Strictly English by Simon Heffer: Part Three
In the third of four extracts from his book instructing us on correct written English, Simon Heffer tackles the language of tabloid exaggeration
The language of tabloid exaggeration is apparent on every page of what the trade calls the “red-top” newspapers. Prices soar, and then they crash. In politics, rows about issues are always erupting, and they are inevitably furious. The key participants in them clash, and they evince rage. The consequence of an outrage is that there will be a probe, leading up to a damning report. Its shock findings will be followed by a clampdown (or a crackdown). The opponents of the transgressors will slam their behaviour and seek to topple them.
Any death, especially of a teen, is a tragedy, and if more than one person dies it is a catastrophe. It leaves grieving loved ones gutted. Should the victim be a young girl, she was bubbly, especially if blonde. Young men, unless proven criminals, had in their lives had huge respect from their mates.
On the sport pages, managers of soccer teams vow that their sides will do better, knowing they risk being axed if they do not. Should a team suddenly become brilliant it will be because a star player has shown he is a hero, and can expect a hike in his wages. He may then launch a new career as a fashion icon. Should the team crash to defeat in a cup final, all its fans would be devastated.
Celebs will usually have amazing lifestyles that are revealed by the tabloid press as a series of stunning events. These will often be fuelled by champagne and sometimes by drugs. They entail living in a million-pound home, but also possibly sharing a love nest with a stunner and, as the paper will reveal, a love child as a result of extensive cheating on a spouse. The wronged woman (for it usually is a woman) will be brave during her ordeal: until it emerges that she has had a toyboy too, with whom there have been nights of nookie.
Some of the italicised words are pure slang and have no place in respectable writing – celebs and nookie, for example. Others come under the heading of coy or vulgar euphemism – toyboy, love child, love nest, cheating and stunner are what might more directly be called gigolo, illegitimate child, flat, committing adultery and mistress.
Some are simply failures of terminology: those who ride horses go riding, not horse riding; and those who shoot or hunt practise field sports. Blood sports is a politically loaded term popularised by opponents of field sports, and often used unwittingly by newspapers that have no editorial objection to them.
The main objection to most of the tabloid language highlighted above is that it devalues the currency. If somebody is devastated because his football team has lost a match, how does he feel when he gets home and finds his wife and children have been killed in a fire? If a woman is brave because of her reaction to the way in which her philandering husband embarrasses her publicly, how are we to describe her if she endures with courage and fortitude a horrible and potentially fatal illness? How can the ordeal of one experience compare with that of the other?
If one death, however sad for those concerned, is a tragedy, how does one describe the moral effect of a plane crash in which 400 people are killed? If a man who scores a goal is a hero, what term do we reserve to describe one who wins the Victoria Cross? If an MP suffers shame because he claims for a food mixer improperly on his expenses, what does he suffer if he is convicted of a criminal offence? If he is disgraced for being found in bed with someone else’s wife, what adjective do we use of him if he is found to have perpetrated a systematic fraud, or is convicted of paedophilia?
Above all, if unexceptional facts (often supplied to the newspaper by a celebrity’s public relations adviser) are described as having been revealed when, in fact, all they have been is disclosed, what verb is to be used for something that is a genuine revelation?
Other words have become clichés and are therefore meaningless. Little weight is carried now by the metaphorical use of verbs such as soar, crash, launch, emerge, fuel and clash. Nouns like toff, fat cat, clampdown and icon are just lazy labels for people or for abstract activities; so too are phrases such as damning report and shock finding.
Respect (huge or otherwise) in this context is an absurdity. It has become a word used in urban argot to describe not a feeling of reverence by one for another, but what a self-regarding person who has watched too many gangster films imagines is the estimation in which he should be held by others.
* Strictly English: the Correct Way to Write… and Why It Matters by Simon Heffer (Random House, £12.99 t £11.99) is published on Sept 9
The main objection to most of the tabloid language highlighted above is that it devalues the currency. If somebody is devastated because his football team has lost a match, how does he feel when he gets home and finds his wife and children have been killed in a fire? If a woman is brave because of her reaction to the way in which her philandering husband embarrasses her publicly, how are we to describe her if she endures with courage and fortitude a horrible and potentially fatal illness? How can the ordeal of one experience compare with that of the other?
If one death, however sad for those concerned, is a tragedy, how does one describe the moral effect of a plane crash in which 400 people are killed? If a man who scores a goal is a hero, what term do we reserve to describe one who wins the Victoria Cross? If an MP suffers shame because he claims for a food mixer improperly on his expenses, what does he suffer if he is convicted of a criminal offence? If he is disgraced for being found in bed with someone else’s wife, what adjective do we use of him if he is found to have perpetrated a systematic fraud, or is convicted of paedophilia?
Above all, if unexceptional facts (often supplied to the newspaper by a celebrity’s public relations adviser) are described as having been revealed when, in fact, all they have been is disclosed, what verb is to be used for something that is a genuine revelation?
Other words have become clichés and are therefore meaningless. Little weight is carried now by the metaphorical use of verbs such as soar, crash, launch, emerge, fuel and clash. Nouns like toff, fat cat, clampdown and icon are just lazy labels for people or for abstract activities; so too are phrases such as damning report and shock finding.
Respect (huge or otherwise) in this context is an absurdity. It has become a word used in urban argot to describe not a feeling of reverence by one for another, but what a self-regarding person who has watched too many gangster films imagines is the estimation in which he should be held by others.
* Strictly English: the Correct Way to Write… and Why It Matters by Simon Heffer (Random House, £12.99 t £11.99) is published on Sept 9
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/7978041/Strictly-English-by-Simon-Heffer-Part-Three.html
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