Language Log

OK, I give up. I admit that I was wrong. I thought that the grammatical term passive had developed a spectrum of everyday meanings like "vague about agency", "listless writing, lacking in vigor", and "failure to take sides in a conflict". But I've now reluctantly concluded that for some members of the chattering classes, it now means nothing at all, except maybe "I dislike this person".

The evidence that drove me over the edge? Hank Stuever and Wil Haygood, "Parsing The Book Of Mark", Washington Post, 6/25/2009:

Wow. Was that a press conference or was that a press conference? That genteel lilt of hubris, sorrow, guilt! But other than a very slow, meandering build to I just needed a little strange, what did it all mean? What language was South Carolina's Republican governor speaking yesterday as he forlornly told the world of his travels and travails, of how sorry he is to his wife, to his sons, to his staff, to "the Tom Davises of the world" (not the Virginia one, all the other ones)? Is it a new Pat Conroy novel? Is it a megachurch sermon? Is it the language of couples therapy? The metaphysics of Oprah? Shakespeare? The psychobabble of cheating husbands? (Note all the passive constructions, the avoidance of first person.) [emphasis added]

Gov. Mark Sanford, back in pocket, explained himself (from the NYT transcript of his statement):

I'm here because if you were to look at God's laws, they're in every instance designed to protect people from themselves. I think that that is the bottom line of God's law, that it's not a moral, rigid list of do's and don'ts just for the heck of do's and don'ts. It is indeed to protect us from ourselves. And the biggest self of self is, indeed, self; that sin is, in fact, grounded in this notion of what is it that I want as opposed to somebody else?

From a conference on the theme "Building the New Majority", sponsored by Pat Buchanan's organization The American Cause, and featuring a panel discussion on English-only initiatives:

A political reporter remarked on BBC Radio 4 this morning that the 157th speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, elected last night, is much hated by many members of his own party (the Conservatives). Among other things, when they are giving speeches he sometimes mutters under his breath and "corrects their grammar." Not a good sign. Nobody likes a grumpy grammar pedant.

(Except that just about all American intellectuals all seem to be in love with Strunk and White, of course; but set that aside — I believe I may have mentioned them in one or two previous Language Log posts.)

[Update: Bercow's grammatical interventions have in fact not been merely sotto voce mutterings. An excellent post at Joel Segal Books gives evidence that he has been recorded in Hansard as taking up the time of the House with grammatical peevery. More public money being wasted as paid members pontificate about supposed grammatical slips in the speeches of other paid members. Parliament is in a worse state than I thought.]

The governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, has been missing since Thursday ("SC governor's whereabouts unknown, even to wife", Associated Press, 6/22/2008).   The linguistic hook here is the way that his spokesman, Joel Sawyer, described his status ("Have you see [sic] this man? SC GOV, MIA", MSNC, 6/22/2009):

The governor put in a lot of time during this last legislative session, and after the session winds down it's not uncommon for him to go out of pocket for a few days at a time to clear his head. Obviously, that's going to be somewhat out of the question this time given the attention this particular absence has gotten. [emphasis added]

A song performed by Mohsen Namjoo, whose title is transliterated as "Hamrah Sho Aziz", has been posted a number of times on YouTube with different images. The earliest one that I've found is from 6/20/2008. There's a version posted on 5/27/2009 that seems to have released by Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign, with some added strings and speeches. Since the election, there have been several versions with different images and mixed-in audio, on 6/13/2009 and 6/16/2009. The last half of the latest one (below) is a TV interview with Mousavi.

Like many others, I've spent much of the past few days reading the sites that offer news about events in Iran; and I appreciate the depth of information that the "New Media" collectively provide, including transcriptions and translations of many of the slogans. Thus Nader Uskowi's weblog features a YouTube video of a wounded girl being loaded into an ambulance ("Casualties in Teheran", 6/15/2009), and also transcribes and translates the chants of the crowd:

Protestors chanting: Mikosham, Mikosham, Ankeh Baradaram Kosht (“Will Kill, Kill, Those Who Killed My Brother”) and Marg Bar Dictator (“Death to Dictator”)

Using the first of these chants as a Google probe, thinking to find other reports and commentary on current events, I stumbled on an interesting account of exactly the same chant being used against the Shah in 1978.

According to recent reports out of Iran, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has resigned as chairman of an entity whose full name is given in English as the "Expediency Discernment Council of the System", or the "Expediency Council" for short.

The Wikipedia entry says that the organization "was originally set up to resolve differences or conflicts between the Majlis and the Council of Guardians, but 'its true power lies more in its advisory role to the Supreme Leader.'" But this post is not about the nature of the organization or the meaning of Rafsanjani's reported resignation, but rather about the English name, which I found bizarre.

From Charles Krauthammer, "Obama Hovers From on High", Washington Post 6/12/2009:

On religious tolerance, [president Obama] gently referenced the Christians of Lebanon and Egypt, then lamented that the "divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence" (note the use of the passive voice). He then criticized (in the active voice) Western religious intolerance for regulating the wearing of the hijab — after citing America for making it difficult for Muslims to give to charity. [emphasis added]

Mary Kate Cary ("Barack Obama Journeys From 'Yes We Can' to the Imperial 'I'", U.S. News and World Report, 6/9/2009) joins the media chorus:

"The Great I Am." That's what Dorothy Walker Bush, the matriarch of the Bush family, used to call it when one of her children used too many "I's" in a sentence. Casting it in biblical terms, she'd tell them, "Nobody likes The Great I Am. Don't be talking about yourself." […]

I tell you all this because I've noticed lately that President Obama used to be that way, too. […]

But lately he's moved from the second person to the first person. Apparently I'm not the only one who's picked up on it. Stanley Fish blogs in the New York Times that [… etc. …]

George Will's column earlier this week points out that the president has become "inordinately fond of the first-person singular pronoun," as evidenced in the GM takeover speech. Terence Jeffrey of CSN wrote a similar piece about the same speech titled "I, Barack," talking about the economic implications of the switch from "we" to "I" […]

As pointed out at tedious length in a series of earlier posts, the only trouble with this theory is that Barack Obama uses "The Great I Am" at a significantly lower rate, in comparable speeches and press interactions, than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush did.

Over the past couple of days, some commenters have complained of superficiality and excessive empiricism in my objections to the spreading media meme of president Obama's allegedly culpable use of first-person pronouns ("Fact-checking George F. Will", 6/7/2009; "Obama's Imperial 'I': spreading the meme", 6/8/2009; "Inaugural pronouns", 6/8/2009).

So this morning, in evaluating Stanley Fish's notion that president Obama's inaugural address used the "royal we", I'll avoid any numbers greater than one. Instead, I'll use traditional humanistic methods to argue that Fish is full of it.

[I'm following up on this morning's post "Obama's Imperial 'I': spreading the meme".]

Stanley Fish ("Yes I can", NYT 6/7/2009) cited the "naked I" of the president's recent rhetoric, allegedly representing a change from the pronominal personality that he displayed during the presidential campaign. But I showed this morning that Obama's recent presidential speeches in fact use first-person singular pronouns at roughly the same rate as his campaign speeches did, or perhaps a little bit less often, judging on the basis of the specific eight speeches that Fish cites. I also showed that overall, Obama's rate of first-person singular pronoun usage is distinctly lower than that of his two predecessors, not (as you might expect from all the fuss) higher.

Fish also cites Obama's inaugural address for its extensive use of the "royal we". So just for fun, having a few minutes to spare, I added a few lines to the script that I used to count pronouns in the cited speeches, and dumped the inaugural addresses of the previous two presidents into the pile of texts that I ran it on.

I guess it's now officially a Media Meme: Obama's "royal we has flowered into the naked 'I'". First Terence Jeffrey ("I, Barack Obama"), then George Will ("Have We Got a Deal for You"), now Stanley Fish ("Yes I can"):

By the time of the address to the Congress on Feb. 24, the royal we has flowered into the naked “I”: “As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress.” “I called for action.” “I pushed for quick action.” “I have told each of my cabinet.” “I’ve appointed a proven and aggressive inspector general.” “I refuse to let that happen.” “I will not spend a single penny.” “I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves.” “I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term.” That last is particularly telling: it says, there’s going to be a second term, I’m already moving fast, and if you don’t want to be left in the dust, you’d better fall in line.

There’s no mistaking what’s going on in the speech delivered last week. No preliminary niceties; just a rehearsal of Obama’s actions and expectations. Eight “I”’s right off the bat: “Just over two months ago I spoke with you… and I laid out what needed to be done.” “From the beginning I made it clear that I would not put any more tax dollars on the line.” “I refused to let those companies become permanent wards of the state.” “I refused to kick the can down the road. But I also recognized the importance of a viable auto industry.” “I decided then…” (He is really the decider.)

The trouble with this idea, as often with the insights of the punditocracy, is that there's no evidence that it's true. Worse, evidence is easily available to disconfirm it.