weasel word [fr. the weasel’s reputed habit of sucking the contents
out of an egg while leaving the
shell superficially intact] (1900) :
a word used in order to evade or
retreat from a direct or forthright statement or position
-- Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate
Dictionary, Eleventh Edition
Certain terms are, in our society, inherently
weasel-words: pro-life; pro-choice.
Nobody in the debate opposes either “life” or “choice” simpliciter; to find such factions, you would have to attend a meeting of
Death-Eaters (anti-life) or neuroscientists (denying the existence of the
faculty of choice -- Free Will).
The resort to these euphemisms
degrades the debate.
For other terms, it’s not so obvious. Take the expression “Let me be
perfectly clear.” For many
people, this phrase seems consumately weasely in itself; but really, this is only because of its
well-known characteristic use by Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon, who would
typically follow up the phrase
with a lie or an obfuscation.
But such infractions do not inhere in the phrase. Owing to our long memory of its Nixonian
misuse, no-one can any longer say it with a straight face (a snide version of the phrase, "Read My Lips", similarly fell out of favor owing to a spectacular mishap by Bush senior); but in principle, a
straightforward and respectable use exists for it. At the lower end, it would be just a kind of
throat-clearing, giving the reporters time to get out their pencils and lend an
ear. (Note to the new
generation: Back in Nixon’s day, reporters used these things called
“pencils”. They’re kind of hard to
describe.) At the highest end, the
use of the phrase would follow the following pragmatic conditions. (Note to the laity: “Pragmatic” in the linguistic sense of pragmatics, the discourse-related
partner of semantics, rather than in the politician’s sense
of “yes this is lame but let’s do it anyway because anything else could hurt our poll
numbers”.)
Conditions of legitimate use:
(1) What I am about to say is no off-the-cuff throwaway
line. I have thought about what I
am about to say, and you are free to quote me; I won’t complain, when the
outcry arises, that the remark was “taken out of context” or that “that wasn’t
what I meant”.
This licenses the expression’s use in a moral and alethic
sense; so used, it is admirable,
statesmanlike.
Then further, at the next meta level up, there is a pragmatic consideration that
licenses the speaker even to use an expression (any expression that make such
claims as in (1), not just this one) in the first place:
(2) I am, by general acknowledgement, in a position of some
authority; I am a person whose
words must be well-weighed, as they are likely to be acted upon.
~
We earlier analyzed (and excoriated) certain other weaselly expressions
that lately have proliferated weed-like in the public square: as, “Well, again, …” Here are
two more -- neither of them obvious weasels, but which reveal their mustelid
nature upon analysis.
(I) “stronger”
This one looks innocent enough, and most uses of it indeed
are. The instance that
caught my attention, on the news broadcast this morning on NPR, was not truly
weaselly in the sense of wittingly devious, but it was at best intellectually
lazy -- and thus, in the event, reprehensible, since the woman who used it is a
prominent newscaster for National Public Radio, and should know better. The subject was U.S. policy
towards Syria, and the newswoman asked her interviewee whether, in his opinion,
the U.S. reponse should be “stronger” -- point
à la ligne; no indication of
what that might entail.
It is a subtle point, but that move already corrupted the
terms of the discussion, by presupposing a linear dimension of assessment,
running from weaker to stronger.
There are a very few cases in life where so simple an evaluatory
topology may be in place:
say, “This beam is stronger
than that one”. (Note: I had to rack my brains to come up with a use that would be semantically impeccable; but even here,
you would need to qualify: Are you
speaking of transverse bearing-strength; longitudinal bearing-strength; resistence to sharp impact, from an
impact angle ranging from 0 to 180; resistence to compression; resistance to elongation; resistence to torsion; or what. You see, even the simplest things are not so simple). Such a
state of affairs certainly does not obtain in the boiling Syrian cauldron: not statics but chaos theory would be
the relevant quantitative handmaid.
But it is worse than that. The antonym of “strong” is “weak”, and weak is what no President ever, ever wants to be called -- not
simply for political reasons, but for socio-psychoanalytical (the President as
the symbolic Father of the Country; weak = impotent: the worst possible thing for a would-be father to be). Hence, the subtext or subspin offered
by presenting the problem in terms of “stronger” or “weaker” politicies, is
simply to provoke unconsidered military action -- “Don't just stand there -- bomb something!”
Such an attitude does indeed characterize the premature-ejaculatory
public pronouncements (better some jism that falls to the ground, than not
getting it up at all, one supposes) of some Republican Vulcan
chickenhawks: but they know not
whereof they speak.
There is nothing wrong with toughness per se; it is simply a socio-rhetorical fact
about America that, frequently, the call to “get tough” is made in blithe
independence of the facts on the ground.
Thus, if you maintain
that the Obama administration have been panty-waisted pussyfoots in dealing
with Iran, you are free to do so;
but intellectually you are in arrears if you do this in ignorance of
things like the Stuxnet attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet),
or the affects of our increased sanctions against that steaming, simmering, and
suffering land. To take one item
at random from the morning’s news:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-iran-hanging-20130121,0,2907702.story
In
Iran, two muggers caught on video are hanged
The
death sentences are seen as a get-tough message from Iranian authorities
alarmed about escalating street thuggery amid a sanctions-driven economic downturn.
Students of history are familiar with the sometimes
unfortunate effects of harsh sanctions, for instance against the Weimar
republic, which paved the way for National Socialism.
(II) “about”
A new rhetorical formula has sprung up, now everywhere to be
heard on broadcast political discussion (I say “broadcast” because the formula
is more characteristic of speech than of writing): “It’s not about X, it’s about Y.”
There exists, of course, a perfectly valid use of this formula: but it crucially depends on what the
meaning of “it” is (to coin a phrase). If, say, It
here refers to A Tale of Two Cities, then the following are
pragmatically impeccable statements (the first false, the second true):
(i) It’s not about London and Paris, it’s about Minneapolis and
St. Paul.
(ii) It’s not about the
Franco-Prussian war, it’s about the French revolution.
Whereas, the characteristic of the new use which we wish
here to put beneath the magnifying-glass (and upon the rack), is that now the
word “it” … does not actually refer to
anything; it is more like the
“expletive” it (again, I use the term
expletive in the sense of
grammarians, not in that of the Nixon tapes) in expressions like “It’s raining”
or “It’s a shame the way things worked out””. In the
latter instance, the “it” is non-referring, but the copula still has some work
to do, having the same value as it does in the non-cleft relative “The way things worked out is a shame.” Whereas in the new use -- “It’s
not about profits, it’s about America” or “It’s not about moving forward, it’s
about the environment” and so
forth -- the copula too is emptied of all significance, having (so to speak)
nothing left to copulate with.
The resulting formulae mean almost nothing, and are virtually impossible
to paraphrase.
The context of this morning’s use -- again from “Weekend Edition” -- was a discussion of the proposal to put armed guards in every school. (My own alternative proposal, to put an etymologist in every school, did not come up for discussion.) The person being interviewed said:
“It’s not about
romance or drama,
it’s about protecting our kids.”
Almost nothing else was offered by way of argument; the above statement was allowed
to ring over the airwaves unchallenged, as a genuine argument in the debate.
Now, take out your pencils (ask Gramps what that means)
because this is a test: Does
that statement present an argument in
favor of the proposal, or against
it? And, in the event that the
statement is semantically vacuous, with no “cognitive content” at all, was it intended, as a rhetorical move,
to support or refute the proposal?
[The exciting answer will be revealed tomorrow. Meanwhile, tell your friends.]
* * *
~ Commercial break ~
Nook lovers are book
lovers!
We now return you to
your regularly scheduled essay.
* * *
(3) Me’m jist folks here, as are y’all -- never did have much of
a head for grammar, or argumentation, or cogency, or exposition -- but b’dang
this here thing comes from m’heart!
The kinesic
equivalent of the phrase would be a plaintive look from a puppy basset-hound.
[Note on the note: Another linguistic technical expression. Kinetic
is already a twenty-dollar word, whereas kinesic
will setcha back a fitty-bone.
For those fond of words costing upwards of a hundred
dollars, click here:
Logophilia. ]
Historical bonus:
This echoes the brain-damaged slogan of the '80's, "Let Reagan be Reagan." It's not a question of weasel words, since any word can be used in this structure, which we dub "Triumphalist Tautalogy". It's weasel syntax. Other examples: "Business is business" (used by someone screwing you); "Boys will be boys" (excusing bad behavior), "War is war" (excusing even worse behavior).
Historical bonus:
Over a century ago, the
psychologist and philosopher William James already adverts to the weaseliness of “about”:
All dumb psychic
states have … been coolly suppressed; or, if recognised at all, have been named
after the substantive perception they led to, as thoughts “about” this object
or “about” that, the stolid word about engulphing all their delicate idiosyncracies in its
monotonous sound.
-- William James,
“On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology” (in Mind, 1884)
[Update, 24 January 2013] This morning, NPR interviewed a woman who was trying
to get gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered covered under the Violence Against Women Act. Her concluding statement:
"This is not about identity
politics; this is about where the unmet needs remain."
* * *
~ Commercial break ~
We now return you to
your regularly scheduled essay.
* * *
[Update
later that evening] You needn't listen long to NPR, before being
exposed to yet more semantically vacuous tricks of syntax. Just now,
with reference to the Newtown shootings:
"It's the commission's job
to allow victims to be victims."
This echoes the brain-damaged slogan of the '80's, "Let Reagan be Reagan." It's not a question of weasel words, since any word can be used in this structure, which we dub "Triumphalist Tautalogy". It's weasel syntax. Other examples: "Business is business" (used by someone screwing you); "Boys will be boys" (excusing bad behavior), "War is war" (excusing even worse behavior).
[Meta-update] I
have pondered deeply a wealth of examples of such Sappy Syntax, and extracted this pearl of wisdom from
its oystershell grip:
~ The Meaning of Life ~
~ is to live ~
~ a life full of Meaning … ~
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