Language Habits III (A series of occasional rants)

Language evolves over time.  It can also be trendy.  Here’s the difference: Water carves mountains out of stone over millennia.  Many generations pass by the same local mountain, noticing none of these tiny developments.  This is a mountain evolving.

Water carves out snow lickety split.   Relative to the evolution of language, this is more like word or phrase trendiness.  It comes and goes.  And my gripe is with much of this trendiness.  So here goes Round III.

100 percent!  

Am I the only one irked by this facile and far-too-trendy term for “I agree,” the more colloquial “That’s right,” or even, simply, “yes.”  It has become a term of art among newscasters and cable talk blabbers since the 2020 election.  It is now penetrating the civilian population.  It is the currently popular way to say that “I am with you completely!”

The sense I hear in “100 percent!” is that it is, first, an eager affirmation of its user’s identity and, only second, a statement of agreement with what the other person has just said.  It is an emblem of tribal membership in a society deeply divided by anger, hate and exclusion.  The phrase’s most important conveyance is the message, I am one of you.  Not of ‘those people.’

Well, OK, if one needs to have her or his identity passport stamped so frequently.  But why drag math into the culture wars?  Among other problems, 100 percent implies that there are other possibilities for agreement, like, say, 63 percent, or 12 percent.  Then what?

I suspect that this usage of the phrase was not invented by math majors, but instead by the math challenged.    Perhaps using it confers some measure of numeric sophistication on the user.  But 100 percent?  I don’t think so.

œœœœœœœœ

The thing is . . .

There may never have been a more eloquent American president than Barack Obama.  I could listen to him talk about cloud formations or comparative fertility rates for hours.  Perhaps that’s why this particular language habit of his stands out so starkly.  To my ear, hearing him utter this phrase is like watching someone defacing the Pieta.

Here is the structure of his common usage of this phrase:  “The problem is is that . . .”   WHAT’S WITH THE DOUBLE ‘IS’?  To be sure, this is a common usage among American speakers today.  But where did it come from, and why?  What helpful work is it doing?  I have no clue.  But I will say this:  The redundant double-is is a syntactical mess.

So here is something Obama might say:  “The problem is is that the Republicans have no plan for the challenges at our southern  border.”  Here is what he should say (in case it is not already obvious):  “The problem is that the Republicans have no plan for the challenges at our southern border.”

I don’t know that the former president led us into all of this is-y-ness.  But my sense is is that we may need him to lead us out of this linguistic wilderness.

œœœœœœœœ

Authentically yours

Authenticity seems to be enjoying a revival recently.  It apparently has become something of a Holy Grail, sought by all who wish to be real.

I am aware of this usage coming up most often in some variation on the phrase, “my authentic self.”  Now I will not get lost in the philosophical and psychological nuances and debates about the self.  Instead, here is what I see.  The search for one’s authenticity has been revived by the rise of its counterpoint, the self-manufactured self.

As we all carefully curate the ‘selves’ we present on our social media platforms–commonly by shedding our flaws and mistakes and highlighting, well, our highlights–we sense that we are ourselves losing our own true North.  We are getting lost in the personal House of Mirrors we have ourselves created.   With more than a little help from Madison Avenue, crisis management gurus, and other “influencers.”

And so we more and more seek those places and states of mind in which we are “authentic.”  Here is my problem:  What is the connection between my authentic self and my best self?  Please, talk amongst yourselves.

œœœœœœœœ

The nasty, horrible, besotted, predatory uncle

Why is the uncle, of all people, increasingly under siege?  Who pulled him off the family tree for ridicule, even condemnation?  And why is no one complaining about this social exile of the uncle?

It seems to have begun with the so unfair notion of the Crazy Uncle, especially at family Thanksgiving dinners.  The Crazy Uncle whom no one wants to sit next to at the table.  The family member who offers jaw-dropping notions into the gravy about all manner of things, from declaiming against Aunt Sylvia’s unclean underwear and Nephew’s involvement in the cult of Boy Scouts, to declaring his own devotion to fascists who dress as Smurfs and burn dolls dressed as Santa.

More recently the uncle has fallen further, much further, to the role of monster.  Now I am not trivializing a very serious, even horrendous matter here, adults sexually assaulting children, one of humankind’s most evil behaviors.  Were I ever to support the death penalty, it would be for these vile perpetrators.

I am here only to ask why, in popular culture, we are pinning these awful crimes on uncles.  You’ve all heard this trope from the mouths of television commentators, used most often in discussions of increasingly severe restrictions on the availability of abortions in the U.S., including those that deny abortions to “a pregnant child who was raped by an uncle.”

Again, the uncle!  %#^&$#, I am an uncle, and a reasonably respectable one at that.  And I loved my own uncles, who never laid a hand on any of us kids and who, while occasionally besotted, generally watched their tongues at Thanksgiving Dinner, if by then they could be understood at all.  So who are we talking about here?  Why are uncles the easy target for opprobrium?

If you want to scandalize relatives, from crazy to evil, why not cousins?  By now it is at least their turn at the wheel of condemnation.  Things I could tell you about my cousin Shank.

########