Pressurizing?

It's been a while since I called out any of the news readers and commentators on NPR on matters of language or use of a questionable word form   So here's my seasonal contribution.
Driving home today I had the BBC's OS program (Outside Sources, for the uninitiated). They were reporting on today's press announcement that the Democratic House intends to write and approve two articles of Impeachment. In describing the first article involving Trump's effort to get Ukraine's president to damage Biden's campaign with charges of corruption in Ukraine. In explaining this the BBC reporter said that Trump will be charged with "PRESSURIZING" the government of Ukraine to announce such an investigation.  Why would the Brits believe that word was interchangeable with "PRESSURING". I had always assumed PRESSURIZING more accurately applied to situations where pressure such as air or gas was injected into a finite space to be eventually used and/or released at a later time. A tire is pressurized  A driver might be pressured to apply pressurized brakes to slow a vehicle.  But how could Trump pressurize Zelenski to take a desired action?

National Public Radio

They've just not given this sufficient thought. Sometimes a communications shortcut that is arguably reasonable in one medium becomes much less so in others. Abbreviations and acronyms make sense in written communications, especially when the acronyms are clearly identified early in a news story or editorial. One shouldn't have to write out National Collegiate Athletic Association multiple times in an article when it can be identified as such initially and then referred to as NCAA following times. But what's true in print does not necessarily hold for use on the radio or TV.
But rather than lay additional groundwork, let me go straight to the specific example that prompted my screed. Today I was listening to National Public Radio (NPR). The reporter on the program commented on an email to the program complaining about this very issue. The listener declared she was annoyed when “they used acronyms and abbreviations without ever clarifying and identifying what some of the letters represented.” . The specific abbreviation that piqued her was BBC-OS. In this case she was not objecting to the BBC. Everybody hearing the program and everybody on NPR knows that BBC stands for the British Broadcasting Corporation or Company. The caller was pretty sure, though, that the “OS” was seldom or never explained. This gave the NPR person the opening to answer the question at some length. Seems “OS” is short for “Outside Sources”. As painfully explained, this meant virtually all sources since BBC doesn't internally create much news. But other than providing this definition, the NPR person never adequately responded to the complainer's complaint. Why couldn't they refer to this little news niche program as “Outside Sources” every time instead of the “OS” abbreviation? When speaking it, two syllables are required to say “O” and “S”. Only four syllables are expended in mouthing “Outside Sources”. The time savings orally fails to match the economy of abbreviating in writing.
It was mentioned in the excuses offered up by NPR that the habit of using abbreviations internally within all organizations, be they broadcasting corporations or government bureaucracies, at times represented merely “insider lingo”. They do allow those in the know to freeze out the unwashed.
I could wrap this up admitting that some acronyms can provide the same useful time savings orally that they do on the paper. This is especially true where the acronym does not dictate each letter being voiced if the acronym is also a recognizable word. It made sense for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties of the 70s and 80s to be referred to both in writing and on television as START treaties. But, having said that, I stand with the e-mailer that “inside baseball” abbreviations are often lazily used at the expense of clarity.

SO

Rather than write another blog on a current political topic or the latest media outrage I think I'll go to modern society and language.
                                                                     "So"

Recall, if you will, the time when one difference between the person on the street  and the one trained in public speaking was that the average person would often be caught beginning a sentence or thought or response to a question with some innocuous utterance such as “Uh” or “you know”. They might also continue to pepper their conversation with additional “uhs” and “you know”s, apparently believing that any sound was preferable to silence.

Though not totally eradicated, superfluous words are significantly reduced in most TV and radio interviews and conversations in recent years. The occasional athlete may still include a number of “you know”s and “uhs” in answers to painfully inane questions about how he felt sinking the winning shot or putt. But for the most part, one can listen to interviews without wincing as much.

There is a new trend, however, in public utterances. And this tends to hold both for politicians, scientists, and scholarly trained persons being interviewed concerning topics of their area of expertise.  The new trend is that after being asked a nice open-ended question designed to allow the respondent to wax eloquent the first word spoken in the answer well be, “So”. 

“How does the new MOAB bomb change the way we deal with ISIS”?

“So, it was designed and is intended to not only do effective damage such as reaching tunnel or underground targets but it also serves as a psychological weapon.”  [Hypothetical example]

What purpose does the introductory “So” serve in the answer?  It acknowledges the legitimacy of the question in the first place.  It seems to declare that what follows is indeed responsive to the question. 

“So” can exist in language as an adjective, adverb or conjunction. (Some dictionaries even include pronoun and noun uses.) The “so” I am addressing is the conjuction designed to introduce subsequent thought or information.

Listen to NPR or one of the TV news interview shows over the course of several programs and days and you’ll discover that “So” is so common an introduction to an answer that it is used more than half the time.  It has not yet become such a cliched use that it is distracting. Typically a responder will use it only at the beginning of an answer, not repeatedly throughout the explanation. This keeps it from becoming as annoying as “uh” and “you know” were for a number of years.

This Week's "On Language"

One of the firm groundings I received from my beloved late parents was the understanding that one of the best forms of humor was the lowly pun. It and other language jokes. They both tended to be more amused by verbal humor than by visual, slapstick attempts at humor. My dad could chuckle for hours at a particularly delicious pun.

That being said, I am reminded this week of one of the earliest verbal jokes that I can recall from my childhood. This week's reminder comes courtesy of the death notices for Fess Parker.
There was a line in the ballad "The Legend of Davy Crockett" that always cracked me up, once I got it. See if you can pick out the gem from this verse:

Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee,

Greenest state in the land of the free.

Lived in the woods where he knew every tree;

Killed him a b'ar when he was only three.

Davy

Davy Crockett

King of the wild frontier.

OK, it doesn't take that much to amuse a nine year old kid.

On Language

With William Safire being gone and James J Kilpatrick no longer opining about the proper use of the English language, my meager blog occasionally addresses the issue. This is closely related to my previous rants about cliches and the media.

Topic for today: Pronunciation errors by sports broadcasters. One of the most glaring would have to be the word lackadaisical. The Olympics commentators butchered this several imes the past few days. By my estimation at least 80% of the time people who voice this word insert an "s" after the "k" when using this word. And to me, folks, that's not rigorous reporting and broadcasting. That, instead, is pretty lackadaisical.

Language Inflation

As time goes by various words and phrases apparently lose their punch. People cease to appreciate them, desiring to describe something that has grown, become bigger, grander, more intense than that which had existed to date. Two simple examples should suffice.
Jesus told in the parable of "The Widow's Mite"(Matt 12:13-17) about a woman who had contributed her entire resources to alms for the poor. And He declared that what she had done was unmatched because she "gave all". At that time "all" was sufficient. He had no need to declare she had given "110%".
Up until very recent years we would be warned of the potential for contagious illness spreading by being told of flu epidemics. And we understood that this was bigger than the possibly small, contained situation wherein one might catch an illness from immediate family members. This meant that schools and churches and the marketplace could harbor carriers of whatever contagious bug was out there.
But a mere epidemic is not grand enough to categorize Swine Flu (oh wait, we do injustice to poor pigs calling it that). The H1N1 virus is not just of epidemic proportions. No! We must crown it a Pandemic for surely none of our ancestors have seen anything matching its ferocity and reach. [And yes, I get that worldwide travel perhaps render this a technically correct differentiation.] But it still seems to me that many of the historic epidemics we're read about were more ferocious than our latest pandemic ever thought of being. This just ain't what I had envisioned for a pandemic back when I was studying epidemics. Where's the boils, spitting up blood, etc??
Returning to the "110%" nonsense, one fears that this type of playing fast and loose with our vocabulary is not just silly. It confuses many people who probably don't really need to be confused. If we blow away the concept of "giving your all", then what are the bounds? How is ALL not significantly superior to 110 or 120 or 200%? If we don't have a maximum value (such as "ALL") then where's the top? My giving 110% effort can easily be topped by somebody. All they have to do is give 125%. Where can it end?
This whole concept is, of course , not significantly different from the tendency in recent decades for "grade inflation" in schools. But I grow weary and don't wish to tackle it tonight.