All of us seem to prefer certain phrases when we speak. Perhaps you have noticed that I often employ assonance and alliteration in my posts. I remember back in college being held after class by my professor because he was absolutely certain I plagiarized my essay after I used rhetorical and literary techniques uncommon to the student body. They could not possibly be spoken by a student! When he learned about my upbringing, origination, and education, he realized that I was not like the kitten caboodle, but I do have my preferred way of doing things.
To some degree, my communication comes from my religious upbringing. Just this morning while reading scripture, I reread some of the phrases that I love to use like “unjustly ascribed to God” or “expressly repugnant” or even “nevertheless”, all of which are accurate albeit archaic applications of the English language. Some of our phrases bother me. It seems like all too often in church, when members rise to pray it’s as if we open up some canned phrases and let the contents spew into the room without much thought. This kind of “vain repetitions” is not limited to words; it is evident in our cadence, our tone, and the rhythm of our communication. It got so bad at one point growing up with one of my brothers that my parents asked him to change it up. As an adult, I still see that people get up and apply the same phrases without giving it much thought, and when I say things to which they are unaccustomed they grow uncomfortable.
Partly, this is why I can’t listen to the president for more than a minute or two. He overexercises the same tired phrases without knowing it. Perhaps this is because he doesn’t seem able to articulate anything without a speech writer or a teleprompter present, and the person who puts words thereon for him to read is certainly into canned phrases. Even when Obama speaks his own mind or speaks at all, he almost always speaks in a consistent manner. His tone and meter are very ingenious; he tries to talk from his throat, which gives the appearance of control and calm and reason, and he ends with a rise in pitch, effectively lifting up his voice. This has the effect of rendering him as if he is a reasonable and uplifting individual. It appears to me that someone taught him to speak this way intentionally, because it can be effective, provided you don’t do it all the livelong day. Since he does it all the time, he wears it out, and it became something that I frequently mock when I impersonate him because it’s all he knows. It has become a sort of sing-song spectacle, in which you can count on the president to repeat tired phrases, sort of like listening to Sheriff Barney Fife. Some media pundits in other countries have noticed that he tells dignitaries the exact same things sometimes. Apparently, all NATO nations except Denmark are close and strong allies, but even Denmark, like a dozen other nations “punches above its weight class”. He looks like it’s earnest, heartfelt and unique, when it is anything other than that- it’s generic canned phraseology and isn’t worth the breath it takes to utter it. That indicates to me that it’s a “vain repetition” and that he doesn’t really mean what he says.
Vain repetitions evince a lack of forethought or meaning in what we say. So maybe I surprise people when I ask God to help us properly process our poop, but I really mean it, and people pay attention. When I visited a high school biotechnology program four years ago and spoke to the students, one of them pointed out that I said “saved my bacon” in lieu of “saved my a**”, and I pointed out that perhaps my colorful metaphors were more effective because they registered and resonated regularly with the audience. I get tired of listening to what amounts to a long extension of jejune, ruderal, asinine banalities as people blah blah blah through their blah blah blah lives.
Words offer the means to meaning. Most people do not appear to know how to use words. We know how to form our mouth and make sounds, but all too often we don’t mean what we say or communicate with any degree of effectiveness. I have noticed that many people only know one definition for a word or one instance in which it’s applicable, but some politicians use a different one knowing that most of us will assume it means something else. For example, Governor Sandoval (R-NV) said he would “end the furlough program”; none of us thought when he promised this that he meant to “make your paycuts permanent in perpetuity”. We thought he would restore our pay with an end to furloughs. On a larger scale, Senators keep promising to “fix” immigration; they do not seem to mean fix as in “repair or make right” but fix as in “put in the fix; make it permanent in its current place”. It’s very clever, diabolically clever, to communicate with guile, but that seems to be what politicians do- throw words at us not because they mean them but because they know we do. Don’t even get me started about the words “love” or “friends”. When we use canned phrases or limit our rhetoric, we strip communication of meaning. Meanwhile, I learned how to recognize when people open up a canned phrase, and I hope that as you register that you will be better able to ascertain actual meaning from those who, although they still talk, have actually ceased to speak.
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