To Ease the Passing of Time

I watch a lot of TV and, over the years, I have noticed that people seem to repeat exactly what they heard other people say in such or such circumstances, to a point that I know exactly what they are going to say before they even say it. 

Let me give you a few examples. Murder and mystery programs like 48 Hours or Dateline often start with an interview of the people who were close to the victim of the crime they are going to talk about in the next hour or two. Inevitably, if that victim happened to be a young woman, which is often the case, they’ll say to describe her personality that she “lit up the room.” I asked my wife this afternoon if she had ever noticed this.  She said yes. And guess what?  We heard it on the news the same night. 

We often hear politicians who never pray say:  “I’ll keep you in my prayers,” when they want to publicly express their sympathy to the victims of a tragedy. If they choose to say that, it's probably because they think that they can strike a chord with the religious people who are going to vote for or against them in the next election.  Another way of expressing the same thing in a less religious way is to say: “My heart goes out to the victims.” I can imagine that before choosing between those two ways of expressing themselves, politicians must try to asses the degree of religiosity of their electorate. 

I often see people apologizing for crying on TV when they become emotional while being interviewed after a tragedy that has just happened to them.  I never understood why.  A guy who has just lost his family in a fire or a car accident feels the need to mumble: I’m sorry!” if he happens to shed a few tears in front of the camera. Come on! Gimme a break! It’s the reporter interviewing him who should apologize for bringing up the subject. 

I think that a lot of things that people use in speaking are like the equivalent of templates in writing, or like the nice stuff that we find written inside Hallmark cards. Scammers also copy and paste romantic exerts from letters or novels to include them in the e-mails they send to their victims to show how deep and authentic their love is. I saw a lot of examples of that on Dr. Phil. 

Thirty five years ago, one of my students who was from the country that was known as Czechoslovakia said to me, "English is a very nice language, but it doesn't leave a lot of room for creativity and imagination." It must be what he was referring to. I don't know how people express themselves in his native language, but I know that the same could be said about French and other languages. For me, it's not due to a lack of creativity or imagination; it's just a way of dealing with uneasy situations. 

There are two expressions that I hear a lot, mostly on American television, that make me feel a little bit uneasy.  I didn’t go online to find the origin and meaning of those expressions. I’ll just give you my gut reaction, how it makes me feel and what I think when I hear them.

The expression “white trash” is often used to describe white people with low income and education that often live in trailer parks. For me it’s a racist expression because it implies that since people who are not white are already trash, there is no use to mention their ethnicity. We never hear of Native American, African American or Hispanic American trash. 

The other expression is “all-American” boy or girl. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but that expression is always used to describe young, handsome, bright and athletic white people who come from a middle or upper class family. They are normally of Anglo or North European descent, not Italian, Polish or Portugese.

Other odd ways of speaking: In French, the expression for "ghost writer" is "écrivain nègre" which literally means "negro writer". The expression "rule of thumb" has a very dark origin. It refers to the approximate size of the belt that a husband was allowed to use to beat his wife. 

Behind those ways of speaking, there is always a way of thinking. Some words or expressions are connected to the past while others are more linked to the present. They tell us a lot about who we are and how we think, but also about how we were and how we used to think. Sometimes changing the way we speak is the first step towards changing the way we think. Sometimes not changing the way we speak is a useful reminder of some of the bad ways we used to think and behave as a group or society.