language

  • Election special: Corbyn crosses the floor

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Politics

    [Update at end]

    There’s a phrase in English politics – crossing the floor. The floor is that of the House of Commons and it means that an elected MP has switched allegiance from one party to another.

    One former MP – Sir Hartley Shawcross – was rumoured to be constantly on the point of changing allegiance throughout the early and mid-1950s and was consequently nicknamed Sir Shortly Floorcross. 😀

    It is a practice normally indulged in by rank and file MPs, not party leaders, unless Bristol’s newspaper of (warped) record is to be believed as per the following screenshot.

    Above headline are the words Conservative Party
    A proper Red Tory?

    Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. According to the Bristol Post, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has joined the Conservatives just 3 weeks away from a general election.

    Your correspondent is now awaiting confirmation of this report from other mainstream media outlets.

    Update: 14.00 hrs, 21st May – The header over the link has now been changed to read “Politics”. However, use of a special creative writing technique would have avoided the original gaffe. Its name: proofreading! 😀

  • Election special: Tory buzzword bingo

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    Cricket fans have long been acquainted with the delights of Boycott Bingo (posts passim), where the regular verbal mannerisms on Test Match Special of the greatest living Yorkshireman have been turned into a game.

    Following the recent announcement of the snap general election next month, followers of politics can now play their own game of buzzword bingo with the stock phrases and soundbites of the nation’s political leaders and election candidates.

    Expect these buzzwords to be wheeled out until everyone is absolutely fed up with them, usually after about 48 hours.

    The Conservatives’ soundbites are particularly limited in scope and number and, from what I’ve seen and heard, to call their candidates’ and leader’s performance wooden would be an insult to trees.

    Below, courtesy of The Guardian, is your very own buzzword bingo card for use with Tory leader Theresa May (whose main method of operation seems to consist of avoiding saying anything of substance. Ed.) and her colleagues.

    Good luck!

    bingo card featuring words strong, stable and coalition of chaos

  • Still verminous

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    At the Conservative Party conference in 2002, new party chairwoman Theresa May stunned delegates with her keynote speech by saying the following:

    Yes, we’ve made progress, but let’s not kid ourselves. There’s a way to go before we can return to government. There’s a lot we need to do in this party of ours. Our base is too narrow and so, occasionally, are our sympathies, You know what some people call us: the nasty party.

    Since 2010 the Conservatives have proved in government that they haven’t changed and they’re still the Nasty Party writ large with their austerity policies that have cut funding to local authorities, cutting benefits for the disabled and referring to the unemployed as scroungers and shirkers.

    Theresa May has since moved on from Conservative Party chairwoman via the Home Office to doing Prime Minister impressions at a lectern outside 10 Downing Street and at the despatch box in the House of Commons. Although her 2002 admonishment might have been the first time that a prominent Tory had criticised the party, the Tories’ political opponents have been doing so along the same lines for decades.

    Aneurin Bevan at the microphoneOne of the most prominent of these criticisms in the post-war period came on 4th July 1948 when Aneurin Bevan, then the Labour government’s Minister of Health, addressed a Labour Party rally in Manchester on the anniversary of Labour’s accession to power.

    Bevan’s speech was largely a review, followed by a pledge that the Government could carry out its entire programme, including nationalisation of the steel industry, a pledge in the party’s 1945 election manifesto.

    However, Bevan recalled what he described as the bitter experiences of his early life. For a time he was forced to live on the earnings of an elder sister and was told to emigrate.

    On this point, he remarked:

    That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation.

    Yes, that’s right. In Bevan’s eyes, the Conservatives were “lower than vermin“.

    Oxford Dictionaries defines vermin as follows:

    Wild animals which are believed to be harmful to crops, farm animals, or game, or which carry disease, e.g. rodents.

    It also offers the additional sub-definition below:

    People perceived as despicable and as causing problems for the rest of society.

    As regards its origin, the word vermin first appears in Middle English and comes from from Old French based on Latin vermis ‘worm’ since it originally denoted animals such as reptiles and snakes.

    However, this demotion of the Tories to rank below rats, mice and the like wasn’t the only attack on the Conservatives during Bevan’s speech, since he is also reported as asking the meeting rhetorically at one point: “For what is Toryism, except organised spivvery?“. This reference to wartime black marketeers may sound anachronistic, but there are still senior members of the Conservative Party who are even nowadays referred to as spivs (posts passim) – and by others apart from your ‘umble scribe.

    Finally, in view of the impending general election, it might be worth recalling what Bevan went on the say about the Conservatives of his time, since these words still have relevance and pertinence today.

    Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were.

    Ouch! All that needs changing to make the above quotation contemporary to the 2017 election would be to replace the name of Woolton with that of a present-day prominent right-wing Tory grandee. Will any opposition candidate do so?

  • British press puts truth in intensive care

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    In 1918 US Senator Hiram Warren Johnson is purported to have said: “The first casualty when war comes is truth.”

    There may not be a war, but classifying the status of truth as a mere casualty may be insufficient and it now finds itself on life support in intensive care when the predominantly right-wing British press is reporting politics, particularly politics abroad.

    Yesterday saw France go to the polls in the first round of the 2017 presidential election, with 11 candidates standing.

    Under the French system, the 2 front runners in the first round of the election go forward to a straight winner takes all ballot in the second round.

    In yesterday’s ballot the independent candidate Emmanuel Macron polled around 23.7% of vote with Marine Le Pen, leader of the fascist Front National coming in second on roughly 21.5%.

    Early opinion polls also give Macron a lead of over 20 percentage points over Le Pen with regard to second round voting intentions and he’s currently predicted to garner 60% of second round votes, thus excluding Le Pen from the Elysée Palace.

    However, looking at certain sections of the British press, anyone would think right-wing intolerance had triumphed in this first round.

    Here’s The Times, formerly regarded as Britain’s newspaper of record, now reduced to a sad mouthpiece parroting the extreme right-wing agenda of the deeply unpleasant Rupert Murdoch.

    Times front page featuring large photo of Marine Le Pen

    Note the large photograph of Marine Le Pen. It’s also worth noting that despite the hype from right-wing media around the world, a $9.8m loan to the FN from a Russian bank with Kremlin links and alleged Russian social media support, Le Pen polled little better than in the 2012 presidential election when she finished third with nearly 18% of the vote.

    However, The Times was not alone in its stilted coverage. Here’s the Daily Mail’s front page.

    Daily Mail front page misreporting

    All that can be said is that editor Paul Dacre has presided over misinformation and distortion on a massive scale, but then again the Mail has decades of experience in promoting fascism dating right back to the 1930s and its founder Viscount Rothermere’s infamous “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” piece.

    Mail's Hurrah for the Blackshirts headline

    Comme on dit en France, plus ça change…

  • Vocabulary – what a bummer

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

    It’s a well-known adage that Britain and the United States are 2 countries divided by a common language.

    However, that doesn’t seem to stop constant encroachment from over the other side of the Atlantic, as illustrated by the following letter from yesterday’s The Grauniad (dead tree edition).

    shot of letter complaining assholery should have been arseholery

  • Saints, dragons and public holidays

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics

    Today is St George’s Day, the saint’s day of England’s patron saint and the purported day of Shakespeare’s birth (as well as being the day of his actual death in 1616. Ed.).

    George was first adopted as England’s patron saint in the 14th century, when he was given the job and his predecessor St Edmund the Martyr, the 9th century king of East Anglia, was given the medieval equivalent of his P45. Nevertheless, traces of a cult of St George in England are discernible from the 9th century onwards in the form of a liturgy used at that time at Durham Cathedral, a 10th century Anglo-Saxon martyrology and in dedications to Saint George at Fordington in Dorset, Thetford in Norfolk, Southwark and Doncaster.

    According to legend, George was a Roman soldier of Greek origin and officer in the guard of the Roman emperor Diocletian, who ordered his death for George failing to recant his Christian faith.

    Looking at patronage, George is much more than the patron saint of England. Four other countries also have him as their patron saint, i.e.:

    • Georgia;
    • Malta;
    • Portugal; and
    • Romania.

    Furthermore, George is also the patron saint of Spain’s autonomous communities of Aragon and Catalonia.

    The best known feat about St George is his alleged dragon slaying. Just like his being a member of Diocletian’s guard, this is also legend. In the medieval romances, the lance with which Saint George is said to have slain the dragon was called Ascalon after the Levantine city of Ashkelon, which is in the modern state of Israel. As regards any factual basis for the legend, some evidence links the legend back to very old Egyptian and Phoenician sources in a late antique statue of Horus fighting a “dragon”. This links the legendary George – who should not be confused with the historical George – to various ancient sources of mythology around the eastern Mediterranean.

    Raphael's painting of George slaying the dragon
    George slaying the dragon as painted by Raphael

    Speaking of dragons, the Old English Wordhord Twitter account came up with “ligdraca” – a fire-drake or dragon vomiting flames – for St George’s Day.

    screenshot of tweet for lidraga

    Celebrating St George’s Day has been more common in the past in England, although there have been times when it was celebrated less or not at all.

    Indeed, Keith Flett informs us that its celebration was popular until the Reformation, but it was still marked. Under the Commonwealth, its celebration was banned in 1645 under the Long Parliament which sat from 1640 to 1660. When the English in their folly decided to invite Charles Stuart back in 1660 after the death of Cromwell, celebrating St George’s Day was restored.

    Unlike St Andrew’s Day in Scotland, St George’s Day is not a public holiday (confusingly called a bank holiday in British English. Ed.). Indeed the countries of the United Kingdom have amongst the lowest numbers of public holidays in the developed world, whilst the UK as a whole has the the fewest of any G20 country or EU member state.

    Whether to respond to this shortcoming or not, it’s been reported today that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will announce that Labour will introduce four new bank holidays – one for each of the patron saints of the countries making up the United Kingdom – if the party wins the forthcoming general election. This will be sold on the doorstep as a measure “to give workers the break they deserve“: and that’s definitely something for which I can vote.

  • Conservative manifesto shocker

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

    When the UK’s not at all unelected Prime Minister announced her intention to seek parliamentary approval for a snap general election earlier this week, I asked my Twitter followers via a poll who was likely to be writing the Conservative Party manifesto.

    The poll is now closed and there’s a surprise winner.

    image showing 61% poll result for Vladimir Putin writing Conservative manifesto

    Your correspondent was fully expecting the party’s manifesto to be written by the usual suspects – the owners and editors of the British right wing press, but alas Twitter – or the part thereof with which I’m in touch – thinks differently.

    The question that must now be asked is whether Conservative Party Central Office have time to translate the party’s manifesto into English and Welsh (if for once the Tories have stopped treating Wales as an English colony. Ed.) from the original Russian once Vladimir Vladimirovich has completed his draft? In the immortal words of Private Eye: I think we should be told! 😀

  • Je suis saboteur

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media, Uncategorized

    Today’s Daily Mail front page is in full censorious mode following the announcement yesterday morning of a snap election by the UK’s not at all unelected Prime Minister.

    Daily Mail front page with headline crush the saboteurs

    As can be seen, those who voted remain in last year’s EU referendum have now been reclassified by the Mail. We’re no longer Remoaners, but Saboteurs.

    Indeed the Mail headline has been greatly exercising the Twittersphere this morning, with its wording being compared with both extreme wings of politics (the phrase “Crush the Saboteurs” was first used by Lenin in January 1919. Ed.), with several reminders of the Mail’s infamous Hurrah for the Blackshirts headline from January 1934.

    Mail's Hurrah for the Blackshirts headline

    Since this morning Mrs May has defended the Mail’s intemperate stance and headline, pleading “freedom of the press”. Some would argue freedom comes with a sense of responsibility attached, Mrs May.

    As someone who voted remain in the referendum and still regards the course towards a so-called hard Brexit favoured by the Prime Minister and entailing leaving the Single Market, the course of action she is advocating looks to me like the ultimate sabotage.

    As a person whose life is built around words, the definition and etymology of the word sabotage interests me.

    According to Dictionary.com, sabotage has the following meanings as a noun:

    • any underhand interference with production, work, etc., in a plant, factory, etc., as by enemy agents during wartime or by employees during a trade dispute; and
    • any undermining of a cause

      • .

    Sabotage can also be used as a verb, meaning to injure or attack by sabotage.

    As regards the origins of sabotage, it came into use in English in the late 19th/early 20th century, emanating from the French, equivalent to sabot(er) to botch, orig., to strike, shake up, harry, derivative of sabot, which dates back to the 13th century and denotes a clog or wooden shoe. Sabot originates from an unidentified source that also produced similar words in Old Provençal, Portuguese, Spanish (zapata), Italian (ciabatta), Arabic (sabbat) and Basque (zapata).

    As regards sabotage in the context of the UK’s relationship with the European Union/EEC, it must be remembered that the Europhobes (later called Eurosceptics. Ed.) were moaning even before the ink was dry on the signatures of Edward Heath, Alec Douglas-Home and Geoffrey Rippon on the 1972 Treaty of Accession.

    The Europhobes have consistently sabotaged Britain’s relationship with Europe ever since and, as someone who is diametrically opposed to their plans, I am therefore proud to declare: “Je suis saboteur!”

  • Grauniad terminology failure

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media, Uncategorized

    On Twitter, the ITI has kindly pointed out a terminological error in last week’s Guardian. I appeared in the text of the article shown below, taken on the occasion of the UK’s not at all unelected prime minister Theresa May’s visit to those nice people in Saudi Arabia who are kind enough to buy lots of weapons off the British for use in Yemen.

    shot of page of paper version of Guardian

    The person identified as Person 2 is described as “the most important person in the room, the translator”.

    I’m afraid you are wrong there, Grauniad. He may be the most important person in the room, but alas he is no translator.

    The error of the Grauniad’s ways was helpfully pointed out in a letter on Tuesday by fellow linguist Jane Straker and her letter is reproduced in full below.

    The big picture (5 April) was good and the numbered captions helpful. It was a boost for our profession to have the man below the late King Abdullah’s portrait described as “perhaps the most important person in the room”. However, translators are not normally people who listen and speak (sometimes simultaneously) in meetings: that is the job of interpreters. Some translators are trained to interpret, but they usually excel at writing, keyboard skills and carefully honing text. Speech is not writing; transfer of meaning between languages and cultures requires not only accuracy, speed and clarity, but impartiality. Interpreters should have no vested interest in the outcome of a meeting. It would be useful to know whether Theresa May had a British Arabic-English interpreter in her delegation.

    To avoid future blunders and save interpreters from putting pen to paper – or fingers to keyboard – passing Grauniad (& other) journalists are advised to consult my handy illustrated guide to translators and interpreters.

    Some linguists have remarked that the two sides of the profession should stop being so pedantic about terminology. However, I believe terminological exactitude is a crucial skill for both translators and interpreters. Give your thoughts in the comments below.

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