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——一不做二不休 2008年2月26日
John Grimond痛惜地写道：任何人在试图给人深刻印象、说服或迷惑别人的时候，都有可能践踏语言。商人乱来，政客空谈。语言本应进化，但对它的懒惰使用，只会导致空洞无物...... 《知识生活》杂志，2007年冬 打开一张报纸，你可能会发现一位学者令你正确使用语言。学究们抱怨人们对词语的误用，例如“execution”（意为“令法院的判决生效”，而非“谋杀人质”）、“presently”（意为“不久”，而非“现在”）和“enormity”（意为“大罪”而非“重要之事”）。有一种观点认为：随着单词失掉一些本来的含义，语言也变得越来越贫乏了。 但当单词获得更多含义的时候，语言也可以变得丰富。英语的优点之一就是易于改变，从而允许单词和短语获得新的用法。当我们称一份出版物为“期刊”时，并不是意味着它每天都出【译注：期刊（journal）一词，原意是日记、流水帐】；而工资也并不是用盐来支付【译注：工资（salary）一词，词源为拉丁文sal（盐），源于古罗马用盐（salt）支付士兵薪酬】。“做爱”这个词，原本只是指情人间的互吻和呢喃，现在的意思却是“一脱到底”【译注：going the whole hog，直译是“那就整头猪”，意为彻底、完全地做某事；干脆、索性、一不做二不休......】。顺便提一句，这个短语来自于伊斯兰学者们难以决定猪身上的哪个部位是穆斯林的禁忌。诗人William Cowper有诗云： 从一整头猪身上排除某一块肉 他们觉得这实在是不能够 【William Cowper是十八世纪英国诗人，此句出自他的一首诗：The Love of the World（《世界之爱》）。诗中说有几名回教徒想确定先知穆罕默德禁止教徒吃猪的哪一部分；可是，各人都认为自己爱吃的部分不在禁令之内，结果他们把整只猪都吃了。尽管今天看此诗实属“政治不正确”，但通常认为这正是going the whole hog此一成语的出处】 像法语和西班牙语这样的语言，有一群高傲的监督员在监管审查。这样做给语言带来的风险是：成为活化石、变得荒谬可笑，或者就是失去作用，无法满足其使用者的需求。而在这个IT飞速发展、公司治理和虐囚的时代，新需求正源源不断地出现。 语言使用者的需求之一就是沟通。这并不需要十分完美的英语。没有人会真的被类似这样的标识误导：“此门有警报”，或者“洗手间无用”，也不会不明白“我屁都不知道”这样的话。受糟糕的语言影响最大的需求是思想行为，也就是人们跟自己的沟通。如果人们无法对自己表达自己，当然也就不可能对别人表达自己。 任何人在试图给人深刻印象、说服或迷惑别人的时候，都有可能践踏语言。最突出的乱用语言者就是商人，比如这些：现场客服代表、车损险、非增量增长机会；还有这些：增强信息管理活动、提供创新解决方案、资源使用中的重要影响力以及由此带来的花在增值解决方案上的高级职业时间的增长百分比。
比起商人，政客们糟蹋起语言来也是不遑多让。他们的货色是：可持续发展、关键绩效指标、知识经济（难道有谁会接受无知经济么？）包容度和授权社区。所有这些都有着强制性的激情、愿景和兴奋。如果政客加上军人，就会得到这样的产物：伊斯兰法西斯、特别引渡、误伤友军事故和反恐战争。 这种情况一贯如此。奥威尔1946年曾经指出：政治语言通常是站不住脚的辩护，因此它必然包括“大量的委婉、想当然和纯然的含混暧昧”。而在他之前，塔西佗早已说过：“他们制造了一片废墟，还把这叫做和平。” 委婉、歪曲和空洞自古以来一直存在这一事实，并不意味着它们的危害有分毫的减少。在这个大众传播的时代，它们被懒得思考的人迅速吸收，这些人会说出这样的话：“尖锐的批判思考，加上伴随着忠诚和坚毅的创新，这样的组合才是最艰难的挑战”，还自以为言之有物。 这就不难理解一位重要的英国政治家最近所说的话：“如果我真的说了有意思的词语，我的意思并不是它有什么意思。”晕了？别这样：他说的都是实话。这样的话就是当人们无话可说却认为自己非得说点什么的时候创造出来的纯粹的背景噪音。 这样有时候会带来严重的后果。“我们所做的是看看我们到底都能用英语做些什么事情，”弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙写道，“我们怎样才能把旧单词用新顺序组合起来，使它们得以延续生命，创造美和描述真实？” 本文作者John Grimond是《经济学人》的主笔，同时也是该杂志的“文体顾问”。 Anyone trying to impress, to sell or to obfuscate is likely to brutalise the language, laments John Grimond. Businessmen bungle, and politicians love empty phrase-making. Language should evolve, but its lazy use leads to meaninglessness ...From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, Winter 2007 Open a newspaper and you are likely to find a pundit putting you right about language. Pedants bemoan the misuse of such words as "execution" (which means "putting into effect the verdict of a court of law", not "murdering a hostage"), "presently" ("soon", not "at present") and "enormity" ("great crime", not "big thing"). They have a point. Language is impoverished when words lose their meanings. But it can also be enriched when words gain meanings. One of the strengths of English is its readiness to change, to allow words and phrases to gain new uses. Publications no longer have to appear daily to be journals, nor salaries to be paid in salt. And "making love", which once involved only a bit of billing and cooing, now means going the whole hog, a phrase, incidentally, that derives from the inability of Islamic scholars to decide which bit of the pig was forbidden to Muslims. So said the poet William Cowper, anyway:
Languages, like French and Spanish, that are supervised and censored by a board of self-important overseers, risk becoming fossilised, absurd or just useless, unable to carry out the tasks that their users demand of them. And in the age of booting up, corporate governance and waterboarding, new tasks appear all the time. One task that users demand is communication. This does not need perfect English. No one is really misled by a sign that says, "This door is alarmed" or "Disabled toilet", still less by "I ain't done nothing." The task that suffers most from mangled language is thought, when people communicate with themselves. If they cannot express themselves to themselves, they have no chance of expressing themselves to other people. Anyone trying to impress, to sell or to obfuscate is likely to brutalise the language. Prominent offenders are businessmen, with their on-board customer-service representatives, collision damage waivers, non-incremental growth opportunities and enhanced information-management activities, providing innovative solutions and significant leverage in the use of resources, and thus permitting an increasing percentage of senior professional time to be expended on value-added solutions. Politicians can effortlessly match this. Their stock-in-trade is sustainable development, key performance indicators, the knowledge-based economy (any takers for the ignorance-based alternative?), inclusiveness and empowered communities, all offered up with mandatory passion, vision and excitement. Put politicians together with soldiers and you get Islamofascism, extraordinary rendition, self-injurious behaviour incidents and the war on terror. 'Twas ever thus. Orwell pointed out in 1946 that, since political language is usually the defence of the indefensible, it has to consist "largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness". And long before him Tacitus remarked, "They make a desert and call it peace." That euphemism, word-twisting and empty phrase-making have been around for ever does not make them any less pernicious. In an age of mass communication they are quickly absorbed by lazy thinkers who believe they are saying something important when they declare, "It is this combination of hard-edged critical thinking and innovation with commitment and perseverance that will be the hardest challenge." From here it is but a short step to explaining, as a prominent British politician did recently, that "If I did use the word meaningful, I didn't mean it to mean anything at all." Confused? Don't be: it was an honest admission. Such talk is mere background noise created by people who have nothing to say but think they must say something. This can sometimes have serious consequences. Once it took a face to launch a thousand ships; now a slam dunk is enough to send America to war. "Our business is to see what we can do with the English language as it is," wrote Virginia Woolf. "How can we combine the old words in new orders so that they survive, so that they create beauty, so that they tell the truth?" John Grimond is writer-at-large for The Economist. He is also the author of the paper's "Style Guide". |
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