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My two sons, 21 and 14 years of age, have lately been
watching with keen interest the ongoing series of student debates on
ANC, “Square Off.” As you may already know, this TV show pits
two-person debating teams from various universities and colleges,
with the young speakers taking on the roles of their adult
counterparts in Congress in debating various highly controversial
issues.
I really can’t find fault in
the English of most of the young debaters, whom I presume to be
among the best and most articulate from their respective schools.
Despite the pressures of time and competition, their speeches are
generally free of such language scourges as footloose modifiers,
mangled idiomatic expressions, subject-verb disagreements, wrong
pronoun usage, and frequent misuses of prepositional phrases and
prepositional idioms. And on the whole, I think, their English
pronunciation and accents are generally beyond reproach as well.
But as my two sons are quick to
point out whenever we have the chance to watch those TV debates
together, the body English of many of the debaters leave much to be
desired, and their overuse of such clichés as “at the end of the
day” and “at this point in time” can be so infuriating at
times. Often, in fact, my sons would urge me to write about those
things in this column in the hope that the message would somehow
reach the debaters.
“Look at how that debater
endlessly chops the air with both hands,” my eldest son said one
time, a pained look in his face. “Shouldn’t his coach remind him
that he’s not in a karate competition?”
“Well, son, that mannerism is
part of his body English,” I said, “and I’m afraid that none
of my English-usage prescriptions could correct it. Only a
knowledgeable public speaking trainer or trusted friend can wean him
from it without shattering his self-confidence.”
“But what about this girl who
seems to be always sneering at her opponent?” my younger son asked
me another time. “Doesn’t she realize it’s bad form to sneer
in public, in full view of the TV audience at that?”
“You’re right, but she
probably isn’t even aware of it,” I explained. “That’s the
problem with TV—it’s a terribly cruel medium. That habitual
facial expression of hers probably won’t even be noticed if she
were debating onstage in a big school auditorium, but it gets
magnified when the TV camera does a medium close-up of her. Somebody
has to call her attention to it, though, and she would need a lot of
facial practice in front of a mirror to get rid of it.”
“Now look at this guy, dad,”
my elder son butted in. “Why does he keep on obnoxiously repeating
‘Ladies and gentlemen’ or ‘Madame Speaker’ in practically
every sentence of his speech? He must have used it a dozen times
already in three minutes. Isn’t there a debating rule against
that?”
“I’m not sure, but habitual
expressions like that are actually semantic crutches. When people
speak at the speed of light, their brains may not be able to send
their next thought to their tongues fast enough. That’s why they
need those expressions to fill in the semantic gaps.”
“I see … But what about this
other debater, dad? He’s now on his 15th ‘at the end of the
day’ and the debate is still far from over. Hearing this cliché
many times over takes away the joy in watching these debates.
Can’t he and the other speakers just say ‘ultimately’ or
‘after all’? And why don’t the people behind these debates ban
that terrible cliché?”
“Patience, my son, patience!
Who knows? Without knowing it, some of those people may be habitual
users of that dreadful cliché themselves. Anyway, I promise to
write about this in my column. Let’s just hope they’d have the
chance to read it before the new round of debates next week.”
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