MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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Can we say the Supreme Court “teeters on the abyss of incredulity”?

I’d like to take up this very interesting feedback about English usage posted last October 15 by a new Forum member who goes by the username Sphinx:

To enable us to analyze the validity of the expression “teetering on the abyss of incredulity” in context, I checked out the editorial of the Inquirer from where Sphinx had quoted it.  Below is the pertinent passage:

Sphinx observed in his feedback that there seems to be something terribly wrong with the expression “teetering on the abyss” as used by Sen. Miriam Santiago and as quoted verbatim in that Inquirer editorial. The correct expression is “teetering on the brink,” Sphinx argues, because “when you are already in the ‘abyss,’ you’re no longer teetering or on the edge, about to fall... you’re way down there already!”

In the context of Sen. Santiago’s statement, the verb “teeter” means “to totter, vacillate, or seesaw,” and the noun “abyss” means “an extremely deep or bottomless hole or chasm,” whether in the literal or figurative sense. The sense of “teetering on the abyss” is therefore something like “tottering in an extremely deep or bottomless chasm.”

So, is Sphinx correct when he says that the expression “teetering on the abyss” isn’t right and should be “teetering on the brink” instead?

There are actually three common figurative expressions in the sense of “tottering in an extremely deep or bottomless chasm.” I checked those expressions with Google and below are their comparative rankings in terms of frequency of usage:

1. “teetering on the edge” – 5,260,000
2. “teetering on the brink” – 4,790,000
3. “teetering on the abyss” – 495,000

It’s therefore evident that Sen. Santiago’s usage of “teetering on the abyss,” while ranking only third in frequency of usage among the three alternative figurative expressions (495,000 instances or 4.7% out of 10,545,000), enjoys some currency among English users in various parts of the world. As figurative expressions go, it looks semantically legitimate despite Sphinx’s opinion that something’s terribly wrong about it because “When you are already in the ‘abyss,’ you’re no longer teetering or on the edge [or] about to fall... you’re way down there already!” My feeling, though, is that “teetering on the abyss,” even if logically debatable, is acceptable figurative language.

But what about Sphinx’s second point—that Sen. Santiago’s use of the noun “incredulity” in the expression “teetering on the abyss of incredulity” is wrong? Sphinx says that “incredulity” means “indisposition to believe”; in other words, it’s the “unwillingness to admit or accept what is offered as true.”

Now the question is: Was that the sense Sen. Santiago intended in this quote: “Which is truly worrisome, because then the Supreme Court runs the grave risk of becoming, in the public eye, ultimately unreachable by workers and the common folk, mere denizens of the ivory tower, no longer Lady Justice in a blindfold—or, as Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago so piquantly put it, “teetering on the abyss of incredulity”?

This time, I think, Sphinx has a valid point. Indeed, it doesn’t seem like Sen. Santiago was saying that “the SC may have a problem believing” but, as Sphinx points out, that she meant “the SC risks loss of credibility” in recalling its “final decision” on the case in question. In other words, by that act, the SC was “teetering on the abyss of unbelievability” (as seen from the standpoint of some outside observer looking in)—not “teetering on the abyss of not believing itself” (as seen from the SC’s own standpoint).

To sum up, to be “incredulous” means “not to believe in oneself,” while to be “unbelievable”—or to be “incredible,” if you will—means “not worthy of being believed.” It seems clear to me now that Sen. Santiago was semantically off by using the noun “incredulity” when she said that the SC was “teetering on the abyss of incredulity,” and that she would have hit it right on the mark had she said “teetering on the abyss of unbelievability” instead.

Of course, this means that Sphinx was also right in saying that the Inquirer, had it known better, should have noted Sen. Santiago’s flawed word choice with the customary “(sic).”
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*FASAP is the acronym of the Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines, whose members are the affected parties in the recall of the Supreme Court resolution ordering the reinstatement of 1,400 laid-off flight attendants of Philippine Airlines.

SHORT TAKE IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

I’m delighted to report that once again, Metro Manila’s major broadsheets and the news websites of its two leading TV networks were remarkably free of English grammar and usage errors during the past week—none serious enough to warrant a critique here anyway.

I just want to comment on the following lead sentence of a news story in one of the leading broadsheets:    

The Manila Times: Use of an obscure foreign phrase without translation

In our country, except perhaps for Roman Catholic priests or seminarians steeped in Latin as well as a handful of linguists, who would know what “nomen est omen” means? Of course I was in the dark myself, so I had to interrupt my reading to check out that phrase. From a list of Latin proverbs that I found on the web, I saw that “nomen est omen” literally means “name is omen,” which implies that the name is fitting for the object or person referred to.

I think it behooves reporters and editors to avoid using such obscure foreign phrases in their news reportage, and if they absolutely must, they should at least provide an immediate translation in the same sentence. This is to keep their readers focused on reading the news rather than going on a wild-goose chase for the meaning of those phrases.

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