Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi A certain A.M. Mainasara who curiously used a plural pronominal self-reference ( i...
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter:@farooqkperogi
A certain A.M. Mainasara who curiously used a plural pronominal
self-reference ( i.e., “we”) took issue with my critique of President Buhari’s
inaugural speech in a July 12, 2015 letter to the editor titled “Dr. Farooq’s
Critique of President Buhari’s Inauguration Speech.” I have chosen to respond
to the critique not because I think I am beyond reproach (as I’ve stated here
several times, I too am fallible), but because I will betray the pedagogic intent
of this column if I let several of the inaccurate claims of the writer to go
unchallenged.
I don’t know on whose behalf Mainasara wrote, but his use of
the majestic plural “we” suggests that he either wrote on behalf of Buhari’s
speech writers or he thought himself too important to use a singular pronominal
self-reference. If the former is true, I want to assure him that my intention
was not to pillory the president’s speech writers. As I said in the original article, I isolated the grammatical and usage slips in the speech “not to
ridicule the writers of the speech, but to guide people who might, out of
innocence, hold up the speech as the paragon of a well-written, grammatically
correct and complete speech.”
I subjected several of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s
public speeches to grammatical analyses, as readers of this column know only
too well. So I wasn’t picking on President Buhari’s speech writers. In what
follows I address the issues raised by Mainasara. I will ignore his obliquely
sarcastic ad hominem digs at me and address the substance of his critique.
1. Mainsara wrote: “May I suggest to Dr Farooq that the
style, grammar and character of a public speech is very very different from a
sixth form essay or even a University degree English language exam. In public
speaking you take liberties with language, grammar, syntax etc for effect, for
emphasis and for brevity.”
So a public speech is different from a sixth-form essay or a
university degree English exam? Wow! What a revelation!! Who would have thought
it?
Seriously, though, it is entirely false that public
speeches, especially inaugural speeches, can “take liberties with language,
grammar, syntax etc” for any reason—if by liberties Mainasara means being slipshod
and being immune from adhering to formal usage norms. If the reader would indulge
my immodesty a bit, I took courses in rhetorical theory and criticism in my
doctoral studies where I studied public address, especially presidential
inaugural speeches from George Washington’s inaugural address to Obama’s. A lot
of thought and effort go into writing inaugural addresses, the kind I don’t
expect to see in Nigeria given that English isn’t native to us. I neither have
the space nor the inclination to write about the rhetoric and conventions of
inaugural speeches; it suffices to say, however, that Mainasara wasn’t faithful
to the facts when he said public speeches free people from the obligations to
be grammatically correct and complete.
2. The writer took
issue with my critique of the phrase “in rain” in the president’s address. I said
“in the rain” is more idiomatic than “in rain.” In refuting my claim, he
reproduced a passage from Shakespeare where “in rain” appears ("In
thunder, lightning or in rain?").
I admit that fussing over the grammatical propriety of the
phrase “in rain” is pettifoggery. So the writer was right to call my objection
a “quibble,” except that this is a specialist column that obsesses over several
minutiae of grammar and usage.
Having said that, there are problems with Mainasara’s
contrast of contexts. First, English has significantly evolved since
Shakespeare’s time. There are several usage conventions that were perfectly
permissible in Shakespeare’s time that are now taboos. Great examples are the
double superlative (such as “most tallest”) and the double comparative (such as
“more taller”).
For instance, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Antony characterizes the injury inflicted upon
Caesar by Brutus as the “most unkindest cut of all.” In modern English, “most
unkindest cut” would be written either as “most unkind cut” or as “unkindest
cut.”
There are several other Shakespearean expressions that are
ungrammatical by the standards of modern English. In the coming weeks, I will
dedicate a column to isolating expressions that appear in Shakespeare’s oeuvre
that are considered illiterate by the standards of modern English grammar. The
point is that language evolves, its norms and conventions mutate, and you can’t
always use the standards of a past era to defend usage choices in a present
era.
A search through the corpora of contemporary English usage
(such as the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American
English) shows that “in the rain” is clearly now the preference of a majority of
native English speakers. In fact, “in the rain,” and “singin’ in the rain” are
the titles of a popular song and a historic movie respectively.
Finally, Mainasara wrote: “In the unavoidable absence of
William Shakespeare, perhaps Farooq Kperogi Ph.D will request Oxford, Cambridge
or Trinity College, Dublin, the three Universities [that] are guardians of the
English Language to agree that Shakespeare should have written.”
Sorry, Mainasara, but the English language has no formal
guardians. Oxford and Cambridge university presses publish dictionaries, but
they are no guardians of the language.
The meanings of words in their dictionaries constantly change in
response to changes in popular usage. One of the distinctions of the English
language, about which many native English speakers brag, is that, unlike French
and other European languages, it has no formal authority to police or adjudicate
usage.
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| A friend sent me a snapshot of the letter. I couldn't find it on Trust's website |
3. The writer says, “Social media is common parlance, like
newspapers so whether you qualify the phrase with the the or not is immaterial.”
This, frankly, isn’t worthy of a response because it says nothing, but I will
respond anyway. There is a world of difference between “the social media” and
“social media.” The former refers to an antecedent and the latter is generic.
Saying “people in the social media” would cause any educated English speaker to
ask “which social media?” because the definite article “the” indicates that a
specific social media type is being referred to. The bulk of my academic
research is on social media. I have never come across any scholar write or say
“the social media” when referring to social media in a generic sense. Mainasara
invokes no authority to back up his defense; he merely says it is right because
he wants it to be right. That’s not the way language works.
4. Mainasara relies on the second definition of “brethren”
given in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
to defend the usage of the word in a presidential inaugural speech. There is
something called pragmatics in linguistics that Mainasara would do well to
acquaint himself with. It means how language is actually used. Dictionaries
list all possible meanings of words, including the obsolescent meanings of the
words. Pragmatics helps the user to determine which meaning is in use, and
which is going out of currency. In no modern English prose, especially of the
status and importance of a presidential inaugural speech, is “brethren” used in
place of “people who are part of the same society as yourself.” Interestingly,
all the dictionaries on my desk don’t have this definition.
Plus, a search through the corpora of contemporary English
usage shows that “brethren” is mostly used to refer to lay members of male Christian
religious sects. If you have no access to corpora, simply type “brethren” on
Google and see how it’s used.
The writer asked if
we should avoid the use of "mankind" and "Sons of Adam"
since I said “brethren” sounds sexist and exclusionary. Well, the answer is
yes. Modern native English speakers no
longer say “mankind”; they say “humankind” or simply “humans.” “Sons of Adam”
isn’t a common expression among native English speakers. If it were, it would
be rendered as “sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.”
The point is, over the past few years, English has moved
toward greater gender neutrality. That’s why TIME magazine’s famous “Man of the
Year” award has been changed to “Person of the Year” award. “Man” is no longer
the generic referent for “human” in English, just as “he” is no longer the
generic pronoun for all humans.
When Louis Armstrong said, “one small step for man; one
giant step for mankind” he was merely reflecting the prevailing grammatical
conventions of his time. If he were to say the same thing now, he would most
certainly say, “one small step for a human; one giant step for humankind.” It
would interest the reader to know that Armstrong actually wanted to say “one small
step for a man,” but he slipped up and omitted the indefinite article “a.”
5. Sentence fragments are acceptable in poetry or in
simulations of dialogic exchanges where antecedents help complete the sense in
fragments, but not in formal, conventional prose. Winston Churchill’s speech
that Mainasara cited was written in verse, so it’s poetry. The example he gave
from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s speech was a simulation of dialogic exchange.
So his contrast of contexts is imperfect.
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