Fwd: Chicago Tribune: Candidates battling it out see `harm's way' all around

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Nathan Bierma" <nbierma at booksandculture.com>
> Date: October 21, 2004 2:22:24 PM PDT
> To: <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
> Cc: <d-zarefsky at northwestern.edu>
> Subject: Chicago Tribune: Candidates battling it out see `harm's way'
> all around
>
> Here's the piece--sorry I ended up paraphrasing most of the quotes, but
> thanks for your help!
>
>
> http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi
> -0410210064oct21,1,66179
> 71.story
>
> --------------------
> Candidates battling it out see `harm's way' all around
> --------------------
>
> By Nathan Bierma
> Special to the Tribune
>
> October 21, 2004
>
> Four times during the first presidential debate, and twice in the same
> answer, President Bush used the phrase "in harm's way" to refer to
> troops in
> Iraq.
>
> "The hardest part of the job is to know that I committed the troops in
> harm's way and then do the best I can to provide comfort for the loved
> ones
> who lost a son or a daughter or husband and wife," he said on Sept. 30.
>
> He added that he met with a young widow "knowing full well that the
> decision
> I made caused . . . her loved one to be in harm's way."
>
> The phrase seems to be getting more common as the presidential campaign
> heats up; it registers nearly as many results on the Lexis-Nexis
> database
> for the period of Sept. 14 to Oct. 14 as it does for July and August
> combined.
>
> Although Bush uses the phrase more, Kerry has also employed "in harm's
> way,"
> as he did in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National
> Convention in
> July. "Before you go to battle," he said, "you have to be able to look
> a
> parent in the eye and truthfully say: `I tried everything possible to
> avoid
> sending your son or daughter into harm's way.'"
>
> The tough-talking John Wayne played a troubled naval officer during the
> aftermath of Pearl Harbor in the 1965 movie "In Harm's Way," which was
> based
> on the 1962 novel "Harm's Way" by James Bassett.
>
> As New York Times columnist William Safire noted last year, "in harm's
> way"
> also hearkens to the swagger of American naval hero John Paul Jones,
> the
> commodore who uttered the famous line, "I have not yet begun to fight."
> Jones wrote in a letter in 1788, "I wish to have no connection with
> any ship
> that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm's way." According
> to
> Safire, Jones underlined "fast" and "in harm's way."
>
> Continuing the nautical theme, "in harm's way" also was the title of a
> book
> on the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during World War II.
>
> Today, "in harm's way" is a euphemism, a tidy tagline for the
> brutality of
> battle, and now for the messy situation in Iraq. But unlike the
> military
> euphemisms "collateral damage" for "civilian deaths" or "delivering an
> ordinance" for "dropping a bomb," "in harm's way" is not coldly
> bureaucratic.
>
> "In harm's way" pleases politicians who love to sound eloquent without
> much
> effort, because the phrase is "actually a bit on the literary side,"
> says
> Arnold Zwicky, visiting professor of linguistics at Stanford
> University. It
> helps that "in harm's way" is old-fashioned; Zwicky notes that the
> phrase's
> parent, "out of harm's way," dates to the mid-1600s.
>
> Putting oneself "in harm's way" connotes sacrifice, the risk of one's
> life
> to keep another safe. But the distinction between a way that's safe
> and a
> way that's harmful may be getting outdated in this post-9/11 world. Who
> among the workers at the World Trade Center could fathom that they
> were in
> the way of such horrific harm?
>
> Meanwhile, the most mundane acts, such as driving on the highway or
> eating
> fatty foods, are fraught with peril. To an extent, we all live in
> harm's
> way.
>
> Endings: The presidential candidates' language in their recent debates
> has
> been dissected and studied like a baseball box score. Linguist Mark
> Liberman, writing at the Weblog www.languagelog.org, found that
> President
> Bush spoke 6,165 words in 476 sentences in the first debate, compared
> with
> Kerry's 7,136 words in 468 sentences, and that Kerry's sentences were
> about
> 17 percent longer.
>
> Bush spoke 26 three-word sentences ("And we will. . . . He changes
> positions. . . . It's hard work [three times]) while Kerry spoke 11 of
> them.
> Still, linguist Geoffrey Pullum, also writing at Language Log, claimed
> that
> the first debate contradicted the common conceptions of Kerry as
> circuitous
> and Bush as direct, because Kerry's sentences built upon each other
> more
> logically. "Neither of the current stereotypes about styles of speech
> seems
> to be true," Pullum wrote. "Kerry does not engage in long-winded
> unstructured rambling; Bush sometimes does."
>
> Liberman also found that while Bush and Kerry paused about the same
> number
> of times in their opening answers and rebuttals, Bush's pauses were
> nearly
> twice as long as Kerry's -- an average of one second for Bush and half
> a
> second for Kerry.
>
> However, Liberman emphasized that voting decisions should ultimately be
> based on policy, not language.
>
> "I wouldn't be a linguist if I didn't think that language is
> interesting,"
> he said, "but that superficial judgments of linguistic ability should
> enter
> into one's decision as to who to vote for is the height of silliness."
>
> ----------
>
> Write to Nathan Bierma at onlanguage at gmail.com.
>
>
> Copyright (c) 2004, Chicago Tribune
>
>
>