MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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Such loose language in the news about bestial and despicable acts!

Some unlikely or unthinkable things happen in life for which even the better news reporters and editors find themselves at a loss for words to describe. This often forces them to settle for semantically questionable word choices or phraseology that only serves to further muddle matters for their readers. In some cases, in fact, they come up with downright illogical, quirkish, or ludicrous accounts of what happened.

Take the following three cases of extremely loose language used by the Philippine Daily Inquirer in reporting the news last November 26 about some bestial and other despicable acts:

(1) Misuse of the word “rape” for a bestial act on a dog

I seriously take issue with the language of the above story on two counts: (a) its misuse of the noun “rape” for the act allegedly committed by the farmer on the dog, and (2) the misleading emphasis the lead sentence gives to the farmer’s having to do the bestial act twice before the police arrested him.

1. Misuse of the noun “rape” in the story: The conventional definition of the term “rape” is that it is an “unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will usually of a female or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent.” (Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary). It’s clear that “rape” applies to a sexual violation of a human being by another human being, and that it is carried out forcibly or under threat against the will of the victim. In this case, however, the victim is a dog, so there simply is no way of knowing whether the farmer carried out the sexual act forcibly on the dog, or whether he used threat of injury to subvert the dog’s will.
   
   The English language actually has a more precise word for that abominable act of humans on animals: bestiality. “Bestiality” is defined as “sexual relations between a human being and a lower animal,” and this definition doesn’t distinguish whether the act is done forcibly on the victim or consummated with the mutual consent of the human and the animal. Another word for “bestiality” is “sodomy,” which is defined as “copulation with an animal.” Although “sodomy” is a less precise word because it can also apply to “anal or oral copulation with a member of the same or opposite sex,” it is a more appropriate and closer word than “rape” to describe the farmer’s alleged act in this case. For that story then, I would suggest this more precisely worded headline: “Farmer held for sodomizing dog.” Even simpler and to the point: “Farmer arrested for having sex with dog.”

2. Undue emphasis on the repeated commission of the “rape”: The lead sentence of the news story, “Police arrested a 33-year-old farmer for allegedly raping a dog twice in Oriental Mindoro,” has a very unpleasant undercurrent in the way it unduly emphasizes that the farmer allegedly had to have sex with the dog twice before getting arrested. It gives the wrong impression that the Oriental Mindoro police arrested him only after repeating the bestial act, and that they might not have done so had he done it to the dog only once. This misleading semantic undercurrent can easily be eliminated by deleting the problematic word “twice” in that sentence: “Police arrested a 33-year-old farmer for allegedly having sex with a dog in Oriental Mindoro.” The two-time aspect of the bestial act can then just be taken up later in the story.

Here, then, is a semantically more accurate and more circumspect rendition that I would recommend for that lead passage:

(2) A stunning reversal of the judicial process

If Chief Supt. Pagdilao’s statement was paraphrased correctly in the last sentence above, we have here a case of a police director making an assurance that’s a complete travesty of the law and justice as well as a stunning reversal of the judicial process. But I don’t think Chief Supt. Pagdilao is that ignorant of the law. He couldn’t have made the ridiculous statement that the erring cops would have to be proven guilty first before being slapped with criminal charges for attempted murder. What he probably said or meant was simply this, “The erring cops would face criminal charges for attempted murder,” but the trigger-happy reporter and his editors bungled his statement in the story by prefacing it with that “if proven guilty” bit.   

(3) An illogical direct quote

Take a look at the direct quote above that’s attributed to the accused: “For him to claim that I hurt him, that’s impossible.” Whether he said it in English or else in Cebuano but later translated into English in this story, that’s a patently illogical statement. It’s saying that it’s impossible for his accuser to claim that he had slapped him during a traffic altercation, but that’s precisely what this accuser claimed the accused had done. So whether true or not, that particular accusation has undoubtedly been made and is no longer at issue here; it’s a done thing. Obviously then, what the accused wanted to say is that it was impossible for him to have hurt the bus driver, but he was probably too angry or too stressed out to make his statement grammatically and semantically airtight. In such situations, it’s incumbent upon the reporter and his editors not to use the illogical quote but to paraphrase it so that it could reflect the intended meaning. In this particular case, a suitable and truthful paraphrase of that direct quote might be something like the following:

“Mabanto said in a TV Patrol Central Visayas report that it was impossible for him to have hurt the bus driver as the latter claims.”

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

(1) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Confusing use of the intransitive verb “snarled”

I have serious misgivings over the use of the intransitive verb “snarled” in the first sentence of the lead passage above. It definitely gives the unmistakable but wrong sense that traffic at Makati’s Central Business District, like a lion or tiger, “growled with a snapping, gnashing or display of teeth” during the protest march of the labor groups. It can be argued, of course, that “snarled” in that sentence was used in its other intransitive sense of “tangled or knotted,” but I would say that it’s a long shot—particularly because the headline of the story, “PAL workers’ march snarls Makati traffic,” had already established the use of that verb in the transitive sense—with the PAL workers’ march as doer of the action and with the Makati traffic as direct object.

This being the case, I would suggest supporting that intransitive use of the verb in the story with the helping verb “got” to make its meaning unmistakable. With this fix, that sentence will then read more clearly as follows:

“Traffic in Makati’s Central Business District got snarled Thursday as labor groups held a protest march against ‘contractualization’.”

(2) Philippine Star: Lost in land-area conversion

We can be sure that Senator Jinggoy Estrada was grossly misquoted here. We all know that the Estrada family residence at Polk Street in Greenhills, San Juan City, is so huge for a property situated in the heart of the metropolis, but for it to be all of 3,000 hectares is much too huge to be believable—in fact, more than 5 times the 595-hectare land area of San Juan City itself! (Also, one hectare is 10,000 square meters, so if that news story’s figure is correct, the property would be a whopping 30,000,000 square meters! That’s absurdly big—no less than 100,000 times bigger than the typical lower-middle-class housing lot of 300 square meters.)

As it turns out, the land-area figure in that Philippine Star story is a serious error in metric conversion. The Agence France Story on the subject that was used by The Manila Times gave the following factual and more realistic measure of that Estrada property:

“The property, situated in a leafy, gated enclave in San Juan City in Metro Manila is a 3,000 square-meter (0.74-acre) spread with four buildings, including a clubhouse where visitors are put up.”

With that size, of course, the Estradas have a much better chance of getting a buyer for that property!

(3) Philippine Star: Unduly sowing fear with the adjective “powerful”

One or two of the international wire news services are, of course, in the habit of prefixing names of major institutions and agencies with descriptive adjectives, but should Philippine newspapers always follow suit and go overboard by tacking on the adjective “powerful” every time to the Commission of Appointments? I don’t think it’s a good idea to be always rubbing it in; as it is, the name by itself can already scare the hell out of those presidential appointees slated for confirmation by that commission. So for goodness’ sake, let’s just drop “powerful,” OK?

(4) Manila Bulletin: Extremely longwinded sentences

We can be sure that the above lead passage—the first paragraph at 60 words and the second, at 70 words—is a big turnoff to readers. Few would be brave and patient enough to wade through that intimidating thicket of words just to find out what such extremely long sentences are saying. And, of course, practically every newswriting textbook would tell you that the readability of sentences takes a calamitous nosedive when they are more than 30-35 words long with hardly any punctuation.

So my suggestion to reporters is to always make an effort to boil down such long sentence constructions into more manageable, bite-size chunks, like the following rewrite of that lead passage:

“BAGUIO CITY, Philippines – This mountain resort city has joined the bandwagon of local governments that are now exploring options on how to maximize renewable energy use in their respective areas. This is to guarantee environmental preservation and protection and to avoid too much dependence on fossil fuel, which is the main source of pollutants of the city’s air.

“A pending ordinance in the city council authored by councilors Erdolfo Balajadia and Fred Bagbagen seeks to strengthen this environmental effort. It mandates the city mayor’s office to invite proponents of exploratory and feasibility studies in the use of renewable energy, such as solar, wind, and water.”

(5) Manila Bulletin: Wrong combination of verb tenses; mixed up antecedent nouns

The lead paragraph above has two serious grammar problems: (a) a wrong combination of the tenses in the adverbial phrase “when I was just out of college and spent practically the entire day working out,” and (b) a mixup in the the antecedent nouns of the verbs in the clause “my Dad took me out to lunch and was shocked when after a full meal.”

1. Wrong combination of the tenses: In the adverbial phrase “when I was just out of college and spent practically the entire day working out,” the verb phrase “was just out of college” is not compatible and not in sync with the verb phrase “spent practically the entire day working out,” resulting in a grammatically flawed sentence. To make them in sync, the second verb phrase needs to be rendered in the passive past-progressive form, “was spending practically the entire day working out.” That first sentence will then read correctly as follows:
   
   “When I was just out of college and was spending practically the entire day working out, my idea of a special meal was usually a buffet.”

2. Mixup in the antecedent nouns of the verbs: Look again at the third sentence of that lead passage above: “Once, after a competition, my Dad took me out to lunch and was shocked when after a full meal, I came back from the dessert table with seven different cakes and pies, on seven separate plates.” This is a fused or run-on sentence that mixes up the doers of the action and the verbs. As a result, it’s unclear who was shocked by what and who had a full meal. Breaking down the sentences into two—this is actually a punctuation fix—can quickly resolve the problem:
   
   “Once, after a competition, my Dad took me out to lunch. He was shocked when after a full meal, I came back from the dessert table with seven different cakes and pies, on seven separate plates.”

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