Defining pornography

Anthony Gambrill

"Words, words, words," shrieks Eliza Doolittle as she breaks into song during the musical My Fair Lady. The object of her tantrum is, of course, Professor Henry Higgins, who is determined to win a bet that he can teach a Cockney flower girl to speak the King's English.

Eliza Doolittle's problem was pronunciation, mine is the words themselves, what we are doing to them in Jamaica, out-with-the-old-and-in-with- the-new words.

Words, on their own, can raise the blood pressure. Take, for instance, the reaction to Phillip Paulwell's mercurial energy policy as demonstrated in a recent Gleaner editorial. "His policy," says The Gleaner, "is an amalgam of stalking horses, three-card tricksters, and loquacious bravado." Apart from the stalking horses reference - not familiar to me as a racehorse owner who just needs horses to run faster - the overwrought writer in the editorial's headline clearly expected the minister to "cut the ... ". What to fill in the ... (expletive deleted) is your choice, but it is most likely to be connected to the 19th-century London plumber, Thomas Crapper.

Mind you, the gentlest of words can have a devastating impact. Winston Churchill, whose rhetoric in wartime Britain held the nation together in its darkest hours, said of Clement Attlee, who replaced him as prime minister from 1945 to 1951, "Mr Attlee is a modest man with a lot to be modest about."

English is the third-most spoken language in the world after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish and is now the most widely used language in the world commercially. Although millions speak English in diverse cultures, you are often faced with dialects and patois. It has been said that the United States and the United Kingdom (UK) are two nations separated by a common language.

We may have a similar problem. For instance, a local paper carried a headline as follows: 'She bangs. The timeless shag is back.' Of course, the ladies in the accompanying photos all had a certain hairstyle. In Britain, to shag means to copulate. I wonder what they mean by haircut in the UK?

We have our Patois, which, if Carolyn Cooper has her way, will be spoken from birth to death, from the schoolroom to the workplace, to the grave and everywhere else in between once we can all agree how to put Patois down on paper. What would be a catastrophe - should the Queen's English not prevail - would be to lose such lovely-looking words as bangarang, brawta, tallawah, labrish and boonoonoonos.

PHASING OUT 'S'

Moving on. We have decided to phase out the letter 'S'. It probably all began when the Reggae Boys became the Reggae Boyz. The anti-S movement has gained momentum, particularly in the theatre. You have been able to catch Glass Slippaz and Schoolaz on stage and the tendency has led to Krosses, although the Oliver Samuels comedy Boy Blue was not reconstituted as 'Bwoy Blu' (yet).

Show business has taken a creative step forward by reinventing entertainers' names - Lutan Fyah (fire?), Nomadzz (nomad?), Raging Fyah (fire?), Chronixx (chronic?), I-Octane (high octane?), Protoje (protégé) and, more recently, Ajrenalin (adrenalin), who was busy in Smokey Vale shooting a video for airplay in Nairobi.

We have employed commonplace words to deliberately obfuscate or mislead.

Take, for instance, MOU or memorandum of (mis)understanding. Agreeing to an MOU is a technique for suggesting something vital is about to happen when, in reality, it is a smokescreen for inertia. Then there is the all-inclusive reference to 'stakeholders', meaning everybody with an interest. It actually should be 'steak holders' because the only ones who will benefit are the instigators of a scheme (usually friends of the government).

I think we can hold the Americans responsible for 'proactive', which is redundant because you are either active or you are not. Should they be blamed for cohort (surely group, entity or some other term is suitable), go-to guy (expert). Backstory (prequel), road map (in politics - a plan), pop-up (temporary), and get-go (start) aren't really necessary. I don't know where wealth adviser came from, but if there was ever a misnomer for a financial institution's customer service representative, this is it.

AMERICANISATION

Jamaica is slowly but surely adding another Americanism - first responder. In the US sense, he/she is a fireman, nurse, policeman. In our country, a first responder is the first person on the scene of a crash to see how bad it is and who's to blame. Or in the case of a fire, to see if anyone is getting out alive.

Stringing words into a phrase can cause plenty of confusion. For instance, take 'kicking the can down the road' (putting off a difficult decision - US), 'stepping up to the plate' (a baseball term but one recurring in UK journalism meaning be ready to take action), and add those to what is being expected of us - 'we have our backs to the wall, tighten our belts, must put noses to the grindstone' - and you have the Mother of all Metaphors, which we Jamaicans are facing right now, as well as a literally impossible stance to take.

There are other arrangements of words worth admiring. 'Over my dead body' attracts the sotto voce response 'that can be arranged', and 'to cut a long story short' with another not-so-sotto voce expression 'it's too late'.

The other one which drives me crazy is the recorded message - frequently repeated when you are waiting telephone receiver in hand - "Your call is important to us." Clearly if it was important, the company would have more call operators.

The last word on words goes to the US Supreme Court judge who, when asked for a definition of pornography, could only say, "I'll know it when I see it."

Jamaica myth: People tint their car windows because they have ugly children.

Anthony Gambrill is an author and playwright. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.