MUST WE GALL PEOPLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 331, 26 October 1945, Page 12

MUST WE GALL PEOPLE

(From an ABC talk by

CAPT.

C. R.

BENSTEAD

, R.N.)

HE other day, when I answered my telephone, a sweet female voice informed me quite seriously that my transportation was at the door. What ‘she meant was that the car had atrived. Clearly my informant saw nothing pompous or funny, or even inaccurate in calling a car a transportation, and she would doubtless have been annoyed if she has guessed that the startled "My what is at the door!" was due to any cause other than bad hearing. No, like so many others, she had merely fallen victim to the fascination of the long word. You must have noticed it-this craz for verbal absurdity that no longe:’ allows us to meet or call on anybody (we must contact him, of course), and prefers to finalise something rather than complete, finish, or end it. Nor is that all. Oddly enough, this habit of speech, which so lightly discards the language that sufficed for Shakespeare and the translaters of the Bible, is then called progress. At present it is more noticeable in the written word than in the spoken, probably because writing is the more leisurely undertaking and gives the greater opportunity for showing off. It is, in fact, a curious thing, the effect _ that trying to write has on quite normal people. And you’ve doubtless noticed

that, too. People who can express themselves simply and adequately over a glass of milk become almost meaningless as soon as they pick up a pen-especially if they belong to a Government Department. Touching the Ceiling Not long ago a town clerk set out to ask me how fhany men I wanted for a civil defence job. He said: "Please state ceiling figure of personnel requirements." Pretty, isn’t it? And so maznificently defiant. Clearly, my town ¢lerk had thrown off the shackles of the ¢lassroom: with its excellent little rules about preferring the short word to the long, and the simple to the far-fetched, and in the careless rapture of his new-found freedom was scaling the most perilous heights of literary expression-touching the very ceiling in fact. We may laugh at it, of course, but is not this tribal jargon of Government officials-and to a lesser extent, journalists and authors-a thing to be stamped on heavily? I think so-if only for the reason that, if we don’t, we shall soon find everybody preferring the long word to the short, the far-fetched to the simple, and worse still, never using one word if they can possibly use half a dozen. You don’t believe me? Well, look round. For a start, we may be pardoned for thinking that those in authority decided to fight this second World War — or should I say "combat this global conflict"? -not with ordinary men, but with a special breed known as male personnel. Civilians, too, being a nuisance in wartime, were cunningly replaced by civilian personnel. And now that the global conflict is thostly over and the strength of the fighting forces-I beg your pardon: "the combat teams and task groups"can be reduced, we are confronted with the "civilianisation of personnel." No, I’m not joking. I really did discover that gem-"civilianisation of per-sonnel"-in the arid waste of a government order quite recently. So you see, we are no longer discharged; we are "civilianised." "A Pleasing Piece of Personnel" Yet nobody, even in his civilianised senses, would dream of saying he contacted a pleasing piece of personnel, however delightful the experience. No, he would say he met a pretty girl, a tasty }morsel, a dinkum Sheila, or even a fag hag, if the prevailing slang so prescribed (and mark well that slang is often amusing and virile and always remote from the pompous and ineffective circumlocution which is jargon).

He would in fact talk about men and women-about people, or even persons. Never about personnel. Why, then, banish men and women from the Forces? Before long, if we’re not on our guard, we shall have some Government Department rewriting the Bible to read: "Be strong and show thyself a male personnel." Dreadful Future Awaits Us Now look at this silly word "combat" which dominates the war scene. It simply means "fight." If we are going to use it as an adjective, we should at least talk about combatant teams and so forth. Nobody talks about the exploits of our fight pilots in their fight-planes. Why, then, combat? Unless something’s done, we soon shan’t be able to have a fight at all-only a combat. And we shall equip the Air Force with bombers and combaters, and then go to church and lustily sing: "Combat the good combat, like some.old wombat." Clearly, a dreadful future awaits us. Now take our old friend "anticipate." It means "to seize beforehand." It does not mean-and if we are to have a word allowing us to take preparatory action so as to be ready for an event, it should never be made to mean-"expect." There is, in fact, a wealth of difference between "anticipate" and "expect." Suppose, for example, we announced not that John and Jane expected to be married, but that John and Jane anticipated marriage. Think of the rumpus there would be! Yet only the other day I read in the headlines of a Sydney newspaper — a newspaper that would doubtless defend "bid" instead of "attempt" and "mystery" instead of "mysterious" on the grounds of brevity-I read in those headlines, I say, that an announcement about the armistice with Japan was anticipated in a few hours. . With great respect I suggest that al‘though we may anticipate the declaration of peace by planning-or should I say "blue-printing’" — our celebrations, (continued on next page)

Protest Against War Jargon

(continued from previous page) we must expect an afinouncement in a few hours. But you can go on like this almost indefinitely because, as I said, everywhere you find this craze for the highsounding inaccurate word and if that is not available, the invention of one ending in "ation." Pre, Re, and De And with it goes the mad scramble with "pre," pe" and "de’as pretty a trio of prefixes as ever brought joy to a jargoneer’s heart. Because of it, plain rat-catching is abolished -and the rat-catcher with it. And we may not even talk about deratting the sewers. No, they must be subjected to rat de-infestation (not rat extermination or destruction but deinfestation) or what is

far worse, deratisation — conducted, of course, by a rodent officer. There it is, along with "civilianisation," "Articisation" — which, ,oddly enougn, does not mean that you make something like the Arctic, but the very opposite; "hospitalisation". -- where, presumably, the patient is doctorised as a prelude to his churchyardisation; and, believe it or believe it not, "cannibalisation" — a gem, I think you will agree, of purest ray serene, I have seen the Wrens referred to as_ "adult female components’’- which is even worse, I think, than "adult ae personnel," All this you cannot have failed to notice-and much more, unfortunately. How' policies are no longer agreed upon at the beginning, but concurred in at the commencement-after which it is not surprising that our rulers should discuss the conditions of unconditional surrender (as I heard they were doing the other day) and not think it funny.

How, too, the most careful of people who would never dream of saying they casted their bread upon the waters, will nevertheless see nothing odd in saying that they heard the changes in the food rations broadcasted. But you mé¢y ask, what is to be done? Just this. Let each one of us who still thinks that Shakespeare and the translators of the Bible can write better English than he can-let him return all! the Government forms that reach him. with a polite request that they should be _ translated into English, and at the ‘same time ruthlessly cut out the re-s and the de-s and all the isations that creep into his own vocabulary and speak as he would over a glass of milk. The rest, too, would be easy. If you should meet an offender, one, that is, who starts talking about things like

combat personnel when he means fighting men-well, in the interests of posterity, throw something at him-some-thing hard, that hurts.