The Death of Language

Of late it has been my lot to spend a fairish amount of time in various dentists’ waiting-rooms.   They all provide reading-material, in the form of magazines which I would never, ever, but never read -- Grooming Tips for Nominalists and Fun with Gluttony or who-knows-what.  But yesterday, after having strolled down to the lake and then around through the woods to where my regular dentist hangs his shingle, and refreshing myself after a hot walk with repeated draughts of Adam’s ale, dispensed from a bubbling cooler into tiny conical paper cups, I noticed that the manufacturer in question (Solo, as it happens) had thoughtfully provided a splash of reading-matter of their own, which you could savor, along with the water, while awaiting your tooth-extraction or root-canal or whatever might be your pleasure of the day.

It is worth quoting the text in full:

BRINGING ALTERNATIVE RESOURCES FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

The first thing you notice is that this means nothing, but nothing, at all.   This is Wernicke’s-aphasia language:  each word is valid, and the syntax is all right, but the thing is incoherent -- unless they literally mean that they are engaged in the business of nuclear power, since that is one of the few resources that Man can “bring” to the environment, the planet having already been created with the rest of them.
(Oh wait -- even that one we were born with, uranium at the planetary core.  Sorry, Solo.)

Further inspection reveals how the sentence was put together.  Each and every word was selected atomistically, independantly of the others, probably by committee, for its PC goodfeel. 

Thus, bring, not “take”:  more generous, more touchy-feely.   Alternative -- always good, diversity and all that.  Resources --  Now, this approaches the awkward area of manufactured goods, poured forth from smoke-belching factories manned by near-slave labor in Third World countries while the hillsides are denuded of their last remaining forests, preparing the mudslide that will eventually bury the entire workforce, but resources puts the matter about as delicately as it can be put.   For:  This really shows what their game is.  The preposition you would expect with bring is to:  it’s what you “bring to the table”, not “bring for the table”.  But for is, in itself, more positive than to: cf. do something for you vs. do something to you.  The environment:  a total feelgood word, but ludicrously out of place, since after all this company does not, as a business,  plant trees or bring anything else to or for the enviroment, they bring a (quite useful) product to you.  The downfall of mentation, the enthronement of unreason, is complete.

The thing is reminiscent of those Japanese T-shirts festooned with random English words:

            Dollar   sexy   business

            sports   nice  HAPPYNESS

But the dixie-cup is worse, because the Japanese know they are just having fun rather than making coherent sense, whereas the marketeers at Solo are doubtless patting themselves on the back and awarding themselves bonuses for this show of Corporate Responsibility.

Perhaps, you suggest (trying to make excuses for these swine), the slogan means, though it doesn’t say it, that their paperware is made with recycled shmush.   But actually no:  For along the side we read:

COMPOSTABLE * Made with renewable resources

“Compostable”!   The mangled bodies of miners are perfectly compostable, that says nothing at all, save that their dixie cups are not made out of a decomposition-resistent substance like diamond or gold.   And “renewable resources”… Hmm, just what might those be?  Trees, obviously;  the buggers cut down trees, millions of them, deforesting countless acres.  So fine, do it, but don’t pat yourselves on the back for being green.

Ech!  faugh.   Where are the Wobblies when you need them.   They would know what to do with the following simple ingredients:

            One (1) length of intestine

            One (1) disemboweled capitalist

            One (1)  lamppost

Serves millions.