x*****u
发帖数: 3419 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 Translation 讨论区 】
发信人: xiaozhu (此君), 信区: Translation
标 题: A Very Short History of Bad Writing z
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Sun Aug 14 15:01:00 2011, 美东)
A Very Short History of Bad Writing
===================================
Now, anyone familiar with the history of English prose might wonder
whether anything we do here will substantially improve its future. Since
the earliest times, many writers have graced us with much good writing.
But others have afflicted us with much that is bad. Some of the reasons for
the bad writing are rooted in history, others in personal experience.
In the last seven hundred years, English writers have responded to
three influences on our language. Two are historical, one is
cultural. These influences have helped make English a language flexible
and precise enough to use with subjects ranging from the most
concrete and mundane to the most abstract and elevated. But
ironically, the very influences that have created this flexibility
and precision have also allowed indeed encouraged many
writers to produce prose that is quite bad. One of the two historical
influences was the Norman Conquest in 1066, an event that led us to acquire
a vocabulary qualitatively different from the Anglo-Saxon wordhord we've
inherited from Bede, Alfred, and Aelfric. The second influence
occurred in the six-teenth century, when Renaissance scholars struggling
to translate Greek and Latin texts found themselves working at a
lexical disadvantage.
After the Norman Conquest, those responsible for institutional,
scholarly, and religious affairs wrote in Latin and later Norman
French. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries,
increasing numbers of writers began using English again for matters of
state, commercial, and social life. But since the native vocabulary for
these matters had long since disappeared (or had never come into being),
English writers were able to write about them in the only vocabulary
available, in words borrowed from Latin, but particularly from French. By
the sixteenth century, French and Latin had disappeared from most
institutional affairs, but writers were still using their words to refer to
institutional concepts. As a result, the foundations were laid for a two-
tiered vocabulary: one consisting of words common to daily life, the other
of words having more special application.
Conspiring with that influence on our vocabulary was a second one, the
Renaissance. In the sixteenth century, as England was increasingly
influenced by classical writers, scholars began translating into English
large numbers of Greek and Latin texts. But as one early writer put it
"there ys many wordes in Latyn that we have no propre Englysh
accordynge thereto," and so translators simply "Englished" foreign words
, thereby providing us with another set of borrowings, many from Greek
but most from Latin, and almost all of them more formal than either our
native English vocabulary or the Anglicized words from French.
As a consequence of these two influences, our vocabulary is the
most varied of any modern European language. Of the thousand words we use
most frequently, over 80 percent descend from Anglo-Saxon. But
most of them are the single syllable labor-intensive words: the
articles the, this, that, a, etc.; most of the prepositions and pronouns:
in, on, of, by, at, with, you, we, it, I, etc.; the most common verbs and
most of the common nouns: be, have, do, make, will, go, see, hand, head,
mother, father, sun, man, woman, etc. (Many words borrowed from French have
lost any sense of formality: people, (be)cause, use, just, really, very
, sort, different, number, place.)
When we refer to specific matters of our intellectual and artistic life,
however, we use almost three times as many French and Latin content words
as native English. Compare how I might have been obliged to
write the paragraph before last, had on Hastings Field in 1066 a
Norman arrow not mortally wounded Harold, the Anglo-Saxon King:
Togetherworking with the outcome of the Norman Greatwin was the Newbirth.
In the sixteenth yearhundred, as England was more shaped by the longread
writers, the learned began turning into English many of the books of
Athens and Rome, but as one early writer put it, "There ys many wordes in
Latyn that we have no right Englysh withgoing thereto." So those
who tongueturned works written in Latin and French into English only "
Englished" outland words, thereby giving us yet more borrowed words
, many from Greek but most from Latin, and almost all of them rather
higher than the hereborn words or the words Englished from French.
Of course, if Harold had won the Battle of Hastings I wouldn't have
written that at all, but he didn't, and as a result we now have
a lexical resource that has endowed us with a stylistic flexibility largely
unavailable to other modern languages. To express the precise shade of
meaning and connotation, we can choose from among words borrowed
from French bravery, mettle, valor, endurance, courage; from Latin
tenacity, fortitude, and from words inherited from native English
fearlessness, guts.
But this flexibility has come with a price. Since the language of
political, cultural, scientific, and economic affairs is based largely on
Romance words, those of us who aspire to participate have had to learn
a vocabulary separate from that which we learned through the first five
or ten years of our lives. Just as we have to spend a good deal of time in
school learning the idiosyncracies of our spelling system and of "good"
grammar, so must we spend time learning words not rooted in our
daily experience. Five- year-olds know the meaning of between, over,
across, and before, but fifteen-year-olds have to learn the meaning of
intra-, supra-, trans-, and ante-. To those of us already in an educated
community, that vocabulary seems natural, not the least difficult. But if
it were as natural to acquire as we think, publishers would not profit
from selling books and tapes promising us Word Power in Thirty Days.
And of course once we learn these words, who among us can resist using
them when we want to sound learned and authoritative? Writers began to
surrender to that temptation well before the middle of the sixteenth
century, but it was about then that many English writers became so
enamored with an erudite vocabulary that they began deliberately to lard
their prose with exotic Latinisms, a kind of writing that came to be known
as the "inkhorn" style and was mocked as pretentious and
incomprehensible by those critics for whom English had become a special
passion. This impulse toward an elevated diction has proved quite
durable; it accounts for the difference today between "The adolescents who
had effectuated forcible entry into the domicile were apprehended" and "
We caught the kids who broke into the house."
But while this Romance component of our vocabulary has
contributed to one kind of stylistic inflation, it cannot alone account for
a deeper problem we have with bad modern prose. We cannot point to the
historical influence of borrowed words to explain why anyone would write (la
) rather than (lb) because (lb) has more borrowed words:
1a. The Committee proposal would provide for biogenetic industry
certification of the safety to human health for new substances in
requests for exemption from Federal rules.
lb. The Committee proposes that when the biogenetic industry requests
the Agency to exempt new substances from Federal rules, the industry will
certify that the substances are safe.
In addition to the influence of the Norman Conquest and the Renaissance,
there has been another, more subtle historical influence on our prose
style, an influence that some linguists have speculated to be a
kind of stylistic destiny for literate societies. As societies become
intellectually mature, it has been claimed, their writers seem
increasingly to replace specific verbs with abstract nouns. It allegedly
happened in Sanskrit prose, in the prose of many Western European
languages, and it seems to be happening in modern English. What
centrally distinguishes sentence (la) from (lb) is not the historical
source of their vocabulary, but the abstract nouns in (la) in
contrast to the shorter and more specific verbs and adjective of (lb):
1a. The Committee proposal would provide for biogenetic industry
certification of the safety to human health for new substances requested
for exemption from Federal rules.
lb. The Committee proposes that when the biogenetic industry
requests the Agency to exempt new substances from Federal rules, the
industry will certify that the substances are safe.
These nouns alone make a style more abstract, but they
encourage more abstraction: once a writer expresses actions in
nouns, she can then eliminate whatever (usually concrete) agents perform
those actions along with those whom the actions affect:
The proposal would provide for certification of the safety of new
substances in requests for exemption. These abstract Romance nouns
result in a prose that we variously call gummy, turgid, obtuse,
prolix, complex, or unreadable. An early example:
If use and custom, having the help of so long time and
continuance wherein to [re]fine our tongue, of so great learning and
experience which furnish matter for the [re]fining, of so good wits and
judgments which can tell how to [re]fine, have griped at nothing in all
that time, with all that cunning, by all those wits which they will not let
go but hold for most certain in the right of our writing, that then our
tongue ha[s] no certainty to trust to, but write all at random. But the
antecedent, in my opinion, is altogether unpossible, wherefore the
consequent is a great deal more th[a]n probable, which is that our
tongue ha[s] in her own possession and writing very good evidence to
prove her own right writing; which, though no man as yet by any public
writing of his seem[s] to have seen, yet the tongue itself is ready to show
them to any whosoever which is able to read them and withal to judge what
evidence is right in the right of writing.
-Richard Mulcaster, The First Part of the Elementary, 1582
Other sixteenth-century writers were able to write prose not wholly
free of abstraction, but not burdened by it either, a prose that we would
judge today to be dear, direct, and still readable (I
have changed only the spelling and punctuation):
Among all other lessons this should first be learned, that we never
affect any strange inkhorn terms, but to speak as is commonly received,
neither seeking to be over-fine, nor yet living overcareless, suiting our
speech as most men do, and ordering our wits as the fewest have done.
Some seek so far for outlandish English that they forget altogether
their mother's language. And I dare swear this, if some of their mothers
were alive, they [would] not [be] able to tell what they say. And
yet these fine English clerks will say they speak in their mother tongue,
if a man should charge them for counterfeiting the King's English.
-Thomas Wilson, Art of Rhetoric, 1553
By the middle of the seventeenth century, this impulse toward "over-
fine" prose had infected scholarly writing. Shortly after the Royal
Society was established in 1660, Thomas Spratt, one of its historians,
complained that scientific writing suffered from a "vicious abundance of
phrase, [a] trick of metaphors, [a] volubility of tongue which makes
so great a noise in the world."
Better, he said, to .
reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style: to
return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so
many things, almost in an equal number of words . . . [to prefer]
the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that, of
Wits, or Scholars.
-From The Histo the Royal Society
When the New World was settled, American writers had a chance
to create such a prose style, one lean and sinewy fit for a new
society. But we did not. Early in the nineteenth century, James
Fenimore Cooper complained that "the common faults of American language are
an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms":
The love of turgid expressions is gaining ground, and ought to be
corrected. One of the most certain evidences of a man of high
breeding, is his simplicity of speech: a simplicity that is equally
removed from vulgarity and exaggeration . . . . He does not say, in
speaking of a dance, that "the attire of the ladies was exceedingly elegant
and peculiarly becoming at the late assembly," but that "the women
were well dressed at the last ball"; nor is he apt to remark, "that the
Rev. Mr G gave us an elegant and searching discourse the past sabbath," but
that "the parson preached a good sermon last sunday."
The utterance of a gentleman ought to be deliberate and clear,
without being measured . . . . Simplicity should be the firm aim,
after one is removed from vulgarity, and let the finer shades of
accomplishment be acquired as they can be attained. In no case,
however, can one who aims at turgid language, exaggerated sentiments, or
pedantic utterances, lay claim to be either a man or a woman of the world
.
-James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat, 1838
In these sentiments, Cooper reflects a long tradition about
what constitutes genteel behavior in the English-speaking world. For five
hundred years, writers on courtesy have urged aspiring gentle people to
avoid speech that is loquacious, flamboyant, or pompous, to keep their
language plain, modest, and unassuming. In The American Democrat, Cooper
was attempting to define what constituted an American gentleman in a
democratic world.
But in Cooper's own style we can see the inexorable power of that
ambition of effect, want of simplicity, and turgid abuse of terms, for
he demonstrated unconsciously, it would seem the very style he
condemned. Had he been aware of his own language, he would have
avoided those abstract, mostly Romance nouns love, expressions,
simplicity, speech, vulgarity, exaggeration, utterance, simplicity,
aim, accomplishment, claim for something closer to this:
We should discourage writers who love turgid language. A wellbred man
speaks simply, in a way that is neither vulgar nor exaggerated does not
say a dance that "the attire of the . . . . He of ladies was
exceedingly elegant and peculiarly becoming at the late assembly," but
that "the women were well-dressed at the last ball"; nor does he
remark that "the Rev. Mr G gave us an elegant and searching discourse
the past Sabbath," but that "the parson preached a good sermon last Sunday.
"
A gentleman does not measure his words, but speaks them deliberately
and clearly. After he rids [his language] of vulgarity, he should aim
at simplicity, and then, as he can, acquire the finer shades of
accomplishment. No one can claim to be a man or woman of the world
who deliberately speaks in turgid-or pedantic language or who exaggerates
sentiments.
In fact, after abusing the pretentious style of "The attire of the
ladies was elegant," he echoed it in his own next sentence: "The utterance
of a gentleman ought to be deliberate ...."
About a half century later, Mark Twain demonstrated the style
that we now like to identify as American clear, straight, and plainspoken:
There have been daring people in the world who claimed that
Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now-all dead but
Lounsbury [a scholar who praised Cooper's novels]. I don't remember that
Lounsbury makes the claim in so many words, still he makes it, for he says
that Deerslayer is a "pure work of art." Pure, in that connection,
means faultless--faultless in all deails--and language is a detail. If
Mr. Lounsbury writes himself -- but it is plain that he didn't; and so it
is likely that he imagines until this day that Cooper's [style] is as clean
and compact as his own. Now I feel sure, deep down in my heart, that
Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our language.
Unfortunately, twentieth-century writers have not all followed Twain
's example.
In probably the best-known essay on English style in the twentieth century,
"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell described turgid
language when it is used by politicians, bureaucrats, and other
chronic dodgers of responsibility. Orwell's advice is sound enough:
The keynote [of such a style] is the elimination of simple verbs.
Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a
verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on
to some general-purposes verb such as prove, serve, fOlm, play,
render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever pos- sible used in
preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of
gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is
further cut down by means of the -ize and de-formations, and the banal
statements are given an appear- ance of profundity by means of the not un-
formation.
But in the very act of anatomizing the turgid style, Orwell
demonstrated it in his own. Had Orwell himself avoided making a verb a
phrase, had he avoided the passive voice, had he avoided noun constructions
, he would have written something closer to this (I begin with a phrase
Orwell used a few lines earlier):
When writers dodge the work of constructing prose, they elimi- nate
simple verbs. Instead of using a single word, such as break, stop, spoil,
mend, kill, they turn the verb into a phrase made up of a noun or adjective
; then they tack it on to some general-purposes verb such as prove, serve,
form, play, render. Wherever possible, such writers use the passive voice
instead of the active and noun constructions instead of gerunds (by
examination instead of by examining). They cut down the range of verbs
further when they use -ize and de-formations and try to make banal
statements seem profound by the not un-formation.
If Orwell could not avoid this kind of passive, abstract style in his
own writing (and I don't believe that he was trying to be ironic
), we ought not be surprised that the prose style of our academic, scholarly
, and professional writers is often worse. On the language of social
scientists:
a turgid and polysyllabic prose does seem to prevail in the social
sciences a lack intelligibility, believe,.... Such of ready usually has
little or nothing to do with the complexity of thought. It has to do
almost entirely with certain confusions of the academic writer about
his own status. -C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination
On the language of medicine:
It now appears that obligatory obfuscation is a firm tradition
within the medical profession .... [Medical writing] is a highly
skilled, calculated attempt to confuse the reader ... A doctor feels
he might get passed over for an assistant professorship because he wrote
his papers too clearly-because he made his ideas seem too simple.
-Michael Crichton, New England Journal of Medicine
On the language of the law:
in law journals, in speeches, in classrooms and in courtrooms,
lawyers and judges are beginning to worry about how often they have been
misunderstood, and they are discovering that some- times they cannot
even understand each other.
-Tom Goldstein, New York Times
In short, bad writing has been with us for a long time, and its
roots run wide in our culture and deep into its history.
from
Joseph M. Williams
Style: Toward Clarity and Grace |
|
