Parts of Speech

“Good lawyering is applied poetry. Words wielded well are a lawyer's weaponry. ...

 ... I have never regretted that my undergraduate days were devoted to the study of literature, language, & logic.”

-- Ann-Marie Clark

BSA scout gives excellent communication advice as troop improvises unique pandemic food drive

My sons' Scouts BSA troop has suddenly become a food drive. (Though the scouts are also still doing a lot of work on various merit badges and rank requirements.) It started with the Gomez family, two of whose sons have led the troop as Senior Patrol Leader. They are close enough to parts of our community that they can verify the needs and resources of the families receiving aid. Both the recipients and the troop know and trust them. The troop as a whole has organized to support the supply side of the Gomezes' operation, while adult scouters and troop alumni help with delivery. 

The classic cautionary tale about charitable work is Dickens's "Mrs. Jellyby" in Bleak House, who works tirelessly to raise awareness and support ill-fated highbrow missionary projects in the most obscure parts of Africa, thinking she's saving people whose needs and wishes she actually knows nothing about, while completely neglecting her own children.

The opposite of Jellybying is often depicted by another English novelist, whose compassion, skill and sales rival Dickens's, Sir Terry Pratchett. As he puts it, "Do the work that's in front of you." 

That's what this is. It does something that existing institutions don't have the capacity for right now. It provides not only shelf-stable staples, but fresh food that we buy and deliver on the same day. Instead of taking whatever food people donate, it buys in bulk so that donors' contributions do more good, handling is efficient, recipients get a planned and balanced basket, and, importantly, they feel like they are treated equally with each other, and with dignity.

Current Boys' Senior Patrol Leader Mattie Nguyen, a high school junior, asked the scouts to participate by spreading the word, and gave them communication advice that it takes most of us decades to learn. I frankly assumed the Scoutmaster wrote this, but I asked Mattie's mom and she assured me that he wrote it all himself. 

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Dear Scouts/Parents of Troop 167:

 If you attended the troop meeting held May 20^th, you are likely aware of the service project that Troop 167 is performing to help families within our community put food on the table. An extension of an effort initiated to help families in our own troop, the scale of this project has grown enormously. Each week we are purchasing bulk quantities of food and preparing staple packages that are delivered to over 100 families. A more detailed description of this can be found in the attached files. A crucial service for at-risk families in Arlington, the continuation of this project is imperative: and it cannot be sustained without sufficient funding. Each box of food requires $25 or more to produce, and each week we distribute to at least 100 families. The cost of providing this service reflects the immense need we are filling.

The potential success of our fundraising effort lies in the hands of T167 Scouts and families.

We are relying on you; the scouts and parents of T167, to raise the funds we need to continue our pledge to service. A volunteer effort, we have no overhead. While helpful in eliminating fees and bureaucratic obstacles, this also means that we are fully dependent on the proactive actions taken by the members of this troop. This is your call to action.

 This is how you can help:

Spread the word. The most helpful thing that Scouts and parents can do is spread the word. As previously mentioned, we have no outside resources managing advertisement. You are our media outlets. In a world now communicating almost solely across the internet, emails are one of the easiest and most effective ways to advertise our fundraising effort. A simple message outlining who we are, what we are doing, and why we need funding can be copied and pasted to reach dozens of people. Additionally, people are witnessing the effects of this virus firsthand, making goodwill in easy access. For this reason, we are asking each scout to reach out to at least 5 people. If each scout does this, we will establish the lines of communication with the community necessary to move our service project forward. Attached to this email are documents providing the intricacies of our effort you may wish to include in your note, as well as a model message/note found below that can be used as a template or guide. Here are some things to keep in mind when creating your messages:

• Who are you writing to? If your recipient is a family member or friend, don’t hold back from personalizing your message. The more closely you know somebody, the more important it is to sound like yourself. A candid and genuine letter will be better received by people you are close with than a robotic and scripted note.  Even if it is to your neighbors or people you may not know as well, show your personality in your writing. Keeping this in mind, still be sure to maintain a professional and appropriately formal approach. Remember; you are asking them for money at a time when people in all walks of life are facing their own challenges.
• How are you writing to them? Are you writing to your recipients over email? Text? Mail? By phone? Understanding the method of communication you are using is key to crafting an effective and appropriate message.
• What are you asking? Every communication has a purpose. The core purpose of the messages we are asking you to create/distribute is the following: Ask people for monetary donations and direct them to our donation page. Provide clear ways for people to donate by providing links or URLs to our donation page like this, and giving them instruction if you believe they may struggle to understand the platform. Offer your aid! The other parts of your message are also extremely important but keep this core purpose in mind. ...
• Communicate safety! How much people know about what we are doing is reliant on what you tell them. Make sure they know that scouts are out of harms way, and that everything we do is in full compliance with the safety restrictions in place. One way that this is ensured is in what you are doing right now- maintaining an essential role in this operation from the safety of your own home!
• Ask your recipient to spread the word too! The whole point of our asking you to send these messages is to raise awareness about our fundraising. Why stop at one point of communication? If you have grandparents you know how awfully well chainmail works, so consider asking the person to whom you are writing to to spread the word as well! As always, make sure you are being polite and considerate. 
• Ask for help! Between younger Scouts, older Scouts, parents, and troop leaders, there is wide range of communicative experience and skill in our troop. If you are ever unsure of what you are writing, who you should write to, or if your message is good, don’t hesitate to ask for help! Your parents are the closest resource you have -- so run your message by them before sending it out. Ask anybody, and they’ll say a second pair of eyes is key to ensuring good writing. As always, the leadership in your troop is also available to you! Reach out to your patrol leader, troop leaders, or even fellow scouts if you have any questions or concerns. No question is a bad question.   

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Model Message/Letter

“Dear Friends, Neighbors and Family [customize]

 The COVID-19 pandemic is making it difficult or impossible for vulnerable families in our community to consistently put healthy food on their tables to feed themselves and their children. We at Scout Troop 167 (having pledged to help other people at all times) are stepping in to help by feeding up to 100 local food-insecure families in great need each week – and we need your help!

As detailed below, we shop at wholesale stores to get the best prices possible and assemble food boxes each week for distribution. We are organized and have the manpower – what we need is continuing funds.  It costs about $2500 a week at our current level of aid.

 Please consider making a tax-deductible donation at tinyurl.com/t167fooddrive. No amount is too small, and your generosity is greatly appreciated.

 Thank you.

 [xxxxxxxx personalized by the scout sending it out]”

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...

 We thank you for your help in ensuring the success of our Troop’s vital service project. Together, we are helping our community stay healthy and safe in a period unprecedented in our lifetimes. We encourage you to please read the attached documents formulated over the past few weeks, detailing the story behind what we are doing, why we are doing it, how we are staying safe, and the logistics of such a large operation. ...

 Sincerely,

Mattie Nguyen (on behalf of the Patrol Leaders’ Council and Leadership of Troop 167).

Links:

• Troop 167 Pandemic Food Drive: Helping Arlington Families in Need
• Donations web page
• Main Troop 167 web page
• Mount Olivet United Methodist Church

Words only the media uses, and sometimes even they don't understand them: Vex, blaze, slay, imbroglio & many more

It's a feature, not a bug. Sometime you do it to use the shortest word possible in a headline, other times for variety, but as Gene Weingarten points out, also to "cover" yourself, or out of dull and stilted habit and a disregard for readers and their real-life experience, forgetting that your work is not an end in itself but serves a purpose in everyday life.

Although some of the terms he says only journalists use have come back into more normal use because they're used in the media so much, or maybe that's just in places like Washington, where I live, or professions like mine. But others definitely haven't: "blaze" (for a house fire), vex, slay ...

Gene fingers journos in language imbroglio

Washington Post Magazine

And there's even a version on Youtube!

#Confucius's "Rectification of names" is about clear, honest language, not ministerial hierarchy.

 Tsze-lu said, "The ruler of Wei has been waiting for you, in order with you to administer the government. What will you consider the first thing to be done?"

The Master replied, "What is necessary is to rectify names." "So! indeed!" said Tsze-lu. "You are wide of the mark! Why must there be such rectification?"

The Master said, "How uncultivated you are, Yu! A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve.

"If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.

"When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot.

"Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect."

Analects, Ch. 13

This passage strikes many Westerners, in this degraded and confused age, as a call for clear, unvarnished, precise and non-"evolving"  language, especially about law and public policy. It has always struck me that way.

But all over the internet you will read that it's not about that, it's about defining, honoring and observing officials' status, titles and powers according to a fixed hierarchy. That sounds to me like a freshman B-minus term paper answer -- how can 1,000 cribbed exam answers, by undergrads who didn't do the reading, all be wrong? Some people think of Confucius as a crabbed, fussy reactionary prig obsessed with status, titles and ceremony, and therefore, whatever he says must be about that? 

I don't think so. Simply reading the entire passage above, instead of taking the three words "rectification of names" and slapping them onto our stereotype of Confucius, should make that interpretation impossible. And while he talks of "a superior man" he clearly describes that superiority as a matter of behavior and wisdom, and a proportionate humility, not birth or status.

 But it's good to see an actual Chinese Philosophy professor, who knows the language, take the same view. Manyul Im, a Philosophy Professor at Fairfield University, writes:

Confucius famously says in Analects 13.3 that the first thing to do in conducting state affairs is to “rectify names” — or “correct terms.” Otherwise, he says, “speech will not follow” (yan bu shun 言不順), with the result that “affairs will not be accomplished” (shi bu cheng 事不成), with the result that “rites and music will not flourish,” with the final result that “punishments and rewards will not be appropriate.”

You could ask a lot of questions here as to what this all means. The one I’ll ask is whether this has anything to do with Analects 12.11–as a lot of people seem to think–where Confucius is asked about governing and he says, very tersely, “jun jun, chen chen, fu fu, zi zi” (君君臣臣父父子子). The way most people seem to render this is some version of “A lord should lord, a minister should minister, a father should father, and a son should son,” where the verbal occurrence is usually embellished (plausibly, I think) with “should act like a proper______.” There are a couple of things that bother me about this, however:

1. I don’t see how 12.11, so construed, is about “names” or “terms” (ming). It seems ostensibly about lords, ministers, fathers, and sons on the one hand and on the other about roles or actions–not about the terms or titles for such people or such roles (or actions). To be about names or terms, at least one of the instances of each pair, the noun or verb–assuming that is how we should construe the grammar–would have to be a mention as opposed to a use. But, how are we to read 12.11 then?
2. Suppose a lord does not act like a proper lord, a minister like a proper minister, and so forth. Why would that threaten to undermine correct or effective speech, as 13.3 states? I could almost see how improper use of the terms–for example, calling someone a lord who is not actually a lord–could undermine correct usage, if the practice caught on or was enforced. But the fact that someone who isin fact, legitimately, a lord isn’t living up to the name or title, doesn’t have an effect on the correct usage of the name or title; correct usage is necessary to make that judgment in the first place. And, if he isn’t legitimately a lord, then his not living up to the title is just to be expected and doesn’t pose a problem. So, 12.11 can’t really be about making sure people live up to their (properly) applied titles if it is to be relevant to 13.3.

From "Rectification of Names (zhengming, 正名)" on Manyul Im’s Chinese Philosophy Blog

I couldn't say it better, or with any authority. But I can add this: In 13 Confucius is talking about what to do first, when reforming a state's government. And he makes a very general statement that language should be "in accordance with the truth of things" so that "affairs" are "carried on to success". He emphasizes how universal and general this effect and necessity is, so why should we interpret it as only being about ministers' titles?

The problem with misused fancypants words is NOT that they're Pedantically Incorrect, it's that they're pseudo-pedantic

Here's my reply to Chris Brecheen's '10 Words Writers Need to Learn to Use "Correctly"':

The problem with most of these is not that they're Pedantically Incorrect: It's that when used incorrectly, they're twee, faux-highbrow words that most people don't really understand, in situations where normal straightforward words would work much better. That's Bemused & Nonplussed, and to a lesser extent Disinterested, Reticent and Penultimate (the last three when used right are non-twee and just fine, and each of the three is the best single word to convey its exact meaning).

Decimate's figurative meaning is totally legit, and needed, and the original meaning is interesting history, but not essential.

Conversely, Redundant's standard meaning is well-known and important, and it would be a shame to lose the ability to conceive and convey it. But the people whom you think are misusing it to simply mean "useless" may have some connection to its standard meaning in mind when they do so.

Literally is overused but it does have a legit comic/figurative sense. Which may be Ironic, but probably in the wrong sense of the word.

With Plethora, I find it hard to see your distinction between the two senses (a wild overabundance versus a plain old abundance), or at least where to draw the line between them, and it's often used with a sense of comic exaggeration.

In Portland, media's bureaucratic style smokescreens who killed who

Press deploys its worst bureaucratese against Portland's anti-Muslim killer and its Constitution-burning mayor

Our default victimhood jargon on sex & violence disempowers victims, ignores responsibility

"X% of women were raped." "Battered women". "The accuser". The passive voice leads us to ignore  responsibilities, actions, transgressions.  But it is the politically correct way to talk about sex and violence. (Ah, there's another one, this "violence" that just somehow happens, that we talk about as if it were more real than the people who do it and the people they do it to.)  It is politically correct because (1) officialdom wants people passive. If individuals take action on their own solutions, it considers them part of the problem, or worse. And (2) starting in the 1970s,  everyone has wanted to identify as a victim of something, a rare flower with its own peculiar rights, sensitivities and vulnerabilities. Which the rest of us not only must accommodate, but must confess ignorance about, unquestioningly submitting our "awareness" to "raising".

Guess what?  When the rubber hits the road, most people don't actually sympathise with, or at least don't respect, people claiming special victimhood. Or "rights." Even fewer trust or respect the kind of people who claim and fetishize empathy and identification with all kinds of rare and exotic victims, minorities, disabilities, deviancies, animals, etc. Think of Mrs. Jellyby. (If you can't, better read Bleak House.) This has been a problem ever since the days of the abolitionists. I used to lament that people were just mean and callous. But actually it makes more sense than that. People feel that they have real lives and real work to do and don't have the capacity for full-time compassion, and to be honest, they might add, they don't really have enough information or leisure to decide whether a minority group that they don't interact with often, or one they never heard of in some distant land, is really as deserving and equal and wonderful as the Mrs. Jellybys assure us. And when someone is claiming "rights", many take it as a sign of weakness and weirdness. I've seen all this up close, from studying 19th-Century abolitionists, Northern Democrats and Irish immigrants, to volunteering with the ACLU in the 80s, to decades of working with fathers and mothers threatened with losing child custody -- the most doomed and lost of them can't stop talking about their "rights."

So when the question is an examination of whether this small group with odd coloring, beliefs, preferences, etc. is deserving of some special kind of "rights", or whether "we" should choose to be "permissive" or "tolerant" and "give" them rights, then they're probably going to lose, or gain only grudging and unpopular "tolerance" without respect or legitimacy.

But that is completely turned around when the question is instead posed in terms of rules governing people in general: Things people "shalt not" do to other people. Things the government simply isn't allowed to do. Compare these different ways of describing the same US Supreme Court cases:

• "Does some troublesome Jewish guy have a Jew-hat right to wear a funny Jewish hat when Air Force cockpit safety regulations prohibit hats generally?"
• "Does an Indian have a right to take illegal hallucinogenic mushrooms in a so-called religious ritual that you've never heard of?"
• "Can the government make laws interfering with people's real, longstanding religious traditions that don't harm anyone?"
• "Is a corporation a person with  'free speech' rights to intervene in a presidential election?"
• "Is the government allowed to regulate speech about presidential elections?"

The other great problem with victimhood language is that it puts what trial lawyers call "the focus of judgment", i.e. the microscope, on the vic, not the perp. And when we're under that microscope, most of us don't look very good. Officialdom at all levels, including us good-hearted individuals in the "helping professions", talks about the millions of "battered women", not the millions of "battering men" and "battering women".  Jackson Katz, Ph.D., a filmmaker, cultural theorist, and educator who might be called a "Men's Responsibility Activist", brought that message to the sanctum sanctorum of political correctness, Middlebury College, in a lecture incorporating self-styled "cunning linguist" Julia Penelope's insights into sentence structures about violence. More at:

"The Language of Gender Violence" by Robert Keren in Middlebury Magazine. Via international family law attorney Nancy Zalusky Berg.

 

Good writing makes readers feel smart, bad writing makes them feel stupid.

Make motions more powerful by writing openers that focus on 'deep issues'

By Bryan A. Garner in the ABA Journal

Adds great new phrases to English: "Rhetorical botox", "A stultifying sub-dialect of pseudo-professionalism"

"SPARE ME THE FASHIONESE" by LUKE LEITCH on The Economists's 1843magazine.com

... A stultifying sub-dialect of pseudo-professionalism has also sprouted, in which the acquisition and possession of fashion is made to sound like a full-time job. If you get rid of old clothes to make way for some new ones, you are “editing your wardrobe” (much in the same way, I suppose, as binning furred cheese and liquefying tomatoes is “editing your fridge”). Choose what to wear of an evening and you’re “curating” your outfit. These days, anyone who manages to stumble out of his front door without being entirely naked can claim to be a stylist.