Never too late to pursue writing if you’ve got the talent

It’s never too late to pursue writing as a vocation if one belatedly discovers having the talent and the great reserves of energy to do it. Shirley A., who describes herself as “75 years old, living alone with almost nothing” (I’m withholding her surname to keep her privacy), makes this point with such disarming frankness in a recent e-mail that I thought I shouldn’t keep her sentiments all to myself. I am therefore sharing them here, verbatim.

October 26, 2013

Dear Sir:

I am reading “English Plain and Simple” and I am gaining so much, including being entertained by it. When I am done with the 463 pages, I might be able to express well what I want to tell you: how grateful I am that I found you and how much I am indebted to you. You see, I have had no formal education (in writing or otherwise) so I am not very encouraged to write anything, but your book is helping me a lot. You have no idea how much you will be contributing to my future happiness. I am 75 years old, living alone with almost nothing, but I hope to be able to fend for myself when I have nothing more but written words to see me through.

I just had a few good laughs today, reading quotes from H.L. Mencken. I just asked my daughter to send me a Nook and to order for me all that you recommended in pages 96/97 to Jay [Some informal prescriptions for better writing in English (1 – One Man’s Meat)].

Meantime, know that you are so much appreciated; if not for you, life would be meaningless and useless for me now. For the first time in my life, I have something worthy of the time God has given me on earth. I will not waste it now.

Thank you very, very much.

Very truly yours,

Shirley A.

My reply:

October 27, 2013

Dear Shirley,

Just call me Joe.

Thank you so much for your compliment about my book. I want you to know that I greatly appreciate it.

You express yourself very well. I have no doubt that even without having come across my book, you already had the facility to write good, compelling English prose. Perhaps all that my book has really done was to perk up your imagination and give you some ideas on how to put your writing talent to good use. But at 75, having discovered that you have the power to do it, you can now pursue a worthy enterprise that definitely can see you through in the years ahead—write a volume of personal essays perhaps or, if you strongly feel it’s worth telling, even the story of your life. Mind you, Shirley, not everybody is blessed with the talent or the motivation or the energy to do what you can do at your age, so my advice is: Go for it!

About H. L. Mencken, I must say that he was a great influence during my formative years; in fact, I still get a thrill down my spine every time I’m rereading his overarching polemics. Which gives me an idea: While waiting for that Nook from your daughter, why not read Mencken’s In Defense of Women in the Project Gutenberg e-book right now? The beauty about Mencken is that even if you don’t agree with his strong views, it’s always a delight to savor his acerbic thoughts in his superb English.

To ensure no dull moment in between your bouts of writing, Shirley, I have another suggestion: join Jose Carillo’s Forum, my English-usage website. You can ask questions or share your views about English or whatever in its discussion boards. You can even use it as a sketch pad or sounding board for material intended for your essays or autobiography. Who knows, someone from among the Forum’s over 42,000 members worldwide just might give you invaluable feedback or, at the very least, simply brighten up a sullen day for you.

Sincerely yours,

Joe Carillo

(The e-mail conversation above originally appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, November 2, 2013 issue © 2013 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.)

Rejoinder by Shirley A.:

October 28, 2013

Dear Joe:

I am very honored and flattered that you replied to my email although, I just wanted to thank you and didn’t expect you to waste anymore of your precious time on me.

Certainly, you have my permission to use the email or any part of it as you please and, well, that makes me very happy. Your book will do a lot for me in acquiring more knowledge and skills, if not, boost my confidence, as well. For sure it will elevate my too-elementary-style of writing to a higher level that would satisfy me. I have read and studied so many books including “The Elements of Style” but I am still very poor in punctuations and grammar, too. I also have a copy of “The 10 Most Annoying English Grammar Errors.” What it is doing now though, is, I am so afraid you will find many annoying grammatical errors in my writing but please don’t mind me, after all, I haven’t finished your book yet.

My one great desire was to get a college degree but even 10 years ago, I was already too old to be out in the streets using public transportation so, that was out of the question but if there was a school across from where I live, I will, most assuredly, still try. I am very envious of people who have a Ph.D. but I just accept and am grateful for what God gives me. I had a nagging feeling that He didn’t really want me to go through all that, at my age, proving my instincts right because of the appearance and advantage of your book, giving me what I long for and yet, not having to go through a lot of hassles, as would have happened, had I gone back to school.

I will follow all of your suggestions and advices and thank you so much for the link. I did want to read “In Defense of Women.” We seem to think along the same lines because last night, I was wishing I had a copy of it when I saw it among his books in the internet.

I can’t thank you enough, and I hope one day I can tell you that I had written an autobiography and a book on essays. I don’t have the resources to add The Manila Times to my daily read but if you send me the link you will get more appreciation and thanks from me.

Very sincerely,

Shirley

The need to avoid officious stock phrases when writing or speaking

I seem to recall posting this essay here two-and-a-half years ago but I thought it was high time posting it once again for the benefit of those who haven’t read it yet and for everybody else who’d like to get rid of the unpleasantly bureaucratic tone of their written and spoken English. (June 17, 2013)

Let’s face it: Bureaucrats, lawyers, and not a few academicians use a lot of officious stock phrases in both their written and spoken communication, among them “by virtue of,” “with reference to,” “in connection with,” “with regard to,” “in order to,” “with respect to,” “in line with,” and—perhaps the most irksome of them all—“this is to inform you that” for both bad and good news and everything in between. These phrases make their English sound so highhanded and even somewhat threatening, but we learn to tolerate them because they are actually part of their professional jargon.

The problem, however, is that through our repeated exposure to these stock phrases, they eventually creep into our own writing and speech without our even knowing it. Indeed, not a few of us in time begin to sound like bureaucrats, lawyers, and academicians ourselves even if we are not. We routinely appropriate their jargon not only in our conversations with our friends and coworkers but also in our job applications as well as in our own memos, letters, and reports. 

But should we really allow tradition and peer-group pressure to tyrannize us into making these officious stock phrases part of our own language? In business and in our personal lives, is it really not advisable and not desirable to speak in more concise, more pleasant, and friendlier English?

My answer to the first question is, of course, a big “No!”; to the second, a big "Yes, we absolutely need to do so!" We should shun those officious stock phrases and avoid them like the plague. As I explained in the essay below that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in 2004, we should always use the most concise and most forthright but friendly English phrases that can precisely convey our meaning. Indeed, our best bet for getting along with people and getting things done in the workplace and most everywhere else is not bureaucratic, lawyerly, or academic language but plain and simple English. (July 30, 2010)

Phrases desirable and phrases abstruse

We are going back to some grammar basics today because of an interesting e-mail that I received from a reader, Mr. Dante Quiba of Vallejo, California, who asked for my thoughts on certain words that were bugging him. He wondered which of them were advisable to use and which might have already fallen into disuse. They are “about,” “regarding,” “concerning,” “touching on,” “in terms of,” and “on account of.” I guess my answer to Dante will be of interest to all users and learners of English, so I am devoting this essay entirely to it.

As we know, the words Dante was asking about are very commonly used prepositions or prepositional phrases. They are those handy grammar devices in the English language that refer to things or relate them to one another. All of the six that Dante mentioned are, of course, still very much in use these days. The first four actually mean the same thing: “in connection with” or “on the subject of.” The shortest of them, “about,” is also the most natural and most forceful. It is arguably our best choice for informal statements that need to refer to something: “About our agreement last night, put it on hold until next week. I have second thoughts about some of the provisions.”

“Regarding” and “concerning” have a mildly officious and legalistic undertone, but if that doesn’t bother us, we can use them freely in place of “about.” Feel how they sound: “Regarding your application for a loan, you may expect release in two weeks.” “We are writing concerning your daughter’s academic performance.” On the other hand, the phrase “touching on” is of very limited use, appropriate only in constructions like these two: “Touching on the subject of romance, he became a spellbinding speaker.” “It will help if you touch on the subject of overtime pay in your briefing.” By some quirk of the language, “touch on” seems to work only when it latches on to the phrase “the subject of.” We thus must avoid it if we can.

“In terms of” (which means “considering”) and “on account of” (“because”) are also respectable—if a bit officious—prepositional phrases: “A time deposit is superior to a savings deposit in terms of interest income.” “We canceled the games on account of the inclement weather.” We must also note here that “in view of,” “owing to,” and “due to” can very well take the place of “on account of” in that second sentence; the choice really depends on what we do for a living and the company we keep. (Lawyers gravitate to “in view of” for their own reasons, but if you ask a non-lawyer like me, I’d much prefer to use “due to” most of the time.) 

More prepositional phrases abound that mean the same thing as “about,” but we are well advised to stay away from them. They are abstruse and can give our prose a false, awkward tone, particularly these five:

“in accordance with”

“in connection with”

“in conformance to”

“by reason of”

“as to.”

Two really obsolete ones, “apropos of” and “anent,” are best avoided altogether.

Then there are scores more of prepositional phrases that are too long-winded and legalistic for comfort; we should make it a point of honor to always replace them with their more concise equivalents. Here are some of them with their no-nonsense counterparts:

“at such time” (“when”)

“at that point in time” (“then,” “now”)

“by means of” (“by”)

“by virtue of” (“by,” “under”)

“despite the fact that” (“although”)

“due to the fact that” (“because”)

“during the course of,” “in the course of” (“during”) \

“for the amount of” (“for”)

“for the purpose of” (“for,” “under”)

“from the point of view of” (“from,” “for”)

“in order to” (“to”)

“in a manner similar to” (“like”)

“in excess of” (“more than,” “over”)

“in favor of” (“for”)

“in relation to” (“about,” “concerning”)

“in the nature of” (“like”)

“in the immediate vicinity of” (“near”)

“in close proximity to” (“near”)

“in the present” (“now”)

“on one occasion” (“once”)

“on the basis of” (“by,” “from”)

“subsequent to” (“after”)

 “until such time as” (“until”)

“with a view to” (“to”)

“with reference to” (“about,” “concerning”)

“with regard to” (“about,” “concerning”)

“with respect to” (“about,” “concerning”)

And while we are at it, we should also mercilessly eliminate from our personal and official correspondence the following prepositional clichés on sight:

“acknowledge receipt of”

“it has come to my attention”

“at this writing”

“attached thereto”

“receipt is hereby acknowledged”

“please be advised that”

“enclosed herewith”

“thank you in advance”

and—as I suggested avoiding in an earlier column—“more power to you!”

If there’s one rule we should live by in the use of prepositional phrases, it is to choose the most concise and most forthright but friendly ones that can precisely convey our meaning. (March 15, 2004)
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, March 15, 2004, © 2004 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

The versatility of free relative clauses in modifying our ideas

In “Crafting more elegant prose with free modifiers,” an essay of mine that I posted here last December 2, 2012, I showed how we can craft more elegant English prose by making good use of the so-called free modifiers instead of bound modifiers. To highlight the difference between these two, I likened a bound modifier to an animal species that has already perfected itself genetically, thus arriving at its evolutionary dead-end; in contrast, I said that free relative clauses form part of the wide gene pool of language that makes infinite permutations of thought possible.

This time, in “Making good use of free relative clauses,” an essay that I wrote for my daily English-usage column in The Manila Times on February 26, 2004, we will take an even closer look at the great versatility of this grammar device in modifying ideas. This is the last of the seven essays on grammar strategies for crafting more readable and compelling sentences that I have posted here from June 2012 onwards.

 

Making good use of free relative clauses

In the preceding chapter, we compared a bound modifier to an animal species that has already arrived at its evolutionary dead-end, and a free relative modifier to a species that partakes of a wide gene pool for its further evolution. This was in the context of the power of free relative clauses to expand ideas beyond the limits of the usual subject-verb-predicate format. We saw that while bound relative clauses simply affirm the identity of a subject noun, free relative clauses expand ideas in any way the writer or speaker deems suitable to his exposition.

There’s a handy guide for spotting the two: most bound relative clauses that refer to non-persons are introduced by “that,” while most free relative clauses that refer to non-persons are introduced by “which”: “The sedan that you delivered to me last week is a lousy clunker!” “That sedan, which you told me would be the best my money can buy, is a lousy clunker!” Notice how self-contained and peremptory the first sentence is, and how awkward it would be to add any more ideas to it (better to start all over again with a new sentence!).

In contrast, marvel at how the second sentence readily lends itself to further elaboration: “That sedan, which you told me would be the best my money can buy, which you bragged would give me the smoothest ride, and which you claimed would make me the most sophisticated-looking motorist in town, is a lousy clunker!” We can add even more “which” clauses to that sentence in direct proportion to the speaker’s anger and indignation, and still be sure that the speaker won’t be gasping for air when he gives vent to them.

We must be aware, though, that bound relative clauses are sometimes not that easy to spot in a sentence. Recall that we learned to routinely knock off “that” from relative clauses as part of our prose-streamlining regimen. Thus, the bound-clause-using sentence above would most likely present itself in this guise: “The sedan [that] you delivered to me last week is a lousy clunker!” This, as we know, is a neat disappearing act that “which” can oftentimes also do to link free relative clauses smoothly with main clauses.

But what really makes free relative clauses most valuable to prose is their ability to position themselves most anywhere in a sentence—at the beginning, in the middle, or at the tail end—with hardly any change in meaning; bound relative clauses simply can’t do that. We can better understand that semantic attribute by using three ways to combine sentences using the free-relative-clause construction technique. Take these two sentences: “The new junior executive has been very astute in his moves. He has been quietly working to form alliances with the various division managers.”

Our first construction puts the relative clause right at the beginning of the sentence: “Working quietly to form alliances with the various division managers, the new junior executive has been very astute in his moves.” The second puts it smack in the middle: “The new junior executive, working quietly to form alliances with the various division managers, has been very astute in his moves.” And the third puts it at the very tail end: “The new junior executive has been very astute in his moves, quietly working to form alliances with the various division managers.”

The wonder is that all three constructions yield elegant sentences that mean precisely the same thing—sentences that look, sound, and feel much better than when they are forced into bound-modifier straightjackets like this: “The new junior executive who is working quietly to form alliances with the various division managers has been very astute in his moves.”

We can see clearly now that free relative clauses work in much the same way as resumptive and summative modifiers: they allow us to effortlessly extend the line of thought of a sentence without losing coherence and cohesion and without creating unsightly sprawl. However, free relative clauses differ from them in one major functional attribute: they specifically modify a subject of a particular verb.

In contrast, resumptive modifiers pick up any noun, verb, or adjective from a main clause and elaborate on them with relative clauses, while summative modifiers make a recap of what has been said in the previous clause and develop it with another line of thought altogether. Free relative clauses specifically need verbs to start off thoughts that elaborate on the subject of the main clause: “She loves me deeply, showing it in the way she moves, hinting it in the way she looks at me.”

We can attach more and more free relative clauses to that sentence, but the point has been made: using free relative clauses is—short of poetry—one of the closest ways we can ever get to achieving elegance in our prose.

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 26, 2004 issue © 2004 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 64 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

Handy words to make our English more immediate and more forceful

As the fourth in a series of pointers for crafting more readable and compelling compositions, I am posting in this week’s edition of the Forum the essay below, “Using the demonstrative reference words,” that I wrote for my weekly English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2004. The discussion focuses on those handy words we can use so we don’t have to repeat ourselves to drive home a point and, even more important, to make what we are saying more immediate and forceful. They are, of course, the demonstrative adjectives, the demonstrative pronouns, and the demonstrative adverbs. All of us are supposed to have already internalized these reference words in our conversational English as early as in grade school, but if you happen to be one of those who had not become totally proficient in using them for one reason or another (perhaps due to youthful inattention or an ineffective grammar teacher), this review should be able to fill whatever gaps there might be your mastery of them. (July 29, 2012)

Using the demonstrative reference words

This time, our back-to-the-basics review of English composition brings us to the demonstrative reference words—those handy words we use so we don’t have to repeat ourselves to drive home a point and, even more important, to make what we are saying more immediate and forceful. As some of you may recall, the three categories of these reference words are the demonstrative adjectives, the demonstrative pronouns, and the demonstrative adverbs.

Demonstrative adjectives. This category consists of the modifiers “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those.” These words belong to the class of function words called determiners, which serve to either identify nouns or word groups functioning as nouns or give additional information about them (the non-demonstrative determiners “a,” “an,” and “the” also belong to this class). We will remember that the demonstrative adjectives always agree in number with the nouns they modify—“this” and “that” for singular nouns, as in “this apple” and “that woman,” and “these” and “those” for plural nouns, as in “those apples” and “those women.”

The demonstrative adjectives “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those” are also called the pointing words. They indicate how near or far an object is from the person describing it, and are particularly useful in spoken language, where the speaker can actually point to the objects or allude to them by tone of voice. See the big difference these pointing words make: “That car salesman over there is recommending this model to me instead of that model over there, but I think all of these models offered by this dealer are priced much higher than those offered by the other dealer downtown.”

Look at the statement now without the demonstrative adjectives: “The car salesman is recommending one model to me instead of another model, but I think all the models offered by the dealer are priced much higher than the models offered by the other dealer downtown.” The sense of identity, immediacy, and proximity evoked by the first sentence is gone, clear proof that the judicious use of demonstrative adjectives truly gives verve to language.

The demonstrative adjectives work as well even if the speaker or writer isn’t actually present at the place where the objects being described are found. When adroitly used in narratives or expository writing, these pointing words can actually allow the reader to relive the writer’s experience, as if the reader himself was present at the scene.

Take this narrative passage:

There was this lovely woman beside me at the bus stop during this pounding rain, and right in front of us were these three men who looked like thugs, eying us with a menace that you could actually feel. Those moments made me think that it was the better part of valor to flee—never mind what could happen to that woman beside me—but these two thoughts stopped me from taking that action: “What will happen to this woman if I left her behind? Will I ever get over this shameful act of cowardice that I am about to do now?”

Demonstrative pronouns. When the reference words “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those” point to specific things independently without latching on to specific nouns, they function as demonstrative pronouns instead. This is the case with the pointing words in the following sentences: “This is the variety of apples I mentioned to you last night.” “That is the director that launched a thousand acting careers.” “I don’t like these any more than you do.” “Those are a few of my favorite things.”

We can clearly see that demonstrative pronouns are particularly suited to spoken prose, when the speaker can actually point to the objects he is describing, whether near or far from where he speaks. In writing, however, we can’t point as easily to a particular object or noun, so we need a clear antecedent noun to establish the identity of the object that the demonstrative pronoun has replaced: “The man’s eldest son passed the entrance test to the state university. That made him easily the happiest father in the small farming town.”

When such a link to an antecedent noun can’t be clearly established from the preceding sentences, it becomes advisable to supply a new noun. This is where the demonstrative adjectives come in handy; they modify the new or repeated nouns instead of replacing them: “That feat of his son made him easily the happiest father in the small farming town.”

Demonstrative adverbs. This class of reference words includes such adverbs as “here,” “there,” “then,” “thus,” and “hence.” These words can handily take on the role of those places or situations that the listener or reader already knows, or those earlier described in a narrative and other forms of expository prose, thus avoiding the need to present them again: “As I told you before, I want you here, not there. You were a free agent then, but not anymore. You will thus be reporting to me directly until six months hence, when your contract expires.”

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 7, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 56 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2004 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

Basic but powerful grammar devices for cohesion and clarity

As the third in a series of pointers for crafting more readable and compelling compositions, I am posting in this week’s edition of the Forum the essay below, “Using repeated action and sequence words,” that I wrote for my weekly English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2004. The discussion focuses on simple but powerful grammar devices in English for giving greater cohesion and clarity to writing and speaking. As I’m sure many of us already know, what these devices do is to represent or point back to ideas, elements, events, or situations presented or described earlier in the composition—thus sparing the reader or listener from the tedium of going through the same set of words and phrases all over again. The happy result is, of course, more concise and more lucid expositions.

Find out now if, in fact, you haven’t been using the whole repertoire of these repeated action and sequence words all these years. If so, it’s not too late to make them give punch and sparkle to your written and spoken English. (July 22, 2012)

Using repeated action and sequence words

For a much better handle on English usage, let’s go further back this time to the basics of English composition. Let’s review the uses of the so-called repeated action words and sequence words, those simple but powerful grammar devices for giving greater cohesion and clarity to writing.

Repeated action reference words. These words become standard equipment very early among English-language learners: “so,” “that,” “these,” “those,” “such,” “too,” “does,” “do,” and “did,” “the same,” “likewise,” “either” and “neither,” and “not.” What they do is to represent or point back to ideas, elements, events, or situations presented or described earlier in the composition. We must always keep in mind, though, that these reference words shouldn’t be used by themselves alone; they should be judiciously combined with important words or phrases previously used in the sentence or paragraph.

Let’s now review how these repeated action reference words work:

“So.” A statement might look like this in its full-blown form: “Everybody is learning how to use the personal computer. You should also be learning how to use the personal computer yourself.” By using “so” as a repeated action reference word, that repetitious statement can be made more concise and forceful: “Everybody is learning how to use the personal computer; so should you.”

“That.” Take a look at this overwrought statement: “He has been in turns a farmer, bus driver, newspaperman, communication specialist, and entrepreneur. The shaping of his unique world view by having been all of these things is what he considers the story of his life.” See how the reference word “that” makes short shrift of the repetitious statement and gives the sentence more drama: “The shaping of his unique world view by having been in turns a farmer, bus driver, newspaperman, communication specialist, and entrepreneur—that he considers as the story of his life.”

“These” and “those.” These two reference words efficiently emphasize enumerative sequences: “Coffee, toast, orange marmalade, and fried eggs—these are the only things I take for breakfast.” “A villa in Palermo, a castle in Austria, a resort house in Capri, a townhouse in Athens—all those the marauding government official had to give up when he was convicted of plunder.”

“It.” This familiar, all-purpose pronoun can be used as a reference word for inanimate things or concepts previously mentioned in a composition: “He ran for public office thrice and lost each time; it was the worst humiliation of his life.”

“Such.” This word is a highly emphatic recapitulating device: “She bought five books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, three by Isabel Allende, and one by Pablo Coelho all at once—such was her fascination with Latin-American literature.”

“Too.” An excellent word for avoiding a repetition of similar attributes: “The woman’s vagabond lover was convicted of the grisly crime; the woman, too, got convicted.”

“Does,” “do,” “did.” These repeated action reference words eliminate the need to restate previously mentioned actions: “The groom loves riding horses; so does his bride.” “Not a few people want an intelligent president; so do we.” “She left right after midnight; so did I.”

“The same” and “likewise.”  These two work in practically the same way: “We ordered six cases of champagne yesterday; we want double of the same today.” “Our team worked overtime on New Year’s Eve; their team did likewise.”

“Either” and “neither.” These words efficiently recapitulate the acceptance or rejection of two previously mentioned choices: “Between the astral blue or apple-red sedan, either will do.” “Hong Kong or Singapore at this time of year? I want neither.”

“Not.” Negation of a statement can be done very efficiently by this repeated action reference word: “Most think that going to Baguio City at this time of year is great; not me.”

Sequence words. As we all know, “the former” and “the latter” are the two most common reference words for concisely showing the order of two previously mentioned elements, situations, and events. Both words imply a certain relation between those elements, situations, or events: “Christmas Day and New Year’s Day came and went, the former with a burst of piety and generosity, the latter with a bang and expectations of better things to come.” The reference word “former,” of course, refers to “Christmas Day,” and the reference word “latter,” to “New Year’s Day.”

We can see that repeated action reference words and sequence words not only tie up sentences and paragraphs neatly together, but also help emphasize the ideas being put forth in the composition. For beginning writers, this is as good a start as any towards concise, emphatic writing.

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 9, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 55 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2004 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

Clarifying some key terms in the impeachment process

By now most everybody should already have a clear idea of what “impeachment” means. In the ongoing proceedings against Philippine Chief Justice Renato C. Corona, it means “charging a public official before a competent tribunal with misconduct with the view of removing him or her from office.” In this sense, from a layperson’s standpoint, Chief Justice Corona’s impeachment was “a done thing” when the House of Representatives endorsed eight articles of impeachment against him by an overwhelming majority last December 12, and what we have been witnessing for over four months now in the Senate impeachment tribunal is the prosecution’s efforts to have him convicted for his alleged impeachable misconduct.

I would have left this matter with nary a comment except that last Wednesday, while my son Ed and I watched the impeachment trial on cable TV, one of the defense counsels, Dennis Manalo, made this statement while cross-examining a witness: “If the witness your honor is so declared as hostile, we will impeach this witness… by proving his bias and prejudice against Chief Justice Corona and his active involvement in a well-planned and orchestrated effort to destroy the reputation of Chief Justice Corona…”

At this juncture my son Ed turned to me and said: “Wait, Dad, didn’t the defense lawyer make a colossal word-choice blunder just now? He said he will impeach the witness, but how could that be? Has he forgotten that it’s his client—Chief Justice Corona—who has been impeached and is the one on trial in this case?”

“No, son,” I explained. “That defense lawyer’s choice of the verb ‘impeach’ is actually precise and calculated, except that he used the word in another sense—‘to cast doubt on or to challenge the credibility or validity of the testimony of a witness.’ That’s definition #2 of ‘impeach’ by our online Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary.”

“Well, shouldn’t he have used another word to avoid confusing laypeople like me? Perhaps ‘discredit’ would have been much clearer.”

“Yes, absolutely! But you see, ‘discredit’ isn’t a legal term; ‘impeach’ is the precise legal term for what lawyers would want to do to an adverse witness.”

This confusion over the dual meaning of “impeach” brings to mind this related comment posted in Jose Carillo’s English Forum recently by member Eduardo (Jay) Olaguer about an apparently imprecise legal usage: “I’m so tired of hearing Filipino newspapers refer to judges or lawmakers as ‘inhibiting’ themselves, meaning that they withdraw from participating in a decision due to a conflict of interest. Why don’t they use the word ‘recuse’ instead of ‘inhibit’? Those who recuse themselves are known as ‘recusants,’ like the English Catholics who withdrew from attending Anglican ‘masses’ during the English Reformation.”

I agreed with Ed that “recuse” is the more precise word for that particular act of self-disqualification by a judge owing to conflict of interest. Indeed, my Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate defines the transitive verb “recuse” as “to disqualify (oneself) as judge in a particular case” and, more broadly, “to remove (oneself) from participation to avoid a conflict of interest.” In contrast, it defines the verb “inhibit” in the general sense as “to prohibit from doing something” or “to hold in check.” And in English law, from what I can gather, “inhibition” is “the name of a writ which forbids a judge from further proceeding in a cause depending before him; it is in the nature of a prohibition.” In civil law, on the other hand, it is “the prohibition which the law makes, or a judge ordains to an individual.” The element of self-disqualification is absent in both definitions.

It’s abundantly clear, however, that even without the element of self-disqualification, the verb “inhibit” has gained more traction than “recuse” in Philippine legal language, so I guess we’ll just have to stick to our own home-grown sense of “inhibit.” (May 19, 2012)

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This essay earlier appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the May 19, 2012 issue of The Manila Times © 2012 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

Dealing with the vexing inverted syntax of passive-voice sentences

We all know the difference between active-voice and passive-voice sentences, with most discussions about them revolving around the idea that as a norm in writing, the active voice should be preferred over the passive voice. This is because, the subject-verb relationship and the sentence structure in an active-voice sentence are decidedly simpler and and more straightforward than those in the passive voice sentence, as we can see in the following comparative constructions:

Active voice: “We pushed through with our plan despite the insurmountable difficulties.”

Passive voice: “Our plan was pushed through by us despite the insurmountable difficulties.”

We can see that the syntax of the passive-voice construction tends to become convoluted when it is forced to supply all of the equivalent grammatical elements of its active-voice counterpart; in particular, the phrase “by us” in the passive-voice sentence above sticks out like a sore thumb and makes the statement sound icky. Indeed, the grammar and structure of passive-voice sentences differ in remarkable ways from that of active-voice sentences, as I explain in the essay below that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in April of 2011 in reply to a member of Jose Carillo's English Forum who expressed bafflement over those grammatical differences. (April 8, 2012)

How the grammar of active-voice and passive-voice sentences differs

A Forum member, Nathan_Yell, asked the following very interesting grammar questions:

“What is the function of the prepositional phrase in the passive voice? Most grammar guides say that the object in the active voice becomes the subject in passive. Is the reverse true? Does the subject become the object in the passive? In the sentence ‘The rice is harvested by the farmers,’ isn’t the phrase ‘by the farmers’ a modifier of the verb ‘harvested’ and thus, an adverb phrase rather than an object? Or, is the term ‘object’ generally used to refer to anything that completes, complements or modifies the verb?”

Here are my answers to Nathan_Yell’s questions:

The function of the prepositional phrase at the tail end of a passive-voice sentence is to identity the doer of the action of the operative verb, as in the sentence you presented, “The rice is harvested by the farmers.” As we know, such prepositional phrases are an optional element in the passive-voice sentence, which actually can stand without them: “The rice is harvested.”

Now, does the subject of a sentence in the active voice become the object when the sentence is rendered in the passive voice? Before I answer that question, let’s first clarify what the active voice and the passive voice are in the first place.

By definition, a sentence is in the active voice when its grammatical subject performs the action of the operative verb, as in this form of the sentence you presented: “The farmers harvest the rice.” Here, the noun “farmers” is the grammatical subject, “harvested” is the operative verb in the active-voice form, and the noun “rice” is the direct object of that verb.

On the other hand, a sentence is in the passive voice when its grammatical subject receives the action of the operative verb, as in the original form of that sentence you presented: “The rice is harvested by the farmers.” Here, the noun “rice” is the grammatical subject, “is harvested” is the operative verb phrase in the passive-voice form, and the noun “farmers” is the doer of the action.

We can clearly see here that the grammatical subject of the active-voice sentence, “farmers,” is not the direct object in the passive-voice sentence. Instead, by becoming part of the prepositional phrase “by the farmers,” that noun has become what’s known as the object of the preposition. The object of the preposition, as I pointed out earlier, is optional to the passive-voice sentence. That sentence can therefore stand without it: “The rice is harvested.”

My answer to your second question is therefore a categorical “no.” The subject of a sentence in the active voice doesn’t become the direct or indirect object when the sentence is rendered in the passive voice. It becomes a different grammatical element known as the object of the preposition—just a noun or a pronoun that follows a preposition to complete its meaning, as in this passive-voice form of the sentence you presented: “The rice is harvested by the farmers.”

As to your third question on whether the phrase “by the farmers” is not an object but an adverb phrase that modifies the verb “harvested,” the answer is “yes.” It is functionally an adverb phrase that modifies the verb “harvested,” but grammatically, “the farmer” is also the object of the preposition “by” in that sentence.

Now to your last question: Does the term “object” generally refer to anything that completes, complements, or modifies the verb? No, definitely not; the term “object” refers to anything that receives the action of the verb, whether as direct object or indirect object. Anything that completes, complements, or modifies the predicate—not the verb—is a complement, which by definition is any added word or expression by which a predication is made complete, like the adjective “impertinent” in the sentence “The judge found the lawyer’s question impertinent” and the phrase “as her traveling companion” in “She chose him as her traveling companion.” (April 30, 2011)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 30, 2011 issue © 2011 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

The grammar for avoiding blame for awful or disastrous outcomes

Almost always, the end of the year is review time for what the individual or the institution has done or has been unable to do during the year in question. Since human nature makes it so difficult to admit failure and culpability, such annual reviews often also become occasions for passing the blame for awful or disastrous outcomes. For instance, in the case of the horrendous disaster wrought by Typhoon Sendong in southern Philippines recently, the finger-pointing for why it resulted in the loss of almost 2,000 lives continues without letup to this day. We all know the routine, and as always, the finger-pointing language used is both familiar and disheartening.

In the English language, in particular, there’s a special verb form that allows people to avoid acknowledging responsibility for things that go sour or tragic. That verb form is the causative verb, and in an essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2006, I discussed how this verb lends itself very nicely to the pass-the-blame routine. I have decided to post that essay here to help us see through the smokescreen of words coming from the usual finger-pointers. Who knows, a good grasp of the grammar of the causative verbs could make us figure out intelligently rather than superstitiously who’s really to blame for the grave misfortunes that have hounded our country these past many months. (January 1, 2012)

  

Using causative and factitive verbs

When an awful act or serious mistake is made, particularly one that leads to a disastrous or tragic outcome, rare indeed is the soul that comes out in the open to take the blame for it. The usual response of the culpable is to ascribe the deed to somebody else or something else:

“They had me scoop the money from the vault at gunpoint.” (The perpetrator of an inside job is trying to extricate himself from the crime.)

“An earthquake made the mountain unleash the deadly mudslide.” (Actually, loggers had ruthlessly stripped the mountain of every inch of its forest cover.)

“The steel gate’s collapse caused the people to stampede.” (The crowd-control measures simply were too puny for so large a mass of humanity aiming to get rich quick.)

The English language has, in fact, evolved a special verb form to make people avoid acknowledging responsibility—if only for the moment—when caught in such situations. That verb form is the causative verb, which carries out an action that causes another action to happen. In the three sentences given as examples above, in particular, “have” is the causative verb in the first, causing the action “scoop” to happen; “make” is the causative verb in the second, causing the action “unleash” to happen; and “cause” is the causative verb in the third, causing the action “stampede” to happen. In each case, the crime or calamitous outcome is acknowledged but no one is accepting responsibility for it.

Causative verbs are, of course, not only meant to make people avoid taking responsibility for things that have gone sour or disastrous. In general, they are used to indicate the sort of actions that people don’t do themselves but allow, ask, or force other people to do: “Emily’s supervisor permitted  her to leave early today.” “Our landlady reminded us to pay our overdue rent.” “The thieves forced the tourists to hand over their jewelry.” Note that in a causative construction, the subject doesn’t actually do the action of the operative verb but only causes the object to do that action. In the last example above, for instance, the subject is “the thieves” and the object is “the tourists,” and the causative verb “force” makes this object do the action of handing over the jewelry.

The other most commonly used causative verbs are “allow,” “assist,” “convince,” “employ,” “help,” “hire,” “let,” “motivate,” “remind,” “require,” and “urge.” When used in a sentence, practically all of these causative verbs are followed by an object (a noun or pronoun) followed by an infinitive: “We allowed foreigners to invest in the local mining industry.” “The recruiter convinced me to leave for Jeddah at once.” “The desperate applicant employed deceit to get the plum job.”

The only notable exceptions to this pattern are the causative verbs “have,” “make,” and “let.” They are followed by a noun or pronoun serving as an object, but this time what follows the object is not an infinitive but the base form of the verb (meaning its infinitive form without the “to”):

“I had my fellow investors sign the incorporation papers yesterday.”

“They made him finish writing the book in only five weeks.” “We let the students pick the class schedules they want.”

Like the causative verb, another type of verb that exhibits peculiar behavior is the so-called factitive verb. While the usual transitive verb can take only one direct object, a factitive verb actually needs two of them. There are only a few of its kind, however, among them “choose,” “elect,” “judge,” “adjudge,” “make,” “name,” and “select.”

Here’s how a factitive verb works: “The prestigious finance magazine last night chose our company “Best at Consumer Goods” in its annual poll.” Here, “choose” is the factitive verb,  “our company” is the direct object, and “‘Best at Consumer Goods’” is the objective complement—all three in tight, uninterrupted interlock. (February 20, 2006)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 20, 2006 issue © 2006 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.


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The great strides made by English toward nondiscriminatory grammar

For centuries, English had been intrinsically a sexist and discrimatory language, its lexicon and grammar not only explicitly treating men as superior to women but also emphasizing the dependence of women to men. This, of course, is evident in the strong male bias in such age-old idioms as “the best man for the job” and “one-man show” and in such occupational nouns and jobs as “craftsman” and “postman,” along with the use of the masculine “his” as default pronoun for the indefinite pronouns “everybody” and “everyone.” Thanks to the impetus provided by the feminist and civil libertarian movements in the major English-speaking countries, however, the English language has been seeing a welcome shift toward nondiscriminatory grammar, structure, and form these past several decades.

In a two-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in 2004, “Using nondiscrimimatory language,” I took a look at these revolutionary changes in the English language and focused on the four major sexist tendencies and biases that it had most successfully curbed or at least attenuated. I have decided to post that essay here to clarify matters for those who, despite their best efforts, still find their written and spoken English hamstrung by its built-in sexist or discriminatory grammar and semantics. (December 11, 2011)   

Using nondiscriminatory language

Part I:

During the past several decades, a sometimes raucous but generally silent revolution has been taking place within the English language. This revolution—call it an induced evolution, if you may—is the much welcome shift of English toward nondiscriminatory grammar, structure, and form. Fanned by the civil libertarian and feminist movements in the major English-speaking countries, this movement has substantially freed the inherently sexist, chauvinist language of Chaucer and Shakespeare from some of its most vexing linguistic biases. For the first time in its 1,500-year history, and well in keeping with its role as today’s global language, English is now consciously nondiscriminatory in its more formal forms. Informally, of course, it still has to find ways of cleaning up some more intractable semantic vestiges that prevent it from expressing total equality and respect for all individuals.

The language has been most successful in handling four problematic tendencies: (1) discriminating against women in word formation, grammar, and sentence structure; (2) universalizing human attributes in favor of men; (3) treating people asymmetrically based on such aspects as gender, age, and ethnicity; and (4) unfairly focusing on irrelevant, discriminatory characteristics of people when describing them in negative situations. We will examine these areas of success more closely, then look at the hard-core semantic structures for which English still has to find enduring nondiscriminatory alternatives.

Nondiscriminatory word formation, grammar, and sentence structure. For centuries, English had been bedeviled by its linguistic propensity not only to treat men as superior to women but also to emphasize the dependence of women to men. We all know, for instance, how inherently sexist the most common English idioms are, like “the man in the street,” “the best man for the job,” “one-man show,” and “man to man.” Similarly, its generic occupational nouns and job titles have for ages been male-oriented: “laymen,” “policeman,” “businessman,” “craftsman,” “fireman,” “postman,” and “salesman.”

Due to pressure from the feminist movement, however, major inroads have been achieved against this blatant sexism in the English vocabulary, making those phrases politically incorrect in educated circles. As nondiscriminatory equivalents for  “the man in the street,” for instance, we now have “the average citizen,” “the average person,” or “an ordinary person.” For “the best man for the job,” we now have “the best candidate [applicant, person] for the job”; and for “one-man show,” we now have “solo show” or “one-person show.” In the occupational areas, of course, the following nondiscriminatory equivalents are now routine in formal circles: for “layman,” we have “laypeople,” “non-specialist,” or “non-professional”; for “policeman,” we have “police officer”; for “businessman,” we have “business executive”; and for “fireman,” we have “firefighter.”  

English is also successfully veering away from the traditionally sexist way of adding the suffixes –ess, –ette, and –trix to feminize male words, as in “seamstress” for “seamster” and “poetess” for “poet,” “usherette” for “usher” and “bachelorette” for “bachelor,” and “administratrix” for “administrator” and “mediatrix” for “mediator.” Self-respecting women rightly saw this word formation as trivializing and discriminatory, in much the same way as labeling a female professional as, say, a “woman doctor,” a “lady lawyer,” a “woman reporter,” or a “female accountant.” Such expressions are now scrupulously avoided, particularly in contexts where gender-specific reference is irrelevant. 

Avoiding the tendency to universalize human attributes in favor of men. Because of its inherent male chauvinism, the English language has historically treated men as the universal stereotype for humanity in general, glossing over women to the point of their total invisibility or exclusion. Thus, even the usually politically correct American president Abraham Lincoln could not help but be male chauvinistic in his “Gettysburg Address”: “Fourscore and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth to this continent a new nation…” What happened, the feminists correctly asked, to the mothers and grandmothers and sisters and aunts on board the Mayflower when it docked at Portsmouth? Today, of course, a politically astute editor or adviser would have easily convinced Lincoln to change “our forefathers” to “our forebears” or, even more semantically precise, to “our grandparents.” We are well advised to do the same in our spoken and written English in the interest of gender equality and political correctness.

Avoiding the asymmetrical treatment of people on such aspects as gender, age, and ethnicity. Another glaring discriminatory aspect of English usage that we must consciously avoid is focusing on the attributes or background of females in negative or unflattering contexts involving males, as in this statement: “Five suspected drug addicts, four of them teenage male students and the fifth a pretty coed, were arrested in a predawn raid on a drug joint in Taguig, Parañaque City.” Such discriminatory language is now becoming rare in the more enlightened English-speaking countries, but it is still endemic in Philippine journalism, particularly in the English-language tabloids. We still have miles to go before we can finally exorcise such patently discriminatory goblins from our macho culture. (March 19, 2004)

Part II:

We resume our discussion of the use of nondiscriminatory language in English, this time focusing on its success in avoiding asymmetrical treatment of people on account of their age, ethnicity and social standing. To begin with, it is no longer socially and politically correct to label people past middle age as “the old,” “the aged,” or “septuagenarians”; they are more properly referred to now as “older people,” “seniors,” or “senior citizens.” In the same token, to call people in the lower age bracket as “youths,” “juveniles,” “adolescents,” “greenhorns,” or “neophytes” would be insensitive; the socially acceptable generic terms today are “young persons” and “young people.” Then, when referring to ethnic group members in negative situations, it is now unthinkable for the mainstream mass media to run a discriminatory headline like this: “Lithuanian [Polynesian, Armenian, Dane, Filipino, etc.] nabbed in Miami multinational drug bust.” The era of gratuitously stereotyping ethnic people for shock effect is long over.

Here in the Philippines, however, we are still prone to using dangerously unfair English-language stereotypes, particularly when referring to the disadvantaged sectors of our society. Take this recent headline of a leading national newspaper: “Old building collapses; 10 looters feared dead.” The story reported: “Nasipit Mayor Enrico Corvera said most of the victims were scavengers looking for metals inside the dilapidated and concrete-walled building...when it collapsed at around 2 p.m. yesterday.” The headline categorically labels those who died in the accident as “looters,” while the mayor simply identifies them as “scavengers.” A “looter,” by definition, is someone who “plunders or sacks in war,” or who “robs especially on a large scale and usually by violence or corruption”; a “scavenger,” on the other hand, is plainly “a garbage collector” or “a junk collector.” “Looting” is a criminal offense while “scavenging” is not, however lowly the occupation may appear, and no amount of headline-letter-count constraints can justify glossing over that difference in meaning. Because of the writer’s semantic ignorance, the victims have not only been killed owing to their poverty but were slandered even in death.

Avoiding unfairly focusing on irrelevant or discriminatory characteristics of people when describing them in negative situations. It is obviously difficult for people to forego or curb the tendency to use derogatory language privately against their opponents or pet-peeves. Human nature seems to be permanently wired for that. But to use blatantly discriminatory language in polite society or in the mass media is an altogether different matter. We have to avoid it not only in the interest of good taste and political correctness but also to avoid committing slander or libel.

Take this discriminatory reporting still prevalent in Philippine journalism: “Singer X was adjudged the ‘Female Vocalist of the Year’ award despite her diminutive size, being only 54 cm. on bare feet.” (What does her height got to do with her singing voice?) Or this spiel by a TV sports commentator: “The two runners performed in the 20K marathon like geriatrics just out of the hospital.” (This discriminatory remark slanders the runners and ailing aged people in general in one fell swoop.) And then this recent diatribe by a magazine columnist: “And when [Politician X], ever so slowly (and perhaps painfully), raised his arthritic right arm to emphasize a point, as we were taught to do in Ateneo elocution class, it was obvious to me that his target audience was the Living Dead.” (Deliciously wicked, that dig at “the Living Dead,” but the terribly unkind reference to Politician X’s pain in raising his supposedly arthritic right arm borders on the libelous, I think.)

Having taken a quick look at the progress English has made so far in fighting discriminatory language, we will now examine its hard-core grammar limitation that we already know so well, but which we must take pains learning how to handle better: English has no gender-neutral pronoun for the third person singular, a quirk that forces it to use the generic masculine forms “he,” “him,” and “his” to refer to both men and women. We thus usually end up with discriminatory language that makes women invisible, like this: “The typical Filipino voter is a laborer who works in a factory, or a farmer who subsists in marginal farming. He has a wife who usually augments the family income with piecework or retail selling. Sometimes these roles are simply reversed.” For gender equality, and also considering the fact that Filipino women slightly outnumber the men, it would be prudent to refer to the Filipino in the generic plural: “Majority of Filipinos are laborers who work in a factory, or farmers who subsist in marginal farming. They have spouses who usually augment the family income through piecework or retail selling.”

By being more discerning in our choice of words, we can make ourselves confidently and pleasantly nondiscriminatory in our larger uses of the English language. (March 22, 2004)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, March 19 and 22, 2004 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

The serious lack of civility that afflicts public discourse

At this time in our country when civility appears to be vanishing from the public sphere, when many traditional seats of power in our society seem to be going out of control or under assault or both, and when every threatened vested interest or emboldened rabble-rouser is now viciously aiming for the enemy’s jugular, it should be of great public interest to closely examine the kind of language being used by the protagonists and antagonists. Are they speaking and acting in keeping with who they think, presume, or pretend they are? Are they using language that conveys their thoughts and desires in ways that validate and support their own self-concept or projection of ourselves? Or is their language going out of bounds, eroding instead of giving a touch of authority to their public pronouncements?

I recall that towards the end of 2005, the country was being buffeted by the same lack of civility, a situation that prompted me to write an essay about suasive diction—the deft use of language to persuasively convey facts and the speaker’s feelings toward those facts—for my English-usage column in The Manila Times. I think that essay, “Giving a touch of authority to our prose,” has become even more relevant today so I thought of posting here today. (December 4, 2011)

Giving a touch of authority to our prose

“Oh what a pair we make,” whispered the Prince of Wales to the pilloried presumptive royal knight William in the riotously charming film A Knight’s Tale, “both trying hard to hide who we really are, and both miserably failing to do so.” For those who have not seen the movie, the prince was constrained to shed off his disguise as a monk among the lynching mob to save the disgraced knight, who a few days earlier had spared him from the ignominy of certain defeat by refusing to joust with him in a tournament. The knight, through the machinations of a villainous duke, was thereafter unmasked as a lowly thatcher’s son masquerading as a member of royalty, thus leading to his arrest and humiliation on the pillory.

This medieval morality tale gives a powerful insight into the crucial need to speak and act in keeping with who we think, presume, or pretend we are. When we write, in particular, we must use language that conveys our thoughts in ways that validate and support our own self-concept or projection of ourselves. The wife of the Caesar must not only be chaste but must look and sound chaste. The professor must really look and sound professorial. The presidentiable must really look and sound presidentiable. To fail to do this in both civilized and uncivilized society—or not to have the wisdom or guile to at least sustain the charade—is to invite catastrophe, which is precisely what brought the presumptive knight to the pillory for public lynching.

Be that as it may, our most potent tool for becoming credible is what the linguists call suasive diction. This is using language to persuasively convey facts and the speaker’s feelings toward those facts. No instrument is more potent for doing that, of course, than the writer’s or speaker’s vocabulary. Our words define us. Whether armed with excellent research or dubious information, whether motivated by good or bad intentions, we can turn off the audience with awkward or leaden words, or hold it in thrall with engaging words and well-turned phrases. It is largely through word choice, in fact, that we establish our credibility and rapport with our audience. Short of coercion or the force of arms, rarely can persuasive communication take place without this credibility and rapport.

The most basic technique for suasive diction is the proper use of the pronouns of power, namely “we,” “us,” “our,” “they,” and “them.” These innocent-looking pronouns can confer a sense of authority—the illusion of authority, if you may—to our written or spoken statements far beyond what the first-person singular can give. The first-person “I” and “me” speak only for the solitary communicator; the collective “we” and “us” speak for an entire group or institution, which people normally take for granted as less fallible and less prone to vainglory than the individual—hence more credible, more authoritative.

This is why, for instance, newspaper editorials routinely use the institutional “we” although they are usually crafted by a solitary writer not so high on the paper’s editorial totem pole; it’s also why tyrants and despots of every stripe and persuasion always invoke “the right vested in me by God/ law/ the sovereign people” to seize power or hold on to it, and why candidates of paltry qualification and virtue invariably invoke “the people’s great desire for change” or “divine signs in the sky” as their passport to public office.

Of course, “we,” “us,” “our,” “they,” and “them” work just as well as pronouns of solidarity. They foster a stronger sense of closeness and intimacy with the audience, and can more easily put audiences at ease with what the speaker has to say. In contrast, the first person “I” often comes across as too one-sided and self-serving, particularly in writing, while the second person “you” can sound too pedantic and intimidating. We stand a much greater chance of getting a fair hearing from those antagonistic to our position by making them think that we are actually on their side.

Even if we are good at using the pronouns of power and solidarity, however, we must not for a minute believe that they are all we need to achieve suasive diction. The facts supporting our contention must be substantial and accurate. Our opinions must be truly informed, not half-baked. Our logic must be sound and beyond reproach. Our delivery must me convincing. If not, we might just end up like that otherwise seemingly enlightened prince in A Knight’s Tale, lying to the lynching mob that William the thatcher’s son was actually descended from an ancient line of kings, then justifying that claim by nonchalantly invoking royal infallibility: “I say so by the authority of my father the King, and that’s beyond any contestation.”

Royally said indeed, but utterly illogical and absurd. (November 14, 2005)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, November 14, 2005 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.


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The problem with words without sound semantic underpinnings

Recently, in My Media English Watch in Jose Carillo’s English Forum, I made a passing comment about “coopetation,” a strange-sounding new word proudly coined by Mr. Andre Kahn, chair of the Advertising Board of the Philippines, during the recent Philippine Advertising Congress held in the recently renamed province of CamSur (it used to be “Camarines Sur”) in the Bicol Region. According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer news story that even used “coopetation” in its headline, Mr. Kahn was inspired to coin that word to describe the spirit that should prevail among rival advertising agencies. “Coopetition means that even though we compete within the industry we can cooperate for the common good of our members like what we have done here,” Mr. Kahn said. In short, he meant “coopetation” to be a happy fusion of the words “cooperation” and “competition.”

Today, I finally found the time to check “coopetation” with Google and found that it’s not new coinage at all. From what I can gather, that neologism and it variants “coopertition” or “co-opertition” have actually been recoined several times since 1913 to yield the sense of “cooperative competition.” But it looks like it didn’t get much traction outside business circles, even if it finally made it to the Oxford Dictionary after the 1980s as a mass noun denoting “collaboration between business competitors, in the hope of mutually beneficial results.” Surprisingly, though, my Merriam-Webster’s 11^th Collegiate Dictionary hasn’t officially recognized “coopetation” yet as a legitimate English word. Indeed, despite being recoined in earnest several times, “coopetition” definitely had not captured the public imagination over the years in the same way as, say, Sarah Palin’s misshapen “refudiate.” That shoddy neologism of hers has already been cited 284,000 times in Google since she inadvertently coined it on Twitter sometime in July 2010; in fact, “refudiate” even made it to the New Oxford American Dictionary less than four months later.

So, the question now is: Will Mr. Kahn’s purposively coined “coopetation” do better than its predecessor neologisms and fare as well in usage as “refudiate”? We really can’t tell. But way back in 2006, in an essay about the noun “racket” that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times, I had tossed around some thoughts about word creation and the unilateral changing of word meanings. It floored me then that the noun “racket” was suddenly being used in the positive sense as an “an easy and lucrative—but legitimate—means of livelihood,” in contrast to its widely accepted negative sense as “a fraudulent scheme, enterprise, or activity” or “a usually illegitimate enterprise made workable by bribery or intimidation.” I’m now posting that essay in this week’s edition of the Forum as a cautionary tale against word misuse in general and, well, against coinage of English words without sound semantic underpinnings. (November 27, 2011)

When wordplay goes overboard

Going by its dictionary definition, the noun “racket” means “a fraudulent scheme, enterprise, or activity” or “a usually illegitimate enterprise made workable by bribery or intimidation.” More loosely, it means “an easy and lucrative means of livelihood” and is slang for “occupation or business” (Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary). In whatever sense, though, I have always thought of the word as denoting something socially abhorrent—perhaps even illegal or criminal.

Sometime in September, however, a fellow English-language editor sent me e-mail that disquietingly turned the word “racket” on its head, so to speak. “May bago po akong raket (I have a new racket),” he said, then proceeded to describe the new enterprise he was engaged in. What he really meant was a new “sideline” that was not even remotely illegal or illegitimate, so I found it disturbing that he should use a normally distasteful word for it. Perhaps such loose usage would be acceptable in informal, face-to-face conversations, but it was very unbecoming to be put in writing by someone who should have more respect for language and its nuances.

I had already forgotten that incident but recently, during lunch with a former associate in the English-language editing business, the peculiar usage popped out again when she asked me this question: “Ano ho ba ang raket ninyo ngayon? (What is your racket at present?).” I almost choked on my drink hearing that nasty word again! How could such a serious distortion of meaning gain wide currency in our language? What is it that makes even intelligent, discerning people view illicit, aberrant things as perfectly acceptable?

It didn’t take long for me to find possible answers to these questions. Driving through a main thoroughfare to meet a client sometime later, I came across scores of product streamers that posed the following question (or words to this effect) in big, bold letters: “Ano ba ang raket ninyo ngayong summer? (What’s your racket this summer?).” It appears that the use of “raket” with a positive spin had been legitimized by mass advertising. For shock value and recall, the word had been appropriated to mean “any business” or “gimik” (gimmick)—one that’s easy and pleasurable to do. In the process, of course, the fraudulent and illegitimate aspects of the word had been glossed over (or shall we say even glamorized?)

In this sense, “racket” joins the word “salvage” in having been corrupted in Philippine usage to mean its opposite. The first is from a grim, derogatory word into a respectable, fun word; and the other from a respectable, positive word into an unpleasant, derogatory word. Some of us will probably recall that the verb “salvage” means “to rescue or save [something] especially from wreckage or ruin,” but in the Philippine context, it has become a euphemism for “to kill or assassinate” or “to execute or dispose of a person summarily and secretly.” This usage grew out from a government task force report that inadvertently used the word to describe the extra-legal executions of thousands of Filipinos between 1975 and 1983 during martial law.

(The Filipino writer Jose F. Lacaba, in a note to the Double-Tongued Word Wrester, a website that records old and new words from the fringes of English, makes this observation about this inversion of “salvage”: “It began as an anglicization or Englishing of the Tagalog word ‘salbahe,’ whose meaning ranges from mischievous or abusive (adj.) and a notoriously abusive person (noun). ‘Salbahe,’ in turn, is derived from the Spanish word ‘salvaje,’ wild, undomesticated, savage.”)

It is normal for a society to do all sorts of wordplay, of course, but I think the Philippine use of “racket” and “salvage” to denote their opposite sense has gone dangerously overboard. We must draw the line somewhere to safeguard language and our value systems. As the slogan of my favorite English-language website, Vocabula.com, sagely warns, “A society is generally as lax as its language.” (April 24, 2006)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 24, 2006 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Two options when plain indicative sentences are not forceful enough

Most of the day-to-day writing that we do consists of simple, plainspoken indicative sentences that make use of the normal subject-verb-predicate construction pattern, as in “We wrote the refrigerator manufacturer about its poor customer service.” Sometimes, out of impatience or anger, we make such indicative sentences more forceful by ending them with an exclamation mark: “We wrote the refrigerator manufacturer about its poor customer service!” Then, in the event that the veracity of that declaration of ours is challenged or denied, we realize the need for an even more forceful way of presenting our case or making our point. This is when we take recourse to the emphatic tenses, as in “We did write that refrigerator manufacturer about its poor customer service!” or, to give even more emotional force to our statement, perhaps express it in the form of an inverted sentence, as in “The poor customer service of that refrigerator manufacturer is what we complained about!”

In an essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2003, I discussed the grammatical structure and workings of the emphatic tenses and inverted sentences. That essay later formed part of the “Usage and Style” prescriptions of my book English Plain and Simple. I am now posting that essay here to show how we can convey our thoughts and ideas more forcefully without taking recourse to more complicated—and more semantically demanding—rhetorical devices. (November 20, 2011)

The emphatic forms and inverted sentences

Every language develops modes not just to share information but to convey thoughts and ideas more forcefully. In English, verbs evolved two special forms—the emphatic tenses—to provide emphasis to the actions they describe. The present emphatic emphasizes actions or conditions happening in the present, and the past emphatic emphasizes those that occurred in the past. More commonly, however, the emphatic forms are used in two types of sentence constructions where emphasis is not intended: to work with the adverb “not” in negative sentences, and to form questions or the interrogative mode, in which the normal sentence construction is inverted. We must understand this distinction clearly to avoid mistakes in using the emphatic tenses.

The present emphatic tense of verbs is formed by putting the present-tense verb “do” or “does” ahead of their basic present form. Here are examples of the present emphatic tense used for emphasis: “I do like apples.” “She does think fast.” “They do act slowly.” The intent is to express the action or state more forcefully. In contrast, here are examples when emphasis is not intended: “The group does not agree.” (forming a negative sentence) “Does the jury have a verdict?” (forming a question).

The past emphatic tense of verbs is formed by putting the past-tense “did” ahead of their basic present form. Examples of the past emphatic tense used for emphasis: “I did write that letter.” “She did come as expected.” “They did pay on schedule.” Examples when emphasis is not intended: “He did not deliver as promised.” “Didn’t you finish the work last night?”

Sentences that use the emphatic tense for emphasis are either affirmative or negative responses to an apparently persistent question, whether stated or only implied. See what happens when this question is asked: “Did you really write that letter?” The emphatic answer would either be “I did write that letter” or “No, I didn’t write that letter.” This is the situational context for using the emphatic forms. It conveys the sense of the speaker either explicitly owning or denying an act, or claiming to be correct in his or her belief regarding the action of others.

Another device for emphasis in the English language, one that is often misunderstood and much maligned, is the inverted sentence. This grammatical form, in which the verb comes ahead the subject, does present agreement problems and possible confusion when used too often. Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “Away from light steals home my heavy son /And private in his chamber pens himself...”

Note that it is the verb “away” that starts the sentence, with the subject “son” far removed from it. The normal-order sentence would go as follows: “My heavy son steals home away from light...” A heightened emotional state can be felt in the first, a dry forthrightness in the second. That difference comes from the change in the form, order, and rhythm of the language itself.

It is, of course, not only in poetry where inverted sentences find excellent use. They can give prose much-welcome variety and punch when used judiciously in a sea of normal-order sentences. Feel the emotional difference between the following normal-order sentences and their corresponding inverted sentences: (1) “Her behavior could be explained in no other way.” “In no other way could her behavior be explained.” (2) “I saw only then the possibilities of the new business.” “Only then did I see the possibilities of the new business.” (3) “She didn’t realize that he had deceived her till she got the letter from a total stranger.” “Not until she got the letter from a total stranger did she realize that he had deceived her.”

When using inverted sentences, however, we must make an extra effort to double-check agreement of the verb with the subject. This subject always follows the number of the verb and not of the nouns or pronouns that come before it: “In the grassy plains lives the last antelope.” It would seem that the singular verb “lives” should be the plural “live” instead to agree with “grassy plains,” but this proves to be not the case; the true subject is not “the grassy plains” but the singular “the last antelope.” See also what happens if the sentence were written another way: “In the grassy plain live the last antelopes.” In this case, the subject “the last antelopes” is plural, so the verb must also take the plural form “live” to agree with it.

Take note, too, that sentences beginning with “there” or “here” are actually in the inverted form: “There is a can of corned beef in the cupboard.” “Here comes the parade.” “There” and “here” are, of course, not the subjects. It is “corned beef” in the first, and “parade” in the second. The two sentences are actually emphatic forms of the normal-order “A can of corned beef is in the cupboard” and “The parade comes.”

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From the book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn the Global Language by Jose A. Carillo © 2004 by the author © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.