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Latinate:
The Good
Some ugly realities are
best left covered over. And sometimes this is beneficial. In the
dentist’s office injections
have replaced shots
or needles.
Patients experience
discomfort
instead of hurting.
Use of the Latinate word distances the sufferer from the
suffering.
On solemn occasions, too, a high
Latinate density is appropriate:
Latinate:
The Bad
Hypocrites
use Latinate words to gloss over their sordid intentions. George
Orwell pointed out how deceivers misuse Latinate words. First, he
vividly described three events in predominantly Germanic language.
Then he gave Latinate summaries of those events:
Millions
of
peasants
are
robbed
of
their
farms
and
sent
trudging
along
the
roads
with
no
more
than
they can
carry:
this
is
called
transfer
of
population
or
rectification
of
frontiers.
People
are
imprisoned
for
years
without
trial,
or
shot
in
the
back
of
the
neck
or
sent
to
die
of
scurvy
in
Arctic
lumber
camps:
this
is
called
elimination
of
unreliable
elements.
The earthy
Germanic words show cruelty and suffering in vivid English. The
Latinate words turn human beings into bloodless abstractions.
Orwell proved a true
prophet of Latinate euphemisms that transform an ugly reality into
a bloodless abstraction, a killer
into a terminator.
George Carlin tracked the change in terminology from shell
shock
to more abstract descriptions: battle
fatigue,
which was replaced by operational
exhaustion,
which yielded to post-traumatic
stress
disorder.
“Enhanced
interrogation
techniques”
mask the word torture,
itself a Latin word (“twisting”).
The Unabomber’s
“Manifesto” has a very high Latinate density (59%). The
radical activist David Gilbert, who drove the getaway van in a
robbery that resulted in the deaths of a guard and two policemen,
calls the episode the “Brink’s
expropriation.”
The Latinate word blurs the reality that he helped kill three
people.
Ron Ziegler, the Press
Secretary for President Nixon, expressed his indignation at the
accusations of the Washington
Post in
highly Latinate language (67%):
“I
will not
dignify
with
comment
stories
based
on
hearsay,
character
assassination,
innuendo
or
guilt
by
association.…
The
president
is
concerned
about
the
technique
being
applied
by
the
opposition
in the
stories
themselves.…
The
opposition
has
been
making
charges
which
have not been
substantiated.”
He later admitted that
his statements “inoperative,”
meaning not that they were false, but that they could not be
passed off as true.
Latinate:
The Ugly
Marvel
at this sentence from Judith Butler (72%):
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“The
move
from a structuralist
account
in which capital
is understood
to structure
social
relations
in relatively
homologous
ways
to a view
of hegemony
in
which
power
relations
are
subject
to
repetition,
convergence,
and
rearticulation
brought
the
question
of
temporality
into
the
thinking
of
structure,
and
marked
a
shift
from
a
form
of
althusserian
theory
that takes
structural
totalities
as
theoretical
objects
to
one in which the
insights
into
the
contingent
possibility
of
structure
inaugurate
a
renewed
conception
of
hegemony
as
bound
up
with the
contingent
sites
and
strategies
of
the
rearticulation
of
power.”
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Judith
Butler’s sentence without the excluded words:
move
structuralist
account
capital
understood
structure
social
relations
relatively
homologous
ways
view
hegemony
power
relations
subject
repetition,
convergence,
rearticulation
brought
question
temporality
thinking
structure,
marked
shift
form
theory
takes
structural
totalities
theoretical
objects
insights
contingent
possibility
structure
inaugurate
renewed
conception
hegemony
bound
contingent
sites
strategies
rearticulation
power.
And
sorted according to language of origin:
strategies
hegemony theory
theoretical
homologous
hegemony
move
structuralist
capital
structure
form
social
relations
relatively
relations
subject
repetition,
convergence,
rearticulation
contingent
sites
rearticulation
question
temporality
structure,
structural
totalities
objects
contingent
possibility
structure
inaugurate
conception
view
power
account
power
renewed
bound
understood
insights
marked
shift
brought
takes
thinking
ways
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