When language turns to mush, no one listens |
Anyone else struggle with languages? I've been grappling with Italian for months yet my best efforts continue sounding like a malfunctioning espresso machine. Sentences stutter, gurgle and even hiss in inappropriate places. Verbs become violently entangled. Conjugations collapse in mid-air.
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And let's not even start on that confounding Italian insistence of bestowing a gender on everyday objects like furniture and cutlery.
It's a humbling experience to be incompetent in a subject others master so intuitively. But at least I can sympathise with our nation's politicians whenever they attempt to speak in English.
Last week's ascension of Angus Taylor to the Liberal Party leadership was accompanied by the traditional word salad of someone unfamiliar with clear language. There were promises of "core values", "restoring confidence" and "rolling up the sleeves" - the predictable swag of garbage phrases uttered so often they should qualify for a recycling deposit scheme.
Taylor, of course, is hardly on his own when it comes to transforming his native tongue into focus group mush. The PM's preference for cautious language often makes him sound like he's waiting for official clearance to finish a sentence. It's the paradox of modern politics. Words so carefully chosen land on the ear like elevator music. Political discussion has become the linguistic equivalent of a beige cardigan. No wonder the electorate has stopped listening.
Just a month ago the Canadian PM Mark Carney delivered a remarkable self-penned speech in Davos. He spoke of a "rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality". His warning that the old days of geopolitical niceties were over was greeted with acclaim and astonishment that a politician would - let alone could - speak so eloquently and honestly.
"The old order is not coming back," announced Carney. "We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy."
But peering into the past helps remind us that Australia's political discourse wasn't always so insipid. Bob Hawke announced economic reforms like a bloke shouting a drink for a rowdy pub crowd. Paul Keating wielded words like a medieval swordsman, equal parts elegance and menace. Gough Whitlam spoke in grandiose sentences while Sir Robert Menzies boasted a rolling grandeur that made the country feel larger and more important than it was.
John Howard was hardly an accomplished lyricist. But he did speak fluent Middle-Australian. He was the neighbour who wandered over to borrow your lawn mower and ended up explaining why your interest rate payments were rising. You may not have agreed. But you listened. That was the point.
Why the decline? A rapidly changing news cycle, the growth in "gotcha" journalism that turns a casual stumble into a career epitaph, a shift in society's expectations and the professionalisation of politics, driven by polling and focus groups. All have shrunk the language and turned authenticity into a risk factor.
This is the sad part. Democracies rely on the art of persuasion, and persuasion relies on the skilful use of language. It's supposed to make us feel something. It should spark debate or at least trigger a conversation. Carney's speech made a chastened and intimidated Europe stand taller.
Yet somehow the man Carney didn't directly name as the cause of this global rupture has shown a bizarre mastery of communication, despite vandalising language with the enthusiasm of a pen-wielding toddler confronted by a bare wall.
Donald Trump dispensed with 25 letters of the alphabet long ago. He needs just one. He views the world he is rupturing solely through the prism of the personal pronoun. He is crude, offensive, self-obsessed and prone to sentences that meander into incomprehensible gibberish. Yet one of the most superficial politicians in history has created the illusion of authenticity, proving how many prefer listening to something messy but human, than polished and empty.
I try to spend 30 minutes every day practising Italian. Each time I fail in new and inventive ways. But sometimes - very rarely - a sentence lands perfectly and I picture an imaginary audience paying rapt attention.
Politicians should try this with English. Until they do, we will continue pretending to listen while they say nothing in carefully crafted sentences designed to be forgotten.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Who do you rank as Australia's finest political speaker? What's the most memorable political speech you've heard? What is to blame for the mediocre quality of current political debate? And have you mastered another language? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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THEY SAID IT: "Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a pre-fabricated hen-house." - George Orwell
YOU SAID IT: Statistically speaking, extraterrestrial life is likely but the chances of ever encountering it are remote. But a search for signs of past life on Mars might just bear fruit.
Ian was an avid reader of sci-fi as a youngster. "I was convinced UFOs and aliens were real and benign, watching over us until we were mature enough for them to reveal their presence. Now I think they never were here and never will be (or if they were, they've decided we're a lost cause and buggered off). Sure, statistically there's probably intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but space is too vast, and the likely distribution of intelligent life too sparse, for us ever to meet them. I don't even believe we'll ever meaningfully leave this planet. Maybe we'll get to Mars, but so what, it's uninhabitable, although clearly of scientific interest. We should focus on keeping the Earth habitable for us and everything else that lives here."
Vena writes: " I think we should warn the Martians or whoever that if the name Elon Musk pops up on your radars, beware."
"Fact 1: your cupped hands hold a million grains of sand," writes Henry. "Fact 2: there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth. That's a lot solar systems spinning around out there. So statistically, there's going to be other life forms - millions of them. Now, whether they're similar to us, fruit flies, blades of grass or the fevered imaginations of cold war TV producers matters not. Given the nearest star to us is 4.24 light years away, no one's popping in for a cuppa too soon."
"The James Webb telescope has revealed more than two trillion galaxies in the observable universe so the odds of life on the incalculable number of planets in these galaxies are pretty good," writes Grant. "What's not good are the odds of any of these life forms making contact due to the tyranny of distance. The closest star to ours (Proxima Centauri) is more than four light years away, meaning if we travelled at the speed of Voyager 1 (61,000 kmh) it would take over 77,000 years to get there. Einstein's theory of relativity proved travel at the speed of light is impossible so visits from aliens will only occur in the fertile imaginations of science fiction writers."
Garry J is convinced aliens have visited Earth, referring to the famous Westall High School mass sighting in April 1966 "witnessed by teachers and large numbers of students with many interviews over the years confirming their experiences even though a teacher was warned to say nothing by government officials who threatened him with the loss of his job".
Sue writes: "I suspect that conspiracy theories significantly pre-date The X-Files but I know it instigated that response in many viewers. I find it interesting that the time span you give for proving the existence of former life on Mars could be beyond the possible time span us for making our planet unliveable."
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