Maureen Dowd on Palin's English
I love Maureen Dowd. I wish she were my personal friend. I don't always agree with her, but she entertains the hell out of me. Check out her latest column on Palin's use of English. Here is an excerpt:If I spoke English this badly at work, let alone wrote this way, I would soon be out of a job. But then I might qualify for Veep. Do I smell a third career? ;-)Talking at the debate about how she would “positively affect the impacts” of the climate change for which she’s loath to acknowledge human culpability, she did a dizzying verbal loop-de-loop: “With the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that, as governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change subcabinet to start dealing with the impacts.” That was, miraculously, richer with content than an answer she gave Katie Couric: “You know, there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that we’re dealing with now, with these impacts.”
At another point, she channeled Alicia Silverstone debating in “Clueless,” asserting, “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet.” (Mostly the end-all.)
A political jukebox, she drowned out Biden’s specifics, offering lifestyle as substance. “In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been, you know, all our lives,” she said, making the middle class sound like it has its own ZIP code, superior to 90210 because “real” rules.
Sometimes, her sentences have a Yoda-like — “When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not” — splendor. When she was asked by Couric if she’d ever negotiated with the Russians, the governor replied that when Putin “rears his head” he is headed for Alaska. Then she uttered yet another sentence that defies diagramming: “It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there.”
Reared heads reared themselves again at the debate, when she said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “were starting to really kind of rear the head of abuse.”
She dangles gerunds, mangles prepositions, randomly exiles nouns and verbs and also — “also” is her favorite vamping word — uses verbs better left as nouns, as in, “If Americans so bless us and privilege us with the opportunity of serving them,” or how she tried to “progress the agenda.” [NY Times]
I've always avoided using the word "impact" to mean "affect" or "influence", primarily because I believe this usage is overly slick and trendy.
ReplyDeleteRather, I reserve the use of "impact" for it's most literal meaning of "collision", as in "the window shattered on impact".
Sarah Palin's use of this word is only to be expected, as she's the queen of phony buzzwords.
I'm glad to find someone else who hates the new use of "impact." I maintain that the reason it is so popular is that many people do not know the difference between "effect" and "affect." Rather than risk using the wrong one, many people use "impact" instead.
ReplyDeleteI try to conjure up the image of a bowel impaction when I hear the word. Gives new meaning to the spoken word. ;-)
And I made a typo in my comment by writing "it's" when I meant "its". Sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteI've ranted about "impact" more than once on my blog, among numerous other language rants.
Everyone makes typos.
ReplyDeleteLanguage changes over time. Sometimes those changes are good. More often they are not. Don't even get me on the subject of "verbing" nouns. ;-)
I go a little grammatically nuts over turning nouns into verbs.
ReplyDeletePalin's use of language demonstrates a jumbled mind. Her head has been so crammed with information and spin, she can't form or express coherent thoughts.
Just give her all the mud and let her sling until her arms get tired.
ReplyDelete