Dialogue: Expletives deleted will bolster the argument

By GORDON McLAUCHLAN

Words have both a reference and an emotional content, a fact easily understood by any student of language or any intelligent person who stops to think about it; so it's been an interesting week or two in the public use of emotionally charged language.

I can't think of any words that have no emotional content, or their use in poetry would be proscribed, but some nouns - concrete, person, roads, shoes and so on - and most prepositions, for example, are most often used in their literal sense.

Whereas "Wow!" and" Whoopdeedo!" are entirely exclamatory and emotional and have little or no reference value at all.

And "ratbag" never means a bag of rats, and apparently never did, although as The Dictionary of New Zealand English (DNZE) points out: "The term 'old ratbag' can be used in an ameliorated sense." Just as a court in Australia some years ago ruled that "old bastard" is not necessarily defamatory, indeed can be a term of endearment.

The better-known and most frequently used four-letter words often have a valid literal meaning in one context - usually as blunt Anglo-Saxon terms best used in the privacy of your own environment - but
become nothing but expletives in another, sometimes carrying the verbal traction of a form of violence. It's a bit like the two-fingers V for victory with the palm facing outwards and a sign-language expletive the other way round.

In any argument, powerfully emotive words seldom advance a rational cause, but rather retard it. And journalists use them in serious discussion at their peril.

During a recent Holmes show segment on longer court sentences, the host referred almost as an aside to those convicted of serious crimes as "scum," a word that carries so much emotional freight that it should have no place in the casual vocabulary of the facilitator in a current affairs debate.

Then this week the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, was quoted as labelling Opposition MP Wyatt Creech as "scumball" and "sleazebag," words that, like "scum," have so little reference value they are really
expletives. It's clear that the Prime Minister is not easily familiar with the terms because usage would have dictated "scumbag" and "sleazeball."

Indeed, the fact that she fractured the terms in such a way demonstrates they were used entirely as expletives, to the serious detriment of her case. When I heard her use those words I decided she had, to use the latest idiom, lost it.

She was also quoted as using "filthy" so entirely out of any sense of its literal meaning that she reinforced the inference that she had lost the argument. I doubt that anyone listening would have thought her language appropriate to the accusations against her husband, no matter how trivial and tiresome those accusations were.

Interestingly enough, "scumbag" and "sleazeball" have a harder edge to them now than "bugger," which was very off-limits 50 years ago but quite suddenly became acceptable for public currency because usage had so divorced it from its once predominant literal meaning.

Then later this week, language again became a matter for public discussion when Saatchi & Saatchi suggested the city's slogan should be "Auckland A," pitched as a play on the expression "eh" and accompanied by sign language. Now we are in the pure realm of emotion here, or perhaps sentiment is the better word.

What has fascinated me about the issue is the depth of the discussion, with words such as "spirit" and "soul" and "civic pride" bandied about as though the term is an enriched form of poetry that will get close to the heart of Aucklanders.

The question is not about poetry or heart, but simply whether it will catch on as a form of sentimental shorthand, as an acceptable chant for Aucklanders in the, well yes, the rather mindless but not offens
ive business of what Americans call boosterism.

I quite like "The City of Sails," and I'm sure that slogan will hang around, but it doesn't have the exclamatory rhythms of "Absolutely, Positively Wellington" and I'm not sure that "Auckland A" does, either.

But the fact that many, if not most, people dislike it on first acquaintance doesn't mean it won't be entirely accepted within a couple of years if it's "sold" well enough, and that's what advertising agencies do, isn't it?

By the way, "eh" is, according to Harry Orsman's DNZE, "a frequent speech particle reinforcing or emphasising a question or request," first used as 'ne' in representations of Maori speakers' use of Eng
lish, giving emphasis to an interrogative statement, especially one expecting the answer 'yes,' rather like the French 'nest-ce pas."' The double Maori and Gallic association is absolutely positive, eh?

PS: One other small matter that has arisen lately is whether we should start farming and cooking the kiwi. In a book called Something of Myself, Rudyard Kipling described a meal he had at a hotel between Napier and Taupo during his visit to New Zealand last century, and said the roasted Apteryx australis was very tasty.