Listening to the radio this morning reminded me of a couple of my pet hates, so I just want to get these off my chest:
- Use of “-gate” as an all-purpose suffix to indicate a scandal. As if Tricky Dicky and his friends had been found to have left the garden hose running at the height of summer...
We recently had a scandal involving genetically modified crops - so naturally the hacks dubbed this “Corngate”. We've had Every-Other-<Expletive Deleted>-Gate as well over the years (I don't know if the fuss over who paid for Winston's lunch was dubbed “Scampigate”, but I don't want to give them ideas). I swear if someone leaves a farm gate open the media will be yapping about “Gategate”. Notice to the press (and radio, and TV): Stop it. It's not clever: it's just a stupid cliché that demonstrates your intellectual laziness.
- Careless use of the word “refute”. Every time a claim is made which is subsequently denied, it is announced that the party issuing the denial has “refuted” the original claim. When this happens I am always eager to read the comprehensive evidence they have produced disproving the claim in question, and I am always disappointed to learn that in fact all they've done is say “No I didn't”, or “Who says? Anyway, My Dad's A Policeman...”. This, ladies and gentlemen, does not constitute refutation.
This kind of drivel is a symptom of language that has been reduced to the level of fast food - filling and fattening but with no useful nutritional content (substance). A hackneyed analogy I know, but still somewhat apt. So we have speech that conveys no meaningful information, or which is simply a tired rehash of things that have been said a thousand times before, whether or not it is appropriate to the current context. So words lose their meaning, and non-words are slipped in as shorthand to provide a substitute for thought or analysis.
Given the role that marketing has played in this process, the case for my earlier proposals regarding rabid chihuahuas is looking pretty good.