Believing or Thinking

(Another one from the Fuel For Thought files...and very much germane)

Do You Believe, or Do You Think?                                                   (June 15, 20004)

It’s time to listen to our American language.  We can’t really call it English any more.  We can’t even use George Bernard Shaw’s “separated by common language” phrase any more.  Our usage uniquely defines us as American speakers/writers.  Let’s call it Americanese.  I’m mostly interested in the embedded subtleties of our language that define us as a culture.  For example, we say, “Watch what you’re doing.” but the Brits say, “Mind what you’re doing.”  We say, "Watch the gap," they say, "Mind the gap."  American usage is language driven by perception; British usage is language driven by conception, one external, and the other internal.  Our perception is our "reality."

We have other cultural markers.  How about “move on”?  This expresses a categorically American attitude regarding the primary value of the future as opposed to the present or the past (Americans devalue the past, but we’ll save that for later).  Notice the value structure in the following:  “Can’t we just settle this and move on?”  And no one raises the obvious question: Move on to what?  Or should we just settle it because we want to move on?  Is what we settle less important than moving on?  The reason we value the future so highly is that we place a premium on progress; for us, progress (anything that is more and therefore better in the future than it was in the past) is inherently good.  Also, the belief that perfection is perfectible is embedded, even constitutionalized in America.  Sound silly?  How about:  “We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union…”?  Americans disparage absolute superlatives.

We also have silly usages.  My favorite one in the last 10 or 20 years is the adjectival usage of “fun”.  Such contortions as “It was so fun.” and  “It was real fun.” (to be distinguished from unreal fun?).  My favorite construction is the bowdlerization “It was much funner than I thought it would be”.  This phenomenon is not new; language speakers (in all living languages) continually contort and distort language to satisfy the need for brevity and contemporaneity.  Our “none”, for example, used to be “not one”, which is why some of us old timers still insist that proper usage says, “None of them is important”.  We have several examples of these contractions without apostrophes.

Which brings me to why I’m thinking about “believe” or “think”. This political-ese annoys me.  My focus is not on the obvious tricks; rather, this is usage we’re overlooking.  I’ve noticed that politicians rarely say they “think” something; it’s always “I believe…” Now if you commit verbally to “thinking” something, you imply that whatever it is will follow a thought process, like logic or common sense.  But if you commit verbally to “believing” something, you imply that whatever you say is based in your faith; you cannot be proven wrong or right, and you are not obliged to produce evidence.  Our faith-based political culture utters almost nothing that doesn’t begin with “I believe.”  Or as his spokesperson at the State Department, Adam Ereli, said in a press conference (6.3.04), “Let’s be clear, it is our belief…”  Belief here is being used to suggest clarity.  Am I the only one who sees the flimflam and absurdity in this?

Media studies specialists analyze this sort of thing all the time.  Have you ever noticed how on camera reporters speak in gerund fragments; e.g., “The White house was busy today.  The President speaking with his cabinet and other administration personnel.  Condoleeza Rice trying to put a good face on the recent turmoil in Iraq.  Mrs. Bush smiling a lot.”  Does media-ese need to be a dumbing down of language?  Do our mediated lives immure us from meaning, simultaneously walling us in and walling us out from understandable communication?  Are Americans less involved with information because we don’t trust the language that delivers the information?  Do we wonder what to think when someone utters, “The fact of the matter is…” then proceeds to voice an opinion?  These common occurrences must be having an effect, and I suspect the effect compels us to stop listening.