sharpest marble in the drawer. If he's older than me, I guarantee you he's a few bats short of a belfry.
Of course, now that we have the Obama administration's iconic metaphor, we'll be hearing it from every middle manager 'til kingdom come. "When the White House was asked if they might pause all off-shore drilling, Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior David Hayes admitted 'everything is on the table.'” And, "As House Ag Committee Chairman Peterson correctly said in announcing his panel's work on the U.S. farm bill -- everything is on the table." I get it; this business with the table ain't coming up constantly because life is just a bowl of cherries these days; it's coming up because, when the going gets tough, the tough get going (choke).
I never expected to hear the table metaphor used in regards to condiments, however. In responding to a call by the Institute of Medicine for federal limits on sodium levels in packaged foods, FDA spokeswoman Meghan Scott stated, "Nothing is off the table," which I suppose to mean that everything is on the blessed table. Ms. Scott is a pretty smart cookie, but I wouldn't want to be sitting in her shoes. She's already being accused of starting a riot in the chef's kitchen. Look for restaurant signs: This is a Salt-Free Environment. There'll be protest announcements on the Food Channel when the Himalayan Pink comes under attack.
And, finally, my odds-on favorite, from an anonymous officer of a financial services firm: "Everything is on the table now, and you can bet that when the smoke clears, budgets and processes will be a whole new animal." You can't beat that one with a dead stick.
So, does everything is on the table mean that all the cards are on the table? That we're betting the farm? That they'll be looking under every rock? It sounds suspiciously to me as though somebody in the President's speech-writer's pool has been watching a little too much Celebrity Poker Showdown.
Group Project: Help me start a list of currently trendy phrases that need to be retired. So far, in addition to the laden table, I've got...
"That said,..."
"Back in the day"
"old school"
"unpack"
"deconstruct"
"drilling down on..." (my goodness!)
Contest: How many buzz phrases, overused metaphors, twisted similes, etc., can you find in this post? It's chock-a-block full of them. Some are cleverly disguised as proper usage and others are as obvious as the nose on your face. I know you can do it; it isn't rocket surgery. [The author will need a linguistics intervention after this.]
* In the Middle Ages, goats were put in stable stalls with nervous race horses to act as calming companions. The surest way to win a race was to steal your opponent's goat.
Back in the day, Nance, them old school folks would unpack these mixed metaphors and seriously drill down on their abusers.
ReplyDeleteThat said, when it comes to deconstructing such abominations, nothing is off the table.
(And a mighty big table it is.)
Everything is on the table, right? Does this mean that one must always use condiments to practice safe eating? That a boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat. That Dijon vu is the same mustard as before? That the clock is hungry when it goes back for seconds? That bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis? Does the name Pavlov ring a bell? And speaking of aging, did you know that a will is a dead give away, and that every calendar’s days are numbered?
ReplyDeleteA word to the wise before you leave the table: A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
I especially dislike "deconstruct" because it's almost always used as a synonym for "destroy." But that isn't a precise use of the term at all.
ReplyDeleteIf there's one word I would like to retire from the English language or limit to those under the age of twelve, it's "scary." The word infantilizes whatever the speaker is referencing. There are so many better words getting pushed aside by this copycat term: "disturbing," "frightening," etc.
I actually have no problem with catch phrases or shorthand methods of communication. Language is organic and words, terms, phrases are constantly being introduced and retired. When a language doesn't evolve with the generations it dies. No one speaks Latin any more, not even the Catholic Church. The Latin mass ended when I was a child.
ReplyDeleteI do think that some terms and phrases get repeated far too much and I also think that far too often people haven't a clue as to what a particular term or phrase means. The purpose of words should be to communicate; if no one understands of what you speak, then there isn't any purpose in speaking.
As for "everything is on the table" or its variation "nothing is off the table," it is shorthand to declare that whatever the issue is that needs to be resolve, there are no limits as to what may be considered in devising a resolution. So if everything is on the table, then you can throw the baby out with the bathwater and start all over from scratch. :)
The anonymous financial officer's observaton actually makes perfect sense to me. I doubt that it is true; everything is never on the table. There is always a bottom line as to what is negotiable and what is not.
I can't imagine any language without idioms. Reading this comment, it appears that I can't communicate without using them! Fortunately, just as these buzz words and phrases enter our lexicon, many of them also depart. What would the English language be without the most prolific inventor of a turn of phrase ever, William Shakespeare?
Touché, Sheria. A mighty fine defense of descriptive grammar (although I hesitate to think what some of our prescriptive grammarian friends might say).
ReplyDeleteFrom my sketchy aging cephalopod brain, I seem to recall a controversy sometime in the 1800s when a descriptive version of Webster’s Dictionary was first published. After the New York Times condemned it as vulgar, the author replied: “You don’t prescribe the news; I don’t prescribe the grammar.”
(Comment Part 1 of 2)
ReplyDeleteEven the table should be on the table, if we're going to make a fire sale of it....
There’s always an ambivalent relationship between the current state of a language and the rules for grammar and syntax. Language is always changing thanks to a number of things, best among them creativity (both expressive of inward states and descriptive of things around us) but ignorance as well, which is also a form of creativity if one partly means by that “catalyst for change.” We know the old saw that only those who know the rules have license to break them, but we also know that in practice it doesn’t hold up. People break all sorts of rules, and in the end if they break them often enough, license becomes law.
Language itself is in the best sense arbitrary in that it doesn’t seem to be based upon any inherent connection between words and things, so there is no question of the the rules being necessary lest we violate the order of nature. Words are necessary in part for making common our understanding, perceptions and feelings. But there’s perhaps a less innocent aspect to the rules we impose: they separate us into “learned” and “unlearned.” In other words, intellectual ranking. Nietzsche points out that this ranking/classifying function underwrites the phenomenon of language generally, with its regularization of the relationship between word and thing, and its incessant promotion of concepts as a way to build upon one’s allegedly successive tamings and descriptions of natural processes around us and of the complex world within.
To put this in a practical context, as a teacher I would never tell students that the elegance and precision of their vocabulary and style are less important in one exercise than in another, or that they matter less than simple expression or “being right.” Wilde said wisely that the origin of all bad poetry is genuine emotion and that in all matters important or unimportant, “style, not sincerity, is the essential.” There’s more than a grain of truth in both statements, even when we are talking about term papers and final exams rather than great novels or poems. I would not want to encourage anyone to consider it immaterial whether he or she knows when to write “they’re,” “their,” and “there,” or to ignore the fact that there’s a difference between “discreet” (what you want to be when you’re cheating on your spouse) and “discrete” (which has to do with a certain quality of numbers and a kind of mathematics). Of course, I suppose you could be discreet with a discrete number of people not your spouse.
Continued in Part 2....
Comment Part 2 of 2
ReplyDeleteOur Twittery and email-happy culture tends to make the vulgar opposition Wilde tries to dispel. That culture assumes it doesn’t matter how you express yourself so long as you do express yourself, preferably with emoticons and silly acronyms like ROTFLMAO. It would be cruel to discount a person’s genuine expression just because the grammar was bad or the words not precise, but I suspect there’s a little of that cruelty in all of us edjikated people. To us, a Sloppy Joe with extra gravy just isn’t the same thing as filet mignon. Perhaps both are good, but they are good in very different ways.
But that’s too easy, and perhaps a bit snobbish. I should introduce in paraphrase a student’s wonderful example along the same lines: “if some surfer kid goes to a museum and gazes at the great works and his only remark is, ‘Bitchin’!, what can we take away from that? Does his sincere reverence deserve less respect than, say, the learned discourse of a John Ruskin or a Walter Pater? It isn’t clear on what grounds it might deserve less respect, at least from this initial standpoint of regard for one’s capacity to be moved in the presence of beauty. Who’s to say that the surfer dude’s unmediated, unrefined appreciation isn’t the very one the painters hoped to inspire?” I think that’s a good question, and not an easy one to answer. I want to come back to my snotty Sloppy Joe/filet mignon comparison, but now I feel guilty doing it, because all I can do is dredge up another elitist quip from Wilde to the effect that one person’s “deeper nature” is in essence the same as another’s, so all we have left to be interested in is the superficialities, the finer points of style and expression, not the deep-down truth of them. Oscar’s right that c’est la différence qui fait tout, just as, I suppose, Stendhal is right when he says, “En amour, posséder n’est rien. C’est la jouissance qui fait tout.” (In love, possession is nothing – pleasure is the only thing that matters.) And still the surfer dude is there to reproach me in his duosyllabic way, ness paw? Sure, he lacks what we might call range, but still . . . .
Well, I think I’m going to go have an early breakfast. After all this intellectualizing, I’m gonna go have me some pancakes with applesauce and a cup of dark coffee. I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me! How many pancakes and how much applesauce does a 3,000 lb. dinosaur require? 12 large buckets of batter and three buckets of applesauce, with a pound and a half of butter to spread over the pancakes while they’re still piping hot.
" when there's a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, to long words and exhausted idioms like a cuttlefish squirting out ink"
ReplyDelete-Orwell-
Well like here we go with the two-option forced choice thing. So I'm like totally impactified negatively at this point in time.
I suppose Mrs. Malaprop could be an English teacher today.
I cannot understand the fashionable antipathy toward clear speech and precise vocabulary without which "self expression" becomes solipsistic and as meaningless as blowing one's nose. Really the only difference between a fine dinner and vomit is in the order, the grammar, as it were.
Using grammar is about saying what you want to say -- saying what you think you're saying -- in a way that can be well understood and is not about tossing around confused concepts and undefined or misunderstood terms because of incompetence, laziness or insidious intent. Grammar stems from function and yes, we lost Latin but it took centuries before any of the vulgates were sophisticated enough to convey much more than "me so horny" or the other base concerns of a debased population. I'd really rather not enter a new Dark Age.
Yes, stale cliche, confused metaphor and many a mondagreen has come and gone, but they do seem to have a far longer lifespan ( notice I didn't say shelf life) than once they did. I think that's the point here.
And yes, bad grammar and inadequate vocabulary do force out the thoughts and words of those with good grammar and good vocabulary, just as Gresham's law illustrates in the context of currency.
That any of us can still read Shakespeare is something we owe to a modest attention to the sensibility behind grammar and vocabulary. No matter how common it may be, something like "the reason why I did it" doesn't mean the same thing as the reason that I did it, nor is the meaningless clutter and verbal, tonal and gestural choreography we like to add to seem "hip" do anything but detract from the ability to communicate. Many people can't write at all since they depend so much on extra-verbal aids to be understood at all.
I simply can't write off the roaring changes in American English to the natural evolution of Language any more than I can write off the destruction of thousands of species in the Amazon basin or the Gulf of Mexico to natural selection. The average high school student has about half the vocabulary that was common 50 years ago. Somehow I can't think that's natural and therefore good It's cutting people off from culture and creating a vast class of cultural, political, scientific and logical infants, ripe for manipulation. Did a simple cup of coffee become an "Americano" because we wanted it to or because we suddenly became Italian immigrants -- or because someone wanted to charge 5 bucks for it by appealing to bourgeois snobbery?
Yes, Shakespeare gave us thousands of phrases but he didn't do to deceive us or to sell us things. He didn't do it because he had an eight thousand word vocabulary and was trying to cover it up.
Ah, there appears to be more than one line of discussion going on here. I didn't read Nance's post as being about grammar but as being about the use of buzz words, a sort of shorthand that people use to communicate ideas. Such communication is not by definition grammatically incorrect. Indeed, there is a world of difference between usage and grammar; they are not the same thing. I too have my pet peeves--your for you're, and the interchanging of their, they're and there. However, idioms, slang, buzz words or phrases are not by definition grammatically incorrect. There is no grammar issue in the use of the term "everything is on the table." Grammatically, it is a perfectly sound statement.
ReplyDeleteI gently still suggest that the concern about the use of idiomatic language is much ado about nothing and that it in no way means the death of the English language.
I unintentionally posted my comment twice so I deleted one. Now there is the mysterious note, "comment deleted by author."
ReplyDeleteI think my fav overused phrase to use is 'all things being equal'. I didn't realize until a few minutes ago how funny this is given my political views.
ReplyDeleteI tend more towards individual words than phrases; these come and go with my moods but 'distressing' is high on the list these days and 'accoutrements' has always been a major part of my vocabulary.
My mom's here, which is distressing at least and the list of accoutrements I'm required to provide has, all things being equal, given me a world-class headache.
Sheria,
ReplyDeleteYes, they are distinct; I think there's a connection, though, in that while buzzwords sometimes add vitality, they seem often to come from sources that impoverish the range of a given language. To that extent, they function like Orwell's catchphrases in "The Politics of the English Language," reducing expression and observation to the simplest possible level. I think a lot of the words we get from political discourse and from newscasters and pundits, etc. might fit into the category of "reductive language." And a fair amount of it amounts to a silly misuse of parts of speech, as in "epic fail" or "disconnect."
Did Shakespeare use Microsoft Word?
ReplyDeleteDino thinks the question is absurd.
But one thing is clear:
Bill word-processed 'King Lear'
And grammar checked 'Richard the Third'.
I think what we have here is, in the spirit of Yogi-isms, is a fractured catch phrase.
ReplyDeleteWe are all familiar with "bring to the table" or "lay your cards out on the table" which refer to the concepts of producing something of value to contribute and of revealing all you have to offer.
Putting "everything on the table" should probably, more appropriately be "bring your A game" and "lay everything on the line" as in we are going to bet the farm we can come up with a solution.
"All things being equal" is also a pet peeve of mine Satyavati, right up there with "moving forward".
Here's the thing about catch phrases, generational lingo and big words - a nursing instructor once asked, after a student had presented a case study using all the correct medical jargon, "How many of you understand what exactly is going on with this patient?" And then she told us, "There is nothing wrong with knowing and using the correct terminology, but you will be doing your patient a disservice if no one else knows what you're talking about."
So, like Satyavati, I tend to string together individual words into a sentence that, I hope, is clear and concise.
"I gently still suggest that the concern about the use of idiomatic language is much ado about nothing and that it in no way means the death of the English language."
ReplyDeleteAnd I gently agree, but, putting it all on the table (ahem) I think that forgetting what I call making sense and some people call grammar doesn't help, but the shocking loss of vocabulary does indeed hurt our ability to communicate in ways that some people might be afraid we will.
We're losing our words, our history and our ability to spot manipulative, misleading distortions. We're simply not able to understand what we need to understand in a devious and dangerous world where they're selling subjugation as patriotism and mythology as history.
I believe I'm right in saying that the average High School graduate has only about 18,000 words these days and that it's about half of what it was in my HS days. Many don't know what WW II was about or when it happened or who was in it and don't care because it's not entertainment.
I had to tell someone with a law degree not long ago that wherefore does not mean where and no, Juliet wasn't asking Romeo where he was hiding and yes indeed, someone did indeed decode the Egyptian hieroglyphs about 200 years ago and no Rosetta Stone isn't a woman's name and no, mano a mano doesn't mean man to man, etc. I think it's "scary."
And I mean when you're outta Orwell, you're outta truth.
Many graduate schools (and publishers) are requiring use of a "plagiarism checker," a software program that that counts up certain words and phrases and projectile vomits a 'fix it' list requiring the writer to create alternative usages. How nauseating, I thought, when certain disciplines have their own commonly used vocabulary, and writers are put under the burden of inventing new constructs just to placate a dumb as Jeebus "plagiarism checker."
ReplyDeleteAnd how I hate Microsoft Word's spelling and grammar check programs that are more often wrong ... yet exert a nasty influence upon our language, our culture, our politics, our intimacies, how we use toilet paper, and how an octopus inks the aquarium; Bill Gates earns a residual off this perversion!. There outta be a law, I tell ya!
'Open source,' anyone?