A VICIOUS CIRCLE OF POOR LANGUAGE AND POOR REASONING
By Gareth van Onselen
Writing for his regular column in the Sunday Independent this past Sunday, Edwin Naidu has produced an article the sheer idiocy of which renders it almost immune to full and proper interrogation: an attack on the DA’s suggestion that Jacob Zuma debate Helen Zille. And so I will not attempt to provide any such analysis here; for, were I to do so, simply identifying and explaining all the logical errors inherent in his reasoning would require a response of some considerable length, never mind the rebuttal, an exercise for which I have neither the time nor the inclination.
(See here for a detailed response to a previous column by Naidu and good illustration of the sorts of logical errors he is prone to making.)
There is, however, another problem with Naidu’s article, aside from its perverse logic. And that is his use - or perhaps I should say misuse - of the English language; a problem of some gravity if one considers that his column appears prominently on the editorial page of a leading Sunday newspaper.
Nor is it a problem limited to the particular article identified above, but a common trait of almost all of his writing. Thus, what I will attempt to do here, is to identify some of the more significant problems with the way Naidu writes, with the hope that, by doing so, I will also illustrate some broader trends and bad habits that, unfortunately, often define South African journalism.
In his essay on Politics and the English Language George Orwell writes: “Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.”
With regard especially to political writing, Orwell continues: “As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.”
Orwell was concerned chiefly with the writings of politicians themselves, but his analysis can quite appropriately be extended to political commentators. He proceeds to identify a series of examples, by way of illustrating these bad habits, the first of which he terms the “dying metaphor”:
“A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e.g. iron resolution ) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves... Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning, and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying.”
Now, consider the following passage, the opening to a December 2007 article by Naidu:
“Jacob Zuma has a rocky road to Polokwane before his coronation as party leader in two weeks time. But his transformation from pariah to presidential frontrunner is nothing short of amazing. Few would have put money on Zuma wiping out his stronger rivals, especially President Thabo Mbeki, in the convincing manner he has. As the nation waits to learn whether or not Zuma will be prosecuted, one thing is clear: regardless of the unsavoury a
| Posted on 30/6/2008
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