[author: Rick Jones]
Have you noticed the explosion of adjectival (and adverbial) usage? President Trump, perhaps our Adjectiver-in-Chief, never says someone is doing his job, it’s always a fantastic job. No one in the White House is ever in discussions, they’re always in serious andimportant discussions (I suspect an impartial observer would conclude that there’s more than a whiff of the frivolous). Tariffs are going to be the greatest thing we’ve ever done. As your senator, I want to assure you that I’m working very hard! (While that’s evocative of guys in dirty tee-shirts with shovels on a construction site, I don’t think that’s what they have in mind.) Does all that excessive use of adjectives make any of those things truer?
As Captain Obvious would say, “Communication is language’s value proposition.” Grunting was better than whacking someone over the head with a stick. Words are better than grunting. The ability to communicate with precision is generally thought to be better than the alternative. A shout out to the English language and its roughly 1 million words. It is the largest language on the planet by word count. It offers the most precision, the most nuanced lexicon for the delivery of meaning.
As the world grows more complex, we generally endeavor to find more words to describe it. That’s a rational and natural response, and pretty critical if we’re going to keep up. We need new words; what would you call an airplane without the new word airplane (or aeroplane for the Brits)? How awkward would it be to continue to call it a horseless carriage that flies through the air? I have read that there are over 15 different words for snow in certain indigenous populations who live in awfully cold places because there is utility to that group of people in that specificity (language police: good job, right?). The point is, the arc of our language bends towards clarity and specificity.
Overuse of adjectives and euphemisms (I’ll get to the latter in a moment) degrades our language’s ability to effectively facilitate communication. Adjectives and adverbs spread like black mold across the language. Very, spectacular, giant, monumental, fantastic, super, wonderful, big, beautiful, bad, horrible, etc. The tsunami of excess has been embraced by both our chattering class and our politicians and certainly Mr. Trump and his fulminating foes who inundate us with adjectival excess every day have not helped. Let’s face it, our political conversations are so redolent with exclamatory language enabled through adjectival excess because politicians of all stripes have embraced the amazing power of fact-free exaggeration.
We are besieged by this linguistic abuse every day, all day long. Is this supersizing of every noun contagious?
Having consulted Professor Google, there’s certainly not a lack of criticism of the overuse of adjectives and adverbs out there, but somehow it just seems worse now.
Do we overuse adjectives because folks think they’re necessary to deliver a compelling message? Is it the equivalent of shouting? Are we concerned that simply stating that we have a deficit problem doesn’t cut it? One must, in order to get the public’s attention, say our gigantic, out-of-control, really bad and enormous deficit is a horrible, very bad day sort of problem? Does the shouting help?
When everything is shouted, if the adjectival megaphone is applied indiscriminately, what you say threatens to become mere noise and not a compelling message. Amongst all this linguistic excess, things which should be shouted can’t be heard. It’s a cry wolf sort of thing. It’s the adults in Peanuts saying, “whah, whah, whah.”
In fact, all this adjectival shouting can actually get in the way of clear and power communications. Could you imagine Winston Churchill, perhaps the greatest political leader and communicator of the 20th century, saying “We shall fight in France (a wonderful and magnificent country, notwithstanding Agincourt, Crecy and the whole World War II thing), we shall fight on the seas and oceans, and let’s be clear that our seas and oceans are amongst the very best in the world…we shall defend our island, our magnificent island, our spectacular island, the best island there ever was…we shall fight on our beaches, and let me point out that our beaches are absolutely wonderful and once this is over, someone will undoubtedly build great resorts there…” and blah blah blah. Well, you get the point.
I am surely not arguing that we ought to excise all adjectives from the English language…sometimes a big boat is indeed a big boat. But if everything is a big boat, how do we know what really is a big boat? (Men, it’s been said, particularly have this problem.) In New York, all restaurants get rated, and last I checked, unless there’s a dead cat in the pot and rats scurrying across the table, every restaurant gets an A. Not helpful. Overuse of adjectives flattens distinctions among words and obscures meaning. He was Alexander the Great for a reason. He was never Governor Dukakis the Great for the same reason. It’s not helpful when big no longer means big.
The point of communicating is, well, communicating. Can we reflect on the fact that our over-adjectivification and adverbization (I think I just made those terms up) is not helpful and, in fact, results in the deterioration of our language’s ability to deliver cogent and important information.
And now some time for euphemisms (and its first cousin, corporate speak), co-conspirators of our superabundance of adjectives in the modern assault on meaning. If adjectives and adverbs flatten distinction of meaning, euphemisms obscure meaning and shutter honest discussions. This, of course, is not a new problem. The Victorians were terrific at it. Let’s not talk about sex, and if we must, let’s call it conversations. Huh? Vapors was used for various psychological and physical ailments, primarily of women. Cupid’s Itch for venereal disease. Sturdy beggars? The working homeless. The Troubles – war in Ireland.
At the pointy end of the cultural war’s spear, we’re generating new euphemisms like topsy. Them as opposed to him, her, he and she. Today, if you don’t want to talk about crime, we might call it a legal transgression (largely peaceful protests?). We’re still struggling to come up with new words for illegal aliens that sounds less hurtful. Dysfunctional communities? Nah, underserved populations. Dysfunctional families riddled by drug abuse and crime are challenged and complex? Latinex (I’m not sure to anyone to whom it might be applied likes it). Actor as opposed to actor or actresses. Historically marginalized populations? People with limited financial resources, the differently-abled, the neurologically diverse and pregnant people. Each of these has been substituted for language that everyone would have understand. This new language is oblique, less clear, less precise and seems to have more to do with virtue signaling by those of (often self-proclaimed) delicate sensibilities than with the actual subject of this new language. Is this elision of precision really important? Is the case for it ethically and morally compelling? Is it such an important social goal that we’re okay sacrificing clarity? Perhaps a silly case, but surely the stuff of everyday life, if I’m a retailer, don’t I really need to know whether my order is for BVDs for thongs (okay, I understand where that might not always be true) but it would be kind of useful to know whether the thems in my store were buying men’s clothes or women’s clothes. If them are coming to dinner, do I set out one plate or two, or three, or four? This is intentionally sacrificing clarity to avoid offense. Couldn’t we be a bit more rugged in our sense of self-worth and expect a resilience in our interlocutors?
If euphemisms are used to avoid giving offense, they are, in some sense, a good thing. Who wants to be an insensitive jerk? However, when euphemisms are used to avoid engagement, allowing us to elide the difficulties of an honest conversation, we have a problem.
Does Brave New World come to mind? Are we elevating the goal of not being hurtful, avoiding vexing each other into the holy grail of good communication? Have we subordinated actual communications to the elysian fields of benign inoffense?
While we are over exaggerating on the one hand in pursuit of attention while veiling precision in an effort not to offend on the other, we pay a price. Directness is useful. Bluntness is useful. When we supersize every word with adjectives and adverbs and embrace a sea euphemisms, meaning is degraded and it matters. The trouble, of course, is overusing adjectives and embracing euphemisms is easy. It’s comforting to avoid offending. I once tried to terminate a young lawyer for inadequate performance and suggested he start to pursue career opportunities elsewhere. Several days later I actually had to go back and tell him he was fired. Ugh!
It feels good to supersize, too. Make everything bigger, brighter, more important. We all do it. I noticed that when I write one of these commentaries, I almost always need to go in and edit out all these excessive and superfluous greats, goods, fantastic, wonderfuls, spectaculars, etc. (save them for when they are critical to meaning…for instance, describing the Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl win).
So, here’s my plea to all my fellow communicators; try to say what you mean. Trust the reader to get your point without shouting with adjectives and adverbs. Trust your reader to not be deeply offended by the absence of gentle euphemisms. I know it will be really, really, really hard (adverbs are guilty, too) to do. We certainly won’t see leadership from our political classes and our self-appointed cultural elites who generally always prefer to supersize their virtue and elevating avoiding offense to a high art (and otherwise strive to perfect content free communication). But for the rest of us let’s take a deep breath and try to embrace what English is actually very, very good at: Communicating.
