I have to cast my mind back to my undergraduate days before I became an English major. Previously I had, like many others, owned a Student Companion, a book written by Wilfred D. Best. It was indeed a debater’s best friend. Many words I did memorize from its brown pages; many words which were to be later exorcised from me by an English Professor, David Kerr. As a first and second year student I could never understand why my wonderful jaw breakers were suddenly hated by an English professor.
After all this was an English class. It was the best place to demonstrate my impressive vocabulary, so I thought. Little did I know that what I considered brilliant English was pretentious nonsense which lacked clarity and precision. My writing was infested by dangling modifiers, pronouns with missing antecedents, the use of nouns instead of verbs, sentence fragments and long sentences which resulted with embarrassing ambiguity. I had to relearn English and for a while forget about tintinnabulation and antidisestablishmentarianism. I became an English single major student and more than anything else learnt criticism, clarity and precision. Years later, I was also to discourage my students from pretentious writing. Language is a tool of communication. Its principal role is to communicate, although it may be used to please and delight. Language should not delight at the expense of communicating. The poet might disagree ÔÇô but he is largely an endangered species anyway, whom some have been attempting to conserve.
Across disciplines I have observed that many in this country love the use of big words and sometimes very vague expressions. The intention is fairly clear: it is to impress and not so much to communicate. Let us consider this matter soberly. If you want to communicate with people, firstly you need to choose the words they understand; otherwise how will they understand you? If you chose interesting delightful words which they don’t understand, they may indeed laugh with much amusement, but they will remain without understanding. As a communicator, you would have failed terribly in your task. You would have impressed but failed dismally to communicate. I see this many times in print in newspapers. I also see it in the writings of some of our politicians, academics and experts of all sorts. Words such as abirritate, abjure, ablactate, and ablation are thrown around with reckless abandon. I recently listened to the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, speaking at the Scottish Tory conference┬áon why Libya should be attacked “to protect civilians”. I was amazed by his clarity. He contrasted the Libyan people’s demonstrations with the brutal reaction from Gaddafi. “It was more than three weeks ago that the people of Libya took to the streets in protest against Colonel Gaddafi and his regime. There were hopeful signs that a better future awaited them and that, like people elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East, they were taking their destiny into their own hands. But Gaddafi ÔÇô aided by mercenaries ÔÇô responded by turning the full might of his military against his own people. Attacking peaceful protestors.
Smashing up towns like Zawiyah. Using heavy weapons, aircraft, helicopter gunships and naval forces … … brutally beating back those who have opposed him. Now he has threatened the heavily populated city of Benghazi. Gaddafi himself made clear his plans last night to launch a violent assault on that city… …and he said that every home would be searched and that he would show no mercy and no pity. There was a real danger that the world would look on in horror at all this ÔÇô and yet do nothing.” Having clearly painted the picture of Gaddafi’s Libya, he outlined his role: “That’s why I felt so strongly that it was right to take a lead, right to help marshal concerted international effort and right to bring forward the action to stop this slaughter.” Yes he did not use the word killings, he chose the word slaughter ÔÇô a word he used four times in his speech – a word reserved for the killing of animals ÔÇô to demonstrate how Gaddafi has dehumanized his people before exterminating the demonstrators that he called cockroaches. And by the way, it was not the first time we heard the term cockroaches. It was the term the Hutu butchers called the Tutsis before they massacred 800,000 of them. It was the same term the Nazis called Jews before they gassed some six million of them.
Cameron’s argument was well thought through and clearly structured. His entire speech is delivered in only 709 words. He is not verbose, but he is effective. He uses the word people 28 times, action 16 times, Libya 14 times, world 10 times, Gaddafi 10 times. His speech doesn’t have big words.
Perhaps the closest thing to a big word is extremism which he uses 4 times; but it is a fairly well understood term in the UK society in particular within the phrase Islamic extremism. He chooses his words carefully to reveal Gaddafi’s brutality. These include words (with their frequencies) such as slaughter (4), violence (4), crisis (3), dictator (3), risks (3), wrong (3), aggression (2), brutality (2), danger (2), pariah (2), mercenaries (2), assault (1), attack (1), beating (1), bloody (1), brutalised (1), brutalising (1), brute (1) and many others. What has impressed me most with Cameron is his ability to communicate clearly, effectively and in simple terms ÔÇô no fancy words! This reminds me of George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language in which he outlines five strategies of good writing (1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. (2) Never use a long word where a short one will do (3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out (4) Never use the passive where you can use the active (5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Batswana love big words because they have very little to say. Big words conceal their weak reasoning since they attract people away from the content towards their fancy language use. We are like a poor vocalist who dances with exuberance to attract people away from his bad baritone. Batswana love big words because they have been poorly taught. They don’t know how to write or express themselves with precision. They prefer to hold a discussion instead of to discuss. Batswana love big words because they prefer being fake than being genuine. It’s who we have become as a people. We prefer big expensive cars even if we cannot afford them because they tell a story of wealth and success, regardless of how fake such a story might be. Our clothes, shoes, accents and diction are all pretentious. Batswana love big words because they believe they are a mark of educatedness. They therefore use big words as a status symbol. They are a badge of being learned.
When they are at their most insecure state, where they feel they will be judged, especially in the public domain, they seize on big words as a defence mechanism. So next time you are confronted with a piece of incomprehensible piece of gibberish, show some sensitivity because the writer may be terribly insecure.