The State of the Language, 1977

By Stefan Kanfer

According to unreliable sources, the first man's first words were, "Madam, I'm Adam." Since then, language has been like that palindrome: the optimists can read its messages forward, the pessimists backward. In 1977 American English gave both groups plenty of opportunity. The air was saturated with recent coinages ("reverse discrimination," "mainstreaming," "ten-four, good buddy"). Some phrases enriched the nation's tongue; many impoverished it with jargon and meaningless terms. For words are like prescription lenses; they obscure what they do not make clear. This year the Washington Star had no trouble finding examples that blurred. In a section labeled "Gobbledygook," the newspaper offered a daily $10 prize for the worst phrase of the day. Sample from the U.S. Labor Department: "No lost time injuries that do not result in a medical expense should not be reported to the OWCP." Those who believe that Babel can be located somewhere south of Sacramento have derived aid and discomfort from Richard Rosen's new volume, Psychobabble. On the downhill arc of the Me Decade, Rosen split an infinitive and savages cant as he collects "psychological patter, whose concern is to faithfully catalogue the ego's condition." Examples: "Very laid back," "I know where you're coming from" and "Go with the flow." Rosen was abetted by Novelist Cyra McFadden (The Serial), a resident of Marin County, where, she claims, such "mindless prattle" rises before it heads East to become a major polluter. Her prototype Of the Bay Area language abuser is a student to whom she assigned a Ray Bradbury short story. "I can't relate to the dude," he complained. Hade he read the piece? Actually, no, he admitted, "I just flashed on it."

In the solecism sweepstakes, television maintained its undisputed lead. Those who wanted weathermen to stop misusing a word ("Hopefully it'll be a good weekend") were left hopeless. Connoisseurs of outrageous grammar once relished close encounters of the Susskind. In 1977 Howard Cosell became the new favorite. "Our surmisal is correct" was one of many errors produced by the World Series; so was an "instrumentality of destruction" (a smoke bomb). Cosell's colleagues relayed his throes: "The Chiefs went into the game overwhelming underdogs"; "The player is loaded with inexperience."

If the past year is any indication, aggressions on the field will cease long before announcers stop doing violence to language. When they do, ungrammatical sign makers will doubtless be hard at work. As they did in 1977, chain stores will offer "bargain's" and "giant sales" will not have a single giant to sell. Banks will still offer their tautological "free gifts." Perhaps the year's weirdest notice was spotted in a Toledo restaurant: "Shirts, socks and shoes must be worn to be served."

Even at the august New York Times, the guards sometimes seemed to be dozing. Some illegal entrants: "falsely padded expense accounts" (as opposed, the reader assumes, to truly padded ones); an obituary describing Playwright Saul Levitt as a "lifelong native of New York"; a man "shot fatally three times"; and David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" identified as the "alleged suspect."

Yet for those who flash on linguistic news, not all the evidence was discouraging. Indeed, quite a few language barriers were dismantled in 1977. Jimmy Carter is hardly a master of the lapidary prose style, preferring code phrases like "defensible borders" and "legitimate rights," and words from his engineering days such as "competent," "effective" and "specific."But he is making good on his promise that federal regulations would be written "in plain English for a change." Optimists have noted that in 1977 the Office of Education simplified its forms. The Federal Trade Commission, a major producer of fog, has hired Wordsmith Rudolf Flesch (Why Johnny Can 't Read) as a consultant. At the Department of Housing and Ur ban Development, Ruth Limmer, former English professor at Goucher College, is trying to turn federal letters into readable prose. "The writer has a terrible time setting the tone" she says. "So he uses an impersonal bureaucratic tone to cover himself. He uses it out of fear."

There are only two reliable remedies for the fear of plain speaking. One is to accept change, to celebrate rather than mourn the resilience of that living organism, language. "Reverse discrimination" may be an ungainly term, but it accurately describes a pragmatic philosophy. "Mainstreaming" is the short form of a long process: the education of disabled children alongside the normal. Slang, foreign phrases, black English continually enliven the American vocabulary. Even CBhavior has its inoffensive moments: "super slabs" seems as good a term as express highways, and "modjitating" (talking) while "dropping the hammer" (accelerating) is more dangerous to the driver than to his speech. Novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett's warning remains as valid in the Colonies as in England: "We must use words as they are used or stand aside from life." That use does not mean an utter lapse of standards. When psychobabble, grammatical barbarities and jargon take the place of honest words, it is time to use remedy two: derision. Woody Allen aims his language critiques from the screen. In Annie Hall, when a rock promoter invites him to get mellow, Allen refuses: "When I get mellow I ripen and then I rot." "From time to time," wrote George Or well, "one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some verbal refuse into the dustbin where it belongs." "Downplay," for example, is jettisoned by Novelist Peter De Vries: "If I heard a speaker use it I would upget and outwalk." Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. objects to the popular synonym for homosexual: " 'Gay' used to be one of the most agreeable words in the language. Its appropriation by a notably morose group is an act of piracy."

Still, at year's end, neither wordsmiths nor comedians have the power of the people. Some of the favorite phrases of 1977 will make it to the lexicons; most will wither before the new year ends. Pessimists have a point when they refer to the new excrescences of television ego-talk. But optimists are not wrong when they find clearer days on Capitol Hill and a tonic absence of Viet Nam euphemisms and campus-v.-cops rhetoric. "Things are improving," says TV Pundit Edwin Newman (A Civil Tongue): "Schools are finally doing what they ought to do, teaching the basic English that we have neglected for too long. But," he admits, "the headmaster at one school recently told his faculty, 'There should always be something ongoing going on.' So we can hardly be complacent."

Thus both sides can take--or lose--heart. In the hallowed jargon of yesterday, herewith the bottom line: "Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?" That, too, can be read backward and forward.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.