Jose Carillo's Forum

MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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Team up with me in My Media English Watch!

I am inviting Forum members to team up with me in doing My Media English Watch. This way, we can further widen this Forum’s dragnet for bad or questionable English usage in both the print media and broadcast media, thus giving more teeth to our campaign to encourage them to continuously improve their English. All you need to do is pinpoint every serious English misuse you encounter while reading your favorite newspaper or viewing your favorite network or cable TV programs. Just tell me about the English misuse and I will do a grammar critique of it.

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Is “major, major” now socially acceptable English?

I found no English grammar errors in the four major Metro Manila broadsheets last week that are serious and instructive enough to be critiqued here. I’m truly glad that their reporters and editors have become much more vigilant with their English, and I trust that they will be able to keep their journalistic output totally free of serious grammar and usage errors for many, many more issues to come.

About the English of one of their broadcast journalism counterparts, however, I received the following e-mail from reader Raquel O. last September 13:

“I would like to react to Ms. Mel Tiangco’s question to P-Noy during the recent TV panel discussion regarding the bus hostage crisis at the Quirino Grandstand [in Manila]. She used the word ‘major, major’ as she asked P-Noy a question regarding the outcome of the crisis.

“Is ‘major, major’ now an accepted word for panel discussion between the President and a respected TV host like Mel?”

Here’s my reply to Raquel, with some afterthoughts of mine added to drive home my point more clearly:

No, Raquel, I don’t think that Mel Tiangco was well-advised in using the expression “major, major” when addressing her question to President Benigno Aquino III. It struck me as disrespectful, crass, and in bad taste for that occasion, which as we all know was a formal media interview with no less than the country’s head of state and chief executive. Perhaps Mel was just carried away by the pre-announced “no holds barred” label for that interview with the President; she must have thought that it gave her the license to be that licentious with language. As someone had so sagely said, “A society is generally as lax as its language,” and I believe that this observation applies to network TV and to its news anchors as well.

I also think that Mel’s attention-getting use of that controversial, much-derided phrase was just another manifestation of the ferocity of the ratings war between the three major Philippine TV networks. Indeed, I got the feeling that whether consciously or unconsciously, Mel uttered that phrase as a pre-emptive strike to make her presence more strongly felt during that media event and steal the thunder away from her two competitive news anchors from ABS-CBN and TV5. On that particular occasion, though, I don’t think that the end justified the means.

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