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When I compare the writing in my European history textbook of 1946, the year Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" came out, with the writing in a current European history textbook I think we have listened well.
Ferdinand Schevill (A History of Europe, first edition, 1925) wrote, in a marginal
gloss, "The reign of Alfonso XIII opens (1902) not inauspiciously."
Orwell hated the "not un-" construction, so common in professors'
writing. When Professor Harold Laski wrote the following sentence he climbed
all over it:
I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say
that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had
not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien.
Five
negatives in 53 words. Orwell counts them for you. In the sections on Spain in
Palmer, Colton, and Kramer (The Making of
the Modern World, 10th edition, 2007) I count not a single "not
un-" construction.
The negative-to-word ratio is now way down in all
scholars' writing. In everybody's writing. The classic "not unlike"
double negative, the star of Professor Laski's sentence, was used in the New
York Times 621 times in the decade before "Politics and the English
Language" appeared. In the next decade it was down to 563 and the ratio
has been falling ever since. We're all scared to death of George Orwell.
Orwell saw how scared scholars were of each other. You think they weren't scared? Listen to Schevill, on one page: "Our
judgment can hardly be other than..." "It cannot be maintained,
however, that..." "No one familiar with...will fail to give weight to
" "The reflection will not be denied that..." "We are
driven to fall back on..." "A satisfactory analysis would have to
take account of..." "Nor should...be overlooked." That's scared.
Academic scared. Hedge, hedge, hedge.
"Ah, but Schevill had a lot to be afraid of on
that page. He was writing about Spain in the twentieth century. His specialties
were Italy in the Renaissance, and the Balkans. He's flying over territory
where he could get shot down any minute. Remember, in 1946 he's still writing
to a lot of people trained, as he was (Freiburg, 1892), in the German
tradition. Mortal Teutonic combat."
How I know it. Any Ph. D. student who faced a
committee in those days knows it. Prussian accents. You're a wuss among he-men.
"Don't hit me, don't hit me." Write articles or books after that and
you're damn well going to hedge. You never get over that fright.
"Of course not. It goes with the territory.
What business are we all in? The search for truth. Truth is by trial. The
tougher the adversaries the better the trial and the closer you get. The aim of
universities is to bring tough adversaries together. You don't expect newcomers
to walk onto their court without fear do you? No, they're going to be scared,
and that's a good thing. It will make them more careful. Care, which shows
itself in cautious language, is what the enterprise is all about."
Then Laski's language just showed great care? I
shouldn't gag?
"You can gag, but only because he's carrying a
good thing too far. His 'not un-' construction comes under an ancient and
honorable category of understatement called 'litotes.' It's characteristically
used to keep from going overboard, either in praise or in blame. 'He is not
unintelligent.' 'He is not overly bright.' If you think you're going to be too
harsh, too judgmental, too bald, too impressionable, or not sly enough, if you
need a few mannerisms of care to hide your essential lack of it, you go
litotic. Go too far and you go wuss."
As Laski did.
"And wouldn't you add Schevill? Isn't he a
wuss?"
I wouldn't say so without noticing where he wound
up. He ended that section calling Spain "a backward country." That's
pretty direct, and it took some guts, even in his time — when you could still
call an age "dark." And I, an undergraduate, knew what he was driving
at, because I wrote in the margin opposite his description of Spain's
leadership, "Mañana types." Lazy. How did Schevill build me up to
that? In what looks to me like a wussy way: "As nothing was done [to
utilize Spain's resources] we are driven to fall back on the ancient charge of
a certain sloth in the national character." He doesn't want to call
anybody lazy, or backward, he doesn't want to say they lived in
darkness, he's a good, liberal, non-judgmental historian, but sometimes by God
logic just forces you, drives you, however desperate you are to find an excuse
for your fellow human beings, to make a judgment on them — one that, alas,
coincides with established stereotypes. Now tell me: Isn't "wussy" is
the right word for that?
"I don't think so, but I don't think 'gutty' is
right either. There's too much guts for 'wussy' and not enough for
'gutty.'"
Which side does it lean toward?
"Wussy."
But you can't say it. You're perfectly set up to be
clobbered by Orwell. In a minute you're going to say it's "not unwussy."
Have you been listening?
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