Alexander Haig

[Jonathan Lighter]

The shape of the general's career reminds us once again that a faulty
command of language always circumscribes the student's opportunities for
successful advancement.

JL

On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Benjamin Zimmer <
bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Alexander Haig
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 9:42 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> >
> > At 2/21/2010 07:31 AM, Bill Palmer wrote:
> >>General Haig, well known for his various military and governmental
> >>accomplishments, may also be remembered by some for his unique
> >>approach to language.
> >>
> >>Keith Allan in "Linguistic meaning" parodies this with an example
> >>from The London Guardian from 3 Feb 1981 of a hypothetical piece
> >>that might have been written about him, using his style:
> >>
> >>  "...General Haig has contexted the Polish watchpot somewhat
> >> nuancely.  How though, if the situation decontrols, can he stoppage
> >> it, mountingly conflagrating? Haig, in congressional hearings
> >> before his confirmatory, paradoxed his audtioners by abnormalling
> >> his responds, so that verbs were nouns, nouns verbed, and
> >> adjectives adverbized. He techniqued a new way to vocabulary his
> >> thoughts so as to informationally uncertain anybody listening about
> >> what he had actually implicationed, etc, etc..."
> >
> > Cool.  Can someone easily provide an actual quote?
>
> The NY Times obit gives some quotes:
>
> ---
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/us/politics/21haig.html
>
> Nouns became verbs or adverbs: “I’ll have to caveat my response,
> Senator.” (Caveat is Latin for “let him beware.” In English, it means
> “warning.” In Mr. Haig’s lexicon, it meant to say something with a
> warning that it might or might not be so.)
> Haigspeak could be subtle: “There are nuance-al differences between
> Henry Kissinger and me on that.” It could be dramatic: “Some sinister
> force” had erased one of Mr. Nixon’s subpoenaed Watergate tapes,
> creating an 18 1/2- minute gap. Sometimes it was an emblem of the
> never-ending battle between politics and the English language:
> “careful caution,” “epistemologically-wise,” “saddle myself with a
> statistical fence.”
> ---
>
> Here's something I wrote last year on "caveat" (with Haig in a starring
> role)...
>
> http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/1952/
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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