And I might as well be talking backwards
Am I making any sense to you?
And the only thing that really matters
Is the one thing I can't seem to do
When that night was over
And the field was lit up bright
And I walked home with you
Nothing I said came out right
~ Martin Courtney (Real Estate)
The band Real Estate is originally from my neck of the woods in northern New Jersey. Ridgewood, to be exact, although they now call Brooklyn home. I like their sound. Kind of poppy, but not annoyingly so. I don't really have that much to say about the band or about this song, other than I like them and it, and the idea of "talking backwards" got me thinking.
My daily newsfeed informed me that the AP is now allowing journalists to use the plural pronoun "they" in "limited cases" when a singular pronoun would be grammatically correct. (Okay, grammar nerds, are you still with me? As for the rest of you, come back! I'm going somewhere with this.) In other words, take this sentence: "A person should never swipe a credit card at a gas pump unless they want to risk getting hacked." Apparently, the AP would now condone this abuse of correct grammar. Clearly, "a person" is singular; "they" is plural. I suppose allowing the use of the plural is a way to avoid the clumsiness of saying "he or she," but I'll take clumsiness over improper grammar any day. And to mercilessly belabor the point, there's always a way around the conundrum. "People should never swipe their credit cards at the gas pump unless they want to risk getting hacked." To me, this kind of rewording would address the sticky issue of gender identity, as it avoids gender-specific words like "he" or "she." Okay, class dismissed.
So my distress took me right to George Orwell's Politics and the English Language. Written in 1946, as with many things Orwellian, the essay speaks to the politics of today. He begins with this: "Our civilization is decadent and our language - so the argument runs - must inevitably share in the general collapse." Bigly. It's a disaster. It's going to implode before it explodes. It's unpresidented. Trust me.
But, George, what's so bad about decadence? Long silk ties, penthouse suites, gold-plated everything . . . won't this opulence / decadence trickle down and make America great again? Not really. We're not talking about a double-fudge brownie chocolate decadence dessert here. Decadence refers to "a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, or skill at governing among the members of the elite of a very large social structure, such as a nation state." Anything sounding applicable here? If you don't recognize it, you're not paying attention.
Back to the collapse of language. "Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind," posits Orwell. Could Orwell have been predicting the eventuality of alternative facts? Was he on to the deception implied in the use of air quotes or worse yet, scare quotes? Am I making any sense to you?
"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better." Braggadocious? Bigly? Yuge? Fake news? Death spiral? Bad hombres? Take heart, though. Orwell offers hope. "The decadence of our language is probably curable."
Bring on the medicine.
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