Dickens and Orwell were on the same page

I'm reading David Copperfield for an English class and Dickens makes a comment about using verbose, ridiculous language. He says about the same thing that Orwell. I couldn't believe it when I read it this evening. What excellent timing! Dickens doesn't analyze this in an anthropological way. He instead makes a comment on how this use of language can get people into trouble, is meaningless and is generally silly. Throughout the book, Dickens uses a somewhat ridiculous character, Mr. Micawber, who likes to use over-the-top language (meaningless words, dying metaphors, extremely pretentious diction, and a lot of verbal false limbs) to show that this type of language is silly. In this passage, Mr. Micawber has just read a letter aloud that is in this language and the narrator, David Copperfield, comments on it. My comments are in brackets and in caps. Here's what Dickens has to say:

"Again, Mr. Micawber had a relish in this formal piling up of words, which, however ludicrously displayed in his case, was, I must say, not at all peculiar to him. I have observed it in the course of my life, in numerous men. It seems to me to be a general rule. In the taking of legal oaths, for instance, deponents seem to enjoy themselves mightily when they come to several good words in succession, for the expression of one idea;[VERBAL FALSE LIMBS] as, that they utterly detest, abominate, and abjure or so forth [PRETENTIOUS DICTION]; and the old anathemas were made relishing on the same principle. We talk about he tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannize over them too; we are fond of having superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occasions, [MEANINGLESS WORDS] if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them. And as individuals get inot trouble by amking too great a show of liveries, or as slaves whenthey are too numerous rise agaisnt their master, so I think I could mention a nation that has got into many great difficulties, and will get inot many greater, for maintaining too large a retinue of words." (David Copperfield, Dickens, ch. 52. p 758-9 in the Penguin edition.)

It is interesting that Dickens comments on how people in legal and political professions use this over-the-top language. We discussed the use of vague rhetoric in politics. Dickens also seems to think that this type of language gets people into to trouble and will continue to get the country into trouble.

As an English major and a fan of Dickens, I have to defend one of my favorite authors from Orwell's accusations. I know some people have a grudge against Dickens because they think that just because he got paid by the word he added extra, superfluous words. I would like to refute this. Dickens was paid to fill up certain amount of space in a monthly magazine. He wrote his novels in installments and planned out the novels to be at certain points at the end each installment. Therefore, there are places were he had to add passages to meet his length requirements. I don't think that Orwell would have accused Dickens of this degraded type of language. Dickens uses very original metaphors and descriptions, and, though his sentences are complex, they don't use a lot of passive voice, pretentious diction, or verbal false limbs.

It is interesting that this type of "degraded" language has been around for quite a long time. David Copperfield was written in 1849-50, nearly 100 years before Orwell wrote about the degradation of language. I think linguistic anthropology has made us aware of a type of rhetoric that has been around for a long time.

Politics and the English Language - on the web

I found these few short paragraphs from Barak Obama’s official site. This is his outline of the problems in the US military. According to George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language, there are many instances of “Bad English” in this paragraph.

"A 20th Century Structure for 21st Century Problems: We have inherited a national security structure that was developed and organized in the late 1940s to win the Cold War. It remains a rigid bureaucracy of government agencies, relying upon a restrictive and disconnected set of legal authorities.
New Leadership and Vision is Needed: America simply cannot afford more of the old approach to our national defense. Instead, it needs a Commander-in-Chief with the right combination of judgment, vision, and leadership for the 21st century.
A Military Under Strain: Currently, our soldiers, seamen, airmen and Marines are deployed around the globe, working valiantly to defend our nation. Yet, these heroes are under-resourced and asked to do too much by a policy that has too often taken their sacrifice for granted. Due to their incredible courage and ingenuity, they persevere, but at incredible cost to themselves and their families.
Recruitment and Retention Problems: A country of 300 million strong should not struggle to find enough qualified citizens to serve. Recruiting and retention problems have been swept under the rug by an administration that does not understand the value of service to our nation.
A System Not Serving our Troops as Well as They Serve Us: As the shameful events at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the recent reports on growing numbers of homeless and unemployed veterans show, we simply are not taking proper care of our wounded warriors and veterans.”

Here are the major categories that Orwell lists and examples from the text:

Dying Metaphors: There weren’t too many dying metaphors “America simply cannot afford” seems to be used by every politician. It plays to the commercial sentimentality of Americans. “Swept under the rug” is also a hackneyed phrase. It seems that something that can be “swept under the rug” is of minor importance.
Operators or Verbal false limbs: There are a few passive voice sentences in this paragraph. Ex: “asked to do too much by a policy” and “problems have been swept under the rug by an administration.” I don’t see a lot of padding in this example, but the writers are obviously trying to sum up the problems of the current administration as succinctly as possible.
Pretentious diction: There were a lot of words that seemed to be a bit “dramatic” to me. These words had connotations that were too strong, in my opinion, for the paragraph. Words like, “restrictive” “disconnected” “valiantly” “heroes” “incredible” (used twice), “ingenuity” “persevere” and “warriors” all see over the top and pretentious.
Meaningless words: There are a lot of meaningless, vague words. For example: “It [America] needs a Commander-in-Chief with the right combination of judgment, vision, and leadership.” This is extremely vague and doesn’t give any particular information. Everyone has judgment – that doesn’t mean it’s good or bad. “Vision” also if vague. Vision of what? This vision is not defined and the reader can not tell if his vision coincides with the writer’s vision. “Leadership,” again, is vague and open to the reader’s interpretation. There is leadership in every presidency and in every government. That doesn’t mean it is good leadership or that the leaders are qualified to lead. Dictators, school teachers, pastors, rectors, and anyone in any type of authority position could say that they have the right combination of “judgment, vision, and leadership.” This phrase is meaningless because it has no specific definition that can be understood by everyone who reads it.
Every single person can take these vague ideas and make them into their vision of what a good president should be. These words are purposefully vague to attract the greatest number of people. Other meaningless, vague words include: “old approach” “qualified citizens,” “recruiting and retention problems,” “under-resourced,” “asked to do too much,” “taken their sacrifice for granted,” “persevere,” “incredible cost,” “shameful events,” “recent reports,” “growing numbers,” and “not taking proper care.”

Synaesthesia

The article I presented in class today was on Synaesthesia, which i found really interesting. One thing this article brought to mind was modern poetry. Poets are always describing things as "tasting green" "smelling smooth" or "feeling orange." In one of my English classes, we talked about this as a figure of speech, also called synesthesia. That brought to my mind a question relating to Professor Blum's comment that synesthesia became "popular" in the early 1900s. (I might have gotten that date wrong.) I thought that the popularity of synesthesia might be related to the use of the synesthesia as a figure of speech by popular poets around this time. In particular, I thought of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" [also known as "Song of Myself] published in the mid 1850s which, if I remember correctly, contains a lot of unusual imagery and synathesia. Emily Dickinson, writing about the same time (1860s), also used surprising comparisons, often with synesthesia:

Example From: "I heard a fly buzz when I died"
With BLUE uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see

She describes a fly's buzz as being "blue." I wonder if these poets had synesthesia or if they were merely influenced by the popularity of synesthesia of the time.

As I was looking for examples of synasthesia in poetry at this time period, I came across an article that seems to have answered my own question: "Theorist of the evolution of human consciousness were also apt to regard the rapid increase in synasthesia [in literature] brought about by both the intensive scientific search for new cases and the popular fad of affecting synasthesic perception, as evidence that it was a newly emergent...trait [in literature]."

I found this quote in: Bright Colors Falsely Seen By Kevin T. Dann. http://books.google.com/books?id=dxxX9qAnRVsC&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=walt+whitmans+synesthesia&source=web&ots=dhIoaXtOEZ&sig=gWm7xURClVZDVmkauuxe3h-g3FM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result


I think it's interesting how trends in one area affect trends in other areas - for example: science influenced literature which influenced public awareness and fads about synasthesia.

Comedy and audience

I was flipping through the channels looking for a comedy show, and I came across the Soup on E! The host, Joel McHale, has just done a show on the Notre Dame campus last weekend, so I decided to watch. There were a few notable differences between the show that he did here and the show on TV. I thought Beeman’s point about analyzing audience’s previous knowledge and culture and Bauman’s point about performing for the particular audience could be applied to both of McHale’s comic performances. At Notre Dame, McHale made a lot of jokes about football, especially about the other team, San Diego State. Everyone would boo when he mentioned San Diego State. Then he would tease the audience about our viewpoint that ND is the only school worth going to. His subject matter also included his family, celebrities, and other performances that he had done. On TV, he only made fun of celebrities. His audience on TV expects him to mock celebrities and not to talk about ND football. The station pays him to only talk about celebrities, TV shows, and mishaps in the media. He plays to a particular audience.

One interesting thing about the TV show is that I could not tell if he was performing in front of a live audience or if they were playing a laugh track on the TV. It seemed like there was an audience because he would pause to let them laugh where he expected them to laugh. He also made an unintentional mistaking, saying “beauty pageant explode children” and then corrected his statement to “exploit children.” The audience laughed at this error. Presumably, everyone in a live audience who came to see the show would know of the show and would want to be there. I thought things might have been a little different at ND. I heard quite a few people on the quad say that they did not know who the comedian was but decided to come anyway. I thought this made it more challenging for the comedian because he wasn’t necessarily playing to a fan-based audience as he normally is in the studio. There also seemed to be times when he mis-judged the audience. Some of his crude or political jokes were not well received by a majority of the audience. When this happened, he made a joke about himself or the audience such as “Okay, no more killing-baby-seals jokes, but lighten up, people.” He laughed off his own mistakes in humor and continued with the show.

Speech Event

This saturday at 6:30 AM I was awaken by a speech event going on out in hallway. The Freshmen Orientation staff was running through the halls screaming for the freshmen to get up so that they could make them run around campus before the game.

I'm not sure if I completely understand all of Jakobson's and Hymes' points about speech events but I'll give it a try:
Jakobson identifies 6 parts of a speech act: In this instance, the addressers were the screaming orientation staff and the addressees were all the sleeping freshmen. The addressers did not seem to mind being overheard by additional addressees that they were not trying to contact - i.e, the rest of the sleeping dorm. The context was the dorm on Saturday morning; the code was English; The Contact was the sound of their voice.

I was a lot more confused about the 6 functions of language that Jakobson (and later Hymes) points out: Emotive, conative, referential, poetic, phatic, metalingual.
These are their definitions as far as I can understand. I will also relate them to my example if I can.
1. Emotive: The speaker's attitude towards the subject. The freshmen orientation staff seemed very excited and enthusiastic to be up and waking others up.
2. Referential: giving information to another party. The f.o.s. gave instructions to the freshmen - get up, get dressed, and meet in the lobby.
3. Conative - (not sure...) How the speaker addresses the listener - i.e. whether in a command, question, statement, etc. In this example: the speaker were using commands.
4. Poetic - (not sure...) the form that the message comes in; if it gives entertainment from the way the words sound.
5. Phatic - communicating for the sake of communicating. - they continued to repeat the same information again and again. This did not seem necessary as I am sure that everyone was awake. They seemed to be using phatic communication or perhaps to continue the emotive function.
6. Metalingual - talking about language - doesn't apply to example.
7. Contextual - (not sure...) what something means to people in a certain situation. Out of this context, the message would not make sense.