Author Topic: Of grand weddings and serious lapses in the journalistic craft  (Read 5391 times)

Joe Carillo

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Of grand weddings and serious lapses in the journalistic craft
« on: October 30, 2009, 09:35:51 PM »
The wedding of Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II and TV broadcast journalist Korina Sanchez last October 27 was doubtless one of the most fabulous the country has seen in years—fabulous not in a fairy-tale sort of way but in its calculated efforts to be really different and in its unavoidable—and pardonable—tinges of political color. After all, the groom is gunning for the second highest post in the gift of the land, and the bride is one of the most accomplished and most popular personalities in the Philippine broadcast industry. It can thus be said that apart from being the product of love, their formal marital union also was that rarest of chemistry between politics and media.

But I really don’t wish to dwell on anything that might annoy the bride or mar the connubial bliss of the newlyweds; like most everybody else, I wish both of them all the best ever after. What I’ll be doing here, in fact, is simply to critique the English used by the four major Metro Manila broadsheets in their reportage of the wedding—that’s all.

On the whole, I think all four of the majors acquitted themselves well in their coverage of the wedding’s nitty-gritty. For such long and gushingly detailed accounts of the event, their English grammar and usage remained for the most part admirably aboveboard and tasteful.

But it was disappointing that after its saturation wedding coverage that involved no less than six reporters, one of the major broadsheets took a serious grammatical tumble right in the second sentence of the lead paragraph of its front-page headline story. Take a look:

(1) Grammatical and semantic fumble up front:

“MANILA, Philippines—The rites began an hour and a half behind the printed schedule. There was no empty space at the cavernous Santo Domingo Church that could seat as many as 5,000.”

Have you found the grammatical and semantic problem?

Just two paragraphs later in the same banner story, this came up:

(2) An odd addition to the English wedding vocabulary:

“Now that was the shot—not only for the sardined crowd in the church, but more so, for the possibly millions of viewers watching the live wedding on television.”

The “sardined” crowd? Mmmm…

Then, in a sidebar, that same broadsheet quoted a member of the Philippine Congress misquoting William Shakespeare:

(3) A quote of a misquote of Shakespeare:

“Bayan Muna party list Representative Satur Ocampo said, ‘I wish Mar and Korina a wedding to remember as they begin their lives together as husband as wife. May their love for each other prove as strong as their declared commitment to serve the public through their respective fields, and will go stronger as time goes by.’

‘As William Shakespeare wrote: “Let the meeting of true minds admit no impediments.” Let Mar and Korina have their happily-ever-after story. I wish Mr. and Mrs. Mar Roxas all the best,’ Ocampo said.”

And from another broadsheet reporting on the wedding, this other curious word choice:

(4) Another odd addition to the English wedding vocabulary:

“The main wedding homilist, the Jesuit Fr. Tito Caluag described it as ‘the most anticipated wedding.’”

Wedding “homilist”? Hmmm…

MY CRITIQUE AND SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS:
    
Let’s now analyze each of the four problematic passages above and see how they can be improved or rectified.

(1) Grammatical and semantic fumble up front:

“MANILA, Philippines—The rites began an hour and a half behind the printed schedule. There was no empty space at the cavernous Santo Domingo Church that could seat as many as 5,000.”

This second sentence is a classic case of misuse of a restrictive relative clause. The way it’s constructed, it gives the absurd idea that there was no empty part of the Santo Domingo Church that could seat as many as 5,000 more; it implies that all of the available space had already been taken by a crowd much bigger than that number, so the 5,000 who couldn’t fit in had to stay outside the church.

In truth, however, the Santo Domingo Church has a maximum seating capacity of 5,000. It was therefore the excess crowd beyond that number—not the 5,000—that couldn’t be accommodated anymore inside the church during the ceremonies.

For that sentence to yield the correct semantics, the restrictive relative clause “that could seat as many as 5,000” should be converted into a nonrestrictive clause instead, “which could seat as many as 5,000,” and a comma should be placed between that clause and the noun that it is meant to modify. That problematic sentence should then be corrected to read as follows:

“There was no empty space at the cavernous Santo Domingo Church, which could seat as many as 5,000.”

Why is this sentence construction the correct one and why is the original construction grammatically and semantically flawed? The explanation is rather long and complex, so I’ll defer it until I’m through with my critiques of the rest of the problematic items.

(2) An odd addition to the English wedding vocabulary:

“Now that was the shot—not only for the sardined crowd in the church, but more so, for the possibly millions of viewers watching the live wedding on television.”

The expression “the sardined crowd” looks like entirely new English coinage to me, and I’m not sure if it’s acceptable English usage or legitimate journalistic usage at all. If anything, it looks like lazily, crassly anglicized Tagalog to me—you know, “parang sardinas sa dami ng tao” (people packed like sardines), an expression more fitting for a tabloid rather than for a leading broadsheet, or perhaps for wet-market talk rather than for reportage of a classy, glitzy wedding.

According to my Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, sardines are “any of several small or immature fishes of the herring family; especially the European pilchard (Sardina pilchardus) especially when young and of a size suitable for preserving for food.” And all the while that paper was saying that the church was filled with big fish! That’s a big language and social faux pas if ever there was one!

One more thing: The phrase “watching the live wedding on television” is awkwardly worded. It wasn’t the wedding that was “live” but the “watching” of it, so the correct phrasing should be “watching the wedding live on television.”

I therefore propose this more level-headed, grammatically perfect reconstruction of that semantically questionable sentence:

“Now that was the shot—not only for the tightly packed crowd in the church, but more so, for the possibly millions of viewers watching the wedding live on television.”

(3) A quote of a misquote of Shakespeare:

“Bayan Muna party list Representative Satur Ocampo said, ‘I wish Mar and Korina a wedding to remember as they begin their lives together as husband as wife. May their love for each other prove as strong as their declared commitment to serve the public through their respective fields, and will go stronger as time goes by.’

‘As William Shakespeare wrote: “Let the meeting of true minds admit no impediments.” Let Mar and Korina have their happily-ever-after story. I wish Mr. and Mrs. Mar Roxas all the best,’ Ocampo said.”  

I really hate to be a spoilsport, and I really don’t mind if politicians become overly effusive and verbose during weddings of this political magnitude. When it comes to Shakespeare and other great writers of whatever language, however, I think people ought to be more precise when quoting them, and newspaper reporters and editors ought to verify such quotes so as not to perpetuate misquotes in print.

Like the congressman, I happen to have memorized that line from Shakespeare in my youth and I know that its actual wording is this:

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.”

While seemingly synonymous, there’s a whole world of difference between “the marriage of true minds” and “the meeting of true minds.” In a marriage of true minds, we can presume that the bond is much more lasting, even forever; in a meeting of true minds, there’s only an encounter between them and the bond might just be a fleeting one or—in the language of matrimony—easily torn asunder. So although the congressman’s quote is well-intentioned, the semantics isn’t exactly the one that the Bard of Avon intended.

For the benefit of those of who seriously care for poetry, the full poem of Shakespeare with the line in question runs as follows:

Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

As we can see, Shakespeare’s lines are really about true love as a marriage rather than just a meeting of the minds.

(4) Another odd addition to the English wedding vocabulary:

“The main wedding homilist, the Jesuit Fr. Tito Caluag described it as ‘the most anticipated wedding.’”

What was the reporter or desk editor of that paper thinking? There’s no such word as “homilist” in English at all! There’s only one entry in my Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate for “homily,” and it’s for the word as a noun that means “a usually short sermon,” “a lecture or discourse on or of a moral theme,” or “an inspirational catchphrase;  also: PLATITUDE.” But “homilist”?

With this misguided penchant for coining English words, I suppose they would call a priest giving a sermon a “sermonist,” won’t they?

Here’s a better construction of that problematic sentence:

“Jesuit Fr. Tito Caluag, who gave the main homily, described it as ‘the most anticipated wedding.’”

***
A mini-lesson in relative pronoun usage:

Now let me explain in detail why the following sentence in that broadsheet’s front-page story is grammatically and semantically flawed:

“There was no empty space at the cavernous Santo Domingo Church that could seat as many as 5,000.”

and why this reconstruction is the grammatically and semantically correct way:

“There was no empty space at the cavernous Santo Domingo Church, which could seat as many as 5,000.”

First, we need to clearly understand what relative clauses are and how they work in sentences.

As we know, the relative clauses are formed when we use the relative pronouns “who,” “which,” “that,” “whom,” “whoever,” “whomever,” “whatever,” and “whichever” to introduce a modifying clause. These relative pronouns serve to relate such clauses to an antecedent noun in a sentence; that antecedent noun can either be the subject or object of that dependent clause. And taken together, the relative pronoun and the dependent clause it introduces constitute what is called a relative clause.

Now, in English, the choice of relative pronoun depends on two things: (1) whether the additional information being given is essential or not essential to the understanding of the idea or context of the main clause; and (2) whether the antecedent noun is a person or an animal or inanimate object.

Now, a relative clause that provides essential information to the main clause is what is known as a defining or restrictive relative clause, as in this example: “People who complain loudest about a problem often don’t do anything to solve it.” Here, the relative clause “who complain loudest about a problem” can’t be taken out from the sentence, for to do so will seriously change the meaning of what’s being said. Indeed, if we drop that relative clause, we would end up with “People often don’t do anything to solve [a problem]”—a sentence that unreasonably and illogically generalizes on human behavior.

On the other hand, when the information in the relative clause is not essential to the idea or context of the main clause, we have what is called a nondefining or nonrestrictive relative clause. In such cases, a comma is normally needed to separate the relative clause from the main clause, as in this sentence: “The company decided to fire its legal counsel, who bungled the court filings in a crucial corporate dispute.” Here, the main clause can stand even without the relative clause, as in this sentence: “The company decided to fire its legal counsel."

Note that the presence or absence of a comma before the relative clause in that sentence has a crucial effect on its meaning. With the comma, the implication is that the company has only one legal counsel and the he or she was the one who bungled the court filings. Without the comma, however, the implication is that the company has more than one legal counsel and that one of them bungled the court filings.  

So far, though, we have only discussed the use of relative pronouns when persons are the antecedent subjects. When the subject is an animal, a place, an inanimate object, or a concept, we can no longer use the relative pronoun “who” to link the relative clause to its antecedent subject. Instead, we use either the relative pronouns “that” or “which” depending on the kind of relative clause we are using in the sentence.

In American English specifically, we use “that” to link a defining or restrictive clause to a nonhuman antecedent subject, as in the following examples: “The Siamese cat that our father found on a street gutter a year ago became the family’s favorite pet.” “The tree house that the Sanchez brothers built during their teens was gone.” “The great idea that was propounded by the neophyte legislator got mangled due to too much politicking.” In these sentences, the relative clause is crucial to understanding the idea or context of the main clause; dropping the relative clause can seriously alter the import or significantly detract from the intended meaning: “The Siamese cat became the family’s favorite pet.” “The tree house was gone.” “The great idea got mangled due to too much politicking.”

On the other hand, we use the relative pronoun “which” to link a nondefining or nonrestrictive clause to a nonhuman antecedent subject, as in the following examples: “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was written by the British historian Edward Gibbon in the 18th century, has been hailed as one the greatest historical works produced by Western man.” “A subspecies of the chevrotain, which is also known as the mouse deer, is indigenous to Palawan and nearby islands.” The pair of enclosing commas is mandatory in such constructions; it sets the relative clause apart from the main clause and indicates that the relative clause is not essential to the idea of the main clause.

More on this subject in “Learning to use the relative pronouns confidently”
***

I don’t think it’s right to use a tough English lesson to end a language critique of the media coverage of a grand, happily-ever-after wedding. To make the grammar medicine go down easier on the throat of those who need it, let me now quote another poem as a coda to this critique. It’s by Dylan Thomas, and I will take this opportunity to say without blushing that in my book, it’s one of the most beautiful English poems I have ever read:

In My Craft Or Sullen Art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2016, 06:47:02 PM by Joe Carillo »

maxsims

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Re: Of grand weddings and serious lapses in the journalistic craft
« Reply #1 on: October 31, 2009, 07:38:24 AM »
“There was no empty space at the cavernous Santo Domingo Church, which could seat as many as 5,000.”

"..can seat as many...?

Joe Carillo

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"Could" or "can" for nonvariable seating capacity?
« Reply #2 on: November 01, 2009, 04:49:55 PM »
Yes, “can” is formally a more appropriate modal than “could” for permanent or nonvariable seating capacity, as in the case of the Santo Domingo Church, so that sentence should read as follows, strictly speaking: “There was no empty space at the cavernous Santo Domingo Church, which can seat as many as 5,000.” In newspaper journalism, however, there is this convention that when the operative verb of a sentence is in the past tense, all verbs that fall under its ambit or sphere should take one tense backwards. Since the past tense of “can” is “could,” many reporters therefore routinely use “could” in such sentence constructions, as in this particular case.

From what I know, however, that grammar convention should only apply to attributive verbs in the past tense like “said,” “stated,” and “declared,” as in the following sentence, “The parish priest said the Santo Domingo Church could seat as many as 5,000” (using the past tense modal “could”) instead of “The parish priest said the Santo Domingo Church can seat as many as 5,000” (using the present tense modal “can”). Of course, if the attributive verb is in the present tense, the modal “can” is the only choice: “The parish priest says the Santo Domingo Church can seat as many as 5,000.”

I really don’t know why most news services and media outlets have come to apply that convention even to sentences using non-attributive verbs, but that’s the prevailing practice as far as I know.

madgirl09

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Re: Of grand weddings and serious lapses in the journalistic craft
« Reply #3 on: November 01, 2009, 08:39:50 PM »
IMHO....The use of "could" suggests "possibility" in this passage, so, if the church "could seat 5,000", it means, it normally allows just 4,800 (more or less) for its normal seating capacity. Just like what we do at LRT where the benches (say, 10 seating capacity) could have as many as 12 accommodated at special crowded times. Traffic laws in Japan, for example, do not allow five-seat cars load six or seven passengers, but children could be counted as "half passengers".  ::) Hmmn. What other uses of could can we illustrate here? :-\

Joe Carillo

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Re: Of grand weddings and serious lapses in the journalistic craft
« Reply #4 on: November 02, 2009, 07:51:37 AM »
I think you’re right, madgirl09. The definitions of “could” provided by my digital Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary seem to suggest that the choice between “can” and “could” really depends on the intention of the writer or speaker, which oftentimes—as in the case of the sentence of the broadsheet in question here—isn’t known or declared at all.

Take a look at the dictionary definitions of “could”:

Main Entry: could
Function: verbal auxiliary, past of CAN
Etymology: Middle English couthe, coude, from Old English cūthe; akin to Old High German konda could
Date: 13th century

 —  used in auxiliary function in the past  <we found we could go>, in the past conditional  <we said we would go if we could>, and as an alternative to can suggesting less force or certainty or as a polite form in the present  <if you could come we would be pleased>

Since in most cases we really couldn’t divine what’s in the mind of the writer or speaker as to the intended usage of “can” and “could,” it’s probably good policy to be flexible—even lenient—in our appreciation of the correctness or wrongness of their usage. Indeed, this is probably why journalists strongly favor “could” as an all-purpose verbal auxiliary in the past tense regardless of whether it’s meant to be in the past conditional sense or to suggest less force or certainty. It neatly eliminates the need to agonize over the choice between “can” and “could.”

maxsims

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Re: Of grand weddings and serious lapses in the journalistic craft
« Reply #5 on: November 02, 2009, 03:15:04 PM »
"...Indeed, this is probably why journalists strongly favor “could” as an all-purpose verbal auxiliary in the past tense regardless of whether it’s meant to be in the past conditional sense or to suggest less force or certainty. It neatly eliminates the need to agonize over the choice between “can” and “could...”

It also neatly eliminates the need for the lazy journalist to bone up on his tenses!    >:(

Joe Carillo

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Re: Of grand weddings and serious lapses in the journalistic craft
« Reply #6 on: November 04, 2009, 11:18:27 AM »
Spot-on, Max!

And by the way, I almost forgot to post the response below to my original posting. It came by e-mail from A.C. Alcala of the Angelo King Center for Research and Environmental Management (SUAKCREM) in Dumaguete City in the Philippines.

Here's Mr. Alcala's response to "'Sardined' isn’t a civilized word to describe big fish in a grand wedding!":
 
"I agree with your comments on the use of the word sardine. Sardines are small fish even at their maturity stage. They play an important role  in the productivity of oceans because they harvest the plankton (which includes the primary producers), converting them to flesh available for the next trophic levels ending with humans. They should not be insulted!"