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June 21, 2008 Vulgarity has its limits, supposedly. But, even extremely highly educated and knowledgeable people such as, e.g., Peggy Noonan or Michael Medved has improperly used the absurd and completely unneeded redundancy of saying: same exact, instead of, perhaps, saying: exactly the same. If brevity be the soul of wit, there seems to be a growing corps of many witless intellectuals. It ought to be simply regarded as being as vulgar and boorish as in using the well-known, lower-class, vulgar, non-word: ain’t. For the well educated involved in such public literary scandal, it is totally inexcusable and unpardonable for any serious or presumably serious writers to be involved with such coarseness of expression. Any important thinker ought to write with precision those things made explicitly for public consumption. It would be similar to writing a redundancy by mentioning, for instance, a “smile grin” [or “repeat again”] that a character in a novel might show pertaining to a facial expression. Repetition, especially when there is absolutely no legitimate writing-related imperative of some kind, obviously bespeaks, ever quite manifestly, of evident poor grammar, meaning, in particular, plain lousy syntax. Such redundant phraseology distracts greatly from what a writer might be trying to say as one must somehow negotiate the clear awkwardness in reading what has been so sloppily scripted. The writing ought, logically speaking, to have been judiciously revised prior to publication. There is then seen a kind of carelessness, a grammatical laziness, that should not ever be the valued hallmark of a serious author who, one suspects, may wish to command attention as to what was written or said, to the ideas that were sought to be presented. What has occurred, given the increasing frequency of hearing this improper, redundant expression, is an unfortunately marked decline of basic standards as to what ought to be rightly accepted as proper American English. One expects such popular talkers as Rush Limbaugh, who has, in fact, used “same exact” in his radio talks, to be just commonly ignorant of proper grammatical rules and practices, so he, among others, could be simply ignored or excused. But, those who are college graduates, unlike Limbaugh, are especially to be held much more notably accountable for extreme derelictions of speech; this is in terms of imprecise or vulgar usage as to their language skills, the verbal arts as it were. On the other hand, as Limbaugh is surely a major part of the modern communications industry in America, he is still fairly culpable, within the scope of his domain of contemporary mass media, as the number one radio talk show personality today. Important public speakers such as Noonan or Medved ought to be, nonetheless, publicly chastised and reprimanded, ridiculed and upbraided, for their noted and continuing verbal carelessness and abuse of the common language, which is, one perceives, surely without any rational question. In published compositions where editors are supposed to exist, moreover, the perceived failure may even be directed more toward terribly incompetent editors who do not eschew written reduplication, a type of poor syntax, meaning added words that truly add nothing. One ought to know that using “same exact” grates heavily, therefore, upon educated ears that have contempt for the lowering or disvaluing of requisite (American) English grammar. Language has ever been a means of helping to establish and defend civilization by raising language standards more and more out of an unwanted barbarism. The ancient Greeks referred, for instance, to non-Greeks as barbarians because they spoke, as far as the worshippers of Zeus were concerned, just unknowable and unimportant gibberish. Use of obviously non-required and, thus, absurd redundancies of speech is, most clearly, barbaric in terms of the vile and contemptible abuse of one’s native language. Perhaps, this discussion may be wrongly condemned or, worse yet, dismissed off hand as a dumb type of a Prof. Henry Higgins’ style of oration blasting the continuing debasement of the English tongue, (especially in America). One can be emphatic, if wanted, without relying carelessly upon a kind of cheap linguistic crunch, without being so vulgarly redundant. However, as the owl of Minerva [wisdom] takes flight at night, perhaps, enough people will wake up, even at this late hour, and be still rightly alarmed now to take up the good fight for upholding proper grammar athwart the vulgarities and stupidities of the passing age. A stigma, as it is known with the social rejection of the non-word ain’t, ought to be, therefore, properly attached to such idiotic and perverse redundancies. So, always let the wise and good seek to intelligently banish this and any/all other simply unneeded redundancies that, logically speaking, add absolutely nothing extra to whatever is being discussed. Crusading valiantly, moreover, against the unwanted corruption of any useful language is supremely part of educated and civilized conduct befitting a people dedicated to serious grammatical standards versus literary barbarism. In conclusion, Noonan, Medved, and many others have been, thus, put on notice. ------------ About the author: Joseph Andrew Settanni, CRM, CPC is a Certified Records Manager and Certified Professional Consultant with 30 years of professional experiencein data, archives, records and information management. Email: mkeegan311@earthlink.net Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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