KEY POINTS:
It sometimes seems as if political correctness has resolved the age-old debate over the impact of words once and for all.
Fred Barnard achieved an immortality of sorts - he scores a mention in every book of quotations - by coining the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. It should be noted, however, that he was specifically referring to advertising on trams.
Children chant "sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me", but often find out the hard way that you should never say never. The opposite view - that words are sharp instruments capable of inflicting grievous harm - can be traced back to the Old Testament, and in recent times found an advocate in the Australian rock band INXS who sang about "words as weapons, sharper than knives".
While the vernacular is full of variations on the theme of talk is cheap, the analogy between words and arrows - neither, once dispatched, can be recalled - is truer than ever now that any public utterance can be transmitted around the world in the time it takes to say "cheeky darkie".
On the other hand, the tendency to make a mountain out of a molehill by portraying a personal criticism as a slander on one's race, gender, age group or sexual preference has the effect of depriving words of their potency.
Former All Black Craig Dowd was accused of racism for suggesting new Springbok coach Peter de Villiers is a "puppet" of the political forces that hold an increasing sway over South African rugby.
Dowd was commenting, admittedly rather rudely, on the politically driven transformation process. There are several compelling arguments which can be deployed on behalf of transformation but de Villiers' and the South African Rugby Union's resort to the race card suggests that they lack the courage of their convictions.
Dowd may have a bit to learn about the bigger South African picture but SARU Chairman Mpumelelo Tshume seems to have a pretty hazy notion of free speech: if Dowd didn't apologise, he warned, "we will have to engage our New Zealand counterparts".
Engaging with counterparts to force disrespectful individuals to toe the line might work in Africa but it has never really caught on here.
Over-the-top language can be a product of arrogance and ignorance, a noxious combination particularly prevalent in the higher reaches of professional sport. Hence the use of the phrase "modern slavery" by Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo and Fifa President Sepp Blatter to describe Manchester United's refusal to release the player from a contract he enthusiastically entered into little more than a year ago.
Once upon a time slaves were plucked from the bosom of their families, manacled, crammed into ships like battery chickens and transported across the Atlantic to toil in the fields under the ever-present threat of the bullwhip. Your modern slave, though, is paid more than $300,000 a week to kick a ball around in front of thousands of adoring fans. That's what I call progress.
While overkill and the jargon of victimhood are increasingly the rhetorical devices of choice in disputes and confrontations, euphemism and weasel words can be useful when the object of the exercise is to muddy the waters.
Listening to government departments rationalising their screw-ups, I'm reminded of former Wallaby great Mark Ella's summary of his coaching stint in Italy: "I heard every conceivable explanation for failure except 'It was my fault'."
Tony Veitch told the media that he "lashed out" at his former partner. It sounds potentially painful but it also sounds unfocused, reflexive, almost involuntary. Unlike words such as punched, bashed or kicked, lashing out also skates around the extent to which, or even whether, he connected. When I read of someone lashing out, I'm never surprised to come across a glancing blow in the next sentence.
Veitch reportedly described the incident as a "fracas" when he drew it to the attention of TVNZ executives. Like contretemps and melee, fracas is a word we pinched from the French because we liked the sound of it.
These words weren't adopted because they provide a degree of precision that English had hitherto lacked: au contraire, what exactly do they mean? Different things to different people, which presumably was the whole point.
Veitch saw safety in vagueness but instead left a vacuum which the loquacious and single-minded "sources" have been only too happy to fill, in the process lodging some stark and damning detail in the public consciousness.
His PR moves suggested he was hoping the various parties would have a limited appetite for kicking a man when he's down. Given that the accusation, as it stands, is one of kicking a woman when she was down, that was wishful thinking.
