Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts. You are free to agree or disagree with him.
PASSIONATE IMPACTS ON YOUR BEHALF
I do not
have to be told this obvious truism.
Excessive
concern for the niceties of language is often a sign of having too much time on
one’s hands. Often it is also a sign of old-fart-dom. Those old dears who write
to the press protesting against split infinitives, a mistake which I am
inclined to repeatedly make. Those who howl when you have a preposition to
finish up with. Those who get annoyed when you write a series of statements
without a main verb. And those who say you cannot begin a sentence with “and”.
I am aware
that language is a living and constantly-changing thing, and that “rules” of
grammar are descriptive rather than truly prescriptive. They describe how language happens to function at a given
time, but they are subject to change. Therefore, I am further aware, those
things against which I protest today may very well be tomorrow’s accepted
usage.
In case I
do not know these things, there are two powerful forces to remind me.
First, all
English teachers, tertiary and secondary, have given up on teaching grammar. To
the great impoverishment of teenagers’ sense of, and understanding of,
language, it is now considered “not done” to teach parts of speech (nouns,
pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, verbs, adverbs etc.). Indeed,
should one do so, one would be decried for teaching an outmoded and inadequate
grammatical system. Bright young tertiary teachers of English fall over
themselves to be “permissive” and to tell us that there are no rules, only accepted
usages.
Second,
those who decry or rebuke some current usages have the habit of tripping over
their own tongues and making egregious asses of themselves. In a recent
newspaper column, a wealthy columnist decried the poor linguistic skills of
bureaucrats and government officials. Well and good, except that he spoke of
the “evolvement” of such poor usage. Obviously evolution had passed part of his
brain by, and people who live in glass houses etc. etc.
But in
spite of all this, I still have an urge to register a protest against some
sloppy usages. At the very least, sloppy usage shows the speaker’s or writer’s
ignorance of current accepted norms, even if he or she is on the way to
establishing new ones.
First horrible specimen. The
creeping misuse of “on behalf.”
Last week
the evening news showed me a New Zealand judge sentencing a sex offender. As
she passed sentence, I was surprised to hear her say “These were callous acts of sexual predation on your behalf.”
I
immediately thought “Well I hope they got
the guy who actually did them, then”.
Correctly
used, “on your behalf’ means “in your place” or “instead of you.”
“He
could not attend the family funeral, so his son went on his behalf.”
“She could not read all the books she
discussed on her radio show, so a researcher read them and wrote notes on them
on
her behalf.” Etc. Etc.
If acts
were committed “on behalf of” the
defendant, it would mean that somebody else did them for him. I assume that
what the judge intended to say was “These
were callous acts of sexual predation on
your part”, which is a fancy way of saying “done by you.” But this ignorant misuse of “on…. behalf” has become very widespread. I surmise it is because it
sounds tone-ier than “done by you”
etc. And because some people don’t know the clear difference between “on your part” and “on your behalf.”
Second horrible specimen. The
way “impact” has been turned into a
transitive verb.
Once upon a
time, “impact” was used almost
exclusively as a noun, unless it was deployed in a literal physical sense (as
in “impacted wisdom teeth” and the
like).
Using it as
an abstract noun, we would ask such questions as “What sort of impact did it have on him?”
Then
journalists, and those foolish enough to imitate them, began to use “impact” as
an intransitive verb, and started asking “How
did it impact on him?”
Then they
turned it into a transitive verb, “How
did it impact him?”
I think
this ignorant usage is now firmly established, so there is no point in my
attempting to halt it.
But
whenever I hear that “he was impacted”
by something, I have mental images of him in a car-wrecker’s crusher.
Third horrible specimen. Not so much a misuse as a horrible overuse.
It’s that
wretched word “passion”.
Of course
the meaning of the word has changed over the centuries.
Once it
meant simply the ability to feel sensation and hence to suffer pain (as in “the Passion of Christ” – a phrase which
baffles those who know only more recent uses of the word).
Then it
came to mean tremendous agitation of spirit, including anger. (“When told that the free market didn’t really
work, the monetarist flew into a passion.”). Often enough, that agitation
of spirit was amorous, erotic or sexual. (“They
exhausted their passion by lusty and prolonged love-making.”)
Then it
came to mean what is now its most commonly accepted usage, that is, something
all-consuming and all-absorbing for an individual. To have a passion for
setting the world to rights or doing good or whatever it may be.
The trouble
is, this last meaning is now being routinely abused to mean “having a strong interest in something”.
Or even just “having an interest in
something.”
“He has a passion for gardening. She has a
passion for macramé.”
Do they
really? Well if they feel that strongly about those harmless hobbies, please
take them to a psychiatrist.
Teenagers
are advised to “follow your passion”,
which seems to mean “pursue activities
that interest you” or even “develop
your abilities”. Personally, while I do think there is a place for saints
and visionaries, I do not want to live in a world peopled by people who are
that enthusiastic or that passionate.
I console
myself with the thought that this overuse of a useful word is just a passing
fad, and that it is the type of linguistic hyperbole that soon burns itself
out.
But as long
as it’s being used I will sneer at it, just as I continue to sneer that those
who still do not know the difference between “uninterested” and
“disinterested”.
I’m quite
passionate about these things.
