Department of Linguistics
A NATIONAL BULLETIN ON ISSUES IN
AUSTRALIAN STYLE AND ENGLISH IN AUSTRALIA
| Volume 18 No 1 | September 2011 |
SCOSE NOTESLanguage researcher Irene Poinkin summarises recent discussions at SCOSE, the ABC Standing Committee on Spoken English. Being LiteralWhen a report described the Kandahar region in Afghanistan as ‘the epicentre of Allied operations’, a listener objected that epicentre (used to mean the very centre of interest or activity) is ‘creeping into journalistic English’ and that it ought to be reserved for its geological meaning – the point on the surface directly above the true source of disturbance. This is a surprisingly frequent complaint. Epicentre is a classic example of a word that now has an extended metaphorical sense in addition to its original literal meaning. And it’s not ‘creeping’ into journalistic English (or any other English). It’s well and truly established as a standard usage recognised by dictionaries. Another listener baulked at hearing of a ‘spectacular factory fire’. He wrote: ‘This is yet another misuse of the wonderful superlative spectacular. How can a factory fire costing possibly “squillions” ever be spectacular, except to an arsonist? Spectacular is a word to be used solely to describe a spectacle, i.e. an occasion pleasing to the eye, e.g. the New Year’s Eve Sydney fireworks.’ The mistake here is to confuse spectacular with festive. A spectacular event, by definition, is something that forces you to look at it. A New Year’s Eve fireworks display and a blazing factory fire do this equally well, even though one is deliberately lit and the other probably not. The listener has introduced a moral judgement. This isn’t part of the meaning of the word. A caller objected when a female gymnast was described as a ‘hero’, saying it should have been ‘heroine’. But hero, in the sense of noble, courageous, or admirable person, has long lost its exclusively male connotations, and the two words have somewhat drifted apart. Heroine nowadays usually refers to the main female character in a work of fiction, whereas hero has wider application. A memorable example was heard when US President Barack Obama described Burma’s democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, on her release from house arrest, as ‘a hero of mine’. In the same way debutant, meaning a player making a first appearance at a particular level, applies to either sex. Debutante is female and applies especially to a young woman making her formal debut into society. As noted in the Macquarie Dictionary, the two words are often pronounced the same way (debutant /DEB-yuh-tuhnt/ or /DEB-yuh-tont/, debutante /DEB-yuh-tont/). Righting AdverbsIn a recent SCOSE Report I used the heading ‘Nouns and verbs: treat them right’. This provoked an objection: ‘If we are to trust a page on good English, we should ensure that the use of English thereon is correct. I believe the heading “nouns and verbs: treat them right” should correctly read “nouns and verbs: treat them correctly”, or perhaps “rightly”, as we need an adverb under those circumstances. Please correct me if I am wrong.’ An adverb doesn’t have to have -ly on the end to be an adverb. The word right in this context is in fact an adverb. The Macquarie Dictionary gives a range of twelve adverbial meanings – including ‘correctly or accurately: to guess right’. The adverb rightly has a much more limited range of applications. The dictionary lists only four senses for it – and rightly so. Modifying ModifiersA broadcaster asked whether a plague of mice should be called a ‘mouse plague’ or a ‘mice plague’. He said that the broadcasters at his workplace all plumped for ‘mouse plague’, which they felt was correct, but that some of their listeners went with ‘mice plague’. Which is correct, and why? It’s mouse plague, of course, and always has been. The singular noun mouse modifies another noun, plague. These common examples illustrate the pattern: pencil case There are a few examples where the plural noun is more common as a modifier than the singular, e.g. systems analyst, parks department, customs house. These are usually where the plural has a special sense, as in customs (although Americans use custom house) or has become institutionalised. The question over whether an apparent plural is actually a possessive – drivers licence, visitors book – is a whole other can of worms (worms' can?). On a related topic, a listener insisted that English is correct and England is incorrect as an adjective in phrases like: the England player But England is precisely the right word. In these compound phrases England is not an adjective but a noun modifying another noun. Such phrases are common in English. We have phrases like electricity substation – an ‘electric’ substation would be more than alarming! A book review is not the same as a ‘bookish’ review. Any twelve Englishmen can make up an English cricket team. But you can spend a lifetime playing cricket and still not qualify to play for an England team. By the way, in such a context England is always plural: England were dismissed for a miserable score of 126 runs or England are still batting for a magnificent 517 runs.
Piques and TroughsWhen a painting by the artist Rupert Bunny was up for auction in Melbourne, Sotheby’s chairman Geoffrey Smith was reported as saying: ‘It’s just the most gorgeous picture and the fact that it has really resurfaced after all these years, it is peaking people’s interest.’ The word needed here was piquing, meaning ‘to excite (interest, curiosity, etc.)’. No connection with peaks and troughs. Moral of the story: be aware of homophones – different words that sound the same. Click here to read the SCOSE Notes in the previous edition of Australian Style (17.1). |
