Apologies for the title, there are only so many words that rhyme with 'bucket'.
With Michele and the kids back in the US for the summer, I am, with the exception of a few weeks in August when I will join them for the annual sunburning and sand eating event at the beach in New Jersey, knocking around London on my own.
This annual familial summer migration has in previous years afforded me the opportunity to do touristy things, to go hiking in Scotland and to spend time with various friends in various pubs. This summer, though, I intend to use the time to tackle a somewhat fluid list of chores, errands and pastimes which I've been either too busy or too lazy to undertake with the family around - the list of things whose undertaking I have, throughout the year, momentarily considered before concluding, "anh, fuckit." The list consists of mundane things like cleaning the black gunk out of the washer, learning to play tennis, writing a novel. That sort of stuff.
Today I spent most of the morning getting my iPhone to sync entirely with one computer, rather than partially with two and, as I would be in technology hell anyway, decided that today would be a good day to organize my applications on the phone into folders so I can find them a bit easier. I currently have to scroll through 8 or 9 pages of applications to find the one I want. Occasionally I discover an application that I'd forgotten I bought, neglected and gathering electronic dust in a remote corner of the phone.
Unfortunately, the mechanism Apple provides for moving icons around involves a great deal of dragging while the software helpfully arranges all the other icons around the one you're moving. Placing an icon in a particular spot relative to others is about as easy as arranging a school of live fish in size order.
After an hour of trying to drop icons into folders that skittered away like cockroaches as I approached them, I'd finally gotten everything organized the way I wanted it. And then the software crashed.
Anh, fuckit.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Loose Linguistics
I've written before about how English vocabulary is so specific in some regards and so vague in others, and reading a BBC account this morning of an attack on a young Lithuanian couple which lasted several hours in which the man was beaten and the woman was raped multiple times by the attackers, I was struck by both the vagueness and the incongruity of the reporter's choice of words in recounting the timeframe (I'm paraphrasing a bit since I can't find the article now, but the below is accurate on the salient points):
'Police believe that the attack began in the early morning and was concluded by tea-time.'
"By tea-time." Seriously. That's what it said.
I recently came across a blog post titled "Why is Language Vague?" which refers to an academic paper of the same title and which briefly explores the subject from an economic point of view. The writer posits that people generally choose to use vague language rather than being forced into indefinite vocabulary due to a lack of language to sufficiently describe the desired concept.
So I wonder why was it that the reporter covering the attack chose to use what seems to me a vague colloquialism ("tea-time") when other more specific phrases are available and would arguably have been better suited to the business of factual reporting. A few possibilities present themselves.
First, I am forced to admit the possibility that, as a native speaker of American rather than British English, I may lack the cultural context which would allow a native British speaker to interpret "tea-time" in the way the reporter intended, namely as a reasonably specific time of day. I am well aware of the folly of relying on Wikipedia as a primary source for research material, but I think it's useful in this specific instance to show whether there is broad agreement as to what "tea-time" means. From the guilt of cultural ignorance, the Tea (Meal) entry pretty well exonerates me. According to the wisdom of the mobs, "tea-time" can be anywhere from 2pm to 7pm. Or thereabouts. So even if the precise time of the conclusion of the attack wasn't known to the reporter, a slightly less vague phrase like "early afternoon" or "early evening" would have served to better frame the time.
A second possibility is that the reporter was simply lazy. I don't think the BBC is in the habit of employing inept journalists, although a number of BBC reporters staged a walkout yesterday so it is entirely possible that this reporter was, shall we say, not on the varsity squad. It's also possible that this particular reporter lacked experience in crime reporting. He may, for example, normally be assigned to the culture desk, where a phrase like "tea-time" might reasonably be applied without attracting much scrutiny.
A third and, I think somewhat more interesting possibility arises when we challenge the assumption that the reporter's interests are directly in line with the readers. Broadly, we assume that a reporter investigates and provides facts to consumers who accept them as such, but we frequently adjust this assumption depending on the perceived reliability of the publication. In other words, most of us would be less inclined to accept as factual a story about, say, an invasion by extraterrestrials if that story were reported in the Sun than if the same story were printed in the New York Times. The story in this case was reported by the BBC, generally considered to be a reliable news source, so we can assume that the writer wasn't fabricating his facts, but it is plausible that he chose the phrase "tea-time" deliberately to influence our interpretation of the story.
I know nothing about the political or personal motivations of this particular reporter, so let's consider this possibility of misaligned interests theoretically. What could a hypothetical reporter hope to convey by the use of an incongruous and vague phrase (such as "tea-time") in a factual article about a violent episode? It may be that the reporter wants to impart to the piece a certain levity if he wants us not to take the news too seriously. Perhaps he is a xenophobe (the victims were Eastern European immigrants, an oft-reviled category here), or he may be a misogynist. Maybe he doesn't quite believe the couple's story and wants to send the reader a wink and a tap of his nose. Or maybe he's having a go at the police who are investigating the report, intending to give us the sense that the officers on the case may not exactly present the finest examples of investigatory prowess.
There may be other possibilities, but I think the point is made. If someone uses vague language it may be a mismatch of context between the sender and receiver, or intellectual sloppiness on the part of the sender; but it may also be intentional and strategic, allowing the sender to transmit a specific message encapsulated in non-specific words. In this instance, though, I'm forced to conclude, as the author of "Why is Language Vague?" did in his abstract: "I don't know."
Now I'm going to go do something else.
'Police believe that the attack began in the early morning and was concluded by tea-time.'
"By tea-time." Seriously. That's what it said.
I recently came across a blog post titled "Why is Language Vague?" which refers to an academic paper of the same title and which briefly explores the subject from an economic point of view. The writer posits that people generally choose to use vague language rather than being forced into indefinite vocabulary due to a lack of language to sufficiently describe the desired concept.
So I wonder why was it that the reporter covering the attack chose to use what seems to me a vague colloquialism ("tea-time") when other more specific phrases are available and would arguably have been better suited to the business of factual reporting. A few possibilities present themselves.
First, I am forced to admit the possibility that, as a native speaker of American rather than British English, I may lack the cultural context which would allow a native British speaker to interpret "tea-time" in the way the reporter intended, namely as a reasonably specific time of day. I am well aware of the folly of relying on Wikipedia as a primary source for research material, but I think it's useful in this specific instance to show whether there is broad agreement as to what "tea-time" means. From the guilt of cultural ignorance, the Tea (Meal) entry pretty well exonerates me. According to the wisdom of the mobs, "tea-time" can be anywhere from 2pm to 7pm. Or thereabouts. So even if the precise time of the conclusion of the attack wasn't known to the reporter, a slightly less vague phrase like "early afternoon" or "early evening" would have served to better frame the time.
A second possibility is that the reporter was simply lazy. I don't think the BBC is in the habit of employing inept journalists, although a number of BBC reporters staged a walkout yesterday so it is entirely possible that this reporter was, shall we say, not on the varsity squad. It's also possible that this particular reporter lacked experience in crime reporting. He may, for example, normally be assigned to the culture desk, where a phrase like "tea-time" might reasonably be applied without attracting much scrutiny.
A third and, I think somewhat more interesting possibility arises when we challenge the assumption that the reporter's interests are directly in line with the readers. Broadly, we assume that a reporter investigates and provides facts to consumers who accept them as such, but we frequently adjust this assumption depending on the perceived reliability of the publication. In other words, most of us would be less inclined to accept as factual a story about, say, an invasion by extraterrestrials if that story were reported in the Sun than if the same story were printed in the New York Times. The story in this case was reported by the BBC, generally considered to be a reliable news source, so we can assume that the writer wasn't fabricating his facts, but it is plausible that he chose the phrase "tea-time" deliberately to influence our interpretation of the story.
I know nothing about the political or personal motivations of this particular reporter, so let's consider this possibility of misaligned interests theoretically. What could a hypothetical reporter hope to convey by the use of an incongruous and vague phrase (such as "tea-time") in a factual article about a violent episode? It may be that the reporter wants to impart to the piece a certain levity if he wants us not to take the news too seriously. Perhaps he is a xenophobe (the victims were Eastern European immigrants, an oft-reviled category here), or he may be a misogynist. Maybe he doesn't quite believe the couple's story and wants to send the reader a wink and a tap of his nose. Or maybe he's having a go at the police who are investigating the report, intending to give us the sense that the officers on the case may not exactly present the finest examples of investigatory prowess.
There may be other possibilities, but I think the point is made. If someone uses vague language it may be a mismatch of context between the sender and receiver, or intellectual sloppiness on the part of the sender; but it may also be intentional and strategic, allowing the sender to transmit a specific message encapsulated in non-specific words. In this instance, though, I'm forced to conclude, as the author of "Why is Language Vague?" did in his abstract: "I don't know."
Now I'm going to go do something else.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)