Sunday, June 24, 2007

I Sanction That: Or Do I?

A friend of mine resents the confounding ambiguity of the word “sanction.”

“Well, just avoid using the word,” I suggest. No, that’s not reasonable. He wants to find the guilty party who started this mess.

So, I promise to do a little research on the matter. All the word-history websites offer the same explanation, verbatim, and without references, so I won’t repeat it here. In my own words, this is the sad little story.

Let’s start with our lexical stepmother and a very kind one at that—Latin. “Sanction” comes from the Latin sancio (sacire sanxi sanctum), meaning “to consecrate or make hallow by a religious act” (Cassell’s Latin Dictionary). According to The Free Dictionary online, the first use of “sanction” appears in the 1500s, but try as I might, I couldn’t find the actual quotation. However, it was used in reference to “law,” or “decree.”

Evidently, during the 100 years or so that followed, the word did a little twisting and turning and came to refer to “the penalty enacted to cause one to obey a law or decree” (cf the Free Dictionary, which gives no references, so who knows how true this is).

Since we get most of our lexicon—that is, our classy lexicon, our big words—directly from French rather than indirectly from Latin, I went hunting on the Web for current French usage and discovered a conference titled “Sanctionner sans punir” (to sanction without punishment), which means the French use “sanction” to mean “to prohibit. An article in a French journal is titled “Il faut sanctionner le négationnisme.” Again, the word is used to mean “prohibit.”

I skimmed numerous French-language blogs in which "sanction" was synonymous with "prohibit" and was about to close the book on the matter when ambiguity showed its tragicomic face in a reference to Robespierre, which translates as follows: “Robespierre never sanctioned the French Revolution.”

Well, did he or didn’t he? I need a good historian to answer that one. As one of its leaders, he certainly wasn’t against it, but since he first profited by it and then lost his head to it, I don’t know whether he neglected to prohibit it or neglected to give it his okay. Alas. So the French have the same problem. So do the Italians with “sanzione.” Sere can we lay the blame?

Well, we all know what happens when lawyers get their claws into language. They spin it and twirl it and create all sorts of knots that leave the rest of us in a state of confusion too much to bear. So, we give up and let the lawyers have their way with us and with our language. My theory is that sanction, originally a clear little noun to mean a law sanctified by the church or some religious order, became clouded after it was turned into a verb by all those fancy sycophants who hang around government buildings and make their living playing with language in order to protect their guilty clients from evil truth—lawyers. And, since we can’t beat them at this game, my advice stands: simply refuse to use the word.

The touch of irony here is that my friend has no problem using the expression “you guys” when he’s talking to groups of men and women. I always have to ask him if he’s talking to the women as well as to the men. And he thinks I go too far and should “get a life,” a remark I consider unsanctionable.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Diction, My Dear. Diction.

I still haven’t figured out how to shrug and walk away when I’m surprised by little linguistic thuds dropped by people who should know better. It’s okay if regular folks commit grammatical and lexical sins. In fact, I like the way their lexical and grammatical diversions stretch the language, make it more alive, more touchable, more powerful even.

But when newscasters say things like, “he paid the ultimate sacrifice” (one sacrifices; one doesn’t pay a sacrifice) or “there’s [sic] 300 people outside the studio,” I can’t help but squirm. I mean, it’s bad enough that they can’t stop calling one another “guys.” When I hear teachers slip up on Grammar 101 in front of their students with remarks such as “He wants to see you and I [sic] in the office” or “I feel badly [sic],” it’s all I can do not to correct them. My friend Peter can say “I feel badly,” because he knows better, and he likes to work at sounding not quite as brilliant as he is. Other people can say it, too. But not teachers. Not newscasters. And, not even talk show hosts.

Most annoying of all are the writers—and not just the immature bloggers who are trying to sound all grown up and trendy—who smudge their copy with words such as “totally” and “awesome” and “f---ing.” I couldn’t bring myself to write that last word.

It’s easy writing. And, like a fill-in-the-numbers painting, it’s boring.

There, I feel all vented.