Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal

Does the standard writing style of journalism rot the brain? Consider this from Language Log:

Bill Poser cites a study of Iris Murdoch’s last novel which “raises the possibility that changes in a person’s vocabulary could be used to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease while it is still in its early stages”. In this case, the text analyzed was written a year or two before the disease was diagnosed, and four or five years before the author died. Some studies published over the past decade suggest an even more intriguing connection between writing style and Alzheimer’s. It’s claimed that a simple index of stylistic complexity, measured in short texts written at about age 20, is correlated with low cognitive test scores and neuropathologically-confirmed Alzheimer’s disease, 50 to 70 years later.

It’s not clear how to assign cause and effect here: maybe a condition that predisposes people to Alzheimer’s also affects writing; or maybe certain life-long habits of writing actually tend to ward off the disease. As we’ll see, there’s an intriguing connection to popular stylistic nostrums. Geoff Pullum will be happy to learn that Strunk and White’s stylistic advice may actually rot the brain. Well, at least it’s correlated with neurodegenerative pathology, and might even cause it.

We can test any text for “idea density”: the average number of ideas expressed per ten words. David Snowdon used the following coding technique to study the writing samples of 678 nuns from the School Sisters of Notre Dame:

Ideas corresponded to elementary propositions, typically a verb, adjective, adverb, or prepositional phrase. Complex propositions that stated or inferred causal, temporal, or other relationships between ideas also were counted. Without the linguistic coder’s knowledge of the age or cognitive function of each sister during late life, each autobiography was scored for idea density. The following sentence from an autobiography illustrates the method used to compute idea density: “I was born in Eau Claire, Wis., on May 24, 1913 and was baptized in St. James Church.” The ideas (propositions) expressed in this sentence were (1) I was born, (2) born in Eau Claire, Wis., (3) born on May 24, 1913, (4) I was baptized, (5) was baptized in church, (6) was baptized in St. James Church, and (7) I was born…and was baptized. There were 18 words or utterances in that sentence. The idea density for that sentence was 3.9 (i.e., 7 ideas divided by 18 words and multiplied by 10, resulting in 3.9 ideas per 10 words).

Language log continues:

Note that 3.9 is a very low measure of “idea density”, in the context of the study. According to the study’s summary table, the mean “idea density” in early life autobiographies for nuns whose autopsied brains “met neuropathologic criteria for Alzheimer’s disease” was 4.9 (95% confidence interval 4.6-5.3), while for nuns whose brains were free of Alzheimer’s symptoms, the mean “idea density” was 6.1 (95% confidence interval 5.6-6.6).

No further details are given, but my guess is that under this definition, “idea density” will depend strongly on “density of adjectives and other modifiers”. Here “idea” means something like “elementary predication”, in a certain way of thinking about the meaning of sentences, so every time you add a modifier, you add an “idea”.

As Mark Liberman points out, much writing advice following from Strunk & White suggests that we should omit needless words–obvious nonsense and politically troublesome, too, i.e. who’s to say what’s needless? The Man?

Now we’re ready to consider my initial question: Does the standard writing style of journalism rot the brain?

Before we can begin to answer this, we need to answer another question: What is the normal or average or median idea density of journalism? Hmmmmmm… big task. So I’m not going to attempt it. Instead, let’s take a look at a couple of ledes from the Sunday edition of the Washington Post and the Sunday News-Leader. Then I’ll simply make a few generalizations and draw one or two hardly-supportable conclusions.

First, let’s consider this lede from the News-Leader:

The Springfield Cardinals’ July 23 bobblehead doll could be a likeness of St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson or the likenesses of four others, including Juan Diaz, the big-bopper of Springfield’s inaugural season.

I’ve never used this coding system before, and I’m doing a very quick-’n-dirty analysis here. So my idea count may be a bit off. I suggest you try this at home Okay, so I count 10 ideas in this lede, divided by 35 words (23, St. Louis, and big-bopper count as 1 word each) and multiplied by 10 gives us a score of 2.8. Hmmmmm…that’s a bit low according to the study cited above. Here’s how it looked:

1) Springfield Cardinals’…could be
2) Springfield Cardinals’ July 23…could be
3) Springfield Cardinals’ July 23 bobblehead doll could be
4) could be a likeness of St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame
5) could be a likeness of St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson
6) could be a likeness of…or the likenesses of
7) could be a likeness of…or the likenesses of four others could be a likeness of…including Juan Diaz
9) could be a likeness of…or…including…
10) could be a likeness of…including…the big-bopper of Springfield’s inaugural season

Now let’s consider this lede from the Washington Post:

President Bush on Saturday praised Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for his efforts in hunting down al-Qaeda operatives inside his country and his long-term commitment to democracy during a day-long visit to the capital.

I score it this way–15 ideas in 34 words:

1) President Bush…praised
2) President Bush on Saturday praised
3) praised Pakistan’s president
4) praised Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf
5) praised…for his efforts
6) praised…for his efforts in
7) praised…for his efforts in hunting praised…for his efforts in hunting down
9) praised…for his efforts in hunting down al-Qaeda operatives
10) praised…for his efforts in hunting down al-Qaeda operatives inside his country
11) praised…for his long-term
12) praised…for his long-term commitment to democracy
13) praised…for his long-term commitment to democracy during
14) praised…for his long-term commitment to democracy during a day-long
15) praised…for his long-term commitment to democracy during a day-long visit to the capital

So that’s a score of 4.41 (counting the compound adjectives as one word). Better, but still low. Notice that the Post lede scores higher partly because it uses eight prepositions compared to four in the News-Leader lede.

After spending far too much time on this exercise than I should, I noticed that the more idea-rich Post lede conforms rather closely to the kinds of sentences that I wrote about in The loooong turn-off and The loooong turn-off, Part 2. So then the question arises: Could writing idea-deficient journalistic prose be bad for journalists yet good for readers?

Hmmmmmmm…does this mean that journalists are more heroic that I once presumed (seeing as how I dislike journalistic hero worship)? In other words: Do journalists sacrifice a little bit of their brains everyday for the civic good?

Now, there are other ways to think about my original question. For example, when I first proposed it, Doug McGill left this comment:

Yes, of course, because it has nothing to do with really thinking. It’s reaching for cookie cutter molds and finally puts the mind itself into a mold. Where, for lack of motion and exercise, it commences to rot. Really thinking through every story and every word, on the other hand, would make it difficult for a journalist to hit her deadlines, and for newspapers to hit the front stoop every morning on time. So one can sympathize and understand the journalist’s dilemma.

At first, I didn’t think McGill’s comment was related to idea-density (he had no idea where this thing was going because I hadn’t told him what I was doing). But now I think there’s an important relationship. Idea deficiency is built into the structure of journalistic prose. Ledes must be short and employ strong nouns (not coded as ideas) and strong, active verbs (coded as ideas). Adjectives and adverbs (coded as ideas) must be used sparingly and with great care because modification is apparently a value judgment (it’s ALL value judgment, but never mind). Prepositions (coded as ideas) serve a certain grammatical purpose and cannot be avoided or omitted as needless words. But journalistic prose style does, however, offer sets of particular prepositional phrasing to handle certain rhetorical jobs, e.g. identifications are usually handed this way: “Joe Blow, 42, of Catfish Hollow, Mo.,” which could be expressed in the more idea-rich (but certainly wordy) “Joe Blow is 42 years old and lives in Catfish Hollow in southwest Missouri.”

Okay, so this thought now occurs to me: We know that there are more than two sides to any news situation or issue. But two sides are usually what’s covered because it’s easier to construct the drama as a clash between antagonists and protagonists. Predication merely has to handle the conflict between two sides. Modification can be sparing because master narratives have already compared/identified the two sides with set/understood adjectives. Ditto for preposition in regard to “where each side stands” in metaphorical relation to the other side and the issue at hand. What has to happen to increase idea density (not to mention political utility) is to add one or more of the other points of view that always exist but are usually left out. You have to add predication, modification, and preposition.

And, while you’re at it, you can tell a different story (also see my Primary Instability Paradox essay).

Tag: journalism
Tag: rhetoric