Hi. I’m Kitty Literate and I have a language problem.
It all started, as most problems do, in my childhood. I was watching the old black-and-white and enjoying the cigarette and liquor commercials when I noticed something wrong with a particular slogan: “Winston Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should.” Something felt not…quite…right. Was it some highly precocious, and as yet unconscious, understanding of the Surgeon General’s 1964 conclusions on the dangers of smoking? No. Was the jingle musically offensive? No more than any other. Wait… I know! It’s the “like.” Shouldn’t it be “Winston Tastes Good AS A Cigarette Should”? According to my fifth-grade English teacher, I. M. Shirley Wright, it certainly should be.
And yet, dear readers, I questioned. Does it really make any difference? Doesn’t “like” sound better than “as” in this particular case? I don’t remember how I resolved this particular conundrum in my own mind, but I do know that it marked the beginning of a life-long fascination with English usage.
Fast forward a few decades. Here we are in the Information Age, when everything you ever wanted to know is a mouse click away. You would think that now would be time when language—the medium of information—would be revered. Instead, it’s being stomped on, its precision continually dulled and rich lexicon oafishly impoverished by bad usage. We are way beyond the Winston era, when a minor infringement of a syntactic rule caught the attention of a nine-year-old girl; we are into a dark time when NPR reporters say things on the air like “ad campaigns around customers’ mindsets,” and there are no problems anymore, only “issues.”
If you’ve read this far and you really don’t care about such things, then goodbye and good luck. But if you do, please stay tuned as I explore what is happening to our beloved native tongue. Oh, and all you nonjudgmental students of linguistics out there, I know language changes, and I’m all for it. But I believe we are into something here that is damaging, not just transformational, and, by golly, I want it on the record!
Please do not think of this blog as a prescriptive grammar book or me as a stuffy schoolmarm shaking her finger at you every time you say “who” instead of “whom.” It’s about style, in all senses of the word, and about taking care of your tools. I chose “hold your tongue” for its double meaning: one, watch what you say (and I don’t mean censor cussing or slang or other wonderful, creative aspects of language); and two, hold your language dear.
This is Kitty Literate, signing off. Until next time.
5 comments:
Dear Kitty: I was pleased to see your comment about the misuse of the preposition "around." It's infuriating. I hear it all the time in the business world, e.g., "At today's meeting, I'd like to cover issues around legal problems." Or, "We had a really good discussion around the subject of increasing profits." How can you help?
Scott Sherman
Baltimore, MD
Dear Kitty: I love your new column. When can I look forward to the next installment? I'm definitely in your fan club!
Jenny
Norwich VT
Dear Kitty: I don't know if this is in your area of expertise, but have you noticed the increasing incidence of rising inflection in spoken American English -- not just among teenagers, but among educated adults as well? if so, to what do you attribute this? And what can you do about it?
Earl
Dear Kitty,
Your blog is terrific and I will look forward to more of your astute observations. William Safire, move over! As a fellow word worker, one of my biggest pet peeves is when people use "impact" as a verb. Are these people either unaware or just dissing standard style, or is this one of those elements of modern usage that I will just have to learn to accept?
Andi Axman
Epsom, NH
Like hardly ever is used as it ought.
Do as you like, but, like, don't, like, get caught!
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