Pro Commerce

Politics of language and the language of politics

Our language has many subsets. We use one subset to speak to infants (kichi-koo) and another to children (little angel, look at grandpa). Still another to talk to pets. One subset to talk to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, another to talk to someone who doesn't speak our language (me no bring wheels). And many others --  including one we use to speak to god (please hear me).

We have a spoken language that is very different from a variety of our written languages.

We have formal languages for funerals (we are gathered today), for commencements and for wedding toasts. We have informal languages for intimate persuasion (my sweet, wonderful).

This paper is for a subset that is a current issue: political language. We have an important subset of English that is spoken by politicians, nearly all of them, nearly all the time. George Orwell wrote a paper on the subject, but he was mostly complaining about the dishonesty of political language.

I am particularly conscious of the issue because it divides America today. There is one group who dislike political language and are attracted to President Trump partly because of the non-political way he speaks. There is another group that doesn't have a strong dislike of political talk; they dislike the non-political language that Trump speaks.

So what is political language?

I will use a brief announcement made yesterday by the mayor of my city. She said: 'I have received many calls from my fellow citizens about the crowding and unsanitary conditions on the sidewalks in the Tenderloin, a district that is only a few minutes walk from City Hall. I am immediately taking action to move us forward. We will cleanup the mess and remedy the situation with strong action and determination. Whatever it takes, we will clean it up.'

So what did she say? Depends on what you, the listener, wanted her to say. Some listeners, her supporters, will believe she is directing a group of city employees to move the homeless off the sidewalks and clean the sidewalks and streets. Other listeners heard her promise nothing. Still others heard her say she is getting complaints, but this isn't a government problem and nothing can be done.

The nature of political language is that it operates at a level of ambiguity that allows for a variety of interpretations.

Non-political language in the same situation would be: 'The Tenderloin is filled with tents, homeless people and garbage on the street. Starting tomorrow, I have a designated a team of city workers and police to move the homeless to two resettlement shelters. Another team will physically wash all the sidewalks and streets. Within the next seven days the neighborhood will be as clean as we can make it.'

Compare the two statements. One is political language that is entirely ambiguous and allows for multiple interpretations and no accountability. The second is standard English with some accountability.

Trump is the second president to come to office from a business background. The first was Harry Truman, who was considered 'unpolished' and 'blunt'.

I have said it often and most readers who have a business background will agree that internal business language is based on honesty and candor. An employee or manager who is not honest within the business will be removed. Dishonesty can lead to supplier trouble, customer lawsuits and employee legal actions. To get rid of an employee the law often requires written proof of disregard for clear management directions.

President Trump  has managed and supervised thousands of workers, staff and employees; he has a long habit of clear, simple, direct and honest language.

His followers admire his candor. His opponents ridicule and denigrate it.

Why does a large part of the population like political language and demand it of politicians? It is not an answer I can give. My guess is that it is so universal among politicians that it is taken as a sign of political skill.

In search for images to use in this piece, I found dozens of cartoons that make the same point I have made here about political language.

Napping

In the previous blog, I mentioned sleeping through a graduate economics seminar and still being selected by the professor to do research for him. I couldn't find an illustrative image online.

This is the current me showing my napping position. It is not obvious that I am half asleep.

Out of the hundreds of times when I napped, there are two good stories of my napping in this position.

One was in India. I was the guest of honor and was to give a talk to a dozen people seated around a large table. It was India so it was hot, probably over 90F. I also had my sun glasses on. My girl friend woke me, with a kick, in time to give the talk. No one, no one ever mentioned it. Or even seemed to notice it.

The second time was at a large dinner, with a talk given by my friend Dr. Peter Sherrill. The subject was statistical mathematics. I was in the front row, having finished dinner, I was in my napping position.

At the end of the speech he said “Did everyone understand the part about the use of Latin Squares in sampling design?” “Michael, did it make sense to you?”

I gave a complete and sound answer. Almost a direct quote from his talk.

Peter and I became very close friends after that. I visited him weekly during the last 3 years of his life.

Age 81 and baffled

I look back at my experience in college and I have no explanation of what happened.

At roughly age 20 I returned from a year in Israel, determined to become an economist and study Wesley Mitchell's business cycles. The U. of Calif, Berkeley looked at my U. of Chicago 3 years, minus one language course for graduation, and applied most of my college courses to high school. I had gone to Chicago from the 10^th grade. Berkeley said I needed a bachelor's degree to enter graduate school. So I took a year at San Francisco State College to get a BA.

I had been on campus two weeks and knew nobody. I was approached by a fellow student who was the elected chair of the student council and asked me if I would be president of the student body. I said yes. I came to understand that phenomenon, why I was selected, in my 40s. It happened so often that I had become president or chair of every organization I came near, that I knew it was my posture, movement and character that was recognized by other humans as a person who is a leader and will take responsibility. An animal genetic factor of some sort. (That year my fellow students rioted at City Hall)

Then things started to happen that I can't explain. A week later the instructor in the statistics class I was taking asked me to be the TA, (teachers aide). I said yes. Why did he pick me? One day I assigned the class data from a 1957 Surgeon General's report on smoking and health. When I got to the class, half a dozen students were lined up at the door. 'Mister Phillips, Mr. Phillips?' They had done their homework. The three questions, based on data in the report, had statistical answers that showed smoking was NOT the cause of lung cancer or any other maladies. I wrote a letter with the findings to the science editor of the local San Francisco daily, the Chronicle, who duly published my findings. The next, major Surgeon General's report had a statistician on the team and had none of the data from the first report. The global center of anti-tobacco studies at U.C. Medical School never had the original Surgeon General's report in their library.

Next, after a month, I was approached by a faculty economist and offered the job of revising the second edition of his Econ textbook. Why me? It was simple, mostly updating data and tables.

In the second semester at S.F. State I was approached by another economics professor and asked to study some data on the salaries of the scientists and managers at Oak Ridge Atomic Research Facility. Why me? The problem was that at the top of the scientific salary scale the only way to rise was to become a manager. A waste of talent from the research point of view. I wrote a report and gave it back to the professor.

Skip a year for Army service and I am a graduate student at the U. of C Berkeley in economics. In one small seminar class taught by Robert Gordon, I spend most of the time with my head in my hands asleep. At the end of the semester, Gordon asks me to help him on a national panel to revise the unemployment reporting. Why me? I was sleeping in his class, much of the time. After studying the material I recommended the current six reporting categories that we still have.

Next, I am contacted by a professor at U. of Wisconsin, Marvin P. Miracle, whom I never met, and paid to spend the summer of 1963 in the U, of C stacks reading the entire literature on Africa from 1600 to 1850 in four languages, including maps. Why me? I searched 180 books for data on markets. I recorded and reported prices and trade all across the African continent as described by travelers. Prof. Miracle used the data in all the major works on African economic history.

I still have no idea why I was selected for all these technical jobs. It doesn't seem to have happened to anyone else. After nearly 60 years of pondering I still don't even have an hypothesis. Intelligence and research skills don't appear to be visible talents. Certainly not genetic.

I have spent my life being a researcher.