Simply put, idioms are the way we say things, and there\u2019s no rhyme or reason to them. Prepositions, for instance \u2014 those little words like in, on, by, with, for, etc. \u2014 they tend to be the most idiomatic parts of speech.<\/p>\n
Take the word \u201cwith\u201d for example: depending on the context, it can mean exact opposites. If a man says \u201cI fought with the Germans in World War II,\u201d we understand that to mean that he fought on the side of Germany. If a man says \u201cI fought with my wife last night,\u201d it\u2019s unlikely he was on her side.<\/p>\n
He may have been on her back about something, but not on her side. The meaning of an idiom comes from subtle contextual clues to which we are very well attuned in conversation.<\/p>\n
In an early work called \u201cThree Dialogues,\u201d Samuel Beckett records a series of conversations about contemporary painting with his friend, the French art critic Georges Duthuit. Years later, the literary critic Martin Esslin asked Beckett if it was fair to say that he just wrote down the actual conversations. Typically enigmatic, Beckett simply replied, \u201cup.\u201d<\/p>\n
Write it down, write it up\u2014two idiomatic ways of talking about writing that say pretty much the same thing, despite the opposite denotations of the words \u201cup\u201d and \u201cdown.\u201d Beckett plays with the idiomatic sense and uses the words\u2019 diametric denotations to vaguely suggest that instead of writing it down (a matter of factual reporting) he wrote it up (a fictional creation). Clever lad.<\/p>\n
Idioms are slippery things, sticky wickets. They\u2019re the most difficult part of learning a foreign language and the easiest part of our own, because we don\u2019t learn idioms in a classroom but out on the corner, down in the street.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what gets me: We\u2019re so good at communicating when we talk and listen, but the minute we sit down to write we seem to lose that fine tuning, that exquisite sense of words that we all exhibit in our everyday conversations. Mistakes we\u2019d never make in speaking we make all the time in writing. That\u2019s what I don\u2019t get.<\/p>\n
Of course, in speech we have other tools to convey the meaning of our words: vocal inflections, facial expressions, hand gestures\u2014hand gestures, especially in New Jersey. In writing we\u2019re forced to do without those, and that makes for difficulties. All the more reason that when we\u2019re writing we should use everything we know from a lifetime of listening and talking about how to use words.<\/p>\n
If someone is inviting you out on a date and says, \u201cI\u2019ll pick you up at 8:30 in my automobile,\u201d your first thought is going to be \u201cAUTOMOBILE??? Why did he say \u2018automobile\u2019? Why didn\u2019t he just say \u2018car\u2019? What\u2019s the big deal about his car? Ferrari, maybe? Why didn\u2019t he just say \u2018Ferrari\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n
You begin to suspect that this guy\u2019s got a screw loose. Maybe you shouldn\u2019t go out with this nutjob after all.<\/p>\n
We should treat institutions the same way whenever they try to foist bureaucratese on us. If your university crows that it wants to teach you to \u201cdemonstrate oral communication skills,\u201d back away slowly; wave your arms over your head to let them know you\u2019re there, and, whatever you do, DON\u2019T RUN!<\/p>\n
You can tell bureaucratic bologna by its distance from anything like idiomatic speech. Where idioms create wordless connections between writer and reader or speaker and listener, bureaucratese says just the opposite. It says, we\u2019re not like you. We\u2019re not normal. We don\u2019t put our pants on one leg at a time. And indeed they don\u2019t. It\u2019s not the voice of human beings. It\u2019s the voice of beings who have given up being human and let themselves become part of the bureaucracy by sacrificing the kind of vivid and vigorous language spoken by beings of flesh-and-blood.<\/p>\n
The wonderful thing about idioms is that they let us say so much more than the words themselves appear to say. The problem with bureaucratese is that it makes us say so much less.<\/p>\n
Can you imagine ever telling your mother that you\u2019re learning to demonstrate oral communication skills? She\u2019d slap your pompous little face. And rightly so.<\/p>\n
American poet Ezra Pound once remarked that just as music begins to atrophy the further it moves from dance, so poetry begins to atrophy the further it moves from music. So too with writing: the further our writing moves away from how we actually talk, the more it loses that vigor and the ability to cut through the crap and say what\u2019s what: our seemingly innate facility and endless inventiveness with language.<\/p>\n
When we stop talking and start demonstrating oral communication skills, we\u2019re in big trouble.<\/p>\n
Michelle recently noted that the airlines have their own idioms\u2014a kind of technical jargon they use to sound official: they never call a plane a plane. It\u2019s always an aircraft. And we\u2019re always told to watch our step \u201cwhen exiting the aircraft.\u201d We get so accustomed to this kind of babble that it doesn\u2019t trouble us anymore, and we neglect to ask what\u2019s wrong with simply saying \u201cwhen you\u2019re getting off the plane.\u201d What\u2019s troubling is how easily such jargon infects us, the occupants of the aircraft, I mean, the ones on the plane.<\/p>\n
I was recently in a little fender-bender, which is emphatically not what the insurance companies call it. Someone skidded on ice and slid into my fender. It was a pretty gentle tap, thank goodness. On the phone, the insurance agent told me where to go to make an appointment \u201cfor inspection of the vehicle.\u201d When I let Michelle know, I found myself using the same words.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe insurance agent told me where we can go to get the vehicle inspection,\u201d I told her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?!?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
I could hear the worry in her voice and caught myself: \u201c. . . to get the car looked at.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s better,\u201d she replied, with audible relief. That\u2019s Michelle\u2014she never gets on my back, but she\u2019s always got it.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jim Hale can be contacted at jimhale821@gmail.com or through his website, https:\/\/www.jimhalewriting.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Simply put, idioms are the way we say things, and there\u2019s no rhyme or reason to them. Prepositions, for instance \u2014 those little words like in, on, by, with, for, etc. \u2014 they tend to be the most idiomatic parts of speech. Take the word \u201cwith\u201d for example: depending on the context, it can mean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-24591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24591"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}