Bouche à Bouche (de métro)

Head to head

Face to face

Toe to toe

Mano-a-mano

But not:

Shoulder to shoulder

Tête-à-tête

Hand in hand

Eye to eye

On Parole

 Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:

parole/pəˈrəʊl/ 

▶noun

• 1 the temporary or permanent release of a prisoner before the expiry of a sentence, on the promise of good behaviour.

• 2 historical a prisoner of war's word of honour to return to custody or act as a non-belligerent if released.

• 3 Linguistics the actual language used by people. Contrasted with langue.

The private and the public spheres intersect all the time, everyday, and often it's a seamless movement; often, nothing much is stirred, uncovered.


The understanding which seems to accompany the system that is language has built into it the clues which signal to all that a statement needs modifying before it can be made public, or that it needs modifying before it can be absorbed in informal exchanges.


But the once fluid division between the public and the private is becoming more rigid, less flexible, clearer even as it confuses (me anyway!).
Because why else would any of us integrate into our daily exchanges disclaimers of all types?


Language is one system.  When it is used by individuals it temporarily becomes a function of that individual's thoughts, opinions and feelings, while at the same time remaining an abstract monster which exists in spite of any one speaker's will or influence.  It is very much like Frankenstein's monster.  Created but, once unleashed, no longer dependent on its creator.


At the same time, individuals modify, add, subtract, mix, superimpose meanings, images, sounds, and paralanguage to improve or impoverish language, every time they use it.


What interests me is the tragic development I see all around, whether in written or spoken language. I see people - individuals and groups - forgetting that when they speak, they have the power to influence listeners AND language; that when they speak, they do not have to integrate any of the vices, habits, clichés, opinions, metaphors and similes already dancing around the collective atmosphere.  Every engagement with language is a chance we all have to express our own thoughts and feelings according to how we see the world, instead of adopting someone else's views wholesale.


Our current obsession with choice is an amusing thing.  While adamant we do not want only one or two possible alternatives when it comes to food, politics, and a number of other things, we seem to be unaware that is exactly what we are getting.  The existence of different brands of the same exact product does not mean we can choose between or among different objects.  
The best example I can think of right now is news channels.  MSNBBCNN.  This Friday I watched the news on TV for a while, after a moratorium I imposed on myself since March 2010.  CNN, BBC News, Sky, Al Jazeera, France 24...  At the same time in the evening, this Friday, ALL these channels were telling me the exact same thing.  All of them.  They all start their "financial news" at the same time.  It is almost as if the directors of each channel phoned one another and said "ok... ready?  NOW!" and had their people press PLAY on the same stories.  And how varied, creative, at least authentic! do you think each channel's report was with regards to the words they used in the story?  They're in more perfect unison than the choir in my local church.


Is this choice?




This happens with language and when it does, it is even worse, because more insidious. The irony is this silent threat is loud.
Speak with 12 people and ask them all the same question. See how many give the same answer.
Speak with 12 people and see how many use the same expressions, turns of phrases, metaphors, similes, etc, to express their opinion.  See how many differ in terms of their opinions on the same issue.
Speak with these 12 people and, at the end, see how many of the expressions they used to convey their wildly differing opinions can be traced to MSNBBCNN.


Recently, talking to someone close to me, I broached this topic, and she said it is because there are a lot of not v bright people in the world.  Maybe.  I'm even willing to agree with that.  But, I asked here, wouldn't that translate into, say, 12 or at least 10 DIFFERENT stupid opinions?  How come the stupidity is so uniform?  Why is the putative stupidity being expressed in the same ways?  Surely there isn't a Stupid Club, like the Trekkies have, whereby ppl get together to exchange views on whatever, and come up with a small collection of things to say?  The "government line" of stupidity?  


But not even governments can keep their cabinet members from stepping into piles of sophistry designed by journalists who work for papers which exist thanks to advertisement from companies whose interests go against the people, sovereignty, and democracy.  


Manufacturing Consent (MC) shows this.  I know I am not discovering anything new.  What I find is that the processes outlined and examined in MC are spreading to private exchanges, to informal conversations.  The property language has of becoming a flexible tool to anyone who uses it is eroding, and no one has to make an effort to make it so.  It is just happening because too many people's mental inertia is allowing it.


The public use of language is invading our private exchanges and not being renewed by individuals' linguistic creativity, or at least not at the same rate.  Like eroded soil, linguistic rain is no longer penetrating the atmosphere, and condensation is more and more a concentrated version of a compact formula of pollutant elements designed to incite apathy and ostensible transparency.  No! Not even. Transparency is NOT a positive thing.  Seeing THROUGH something is not seeing the something itself.  I sit corrected and, after having thought it through, hereby declare those clouds to be of ostensible opacity.


Fratelli, let's think, please.  


Yknow how in churches the pastor, priest, preacher, will say, "brothers and sisters, let us pray" ?


Please, let us think.


You know it is the same thing, but saying THINK instead of PRAY changes something, does it not?


Why does it change something?


According to me, it is because we think for ourselves, but pray outwardly.  Thought is introspection, as good prayer ought to be, and often isn't.


Let us use language to fit our real thoughts.
Like the economy and economic theory, language exists and was created by us, to suit our needs, both to communicate and create.  Like the economy, it needs to fit our lives and benefit us, not the other way around.  We should not modify our thoughts merely to fit around the economy and the language being imposed on us.
Language, like the economy, does not belong to pressure groups, political parties, or academics. Like Castro Alves said "the public square is the people's, as the sky is the condor's". Language is the biggest public square. Let's not let malls own it like they do so much of the literal public square now, too much.


Let us let language fit our need to create.
We do not have to use the expressions ppl on telly use.  NO ONE has the monopoly on language. It belongs to all of us, and we can ALL of us use it how we want to use it.  


I want to put Langue, according to Def #3 at the beginning of this entry, ON PAROLE, and free Parole from the outdoors prison in which it currently floats.  Seriously.  And I'm not talking about JamesJoyce Syndrome.


This is so important because language shapes thought.  Try to think without words. Can you?

I haven't read it but like the cover

Apple & Pear

"What you see is what you get" is a cliché that interests me.  How true is it of people? How true is it of people who say this phrase about themselves?  I don't have answers, I'm afraid.  Today, I have questions.

The idea according to which we're all complicated complex layered human beings whose appearance may not reflect this state of affairs is one I thought true as far back as I can remember.

People talk and sometimes say something which is neither v intelligent nor desperately original, and yet one thinks to oneself "no, it can't be all, there's got to be more to her/him."

Similarly, whenever someone is consistently interesting, funny, all-good-things-etc, one tends to ask the Q: "what's the catch?" or say "if it's too good to be true, it probably is."

And yes I see the merit in this basic speculation vis-à-vis one's inner core, if you'll allow me this Cosmo-Elle-Marie Claire-ism.

But what's been bugging me is: what if one's appearance IS one's core?  What if sometimes one's tendency to see something that isn't immediately visible is a fruitless exercise precisely because there's nothing else there?

If you can imagine removing someone's mask only to find the same thing underneath, over and over, ad infinitum, that's what I mean.  Or that character Jim Carrey plays in The Mask-- at one point the mask is absorbed by his body and is no longer an "accessory", but a sort of second skin.

Imagine going to a costume party wearing a mask of... your own face.  

Why must there always be something else under the scratch card? 

I've been finding more and more that ppl's masks are not only an 'incomplete' representation or manifestation of their inner cores, but that, often, much more frequently than I'd previously allowed for, if you scratch the surface you find either nothing under it or you find a larger sample of what is manifest on the surface.  Perhaps the example par excellence of what I mean is Michael Jackson.  He turned his face into what he perceived himself to be inside, and yet, looking at him, one of the first thoughts that come to me is: he isn't only his appearance.  But isn't he his appearance, too?  And why are appearances considered as less relevant in the order of things?  And I don't even mean it in a superficial way.

More!

Turning aside (stick your hand out there Joe) from this cliché stuff of which you are not half so heartily sick as I--it occurs to me that I should record (for the benefit) (of posterity) those appalling attempts at adult chat which (invariably) follows certain set introductory formulae. I mean, a phrase such as 'In my humble opinion...' Clearly, no decent person could (bring himself) to start talking with such a despicable preamble. But consider the sort of thing that follows these further phrases I have listed below. If you do so conscientiously I will have you excused from jury service for the next seven years.

'Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...'

'I rise...'

'We are all g. t. h. to-n...'

'You all know why we are all g.t.h. to-n...'

'It needs no words of mine to introduce the next speaker...'

'Needless to say...'

'It may be olf-fashioned, but...'

'Your headmaster has asked me to speak to you this evening...'

'I don't know much about art, but...'

'The donor of this banquet is a very shy man; he has asked me to come among you to-night and let you know how much he...'

'I have to speak to you boys this morning about a very painful matter...'

'I yield to none in my admiration for...'

'I crave the courtesy of your columns...'

'At the risk of boring my listeners...'

'In this connexion I recall an anecdote...'

'After all...'

'Double You Bee Yeats once said to me...'

'I remember your poor father saying...'

'I must say it always has been a mystery to me...'

And lashed but not lost, that great trumpet of epileptic perfidy:

'WHEREAS...'

I regret all this. Bitterly.

IN view of the vogue of this drug (which takes care of everything from pneumonia to what your uncle Joe had), why not revise the primary medical degrees to read M.&B., B.Ch., B.A.O.

You don't think that's funny? Well let's hear one of your own. Tell a funny story. Kill us, strangle the life out of us with lethal gurgles. Sad affair at Sidney Parade. Strange man collapses after hearing joke from Irish Times reader. An unknown man, respectably dressed and of middle age, collapsed and died yesterday after listening to a humorous anecdote related by a reader of a Dublin newspaper. With the deceased man passes the last link with Parnell. A man who spoke the Irish language at a time when it was neither profitable nor popular, he had a large circle of friends. (And tell me, pray, why do friends always adopt this irrectangular information?) A popular figure in Irish dancing circles, he was a firm believer in the immutable principles laid down by the Manchester school.

Flann O'Brien

The Best of Myles

Since yesterday's idea of writing about grammar was abruptly aborted, today I think it would be only fair to talk about another one of my favourite topics: clichés. I think it's fair to say that the best person for the job is not me, though one day I hope to be able to take this subject to new heights of witticism and urbanity. For now I'm happy to share the following texts which have given me many moments of wild (and protracted) laughter.

**********

"'Myles na Gopaleen' was the name Flann O'Brien adopted for Cruiskeen Lawn, the column he wrote for the Irish Times. This book is a selection of his best material -- and it is one of the supreme comic achievements in our language - containing such immortal creations such as The Brother, a man with a solution to everything from the common cold to the economic crisis; the Plain People of Ireland, a breed distinguished for their love of a well-turned cliché, a drop of the hard stuff, and rebuking Myles when his inventions become too fanciful; and Keats and Chapman, two absurdly erudite poets who will stoop to any old adventure so long as it ends in an epigram." ~~ Back cover

Extracts from The Best of Myles by Myles na Gopaleen (Flann O'Brien):

CLUICHE NA gCLICHÉ

Do what I do. Carry a small grey American automatic and make sure that it is always stuffed with bullets. Then when some bleating fish-gilled bags opens up and says--

"Of course, backing horses is a mug's game."

--just empty the gun into his low-grade jungle forehead and explain what you have done to the police. The whole thing will be hushed up and will you never hear another word about it. To try you for murder after such provocation would be to make lobster salad out of the courts of justice.

If you did not kill him, he would probably go on and tell you that gin is a very depressing drink, or that September is the best month of the lot for holidays, and then it would simply have to be your life or his.

While you are here, please answer me this. In relation to any problem, what commodity of apparently fluid nature is it necessary to hammer out?

A solution.

What obscure and unhelpful act is often done with a problem?

That of only tinkering.

And to what degree is a problem sometimes insoluble?

Well-nigh.

*********************

CATECHISM OF CLICHÉ

What, as to the quality of solidity, imperviousness, and firmness, are facts?

Hard.

And as to temperature?

Cold.

With what do facts share this quality of frigidity?

Print.

To what do hard facts belong?

The situation.

And to what does a cold fact belong?

The matter.

What must we do to the hard facts of the situation?

Face up to the hard facts of the situation.

What does a cold fact frequently still do?

Remain.

And what is notoriously useless as a means of altering the hard facts of the situation?

All the talk in the world.

Is this killing you?

It certainly is.