Violent English

Everyone deplores violence these days. Many articles and books, radio and television programs, and self-help and encounter groups are designed to help us curb our tempers. And with the specters of international terrorism and nuclear warfare haunting our horizon, it may be that the future of the human race depends upon our ability to channel our violent impulses and to locate solutions based on cooperation rather than aggression.

When we tackle, wrestle, and grapple with the problem of violence, we are bound to be struck by a crucial idea. If our view of reality is shaped and defined by the words and phrases we use, then violence is locked deep in our thoughts, frozen in the clichés and expressions of everyday life. “I’ll be hanged!” we are likely to exclaim as this insight hits us with a vengeance. “I believe that I’ve hit the nail right on the head!”

Let’s take a stab at the issue of violence in our everyday parlance with a crash course on the words we use to describe disagreements. First, we rack our brains assembling an arsenal of arguments. Then we attempt to demolish the opposition’s points with a barrage of criti­cism, attack their positions by nailing them dead to rights, letting them have it with both barrels, and shooting down their contentions. We break their concentration by punc­turing their assumptions, cut them down to size by ham­mering away at their weaknesses, torpedo their efforts with barbed criticism, and then, when push comes to shove, assault their integrity with character assassination. If all else fails, we try to twist their arms and kill them with kindness.

Now we can begin to understand the full impact of the expression “to have a violent disagreement.”

The world of business is a veritable jungle of cutthroat competition, a rough-and-tumble school of hard knocks, and dog-eat-dog world of backbiting, backstabbing, and hatchet jobs. Some companies spearhead a trend of price gouging. Other firms beat the competition to the punch and gain a stranglehold on the market by fighting tooth and nail to slash prices in knock-down-drag-out, no-holds-barred price wars. Still other companies gain clout by putting the squeeze on their competitors with shakeups, raids, and hostile takeovers. Then the other side gets up in arms and screams bloody murder about such a low blow.

No wonder that business executives are often recruited by headhunters. No wonder that bleeding hearts who can't fight their own battles are likely to get axed, booted, canned, discharged, dumped, fired, kicked out, sacked, or terminated.

One would hope that sporting contests would provide an escape from life’s daily grind. But once again we find mayhem and havoc embedded in the adversarial expressions of matters athletic. In fact, we can’t get within striking distance of a big game without running or bumping into some ticket scalper who’s out to rip us off and get away with murder. Once inside the stadium or arena, we witness two teams trying to battle, beat, clobber, crush, dominate, maul, pulverize, rout, slaughter, steamroll, thrash, throttle, wallop, whip, wipe out, kick the pants off, make mince-meat out of, stick it to, and wreak havoc on each other with battle plans that include suicide squeezes, grand slams, blitzes, shotgun offenses, aerial bombs, punishing ground attacks, and slam dunks. Naturally both sides hope that they won’t choke in sudden death overtime.

Fleeing the battlefields of athletics at breakneck speed, we seek release from our violent language by taking in some entertainment. We look to kill some time at a dynamite show that’s supposed to be a smash hit blockbuster and a slapstick riot that we’ll get a kick and a bang out of. But the whole shootin’ match turns out to be a bomb and a dud, rather than a blast and a bash.

The lead may be a knockout and stunning bombshell, but she butchers her lines and her clashing outfit grates on our nerves. Sure as shootin’, we’re burned up and bored to death with the sheer torture of it all. We feel like tearing our hair out, eating our heart out, gnashing our teeth, snapping at others, and kicking ourselves. So, all bent out of shape, we go off half-cocked and beat it home feeling like battered, heartbroken nervous wrecks. The situation is explosive. We’ve been through the meat grinder, and we’re ready to blow our tops and stacks, shoot off our mouths, wring somebody's neck, knock his block and socks off, and go on the warpath. We’ve got a real axe to grind.

Even alcohol and drugs won’t offer any releases from the prison of violence in which we English speakers are incarcerated. However blitzed, bombed, hammered, plowed, smashed, stoned, or wasted we become, we must eventually crash. It's like using a double-edged sword to cut off our nose to spite our face.

If language is truly a window to the world and if the words and expressions we use truly affect the way we think, can we ever really stamp out violence?

Task 6. Read the text. What does Farmer Pluribus suggest to improve and simplify the English language?

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 956