‘Ours is a precarious language, as every writer knows, in which the merest shadow of a line often separates affirmations from negation, sense from nonsense, and one sex from another.’

James Thurber, 1961

Ah yes fellow men, read that last bit again. Separates ‘one sex from another’ indeed. It is certainly a very dangerous thing to use language in the vicinity of females. He who dares often ends up in the doghouse. Who knows what hell can break loose at the most innocuous utterance? I’m sure we’ve all felt the wrath of using the wrong adjective to describe something – or was our adjective misconstrued?

I definitely have a favourite bit of precarious language. I’m sure all you males will be familiar with this. It involves the paying of compliments and often goes something like this. The male starts:

‘I like you’re new hairstyle!’ (In this case let’s imagine that she now has a fringe.)

‘Oh really?’ Cue a steely gaze in your direction.

‘Yeah, it really suits you.’

‘Oh, so you didn’t like my hair before?’

‘No, no, no … it was fine before but this new style really frames your face well.’

‘It was “fine” before, was it? So you didn’t like my face before either?

‘No, I mean …’

But it’s too late now. Good luck explaining yourself. You resort to spluttering more words that just come out as platitudes. The face you’re talking to darkens even more. You’ve said it now and there’s no taking those words back. Into the doghouse you go. Ah yes, the precariousness of a compliment. And take care with the word ‘fine’. For some it’s basically an insult.

Language: what a blunt instrument it is with which to communicate. Those implications of what wasn’t said in that innocent, supposedly flattering statement can be vast. Oh dear, the gulf in meaning between what we say and what we mean. I recall a conversation with a certain special someone before embarking on a trip to France (I paraphrase):

‘So I’ll be travelling most of tomorrow so probably won’t manage to call you tomorrow [Saturday] but maybe Sunday.’

My golly gosh – only later was I to find out the rage that the word ‘maybe’ inspired. ‘But Sweetest!’ I implore, ‘I totally meant I’d call you on Sunday. ‘Oh really’, she replies in a disbelieving tone; and I believe that if she had been born with that wonderful ability to raise one eyebrow she would have done so at that moment. ‘Yes’, I reply, my voice taking on the whining quality of a child who really wants something. Honestly, even though I said ‘maybe’ I truly meant ‘definitely’. (As it happens I had called on Sunday but hadn’t got through.)

That ‘merest shadow line’ was actually in my head as much as it was in the piece of language. Is it just the way I use the language? Really, how on earth is this ridiculousness possible? ‘It’s not you, it’s me’, as the saying goes. I suppose the point is that the precariousness of language exists in the interpretation of the words, the tone and accompanying body movements.

Maybe another time we can discuss some of the precarious language that females use.

9 September 2010

‘Next in criminality to him who violates the laws of his country, is he who violates the language.’

Walter Savage Landor, 1775–1864 

Well ladies, judging by the absence of a ‘she’, it looks like you got away with it. Walter has either been slack in laying down of parameters for the damned, or thinks it’s fine for females to smash grammatical rules and mangle syntax. Men, be careful. Remember to conjugate correctly if you don’t want to compound your punishment for that robbery you committed last week.

But in our globalised world – where English gets rebranded Globish – it seems violations of so called language rules are quite acceptable, as long as we achieve communication. Solecism is a thing of the past. Fair enough I suppose. Walter should probably relax and accept the fluidity ... Insert at this point whatever liberal exposition of living and evolving languages [blah, blah, yawn, etc.] that you like.

However, this classicist’s quote does give me an opportunity to hop onto a hobby horse and say ‘No! There are some lines we must not cross!’ I’m speaking very specifically about the word ‘literally’. In recent months I’ve been trying to protect the virtue of this poor, oppressed, battered word.

A couple of anecdotes to illustrate the point: Exhibit A – some months ago I walked into a grocer for a pint of milk and as I was handing over my pennies, a young man walked in speaking on the phone to his friend; ‘He’s killing me, literally’ is what he said. Exhibit B – during a presentation at work, a certain high ranking manager uttered ‘before … the company was literally on its knees.’

Oh dear [my head wearily slumps] … To my shopping friend I would say, ‘Well you look perfectly healthy, hale, hearty and whole to me. I see no grim reaper sneaking about. Although I do concede that your sentence would be accurate if you were aware that somebody was slowly poisoning you, subsequently resulting in your death.’ To my manager friend I simply say, ‘I never knew that companies had knees. That’s incredible!’

Naturally I said this to neither, not wanting to be punched by an east London native or sacked. Anyway, who likes a know-it-all? Whoops, did I just write these paragraphs? Too late now, I can’t stop. The hobby horse stumbles on.

You see, we are killing this word and rendering its meaning redundant. If I come back from meeting a now ex-girlfriend in a knife shop and say to my friend, ‘She literally stabbed me in the back’, what do I mean? Do I mean it metaphorically and idiomatically or literally? Did she or didn’t she? Well because of all those … [lost for the word I shake my fist and splutter] out there I don’t know any more. ‘Yeah, yeah but you know from the context’, you say. Not a good enough defence. I prefer accuracy and clarity.

How would you feel if you were a highly specialised adverb reduced to the mere station of exaggerating someone’s dull story? It’s like using a thoroughbred racehorse to pull a plough.

Please, I implore you all to leave this word alone and even defend it when you hear it viciously attacked. Lexicographers have even had to list it as an intensifier alongside its more precise meaning much to my disgust. It has been abused at least since 1926; and yes, I am sad enough to have come across a dictionary published then to check. There was I thinking that we all spoke beautifully proper English back in the day.

You can have your kidz, niteclub, skool, ‘He were …’, double negatives, split infinitives, even 'I'm loving it', but I beg you to be gentle with this word.