Every language has speech styles, some typical labels for which are ‘neutral, ‘formal’, ‘colloquial’, etc. Part of one’s ability to speak (and write) correctly is the knowledge of what speech style is appropriate in what context in a given language. While norms of linguistic appropriateness may vary considerably across languages, there is no language in which a knowledge of these norms is absent in a non-pathological speaker’s command of the language.

The pathological misuse of stylistic norms in speech was demonstrated yesterday in Donald Trump’s widely broadcast comments on the suicide bombing in Manchester (England). Trump called the bomber an “evil loser.” In the sense meant by Trump,  Merriam-Webster Unabridged defines ‘loser’ as “one who is incompetent or unable to succeed.” Stylistically, especially in American English, this word has a colloquial or informal connotation, which makes it fundamentally incompatible with the adjective ‘evil’ used and meant in its strict (non-figurative) sense.

To call a suicide bomber, who killed and maimed innocent children (among his victims in Manchester yesterday), a “loser” is a pathological use of the colloquial style in American English because it makes what can only be considered a terrible murderer into someone who is merely a misfit or (incorrectly, given the attack’s success) a failure. Trump’s linguistic choice of words in this instance is––tragically––of a piece with his other pathologies.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO

The platitudinous Italian apothegm, “traduttore, traditore” (‘translator, traitor’ = ‘to translate is to betray’ [the original]), applies in spades to the Russian poem in the preceding post (Constantine Shapiro, Selected Writings, 2nd, expanded ed., [Book Surge Publishing: Charleston, S. C., 2008], p. 181). One crucially distorted element of the original is the last line, the last (rhyme) word in particular, щит ‘shield’. The “shield of truth” is salient because this phrase encompasses much of the addressee’s haecceity. In the Russian, the word at stake occurs in rhyme position, whereas in the English translation it does not. The positional purport of the original poetic diction is thereby lamentably lost in translation.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO

The goal of every human being’s life is to make others happy, especially those whom we love and who love us. That is what my mother, Lydia Shapiro (1905-1983), did for her five sons every day of her life. My father, Constantine Shapiro (1896-1992), wrote a poem in 1943 addressed to her (“К Лидии» [“To Lydia”]), whose iambic lines read as follows:

K ЛИДИИ

Ланиты розами покрылись,
Вы пополнели, расцвели,
Вы поумнели, оперились,
Совсем как дама стали Вы.

А все ж в глазах огонь играет
И детской шалости мечты,
Годов следы с лица стирает
Волна сердечной теплоты.
Поэт Вам счастия желает,
Он жизнь спокойную сулит
Тому, в душе чьей обитает
Любовь и правды верный щит.

A loose prose translation goes like this:

To Lydia

Your cheeks have become covered with roses,
You’ve filled out, blossomed,
You’ve gotten smarter, full-fledged,
You’ve become just like a lady.

And all the same a fire plays in your eyes
And thoughts of childhood pranks,
[And] traces of the years have been removed
By a wave of cordial warmth.
The poet wishes you happiness,
He prophesies a peaceful life
To one in whose heart abide
Love and the faithful shield of truth.

The last two lines are the key to my mother’s being and essence. She and I played the entire piano/clarinet duo repertoire together when I was a child (just as Marianne and I did our whole married life together). I think of Mama every day of my life.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO

Languages always differ to some extent in the diapason of their word stock. One language may have a name for an item of vocabulary that corresponds to real-life differences lacking in another. Such is the case, for instance, of English finger and toe to name digits on human hands and feet, respectively, which is lacking in Russian. The latter uses the word palec (палец) for both. Although the word without further specification refers to hands, when a differentiation is required a clarificatory phrase is used to designate the anatomical item, namely пальцы на руках ‘fingers’ and пальцы на ногах ‘toes’.

A unique case of lexical specificity is to be observed with a triplet of compound adverbs (preposition + verbal stem + feminine accusative desinence) in Russian that designate whether one puts the sugar in the cup/glass of tea or drinks it with the (piece of) sugar between one’s teeth. (Tea drinking is an activity Russians are traditionally very fond of.) Thus, when sugar is used in one’s tea, the appropriate phrase is внакладку (vnakládku) ‘placing in’. When the sugar is held between the teeth while drinking tea, the word is вприкуску (vprikúsku) ‘biting in’. And finally, in jocular use, when no sugar is taken at all with one’s cup of tea, the word is вприглядку (vprigljádku), which means something like ‘while eyeing [it]’. This three-way differentiation between drinking tea with or without sugar amply testifies to the wide-spread idiosyncrasies of word usage observed across languages.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO

Sometimes Jacobus Primus (moniker of Y-H-B’s older brother Jacob [b. 1928]) comes up with a word in conversation that is eminently apposite but rarely heard these days in ordinary speech. Such is the adjective punctilious, defined by the OED as follows:

Strictly observant of or insistent on fine points of procedure, etiquette, or conduct; extremely or excessively particular or correct. Also: characterized by such scrupulous attention to detail or formality.

Here is its pedigree:

Origin: A borrowing from French, combined with English elements; modelled on a French lexical item. Etymons: punctilio, n., -ous suffix, French pontilleux.
Etymology: < punctilio n. + -ous suffix, after French pointilleux (a1608; c1580 in Middle French as pontilleux). Compare Italian puntiglioso (1618)

Jacobus mentioned this word the other day (inter alia) because he can be said to embody its meaning in his own attitude and behavior. Once again, Aristotle was right when he averred that action is the overt embodiment of character. Q. E. D.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO

It is a commonplace of the analysis of personality that language is the main ingredient in the self-fashioning of a persona. Gestures, clothing, mannerisms of all kinds contribute to this process but are ancillary to the cumulative result. “You are what you say”––or so one can safely maintain, although a distinguished Colombian philosopher of mathematics, when recently exposed to this statement, responded by countering, “You are what you are” (a notably vacuous formulation all the same).

Humor at one’s own expense (self-irony included) can be characteristic of one’s personality, and those who lack this trait often stand out in contemporary American culture––negatively, one must say, although it need not prevent such persons from succeeding in life. A total absence of the ability to ironize on oneself is part of the general lack of self-awareness (clinically: anosognosia) that is more typically characteristic of the male members of the species, but not only.

One such person in Y-H-B’s early academic experience stands out, namely a former colleague (a male Slavist), who as a young man exhibited a total absence of self-irony linguistically and of self-awareness behaviorally, then came out of the closet publicly after two failed marriages to women (N.B.!), and ended up with an endowed chair at one of America’s elite universities–– despite remaining unchanged as to personality all the while.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO

The phrase “groves of academe” has been in English since at least the eighteenth century. The OED cites it as deriving from Horace’s Odes:

groves of Academe [translating classical Latin silvās Acadēmī in Horace: see the etymology] (literary): a place of studious seclusion; the academic world, viewed as sheltered from the demands of everyday life.

In post-war America the phrase came into common use due largely to Mary McCarthy’s eponymous 1952 novel, whence the word academe as a frequent designation for the academic world or academic life. Lately, however, it is being supplanted by the hypertrophic variant academia, often mispronounced to rhyme with macadamia (as in “macadamia nuts”). This variant is on the cusp of consigning the correct form to oblivion and is even to be heard emanating from the lips of academics, who should know better.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO