Good grammar is the handmaiden of semantics, or meaning in language, but it doesn’t automatically guarantee the correct denotation, connotation, or nuance of what’s desired to be said. Writers and editors therefore need to be sensitive to the mutability of language. Indeed, if they aren’t careful or vigilant enough, what looks like perfectly grammatical sentences to them could yield meanings far from—or even the exact opposite of—what they intended.
Let’s closely examine three cases of semantically flawed statements that I came across in two of the major Metro Manila broadsheets last November 12:
(1) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Misleading reporting due to faulty semanticsPH working on nurses’ entry to Japan easier
YOKOHAMA, Japan—Soon, Filipinos planning to work here as nurses and caregivers might just find entering this country a walk in the park.
Philippine Charge d’Affaires Belen Anota Thursday said efforts were on-going between the Philippines and Japan to ensure that Filipino nurses and caregivers would be able to hurdle tough entry exams.
I find both the headline and lead sentence of this news story semantically faulty and seriously misleading.
To begin with, the headline “PH working on nurses’ entry to Japan easier” fails the basic test of coherence—even if newspapers, invoking space and word-count constraints, often apply the coherence test very loosely when composing headlines for their news and feature stories. Indeed, no matter how we look at it, that particular headline is garbled; only a judicious rewrite could put grammatical and semantic sense to it.
Here are my two suggested reconstructions of that headline:
PH working for easier nurses’ entry to Japan or:
PH working to ease up nurses’ entry to Japan (The character count for each of the two reconstructions is almost equal to that of the original semantically flawed headline, so those reconstructions aren’t really far-fetched. They could have been easily arrived at if the headline writer and editor had been more semantically sensitive and had tried just a little harder.)
But this faulty headline, bad enough as it is, actually pales in comparison to the much more serious semantic transgression of that news story’s lead sentence. Let’s take a closer look at that sentence:
“YOKOHAMA, Japan—Soon, Filipinos planning to work here as nurses and caregivers might just find entering this country
a walk in the park.”
I submit that because of its reckless use of the idiom “a walk in the park,” this sentence grossly overstates the possible ease by which Filipino nurses and caregivers could enter and work in Japan as a result of its on-going negotiations with the Philippines. The idiom “a walk in the park” means an undertaking that’s extremely easy, one that’s practically synonymous to the idiom “just like breezing through.” As I will explain in a moment, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Muddling the situation further is the fact that this false expectation of ease of entry to Japan is supported by story’s next statement, which is also semantically and factually flawed like the first:
“Philippine Charge d’Affaires Belen Anota Thursday said efforts were on-going between the Philippines and Japan
to ensure that Filipino nurses and caregivers would be able to hurdle tough entry exams.”
We can be sure that that the phrase “to ensure that Filipino nurses and caregivers would be able to hurdle tough entry exams” isn’t an accurate paraphrase of what Ms. Anota might have said or had intended to say. To the best of my knowledge, the on-going efforts between the Philippines and Japan are not meant to make the tough professional nursing examinations in Japan any easier from an exam content standpoint but only to remove a language hurdle for foreign applicants by providing English translations for the exam questions. (
Click this link to “Japan removes language barrier in nursing exams” in the August 26, 2010 issue of The Manila Times.) and, for a deep background, also this link to
“The Skills and Education Needs and the Struggles of Filipino Workers in Japan” as posted in the Forum on September 4, 2009.
So then, Filipino nurses and caregivers shouldn’t expect Japan to make its professional nursing and caregiver examinations much easier to a point of just being “a walk in the park” for the test-takers. Japan won’t simplify the exam questions and lower its professional standards for nurses and caregivers just to accommodate Filipinos; instead, it’s only expected to provide English translations for the exam questions in the spirit of amity between the two countries. This is the crucial fact that was lost in that semantically flawed reporting.
I then would venture to say that a factually accurate and semantically correct rendition of that questionable passage would be as follows:
PH working to ease up nurses’ entry to Japan YOKOHAMA, Japan—Soon, Filipinos planning to work here as nurses and caregivers
would find it easier to do so.
Philippine Charge d’Affaires Belen Anota Thursday said efforts were on-going between the Philippines and Japan
to remove a language hurdle for Filipino nurses and caregivers by providing English translations for the test questions in Japan’s tough professional nursing examinations.
(2) Philippine Daily Inquirer: A case of amphiboly and false cause-and-effectAccenture announces 3 new sites in Taguig, QC, Cebu
MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines continues to appeal to IT and business process outsourcing companies as Accenture on Thursday unveiled plans to set up three additional sites in the country during rites marking its 25th anniversary at McKinley Hill in Taguig City.
The company local operations continue to flourish and ride “on a momentum of growth,” said Accenture Philippines country managing director Manolito Tayag, who presented the company’s expansion of operation to the media. The briefing was attended by Vice President Jejomar Binay and company officials.
The lead sentence of the news story above suffers from what is known in rhetoric as
amphiboly, or a statement whose meaning can be interpreted in more than way. Take a close look at its main clause, “the Philippines continues to appeal to IT and business process outsourcing companies.” As a stand-alone clause, it can be taken to mean in two ways: first, that the Philippines has not stopped pleading or making entreaties to IT and business process outsourcing companies, and second, that it has retained its attraction or allure to those companies as a location for their operations. Which meaning or interpretation of that ambiguous statement is correct? We really can’t be sure until we have read into the story further.
If we take the first meaning as the correct one, then the whole statement becomes illogical. It would appear that even as Accenture has already unveiled plans to set up three more sites in the country, the Philippine government isn’t at all satisfied with that development but, like a capricious child, wants even more such sites to be put up by other BPO companies.
If, on the other hand, we take the second meaning of the first clause as the correct one, then the whole statement collapses into a
non sequitur, or an inference that doesn’t follow from the premises; in other words, it is an illogical statement. This is because the use of the coordinating conjunction “as” between the main clause and the second clause would make the sentence a nonsensical cause-and-effect statement, when, in fact, the main clause is an separate, independent action that has nothing to do with the action in the second clause. That nonsensical statement would be something like, “The Philippines has retained its appeal to IT and business process outsourcing companies as Accenture on Thursday unveiled plans to set up three additional sites in the country during rites marking its 25th anniversary at McKinley Hill in Taguig City.” See the fallacy in that statement?
By now it should be obvious that the problem with that first sentence isn’t only semantic but also grammatical and structural—one resulting from a wrong choice of the pivotal verb (“continues to appeal”) in the main clause and the use of the wrong conjunction (“as”) to link that main clause with the other clause. In fact, nothing less than a total rewrite of that sentence would put its sense and logic in the proper order.
Here’s my attempt to make that sentence yield its intended meaning:
“Proof that the Philippines has retained its appeal as a haven for IT and business process outsourcing companies, Accenture on Thursday unveiled plans to set up three additional sites in the country during rites marking its 25th anniversary at McKinley Hill in Taguig City.”
(3) Philippine Star: A semantically questionable run-on sentence ‘Visit by Chiz, Kris may hasten raped nurse’s recovery’
COTABATO CITY, Philippines – For relatives of the 22-year-old volunteer nurse who was gang-raped in South Upi, Maguindanao last Sept. 25, a visit by Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero and actress Kris Aquino is surely welcome to speed up her recovery.
“She’s so fascinated with Sen. Escudero and Kris Aquino. She’s a big fan of these two well-known personalities,” an aunt told reporters here yesterday.
Officials of the Maguindanao Integrated Provincial Health Office said the victim has indeed been wishing to personally see Escudero and Aquino when she recuperates from head injuries that left half of her body paralyzed.
Frankly, I find news stories like this so iffy and far-out. Although I’ve heard so many wondrous tales of seriously ailing patients totally cured by self-professed faith healers, I’m incredulous that a youthful senator and an immensely popular TV talk-show host are now being bruited about to have healing powers themselves, capable of making a battered rape victim recover from “head injuries that left half of her body paralyzed.” I would have thought that this was stuff that would find itself only in the pages of the
National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids that dish out otherworldly news.
Mind you, though, I’m making a critique of this story here not so much for the audacity of its claim but for its use of a breathtaking run-on sentence for its lead statement, “For relatives of the 22-year-old volunteer nurse who was gang-raped in South Upi, Maguindanao last Sept. 25, a visit by Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero and actress Kris Aquino
is surely welcome to speed up her recovery.” The phrase “is surely welcome to speed up her recovery” is obviously an unwelcome, ill-advised, and awkward fusion of the phrases “is a welcome development” and “will surely speed up her recovery.” In the excitement of the reporter to deliver the news, he garbled the two phrases into the run-on “is surely welcome to speed up her recovery.”
So, the logic and credibility of its claim aside, that lead statement should be grammatically and structurally set aright as follows:
“For relatives of the 22-year-old volunteer nurse who was gang-raped in South Upi, Maguindanao last Sept. 25, a visit by Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero and actress Kris Aquino
is a welcome development that will surely speed up her recovery.”
SHORT TAKE IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:If you thought that only the Philippine print media is capable of flagrant errors in English usage, here’s a foreign wire-service news summary that went into my Yahoo.com mailbox a few hours ago:
Associated Press: Misplaced modifying phraseDNA test casts doubt on executed Texas man’s guilt
AP - A DNA test on a strand of hair has cast doubt on the guilt of a Texas man who was executed 10 years ago during George W. Bush’s final months as governor for a liquor-store robbery and murder.
In that sentence, because of the bad positioning of the modifying phrase “for a liquor-store robbery and murder,” it absurdly modifies the phrase “during George W. Bush’s final months as governor” instead of the relative clause “who was executed 10 years ago.” Imagine GWB as governor for a liquor-store robbery and murder during his final months in office! What will they not re-imagine next?
Here’s a rewrite of that sentence that puts everything in its proper place:
“A DNA test on a strand of hair has cast doubt on the guilt of a Texas man who, 10 years ago, was executed for a liquor-store robbery and murder during George W. Bush’s final months as governor.”
