Language Log

Among the many discussions of yesterday's inaugural address, one that struck me was Eve Fairbanks' question "Why'd Obama Talk about George Washington?" She observes that "in the last half of the last century or so, George Washington was appropriated by right-wingers as 'their' founder"; and concludes that

I thought Obama ended his speech with Washington today in order to tweak his image. He's not here to change everything about America, or even to change everything that his progressive supporters don't like, the end of the speech said. He's here to safeguard it like the unflappable Washington, to "carr[y] forth that great gift of freedom and deliver … it safely to future generations."

This rings true — certainly the theme of continuity with America's political past was central to the speech, and I'm sure that the reaction of Ms. Fairbanks' conservative mother was not unanticipated:

[M]y staunchly Republican mom told me after watching Obama's speech that "one of the things that has always nagged at me about Obama, as a conservative, is, 'Does this man care about the founding? Does he even think about it?' So I was astonished to hear it invoked … the evocation of Washington was great." And the story Obama told about George worked perfectly in the moment: Its images of "shores of an icy river" and men huddled against the bitter cold feathered in with today's weather.

But it's worth remembering that the Washington of 1776 was the general of a revolutionary army, and the words that he ordered to be read to his men were written by Tom Paine, a radical agitator.

When Chief Justice John Roberts and Barack Obama made a hash of the presidential oath of office on Tuesday, most early commentators — including me — assumed it didn't really matter what they said, since Obama had officially become president at noon (shortly before they actually got to the oath). But some legal scholars pointed out that the oath is still required under the Constitution and argued that a "do-over" should be performed, just to be safe. Today, the do-over proponents won out, and at 7:35 pm EST, Roberts again swore in Obama in the Map Room of the White House. From the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire:

“We decided it was so much fun,” Obama joked before again stating the words written in the Constitution. “Are you ready to take the oath?” Roberts asked. “I am, and we’re going to do it very slowly,” Obama quipped.
The oath took 25 seconds, and the recitation was flawless this time. “Congratulations, again,” Roberts said. “Thank you, sir,” Obama replied.
“The bad news for the [press] pool is there’s 12 more [inaugural] balls,” Obama joked.

The "Bushisms" industry, mined so thoroughly by Slate's Jacob Weisberg for eight long years, is now a thing of the past. But Weisberg's colleague at Slate, Christopher Beam, got an exclusive scoop on a behind-the-scenes eleventh-hour Bushism when he managed to get into a farewell party for the outgoing administration on Sunday night. Here's what Bush told the crowd, according to Beam:

"I am glad we made this journey," he went on. Then he engaged in a little reminiscence. "Remember the time in 2003 when Bartlett came to work all hung over?" Laughs. "Nothing ever changes."
He continued: "We never shruck—"
"Shirked!" someone yelled.
"Shirked," Bush corrected, smiling. "You might have shirked; I shrucked. I mean we took the deals head on."

I did an inauguration piece, too, for Newsday, on a quick turnaround; I'll post the link to the full piece here when it goes up. My general take, though, was that Obama had recycled his historical models with his foot on the rhetorical damper soft pedals:

Commentators had been looking back to Lincoln, King, FDR, and JFK for models. But while the speech might bring to mind all of those, it was more subdued and restrained. In place of Roosevelt's 1933 remonstrance of the "callous and selfish wrongdoing. . . in banking and business," Obama offered a nonspecific rebuke of "greed and irresponsibility on the part of some," immediately balanced by a reminder of "our collective failure to make hard choices." And FDR's famous warning against "fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror" became a caution about "a sapping of confidence across our land."

In fact the most vivid evocation of the Depression era was in the summons to "pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America," an allusion to Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields's “Start All Over Again,” the anthem to pluck and resilience that Fred and Ginger sang in the 1936 Swingtime.

There was more, on Obama's venture in polyptoton, a term that doesn't crop up a whole lot even here on LanguageLog. But one good turn is enough for now.

The first Language Log post on today's inaugural might have been Bill Poser's numerical gotcha, and the second one might have been Ben Zimmer's dissection of the Roberts/Obama oath flub, but the first Language Log commentary, at least in some sense of that phrase, was my interview with PRI's The World. The interview began shortly after 1:00, as soon after the speech as I could hike the 10 blocks or so to the WXPN studios and meet up with the producer who kindly guided me to a microphone.

It should be aired sometime later today, in some form — "we'll rip it to shreds in editing", said the host in a friendly tone. The interview gave me renewed respect for the talking heads who need to think of something coherent and interesting to say about events as they unfold, so in this case I'll be happy to ripped to shreds, as long as they reassemble me in a not-too-stupid-sounding way.

Meanwhile, here are the notes that I took with me to the interview, fleshed out a bit in the interests of coherence.

Chief Justice John Roberts' administration of the presidential oath to Barack Obama was far from smooth. Early reports differ in saying who stumbled: NBC and ABC say the flub was Roberts', while the AP says it was Obama's. I think both men were a bit nervous, and the error that emerged from their momentary disfluency came down to a problem of adverbial placement.

President Obama's inauguration speech contains an error that may well be of linguistic origin. He said: "Forty-four Americans have now taken the Presidential oath". That is false. Obama is the 43d American to take the Presidential oath. Obama's slip is probably due to the fact that he is accounted the 44th President.

There's an extraordinary amount of anticipation about Barack Obama's inaugural address, due in a few hours. A small sample of the anticipatory commentary: "The speech"; "'The Speech': An Experts' Guide"; "Inaugural Words: 1789 to the Present"; "Obama's Inaugural Address: Great Expectations"; and literally thousands of other articles. We've contributed our mite, in the form of Geoff Pullum's post "Presidential inaugurals: the form and the content", 1/15/2009 (though this belongs to a somewhat smaller body of work, the meta-anticipatory commentary). No doubt after the event there'll an even greater flood of discussion, meta- and otherwise.

Last night I saw a variant of the following bumper sticker on a car driving around my neighborhood (click image to enlarge; original found here):

The variant I saw had white lettering on a blue background — that is, no flag — and the wording of the second part was "if you're reading it in English, thank a soldier". (Other variations ask that you thank a veteran, the military, a U.S. soldier, …) Both wordings are a little off, if you think about it: if you can read the text of the bumper sticker, then of course you can read it in English (and of course you're reading it in English). But that's not the point of this post, especially given that I've also found a more sensibly-worded variant here ("If you can read this, thank a teacher… and since it is in English, thank a soldier.")

If you want a sense of just what a hole the right finds itself in these days, consider the recent press release from the anti-abortion American Life League  headed "KRISPY KREME CELEBRATES OBAMA WITH PRO-ABORTION DOUGHNUTS." It goes on to say:

The next time you stare down a conveyor belt of slow-moving, hot, sugary glazed donuts at your local Krispy Kreme you just might be supporting President-elect Barack Obama's radical support for abortion on demand… The doughnut giant released the following statement yesterday:

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American's sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies — just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet "free" can be.

…The unfortunate reality of a post Roe v. Wade America is that "choice" is synonymous with abortion access and celebration of 'freedom of choice' is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand…. Celebrating [Obama's] inauguration with "Freedom of Choice" doughnuts – only two days before the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision to decriminalize abortion – is not only extremely tacky, it's disrespectful and insensitive and makes a mockery of a national tragedy.

A number of anti-abortion bloggers have joined the ALL in urging readers to make their indignation known to the company, while others have confined themselves to suggesting that the promotion was at best clueless. "To a majority of Americans," the commenter on one blog wrote, "the words ['freedom of choice'] do not connote liberty, or 'tasty goodies' or patriotism at all.  These words are synonymous with the painful tragedy of abortion."

And conservatives wonder why their movement is in trouble?

Back in July, Bill Poser noted that "Barack Obama is reported to speak Indonesian as result of the four years, from age six to age ten, that he spent in Indonesia." Bill asked for any evidence about Obama's competence in Indonesian. Since then, we've gotten some anecdotal reports about Obama's Indonesian (including from the President of Indonesia!), but we still don't know if his language skills rise above the basic conversational level.

I was struck by a linguistic aspect of the picture accompanying Ellen Barry's NYT article, "Latvia Is Shaken by Riots Over Its Weak Economy", 1/14/2009:

The vehicle visible in the left center of the picture is labelled, in English, "MILITARY POLICE". I wonder about this history of this inscription.

If you've ever found yourself thinking that Language Log writers seem concerned with form rather than function — that they obsess about the details of how things are put, to the exclusion of concern with the core content that really matters, and that they will probably miss the historic excitement of this January 20 grubbing around for prepositions — you need to take a look at the following passage by Jill Lepore of Harvard. It's from her article in the January 12 New Yorker on the language of presidential inaugural addresses. Lepore makes reference to claims in Elvin Lim's book The Anti-Intellectual Presidency that American presidential inaugural addresses have been getting stupider, with stupidity being measured by Flesch Readability Test word- and sentence-length criteria:

The past half century of speechwriters, most of whom trained as journalists, do favor small words and short sentences, as do many people whose English teachers made them read Strunk and White's 1959 "Elements of Style" ("Omit needless words") and Orwell's 1946 essay "Politics and the English language" ("Never use a long word where a short one will do"). Lim gets this, but only sort of. Harding's inaugural comes in at a college reading level, George H. W. Bush's at about a sixth-grade level. Harding's isn't smarter or subtler, it's just more flowery. They are both empty-headed; both suffer from what Orwell called "slovenliness." The problem doesn't lie in the length of their sentences or the number of their syllables. It lies in the absence of precision, the paucity of ideas, and the evasion of every species of argument.

A beautiful expression of a point we have often tried to emphasize. It's not so much that the superficial rules for writing promulgated Orwell and by Strunk and White are toxic and meretricious (though they do poison young minds, and should be condemned for that); it's that if you think they are deep and important and determinative of quality, it is YOU that will get hung up on trivialities of form rather than important aspects of content.