Over the past eight years, President George W. Bush has generously illustrated many principles of English grammar and usage. To show our appreciation, we offer a few choice examples of the lessons he has shared.
- "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."
(February 21, 2001)
Credit to Mr. Bush for attempting to use a singular pronoun to refer to a singular noun ("a child"), but both of the pronouns in this sentence really should be in the subjective case: not "he or her" but "he or she." (See Using the Different Forms of Pronouns.)
- "When we get the facts, we'll share it with the American people."
(November 8, 2001)
Ah, but those pronouns can be almost as slippery as the facts. Let's quietly change "it" to "them" to agree with the noun "facts." (Now that he has some spare time, Mr. Bush may want to work on this Practice Exercise on Pronouns.)
- "It's a time of sorrow and sadness when we lose a loss of life."
(December 21, 2004)
Indeed. Such needless repetition is called pleonasm.
- "The goals of this country is to enhance prosperity and peace."
(speaking at the White House Conference on Global Literacy, September 18, 2006)
Presumably distracted by "this country" (the singular object of the preposition "of"), the president missed the plural subject, "goals." Our advice: use "are," not "is," and visit Correcting Errors in Subject-Verb Agreement.
- "We've got pockets of persistent poverty in our society, which I refuse to declare defeat—I mean, I refuse to allow them to continue on. And so one of the things that we're trying to do is to encourage a faith-based initiative to spread its wings all across America, to be able to capture this great compassionate spirit."
(March 18, 2002)
Fortunately, the mixed metaphors here distract from the more serious breakdowns in syntax.
- "Suiciders are willing to kill innocent life in order to send the projection that this is an impossible mission."
(April 3, 2007)
"I want to remind you all that in order to fight and win the war, it requires an expenditure of money that is commiserate with keeping a promise to our troops to make sure that they're well-paid, well-trained, well-equipped."
(December 2003)
"And the question is, are we going to be facile enough to change with—will we be nimble enough; will we be able to deal with the circumstances on the ground? And the answer is, yes, we will."
(July 25, 2006)
"Columbia carried in its payroll classroom experiments from some of our students in America."
(February 11, 2003)
"Projection"? "commiserate"? "facile"? "payroll"? Not since Mrs. Malaprop herself have we witnessed such a master of malapropism.
So thank you, President Bush, for expanding the range of the English language and for helping America to become what you once described as "a literate country and a hopefuller country."
More About Language and Politics:
Some books about the English language are cleverly written--playful, humorous, and all too often littered with inaccuracies. At the other end of the shelf are the formal linguistic studies--heavily footnoted, agonizingly precise, and generally painful to read.
And then there are David Crystal's books (over 100 of them at last count), which manage to be both scholarly and eminently readable. An honorary professor and part-time lecturer of linguistics at Bangor University in Wales, Crystal has been conducting research in language studies since the early 1960s. Throughout this Grammar & Composition website, you'll find references to several of his recent works, including The Stories of English (2004), How Language Works (2005), and The Fight for English (2006).
But Crystal's greatest achievement, and the one book about language that all students and linguaphiles should own, is The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2003), described by a reviewer as "the most diverting, delightful, imaginative and altogether entertaining compilation ever assembled about spoken and written English."
Here you'll learn about dactyls and dialects, flyting and rhyming, language change, language delay, language shift, and language loyalty. Phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics have never been this much fun.
In his preface to The Cambridge Encyclopedia, Crystal examines the question, "Why study the English language?" See if you can come up with any answers that are better than these.
- Because it's fascinating
It is remarkable how often the language turns up as a topic of interest in daily conversation--whether it is a question about accents and dialects, a comment about usage and standards, or simply curiosity about a word's origins and history.
- Because it's important
The dominant role of English as a world language forces it upon our attention in a way that no language has ever done before. As English becomes the chief means of communication between nations, it is crucial to ensure that it is taught accurately and efficiently, and to study changes in its structure and use.
- Because it's fun
One of the most popular leisure pursuits is to play with the English language--with its words, sounds, spellings, and structures. Crosswords, Scrabble®, media word shows, and many other quizzes and guessing games keep millions happily occupied every day, teasing their linguistic brain centres and sending them running to their dictionaries.
- Because it's beautiful
Each language has its unique beauty and power, as seen to best effect in the works of its great orators and writers. We can see the 1,000-year-old history of English writing only through the glass of language, and anything we learn about English as a language can serve to increase our appreciation of its oratory and literature.
- Because it's useful
Getting the language right is a major issue in almost every corner of society. No one wants to be accused of ambiguity and obscurity, or find themselves talking or writing at cross-purposes. The more we know about the language the more chance we shall have of success, whether we are advertisers, politicians, priests, journalists, doctors, lawyers--or just ordinary people at home, trying to understand and be understood.
- Because it's there
English, more than any other language, has attracted the interest of professional linguists. It has been analysed in dozens of different ways, as part of the linguist's aim of devising a theory about the nature of language in general. The study of the English language, in this way, becomes a branch of linguistics--English linguistics.
To learn more about David Crystal and his books on language, visit davidcrystal.com.
More About the English Language:
Image: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, by David Crystal, Cambridge University Press (UK and US), 2003
Stop me if you've heard this one before, but the American Dialect Society announced this week that its members had chosen bailout as the Word of the Year for 2008. That's right--bailout was also Merriam-Webster's selection back in November.
Even the chair of the New Words Committee, Grant Barrett, seemed a bit disappointed by the society's choice. "You'd think a room full of pointy-headed intellectuals could come up with something more exciting," he said.
But cheer up, logophiles. A look at the finalists in other categories reveals some fresher verbal specimens.
- A runner-up in the category of Most Useful, Palinesque: "pertaining to a person who has extended themselves beyond their expertise, thereby bringing ridicule upon a serious matter."
- The winner in the Most Unnecessary category, moofing: "from 'mobile out of office,' meaning working on the go with a laptop and cell phone."
- The least popular contender in the category of Most Creative, rofflenui: "blended New Zealand English-Maori word that means 'rolling on the floor laughing a lot.'”
- Second place in the category of Most Outrageous, body-snarking: "posting pictures and commenting negatively on the bodies of the people in them."
- And three notable contenders in the Most Euphemistic category:
scooping technician: "a person whose job it is to pick up dog poop."
age-doping: "the falsification of records to show that an athlete meets participation requirements for a sporting event."
thought showers: "coined by a British city council because the synonym 'brainstorming' was said to be offensive to epileptics."
Now let me be the first to cast a hopeful vote for the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year for 2009: recovery.
More Words of the Year:
In our Glossary of Grammatical & Rhetorical Terms, you'll find a name for . . .
- Caroline Kennedy's habit of repeating "you know" (138 times in a recent interview with The New York Times): embolalia
- some "jar-dropping" and "mind-bottling" errors of spelling and pronunciation: eggcorns
- that "spontaneous" remark you rehearsed for days: sprezzatura
- your spell checker's whimsical habit of replacing "Barack Obama" with "Burka Abeam," and "inconvenience" with "incontinence": Cupertino effect
- the small talk that often passes for conversation at work: phatic communion
- the trick of using a single adverb--obviously--to "prove" an unsupported claim: boosting
- comedian Stephen Colbert's way of closing his program by thanking "all the people who made this show possible--thank you, Stephen Colbert": illeism
You'll find these and over 500 other language-related words and expressions in our
Glossary of Grammatical & Rhetorical Terms.
More Words About Words:
