When done just right, using a literary allusion or metaphor in a feature story can make it more inviting and interesting to read. For instance, calling a child prodigy in math and physics a “young Einstein” or two star-crossed lovers a “modern-day Romeo and Juliet” can lift a story from the mundane and make reading it more gratifying. When done wrongly and improperly, however, a literary allusion or metaphor becomes not only a serious distraction but a distasteful experience.
CINEMATIC SCENE FROM SHAKESPEARE'S PLAY MACBETH
Such, in my view, is the case with the seriously flawed literary allusion and demeaning idiomatic expression that I found in two major Metro Manila broadsheets during the weekend, as follows:
1. The Manila Bulletin: Irrelevant, grammatically flawed use of literary allusionTax exemption from lotto stressed
MANILA, Philippines — With all due respect to William Faulkner, one of America’s literary giants: All the sound and fury over a supposed proposal of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) to impose a 20 percent tax on lottery winnings signify nothing.
Well, the story started normally like any other developing news from a credible source unlike 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature awardee Faulkner’s Benjy Compson in “The Sound and the Fury” who begins with a “highly disjointed narrative.”
The above feature story on the PCSO’s reported plan to tax major prizes of the Philippine lotto uses a literary allusion anchored on the following famous lines of verse:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.Such profound and poetic thoughts! The problem, though, is that the feature writer attributed the “sound and fury…signify(ing) nothing” idea to the American novelist William Faulkner. This is a seriously erroneous attribution. The lines paraphrased by the feature story are indeed from William Shakespeare’s play
Macbeth, taken from Macbeth’s famous soliloquy about life and death. However, Faulkner merely appropriated the “sound and fury” idea from Shakespeare, using it allusively as the title of his novel
The Sound and the Fury.
That false attribution is perhaps an honest mistake. But then the feature writer also wrongly prefaced the literary allusion with this statement: “With all due respect to William Faulkner…” This is a semantically flawed prefatory statement, for in such a situation, to say “with all due respect to William Faulkner” is to say beforehand (like many lawyers do when they want to rebut somebody in authority or of higher rank) that the writer somehow disagrees with the statement that he’s about to quote. In this particular case, though, the writer obviously isn’t taking issue with Faulkner’s statement. He obviously agrees with the idea and simply wants to paraphrase it in another or possibly contrary context. The correct, logical preface to such a paraphrase should then be either “To paraphrase William Faulkner” or “With apologies to William Faulkner.”
These two problems are not all, though. Aside from having wrongly quoted Faulkner and having used the quotation in the wrong context, the feature writer then pursued a very far-fetched, unwarranted, and inappropriate contrast between what he called “a credible source” of the lotto-prize taxation idea (the PCSO chair herself) and Benjy Compson, a mentally handicapped character in Faulkner’s
The Sound and the Fury. In the context of the flawed literary allusion pursued by the feature story, this contrast makes the story’s narrative thrust border on the irrelevant, impertinent, and bizarre.
To avoid a journalistic faux pas like this, it’s advisable for writers and editors to be very careful and circumspect when they feel like using literary allusions in their feature stories. They should refrain from using literary material when they aren’t thoroughly familiar with its authorship and provenance and, as important, they should be doubly sure that they are using their literary allusion or metaphor in the proper context. Otherwise, they will just end up dispensing literary disinformation rather than dramatizing the story and whetting the interest of the reader.
(2) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Demeaning idiomatic expression; stereotypical writingAussies lead cleanup brigade in Tondo
While foreigners may be a dime a dozen in malls and beaches in the Philippines, you don’t really expect to see them doing manual labor in the middle of the working-class district of Tondo in Manila.
And yet, that was where no less than Ambassador Rod Smith, and a handful of his fellow Australians, were last Wednesday: Painting classrooms in one of the most notorious tough as nail neighborhoods in the National Capital Region.
The Australian Embassy-initiated activity at Tondo High School was part of the Department of Education’s annual Brigada Eskwela program, which taps the local community, school staff, volunteers and partner organizations to conduct a weeklong sprucing-up of dilapidated schools before classes start in June.
The idiom “dime a dozen” is a rude, insulting, and derogatory expression that means “regular, boring, common, worthless,” so I really wonder what the reporter had in mind when he described foreigners in Philippine malls and beaches as such. And he must think so lowly of foreigners that he would even put in the same “dime a dozen” category the civic-minded Australians who participated in the Australian Embassy’s classroom-painting project in Tondo, Manila. So, with his not-so-well-thought-out English, the reporter had maligned the Australians instead of praising them for doing the Filipinos a good turn!
The strong bias of the reporter is also obvious in the feature story’s description of Tondo as “one of the most notorious tough as nail neighborhoods in the National Capital Region.” It’s bad enough to label present-day Tondo as “a notorious neighborhood,” but “tough as nail”? This idiom means, at best, “strong or difficult and rugged,” and, at worst, “not feeling or showing any sympathy, fear or worry.” This is a very serious case of stereotypical writing—writing that creates a standardized mental picture that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment. Reporters and editors are well-advised to be always on guard against this kind of writing.
Had the reporter and the desk editor been more objective and level-headed in their English, the first two paragraphs of that lead passage might have read more pleasantly as follows:
“
While foreigners may be a common sight in malls and beaches in the Philippines, you don’t really expect to see them doing manual labor in the middle of the working-class district of Tondo in Manila.
“And yet, that was where no less than Ambassador Rod Smith, and a handful of his fellow Australians, were last Wednesday:
painting classrooms at Tondo High School in an activity initiated by the Australian Embassy under the Department of Education’s annual Brigada Eskwela program.”
SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:(1) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Unparallel and illogical sentence construction‘Chedeng’ is gone; so is summer
Summer is gone, the wet season is here, and brace yourselves for powerful typhoons—maybe about a dozen more—in the next four months.
Weather forecasters sounded the warning yesterday as Typhoon “Chedeng” headed out of the country, leaving in its wake a stronger southwest monsoon and signaling the end of summer
.
For using the wrong conjunction, the lead sentence of the news story above reads very badly and illogically, its semantics ruined by unparallel construction. The sentence is unparallel because the active-voice third clause, “brace yourselves for powerful typhoons,” isn’t coequal and similar in form to the first two passive-voice clauses, “summer is gone” and “the wet season is here.”
That sentence would have worked perfectly had the third clause used the subordinating conjunction “so” instead of the coordinating conjunction “and.” Using “so” would have made that third clause a subordinate or dependent clause, which is what it should logically be in that sentence. Look:
“Summer is gone, the wet season is here,
so brace yourselves for powerful typhoons—maybe about a dozen more—in the next four months.”
(2) GMA News: Misuse of “despite”Annyeong Korea: Seoul delights a Hallyu-wave fan
Going to Korea was a dream-come-true for a Hallyu-wave fan like me. Last February, I went to South Korea for a vacation with friends. Despite the freezing cold, we were warmed by the hospitality of Koreans.
Even if most Koreans struggle with English, the language barrier never stopped us from gaining new Korean friends and discovering their culture. Everywhere you go, you'll hear them greeting one another with “Annyeong” for ‘hello’ or when parting, it can also mean ‘goodbye.’
It looks like the writer herself is struggling with English like the Koreans she describes in the story. This is because in the lead paragraph above, the use of the preposition “despite” in the second sentence makes the statement illogical and nonsensical. “Despite” means “in defiance of” or “without being prevented by,” so to use it in that sentence yields this wrong sense, “In defiance of the freezing cold, we were warmed by the hospitality of the Koreans,” or, stated more simply, “Even if it was freezing cold, we were warmed by the hospitality of the Koreans.” Both versions are semantically flawed because they contravene the intended sense.
Here’s a rewrite of that first paragraph, this time simply using the expletive “it,” that yields the correct sense:
“Going to Korea was a dream-come-true for a Hallyu-wave fan like me. Last February, I went to South Korea for a vacation with friends.
It was freezing cold, but we were warmed by the hospitality of the Koreans.”
(3) The Philippine Star: Inconsistent use of “between” and “among”Germany pushes negotiated settlement of NAIA-3 dispute
Manila, Philippines—Germany maintained yesterday that a “negotiated settlement” among all parties involved is the best way to resolve the legal dispute over the expropriated Terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).
“We... reiterate that a negotiated settlement between all parties involved would be the best way out of the present impasse,” the German embassy said in a statement.
The news story above has vacillated in its use of “among” and “between”—using the phrase “negotiated settlement
among all parties involved” in the first paragraph and “negotiated settlement
between all parties involved” in the second. At the very least, a newspaper should be consistent in its choice between these two prepositions.
The recommended usage is “between.” It’s prescribed by the
Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary and
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, both of which note that contrary to the popular notion that “between” can be used only for two entities, it can actually be used for as many entities as desired if the relationship is one-to-one. Indeed, “between” can be used when the number is unspecified (“economic cooperation
between nations”), when more than two are enumerated (“
between you and me and the lamppost,” “partitioned
between Austria, Prussia, and Russia”), and even when only one item is mentioned but repetition is implied (“pausing
between every sentence to rap the floor”).
Note that in the news story above, the German embassy’s statement correctly used “between.” Unless the newspaper’s stylebook prescribes otherwise, the least the reporter could have done was to follow this choice of “between” and not to contravene it with “among” in her paraphrase of that very statement.
(4) The Manila Times: Use of wrong subordinating conjunctionLa Niña triggers onset of wet, rainy season
THE rainy season began this week as the country went through the shortest dry season this year because of the La Nina phenomenon.
Rene Paciente, senior weather specialist of the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa), on Friday said that the country had almost a month of the dry season this year compared to the past years.
[UNQUOTE]
The lead sentence above misuses the subordinating conjunction “as” to link the dependent clause to the main clause, making the timeline of the events described by them chronologically flawed. This problem, very common in newspaper reporting that uses sentences consisting of two clauses, can be easily fixed by replacing “as” with “after”:
“The rainy season began this week
after the country went through the shortest dry season this year because of the La Niña phenomenon."
(5) The Manila Bulletin: Wrong word choicesMMDA adapts Korean transport system
MANILA, Philippines — The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) announced Friday the adaptation of Smartcard system, one of the best practices in parts of Korea, in the integrated bus terminals that would be put up [in] the outskirts of the bustling metropolis.
MMDA Chairman Francis Tolentino made the declaration during the official visit of Governor Kim Moon-Soo, and [a] 27-man delegation from the metropolitan government of Gyeong-Gi in South Korea, to the agency office. The initiative is line with the agency’s signed sisterhood agreement with Gyenonggi province, South Korea.
The headline of the story above uses “adapts” and the lead sentence misuses the word “adaptation,” both wrong word choices. This is because “adaptation” means “adjustment to environmental conditions.” The intended sense, however, is “to accept formally and put into effect.” The correct words for that sense are, of course, “adopt” and “adoption.”
That sentence should therefore be corrected as follows:
“MMDA adopts Korean transport system“The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) announced Friday
the adoption of the Smartcard system, one of the best practices in parts of Korea, in the integrated bus terminals that would be put up [in] the outskirts of the bustling metropolis.”
(I must also add that I’m still mystified by the qualifiying phrase “one of the best practices in parts of Korea” in that lead sentence. If the Smartcard system is “one of the best practices” only in some parts of Korea, why is it not also regarded as “one of the best practices” in other parts of Korea? Something seems amiss in the semantics here. What’s the catch?)
(6) The Philippine Star: Wrong use of a noun’s plural formHundreds of Internet cafes in Iloilo closed
ILOILO CITY, Philippines – Almost all internet cafes here closed shops, albeit temporarily, recently.
The reason? They want to hide from the prying eyes of the members of the Optical Media Board (OMB) who were in Iloilo City to launch an operation against computers shops and other establishments using unlicensed operating systems (OS).
In the lead sentence above, “closed shops” is grammatically wrong with “shops” in the plural form. As part of the phrasal verb “close shop,” the word “shop” functions as an adjective complement and therefore can’t take the plural form “shops” when the subject is a plural noun; only the verb “close” in that phrasal verb can inflect or change depending on the tense and the number of the subject. Also, I find “albeit” too legalistic a word for the context of that sentence; “even if only” would be more appropriate.
That sentence should therefore be corrected as follows:
“Almost all Internet cafes here
closed shop recently,
even if only temporarily.”
(
7) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Trivial statementArt and design come together for Unicef auction
MANILA, Philippines—Real-life stories of maternal deaths happen in the Philippines. Whether the cause may be due to lack of skilled midwives in rural areas or inaccessibility to hospitals, death during childbirth is a main concern for the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) Philippines.
Through the initiative of Daphne Oseña-Paez, Unicef special advocate for children, artists and designers have put their resources together in the hope of raising money that would benefit programs on maternal health and education in the Philippines’ poorer areas.
In the lead paragraph above, the sentence “Real-life stories of maternal deaths happen in the Philippines” is a trivial statement not worth reporting at all. This is because the statement is too general; it can apply to every other country in the world. Only when that statement is qualified or modified to cite particulars will it be of any use in that news story, as in the following construction:
“There’s a high incidence of maternal deaths during childbirth in the Philippines.”
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