In which you owe someone an apology...

An uncomfortably warm welcome to April 2010, my first normal entry for two long, painful months! As is horribly often the case, I must begin with a grovelling apology. Having, in both February and March, subjected you to bizarre and barely poetic musings, whilst simultaneously promising additional conventional entries, I appear to have disappointed you on all counts. To compensate for the unorthodox nature of the past few months, I shall furnish you with a soul-numbingly mundane discussion on one of my many personal gripes, as I feel this facilitates the quickest return to normality. But before we begin, AND BEGIN WE SHALL, I shall provide you with a few unnecessarily inane updates on my life and the world as we know it. It’s halfway through April, and exams are looming like icebergs through the twilit gloom of academic comprehension. Fortunately, what with temperatures rising like inconvenient erections, these glacial behemoths will soon be a thing of the past, and summer can commence with trademark heavy-handed prejudice (I burn easily). I have just ordered no fewer than three Elvis Costello albums (I really like Elvis Costello), am on my way to challenge the Sinnoh region’s Elite Four in Pokemon Diamond (my Golduck knows ‘Shadow Claw’), and I am as big a hit with the ladies as ever (a DIRECT HIT, you guys)! On top of all this intense drama, apparently scientists are working on a way to lessen the number of mothers passing on genetic diseases to their children, by transplanting healthy Mitochondrial DNA into eggs at risk. Stevie Wonder is supposedly playing at Glastonbury, and that crass, sanitary-towel of a man, Tarcisio Bertone, has come under fire for his crazy claims about the evils of homosexuality within the church, and for being, to quote myself, “a cunt”. So it’s the good times all round! But, to return to the subject of this month’s discussion, I present you with a rambling tirade against the evils of IMPROPER WORD USE, and THE INJUSTICES WHICH RESULT FROM IGNORANCE OF THE MOTHER-TONGUE.

Pedantry.

Many of us dislike it, and with good reason. Linguistic pedantry, in particular, we all find unutterably tedious. The distinction between “less” and “fewer” is quite literally irrelevant in modern, English-speaking society, as is being trigger-happy with the word “literally”. Improper use of apostrophe’s (!) rarely causes anyone any bother, nor does the grammatical incorrectness of the phrase “None of them are...”
 

To illustrate the pointlessness of such technicalities more effectively, I’ll quickly show you (or more likely reiterate for you) the distinction between “less” and “fewer”. “Less” is used when referring to something which cannot be given a definite numerical quantity, and corresponds with the adjective “much” (e.g. less chocolate, less blood, less confusion). “Fewer” is used when referring to something which can be given a definite numerical quantity, and corresponds with the adjective “many” (e.g. fewer people, fewer chairs, fewer sexual assaults). As I’m sure you’ll agree, this is neither here nor there. It does not hinder our understanding of what someone is saying to us one iota. It is a silly, arbitrary feature of our language which complicates it needlessly. But some people get very riled up about it. The “none of them are...” kerfuffle is even worse. As we know, “none” is a contraction of “not one”, but it long ago lost the apostrophe which denotes this. “Not one of them are...” is incorrect. “Not one of them is...” is correct. BUT, the omission of the apostrophe, I would argue, nullifies this technicality, as “none” has essentially integrated itself into our language as a standalone word. But I undress... I mean, digress.
 

My point is one which I often bore people with at parties: language is a democracy. If this is a given truth then such pedantry must surely qualify as tyranny. However, there are times when linguistic pedantry is in the right. Admittedly, very rarely when it sees fit to concern itself with grammar, but sometimes when it concerns itself with definition, or denotation. The above example, “literally”, is not one of these occasions. People use “literally” to emphasise the truth of a statement. Sometimes they apply it to metaphors, similes or hyperbole, and are condemned by pedantic, friendless cretins for doing so. “I literally do nothing all day.” That’s impossible, of course, but we understand what it means. The speaker is putting distinct emphasis on how little he or she does. Nobody is in any confusion whatsoever.
 

Hopefully.
 

But what of words which are incorrectly used, and which consequently do confuse people? What of words we apply to one another which (we finally broach this month’s subject) are unfair because they are used incorrectly? I refer you to the two I dislike the most: “pretentious” and “hypocrite”.

“Pretentious” is the adjective form of the noun “pretence”, which in turn is the noun form of the verb “to pretend”. Correctly used, it denotes someone who is pretending, as seems obvious. Why then, do we use this word, in the most negative of tones, to describe someone who has the collected works of Shakespeare on their bookshelf, who enjoys classical music, who discusses philosophy, or who frequents the theatre? If these people are in possession of Shakespeare’s canon, the operatic works of Mendelssohn, if they ruminate on Plato or Hume, or revel in the dry wit of Pinter, what is it that makes them pretentious? If they sincerely enjoy these things then they are, by definition, unpretentious. They are true and sincere. If they own these things or do these things in order to appear cultured, and lack genuine passion, then they are pretentious, but colloquially, many people fail to draw this glaringly evident distinction. In jibing these people, whether pretentious or not, the jiber (Jibe-machine? Jibe-talker?) is him or herself, being extremely pretentious. Placing themselves in a position of self-assumed superiority to scorn someone for being more cultured and (often) just more interesting is adopting a false facade in itself. The difference is that, rather than drawing from the well of cultural elitism, this has its roots in reverse-snobbery.

As a friend recently said to me, as I gallantly defended Oscar Wilde from accusations of pretension: “Oscar Wilde isn’t pretentious; he’s an intelligent writer!” This, I fear, is the problem...

The unjustly widespread application of “pretentious” stems less from a lack of understanding of language, and more from a broader, and far more problematic source. It stems from a general lack of understanding, and the resultant feelings of intimidation and suspicion. It is simply an abstract parallel to a feature inherent in us all, but mercifully suppressed (in what I hope to be most of us) by centuries of civilisation: a hostile reaction to anything alien. Intelligence and culture, bizarre though it may sound, are alien to some people. In fact, it is alien to all of us to some degree. There is always someone more intelligent and cultured than we are. Are we not all tempted to label them as pretentious? Do we not all, by means of ridicule, seek to bring those better than us crashing down to our level, to render their superiorities insignificant by making them laughable or conceited? In doing so, we render our own deficits less severe, and therefore less painful.

Finding a solution to this is, as I have mentioned, problematic. I daresay that clever people, and people who actively try to better themselves intellectually and culturally (however successfully) will always attract the criticism of those too base, crude and bitter to take the leap to self-improvement themselves. Until then I urge you, before flinging such a slanderous term at someone, to ask yourself if it is they or you, who are pretentious.

“Hypocrisy” was a word which gave Samuel Johnson a hard time. It was one of his many pet peeves regarding the application of language, and the unjust use of the word riled him up something awful. “Hypocrisy” means the declaring of views, opinions, morals or beliefs that are inconsistent with one’s own. It’s basically lying. However, we have come to accept “hypocrisy” as meaning incongruence between statement and action, which is very different. Someone who complains about people around them smoking, but frequently smokes in public, is a hypocrite. Someone who discourages people from smoking, but smokes themselves, is not necessarily a hypocrite. As with “pretentious” the problem with this misuse is one of sincerity.

Our man who smokes in public, but complains whenever anyone else does the same, clearly lacks sincerity. In contrast, our man who discourages people from smoking, but does so himself, provided he genuinely believes in the benefits of not smoking, is far from a hypocrite. It would be unfair and insulting to accuse the latter of hypocrisy without first ascertaining the authenticity of his conviction.

Politicians are often accused of hypocrisy because they tell us what they think we want to hear, which is often at odds with their own beliefs. This is hypocrisy. The Catholic Church promotes the teachings of a poor carpenter, but have their headquarters in a building of incredible opulence. This is (horrendous) hypocrisy. Criminals sometimes go to schools to encourage children to avoid trouble, work hard, and respect others.  This is NOT hypocrisy (if they actually believe it).

That’s essentially the difference. It might seem a bit confusing, and it certainly took me a little while to sift through the numerous available definitions in order to prove my point, but fundamentally it’s really very simple. The difference between a valid accusation of hypocrisy and unjust slander is the difference between someone telling the truth and someone telling a lie. It’s the difference between someone who believes what they say and someone who doesn’t. Lacking the facilities to act on what you believe, but encouraging others to act upon it, is not hypocrisy. It's just being human!

Yet even once we have come to grips with this, hypocrisy remains troublesome. It can be used, as with politicians, to conceal motives or to endear yourself to someone under false pretences. But, as I am sure you can imagine, hypocrisy can be used morally, if not misguidedly, to conceal that which is painful, to avoid confronting that which is frightening. So, just as with “pretentious”, think carefully before you label someone a hypocrite.

There you go then. Those two words have been playing on my mind for a few days now, and now they can play on yours while I get down to the very serious business of revision. I’ve got to grapple with Jude the Obscure (again), endure Hard Times in the library (again), and scour the university, North and South, to find textbooks (again). I’ll be staring at the unimaginable, corrupt horror of The Picture of Dorian Gray (squirming with the excitement of a schoolgirl - for the THIRD TIME!) and wandering the frightening, existentialist streets of The City of Dreadful Night (again - what’s the point?). Anyroad, philosophical puns aside, I shall endeavour to have another entry up in the second week of May, once these exams are good and sat. Meanwhile, if any of you are experts on the architecture of post-war Berlin, medieval witch hunting, or the Spanish Civil War, send me your brains.

Jamie.