GETTING TO KNOW THE ENGLISH MODALS

Don’t let the modal auxiliaries “can,” “could,”
“will,” and “would” baffle you anymore 

Let’s do a quick review of the proper usage of the function words “will” and “would,” “shall” and “should,” and “can” and “could,” which from my experience as an editor continue to be pitfalls to many learners and even some long-time users of English.

The most important thing to keep in mind about these word-pairs is that they aren’t meant for sentences that deal with simple facts or absolute certainties. They are distinct grammatical forms called modal auxiliaries or modals, which work with verbs to convey various shades of necessity, advice, ability, expectation, permission, possibility, or conditionality.

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“Can” and “could.” These two modals convey the idea of ability, possibility, permission, or potential; “can” is the present-tense form, “could” the past-tense form. Ability: “She can write novels.” “By then she could no longer write novels.” Possibility: “The team can win if its members are more disciplined.” Permission: “Can I go out with my playmates now?” Potential: “With his political acumen, he can be presidential timber.”

The modal “could” is also used to make a deferential or polite request, offer, or suggestion: “Could you tell me how to leave the send-off party now without offending the boss?” But among social, age, or professional coequals, “can” is more suitable: “Can you tell me how to leave the send-off party now without offending the boss?”

“Will” and “would.” The usual function of “will” is as a verbal auxiliary for expressing simple futurity, as in “Evelyn will go to Tokyo tomorrow.” As a modal, however, “will” works to convey choice, willingness, intention, consent, or habitual or customary action. Choice: “I will take the train instead of the bus.” Willingness: “I will go if you wish.” Intention: “I will prove you wrong.” Consent: “Yes, the school will admit you.” Habitual or customary action: “She will get angry over trivial things.”

In the past tense, the modal “will” inflects to “would.”  Choice: “That year, I would fly first class rather than economy.” Willingness: “In my mid-twenties, I would go wherever I was assigned.” Habitual or customary action: “After breaking up with her fiancé, Joanna would get angry over trivial things.”

In conditional sentences, the modal “would” works to express probability or presumption in both present and past, as in “That overambitious politician (would win, would have won) hands down if not for the very serious corruption allegations against him.”

Also, the modal “would” conveys politeness and deference in expressing intent or desire, as in “Would you consider my daughter for that overseas job?” This differs from the rather pointed request conveyed when the modal “will” is used: “Will you consider my daughter for that overseas job?”

As a quick exercise, are “will” and “would” used correctly in this statement: “Will it rain tomorrow? If it wouldn’t, would it be a sunny day?”

Yes, they are correct. The first question uses “will” as a verbal auxiliary to express simple futurity; the second is a conditional construction where (a) the “if”-clause uses the modal “wouldn’t” to express negative possibility, and (b) where the result clause also uses the modal “would” to express expectation of a desired outcome in question form.  

“Shall” and “should.”  In American English (the English used in the Philippines), the modals “shall” and “should” are used sparingly to state polite questions (suggestive that permission is being asked) in the first-person, as in “Should I get a taxi for you now, ma’am?” More commonly, the modal “shall” is used in formal written directives and records of corporate proceedings, as in “All workers shall be responsible for the upkeep of their respective work areas.”

This discussion appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the October 24, 2019 print edition of The Manila Times, © 2019 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

RETROSPECTIVE ON POLITICAL PROPAGANDA

For good or bad, propaganda essentially aims to short-circuit
rational thought among its targets to favor the proponent's goal

Propaganda did not start as something undesirable or downright evil. In fact, it had its origins in what many of us would consider the holiest of causes. Over four centuries ago, in 1622, Pope Gregory XV was confronted with a twin-horned problem--heathens were fiercely resisting Christianity in the new lands that the papacy wanted to evangelize, and where the faith had already made a beachhead, heretics were attacking its very genuineness and patrimony. 

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Alarmed, the 68-year-old pope, once a fiery and outspoken doctor of laws but now afflicted by a dreadful bladder stone barely two years into the papacy (he died of the illness a year later), decided to form a special task force. He called it the Congregatio de propaganda fide, or “the Congregation for propagating the faith,” and gave it the task of putting more teeth to the worldwide missionary activities of the Roman Catholic Church.

That congregation’s successes and failures are today firmly etched both in the world’s religious geography and in the inscrutable, sometimes shockingly irrational ways that people on both sides of the great religious divide view that world. That, of course, is a fascinating subject crying for an intelligent discussion, but at this time, we will limit ourselves to how the then entirely new word “propaganda” crept into the language, first into Latin and later into English, and how its practice evolved into a deadlier hydra than the twin-horned devil it was originally meant to vanquish.

Today, as most of us know, the word “propaganda” has become a noun that means “the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.” In plain and simple English, it is a one-sided form or persuasion seeking to make people decide and act without thinking. This blight on the logical thought process becomes virulent when serious clashes in religious, political, and ideological beliefs become inevitable. And what makes the once pious word and activity even more unchristian and linguistically anomalous is that it is waged as fanatically by the really bad guys as by the presumably good guys on our side.

The essential problem with propaganda, of course, is its single-minded goal of short-circuiting rational thought. As practiced in  Philippine election campaigns in recent memory, for instance, it is excessively bigoted in agitating our emotions, in exploiting our insecurities and ignorance, in taking advantage of the ambiguities and vulnerabilities of the language, and in bending the rules of logic whenever convenient or expedient. Propaganda can delude both the ignorant and intelligent alike, and the even greater danger is that even astute people could become its victims and crazed believers, as we are witnessing right now.

To fortify our defenses against political propaganda, we have to do two crucial things ourselves: (1) get to know at least the most basic tricks used by political propagandists to subvert rational thinking, and (2) cultivate an open and objective mind to counter their deceptions and sleights of the mind.

A practical first step for this propaganda-defusing process is to critically scrutinize those aspiring for the top national positions. For our own and this country’s sake, and no matter what the poll surveys and the TV or radio commercials say, we must cut the candidates or their proponents down to size. We must for decision-making purposes think of them simply as applicants for a specific job, or consider them as nothing more than branded products on the supermarket shelf.

By looking at a candidate as just another job applicant, we can greatly loosen the grip of his or her propaganda on our senses. That will allow us to dispassionately go over his or her application and résumé and make a reasonably sound judgment on the following basics: (1) communication and writing skills, (2) quality of mind and self-appraisal, and (3) qualifications and job-related work experience. Anybody who skips this elementary procedure for hiring entry-level stock clerks and senior corporate executives alike is obviously an incompetent, irresponsible fool who deserves to be fired outright. And yet, as we can all see, skipping this very basic process is what many propagandists of national candidates would like the Filipino electorate to do.

It would be even more instructive to treat the candidates simply as products on a supermarket shelf or public market stall. We can then proceed to mercilessly strip them of their elaborate branding and packaging to see the intrinsic worth of the actual product inside. It would shock many people to know that the cost of the packaging of certain shampoos in glitzy sachets can run to as much as 85 percent of their total selling price. How much more profound their shock would be to find that some highly touted candidates, when stripped of their glitzy imaging and positioning, are not trustworthy enough and have less probative value for the national positions they are seeking than the paper their faces and names are printed on.

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This essay first appeared in Jose A. Carillo’s “English Plain and Simple” column in The Manila Times on March 29, 2004. The author is once again presenting the essay in retrospective to help contextualize the intense propaganda buildup today to destabilize the current government and start another round of changes in the country’s charter to benefit particular political interests.

ESSAY BY JOSE A. CARILLO RETROSPECTIVE: THE BATTLE FOR OUR MINDS

Media-abetted distortion of the Philippine electoral process

By Jose A. Carillo

Once upon a time in our fledgling democracy, people who sought elective office assiduously cultivated a public life of honor, dignity, and excellence. The measures of social and political acceptance were intelligence, integrity, and achievement. The political firmament of the pre-Independence era thus filled up with such illustrious names as Quezon, Osmeña, Recto, Tañada, Roxas, and Laurel. They became larger-than-life presences because of their personal magnetism, eloquence, and deep understanding of the imperatives of politics and governance. But then that was the time when radio in our country was still an adolescent as a mass communication medium. That was the time when broadcast television was still an infant even in America, which had transplanted democracy on the largely unprepared Philippine soil at the turn of the 20th century. That was the time when the print media still held sway as the public information medium. The mechanisms of the democratic electoral process could still grow without getting badly distorted by media-induced manipulation.

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When the Filipinos discovered TV and radio broadcasting, however, a monkey wrench was thrown on the country’s electoral process. They discovered that broadcast media appearance and noise could very well substitute for the assiduously cultivated public life. They discovered the politics of convenience, the politics of media-induced gloss and popularity. From then on, no one who wanted to enter politics needed to learn the art of politics and governance. All one had to do was to expose oneself on broadcast media, preferably television. The kind of exposure really didn’t matter—decent, indecent, whatever—so long as it was sustained exposure. Clowning or outright buffoonery or somersaults on TV was perfect. Reading the news or prattling on TV and radio with half-baked opinions was just fine. Anchoring talk shows or quiz shows was just great. And yes, doing 30-second TV or radio endorsements for any product that needs heavy advertising was even much better! Pitch multivitamins, rum, brandy, anything—and voila! one can be sure to be rated highly by the statistical pollsters and run for election. The greater the broadcast exposure, the higher the level of public office one could aspire for. So why bother learning the art of management, leadership, and governance? After all, the simple media-exposure formula had wonderfully sent entertainers of all stripes to Congress as well as to provincial capitols and city halls—film actors, clowns, sit-com talents, martial-arts performers, talk-show hosts, and newsreaders. At one time, the same formula even sent one of their kind to the highest post in the gift of the land!

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There may be some exceptions to the rule, but look at what Philippine democracy has produced for us: politicians without political platform or ideology, elective officials who do little on top of preparing themselves for the next elections, individuals who have no true constituency or principle to stand for and fight for. Repudiating the marketing axiom so clearly enunciated by Al Ries and Jack Trout in their book, Positioning—that anyone or anything that must battle for our mind must clearly “position” or define itself in the marketplace—these people have not even taken the trouble to position themselves. They stand for nothing. They belong to a political party largely for convenience. Only a paltry few have shown a gift for leadership and governance, fewer still those with a clear vision of their role as public servants. Many have just capitalized on their media-induced popularity to attract moneyed backers or well-financed politicians who were unsure of their grip of the public mind. Some, in fact, have evidently become touts or politicians for hire.

The sad thing is that the Philippine mass media have actually abetted this state of affairs. They have allowed not only politicians but their very own broadcast or editorial personnel to ruthlessly exploit the power of media to advance their political interests. (Of course, it is entirely possible, too, that the media owners were the ones exploiting their former wards all along for their own vested interests.) We thus see the embarrassing spectacle of  (1) TV newscasts whose newsreaders are also the commercial endorsers of products advertised on these newscasts, (2) broadcast personalities already in high public office still shamelessly extracting media exposure for themselves by keeping their old broadcast programs (as if nothing has changed in their professional lives), and (3) officials in high elective office callously acting as commercial product endorsers on all forms of media to perpetually keep themselves in the public eye.

When will this cult of media-abetted popularity end? I am afraid it will not—unless the Filipinos realize that the quality of their governance will only be as good as the quality of the people they put into public office, and unless they recognize the harm that this reign of entertainers in politics is doing to them and act in concert to end it. Until then, to expect any real progress in this country will remain an altogether ridiculous notion. (2003, 2009)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, August 15, 2003 issue © 2003 and 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

APPOSITIVES AS OPEN SECRET TO MORE ENGAGING WRITING

They can make your writing more engaging, more informative, and more readable

A common problem with bad writing is that it’s often so general and lacking in texture and depth. The people, places, or things used as subjects seem to exist only in two-dimensional space, as in a crude cartoon movie, with the actions described all seeming to crowd themselves in a very brief timeframe. There are hardly any telling details to give meat and substance to the bare-boned prose, so the writing is dry, bland, and uninviting to read.

An efficient way of giving vitality to such writing is to use appositives and appositive phrases. 

An appositive is simply a noun or pronoun that often comes directly after another word in a sentence, putting that word in better context by explaining it or by giving more information about it. On the other hand, an appositive phrase consists of an appositive and all of its modifiers. 

Both are powerful tools that allow you to identify or explain the nouns or pronouns you are using without having to come up with a new sentence or string of sentences to provide more information. This makes your buildup of ideas smoother as it frees the writing from digressions or asides that may just impede its natural flow.

The appositives used in the sentences that follow are indicated in italics: 

“My office assistant Joanna took the day off yesterday.” 

“Her husband, the jealous type, took her on an extended out-of-town trip.” 

“They rode on my friend’s car, a battered 2015 SUV, to a hillside farm in Batangas.” 

Note that appositives may also come before the noun or pronoun they refer to; what’s important is not to detach them from the noun or pronoun they modify.

And here are two sentences modified by appositive phrases: 

“Mayon Volcano, a major Philippine tourist attraction because of its majestic near-perfect cone, is found in Albay, a southeastern province in Luzon about 500 kilometers from Manila by bus.” 

“Adventurers with only a few hundred pesos between them, the two provincial girls took the bus to Manila.” 

In the first sentence, two appositive phrases are at work: “a major Philippine tourist attraction because of its majestic near-perfect cone” modifying the “Mayon Volcano," and “a southeastern province in Luzon about 500 kilometers from Manila by bus” modifying “Albay.” 

In the second sentence, coming ahead of the subject “two provincial girls,” is the modifying appositive phrase “adventurers with only a few hundred pesos between them.”

It should now be clear that an appositive or appositive phrase may either be essential or non-essential to a sentence. An essential or restrictive appositive narrows the meaning of the word it modifies; it is a must to maintain the meaning of the sentence. Usually a single word or two that’s closely related to the preceding word, it doesn’t require commas to set it off from the rest of the sentence, as in the following example:

“The extremely popular Philippine president Ramon Magsaysay died in a tragic plane crash in the early 50s.” 

(Without “Ramon Magsaysay” as appositive, it will take some research to figure out who that president was.)

On the other hand, a non-essential or non-restrictive appositive isn’t absolutely necessary to the meaning of a sentence; it may even be omitted without altering its basic meaning. Depending on its position in the sentence, it must be set off from the rest of the sentence by one or two commas), as in the following example:

“Alicia’s sister, a Philippine-born doctor, worked as a senior anesthesiologist in a large hospital in the U.S. Midwest.” 

(Even without the appositive “a Philippine-born doctor,” the interested reader still could find out who that doctor was.)

Non-essential appositive phrases have the same optional role in sentences like this one: 

“December, usually the coldest month in tropical Philippines, is becoming more popular than June as the wedding month of choice.” 

We can take out the appositive phrase “usually the coldest month in tropical Philippines” and still get a clear idea what month it is that more and more Filipinos are getting married.

This essay, 2147th of the series, appears in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the April 20, 2023 digital edition of The Manila Times, ©2023 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.