Isn’t it clear?…
I’ve got a busy summer ahead of me as I prepare to move (just 4 weeks from now) and prepare my new classes for SMSU. Part of that process, obviously, means reading all my new textbooks. As a scholar of rhetoric, it’s maddening reading journalism textbooks because the profession still operates under what I’d call a Strunk & White view of language, i.e. that language can be made clear, concise, an impartial.
Journalism operates with many assumptions about language that not only make it more difficult to do the job, but also may do harm to political minorities. For example, journalism asserts that (re: Moral Politics, George Lakoff):
1. Concepts are literal and nonpartisan: The standard six-question rubric of journalism (who, what, when, where, why, how) cannot capture the complexity of issues as seen through, and expressed by, the incompatible moral systems of liberals and conservatives.
2. Language use is neutral: “Language is associated with a conceptual system. To use the language of a moral or political conceptual system is to use and to reinforce that conceptual system.”
3. News can be reported in neutral terms: Not if #2 is correct. To choose a discourse is to choose a position. To attempt neutrality confuses the political concepts. Is it an “inheritance tax” or a “death tax”? What could possibly be a neutral term? To use both in the name of balance is confusing because most news articles don’t have the space, and most TV treatments don’t have the time, to fully explain the terms and why liberals prefer one and conservatives prefer the other. There’s no time or space to explain why this language difference matters (beyond political tactics) to the formation, implementation, and evaluation of policy.
4. Mere use of language cannot put anyone at a disadvantage: Again, see #2.
5. All readers and viewers share the same conceptual system: We share the same English language, i.e. its grammar. We often do not share dialects or the denotations and connotations of concepts, lived experience, and ideologies. The statement “I am a patriotic American” means something entirely different to liberals and conservatives. That difference is more than a matter of connotation. The differences in connotation spring from different moral constructs. What the conservative means by that statement appears immoral to the liberal and vice versa.
All of that is a long-winded introduction to an interesting AP article about the meaning of the word “credible” in regard to “intelligence” about a possible terrorist attack in the U.S. this summer. Strunk & White is no help here.
Maybe it’s just me, but when I clicked on the “AP article” it was about base closings and not the meaning of credible.
Fixed!
Are the assumptions you see operating here in journalism- that concepts are literal, that language use is inherently neutral for members of a universal audience, that news can be ‘objective’-can these assumptions be traced directly to the Scottish Englightenment position that discourse be appropriate for securing a certain social status, a middle-class standing in contemporary society? In other words, most news reports seek to actively suppress elements that would or could be read as divisive, an indicating some contestable space in the social fabric?
Michael Greer
_The Elements of Style_ does not make a case for “clear, concise” language. It makes a case for clear and concise writing. Writing is very different from speech (something that the vast majority of humans master naturally in a relatively short period of time). Writing lacks the profuse context of spoken language, requires specialized cognitive skills, and is basically an invented skill rather than a natural skill that happens to have some similarities to speech. Although _Elements_ makes a case for clear and concise “writing,” it makes no claims for impartiality. Most other adherents of “clear and concise writing,” including Orwell, also make no claims to impartiality. In fact, they would probably argue that partiality is the point of writing in the first place. The current poor state of journalism cannot be attributed to journalism schools teaching an abundance of “conciseness and clarity” let alone “impartiality.”
Richard…quite right re: “writing”
Re: makes no claims for impartiality
Makes no specific claim…that’s true. But it’s there just the same, IMO.
On “writing” there are three important developments:
historical grammatology–the origin of writing
theoretical grammatology–the essence of writing
applied grammatology–the pedagogy of writing
Ulmer is now doing the most important work on writing in a hyperreal cultural environment.
This past semester, I used _Elements_ in conjunction with several other rhetoric and composition texts for a freshman composition course. It was the first time I had looked at the text in probably ten years (it was even in a new edition edited by White’s step-son). Of course, a one-semester first-year writing course cannot go much beyond a surface treatment; We had some lively discussions about the text (with the help of Amazon.com reviews); however, the class and I didn’t make any connection with impartiality. I will return to the text this summer with that in mind. An implied theme of writing as an impartial tool is very ironic considering Strunk and White’s penchant for clarity.
I can understand the need for clarity if your model for language is transmission of messages. But what about those situations where you need to invent an argument or explicate a topic? How do guidelines for clear and impartial expression help?
In other words, _Elements_ is dealing with one canon, style, and it doesn’t help for any of the others, especially organization and invention.
Michael– Well, they don’t help…which could have been part of the point had this entry run even longer
I agree with your concluding assertion.