By Alan Burke
Watch what you say.
There are language police everywhere, and just now they've got their red pencils out for annoying expressions.
Recently a group at Oxford University, in the land where the mother tongue began, put together a list of the 10 most annoying phrases currently circulating in the English language. Many of these terms are like fingernails on the blackboard for teachers and grammarians. They are redundant, or overused or inexact or all three at the same time.
Bow your head in shame (with all due respect) if you go about saying any of these things:
At the end of the day
Fairly unique
I personally
At this moment in time
With all due respect
Absolutely
It's a nightmare
Shouldn't of
24/7
It's not rocket science
Everyone has their own favorite to add to the list. For example, Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett is quick to produce his most annoying phrase, "I didn't do it, judge."
Barbara Anderson, the symbol of the initiative petition, has had it with the expression, "Barbara, why don't you do a petition drive on that?" After dealing with state government for more than three decades, she's happier to name the phrase she enjoys the most, annoying or not. "'Well, duh.' I don't know how we got along without that expression," she says.
Senate Majority Leader Fred Berry grows weary of hearing that, "In each life, a little rain must fall." Although he concedes, "We do have a little rain in life." And sometimes a little hurricane. Most of us don't need to be reminded of it.
Chris Fauske, who hails originally from Britain, is the interim dean of arts and sciences at Salem State College. Despite his origins, Fauske refuses to get worked up about annoying expressions. In fact, it is precisely because he has studied the history of the language that he can put all this into context.
People have been predicting a language Armageddon for centuries, he notes. In the 1700s, a profusion of pop words and phrases had purists in a panic. In response, the language police of that era tried to enforce hard and fast rules. But English speakers have never been easy to control.
"Shakespeare uses double negatives," Fauske points out. Strictly speaking, a double negative turns a "No" into a "Yes." But even in verse, Shakespeare is representing the way ordinary people use the language.
In "Twelfth Night," for example, Viola declares of her heart, "Nor never none/Shall mistress of it be, save I alone." Today, your average English student might be more likely to say "There ain't nobody never going to tell me who to love."
We get the drift in both cases. "(The double negative) has always been used as an emphatic," Fauske explains, the equivalent of shouting, "No, no!"
"The issue for English is — can we understand the sentence?" Fauske says.
What's more, modern slang terms aren't always as modern as they sound. Back in the day — make that back in those bygone days of the 18th century — a Boston regionalism like "wicked" was commonly employed in the same way in England. Similarly, says Fauske, the hip use of "bad" for "good" was heard in British prisons of the 1700s.
Meanwhile, Graeme Bird, an assistant professor of linguistics at Gordon College, admits to some annoyance after, like, you know, listening to some of his students.
Bird, a New Zealand native, preaches against "like." Yet, he has found himself almost involuntarily using the word "in front of 20 students who were laughing their heads off." Words and phrases become infectious, even annoying, because they're useful. "Like" is a practical device designed to give the speaker a chance to form his thoughts.
"In a sense," Bird says, "nothing is right or wrong if people accept it."
Salem State English professor Julie Whitlow gives an example of adapting a phrase. In her hometown of New Orleans, a group of men and women can be addressed as "Y'all." But in New England, there is no easy way to address such a group.
"I've been in a restaurant with a bunch of women, and the waitstaff will start to refer to us as 'You guys,'" she says.
Thus people manipulate the language to suit them, and, fortunately, English offers speakers a flexibility that often yields colorful words and phrases.
Ordinary people — not Oxford professors — control the language. And why not? After all, it's not rocket science.
