Language is as language does

Language has become our chief means of communication with one another and even with ourselves. That makes it important that language be precise and unambiguous. Yet even quite correct use of language can create misunderstandings and perpetuate mistakes, quite unintentionally; some that matter more and some that matter less.

I was reminded recently of one of my favorite quotes from George Bernard Shaw, that England and America are divided by a common language. Wanting to check that citation, I found that some such insight has been recognized by — or attributed to — quite a lot of other people as well, over the course of many years [1].

That phenomenon, worthwhile insights about human nature or human behavior being traceable very far back, was first revealed to me by Isaac Newton's modest response to praise: “If I have seen further than others, it is only because I stood on the shoulders of giants”. That insight can be a traced back more than a thousand years, it turns out, and has been credited to many people during that time [2].

When a given word means different things in different places, embarrassment or worse can result. Growing up in Australia, when I needed to change something I had penciled in, I asked for “a rubber” to do the erasing. My similarly educated sister was quite unprepared, and considerably embarrassed, when she found that in England, “rubbers” stands for condoms.

Some of my current reading has brought me to realize how dangerous is one of the most frequently used words in the English language: “THE”.

“The word ‘the’ is one of the most common words in English. It is our only definite article. Nouns in English are preceded by the definite article when the speaker believes that the listener already knows what he is referring to” [3].

Exactly. One presumes that the word following the definite article refers to a quite specific thing whose nature is well known to everyone. But I have been reading a history of the Bible [4] and have thereby realized that up to now I had accepted, unconsciously and without ever thinking about it, that the very commonly used phrase, “the Bible”, refers to a real specific thing, namely, an authoritative, authentic, universally agreed to piece of religious writing. Now I see that my presumption was entirely misleading; and on a matter that is of no little social importance.

There are innumerable different Bibles, even when the espousing religion also gives the misleading appearance of being a single definite thing, say, “Christianity” — of which there are also innumerable different versions, though that too is not commonly pointed out in public discourse. Some Bibles have some chapters that others do not. Many differences in wording are of substantive importance. Old Testament and New Testament are wildly and radically different, even if versions happen to be bound in the same “Bible”. Those quite many people who speak of believing in the truth of “every word in the Bible” may certainly not be lying, yet they are misleading themselves if not others.

The difference between lying and misleading is another aspect of language that deserves to be more widely understood. I found it expressed most clearly in a memoir by a mathematician [5], who pointed out that misleading is the bad thing; indeed, that it is perfectly ethical, even sometimes necessary, to tell a lie in order not to mislead, as I later illustrated in my Dean’s memoirs [6].

Unfortunately, quite deliberate misleading and mis-informing has become almost standard practice in much commercial business. Advertising is hardly at all about informing and chiefly about spinning and hyping.

Big Pharma Is an outstanding example. The possible benefits of medications and procedures are described in detail, and with very attractive models and fake stories if the advertising is on TV, but the “side” effects and risks are hidden in fine print and dismissive remarks. What lay people, potential consumers, really need to know is the ratio of possible benefits to possible risks: NNT to NNH — number of people who need to be treated for 1 of them to actually benefit, compared to number treated before 1 of them has a bad outcome from the drug [7].

The blame for this rests chiefly on the FDA (federal Food & Drug Administration) for permitting direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs [8]. Furthermore, such advertising is not monitored and regulated against even the most egregious instances of misleading advertising. For example, see all the happy-looking gay men in advertisements for the latest anti-HIV drugs; a couple of decades ago already the FDA had warned manufacturers to cease with the entirely fake, fictitious, misleading advertising of such highly toxic medications by showing athletic young men cavorting actively and happily [9]; but that warning has never been obeyed or enforced.

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[1] Quote Origin: Britain and America Are Two Nations Divided by a Common Language
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/04/03/common

[2] Robert Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript, Harcourt, 1985

[3] https://www.ef.edu/english-resources/english-grammar/definite-article

[4] John Barton, A History of the Bible: The Story of the World's Most Influential Book, Viking, 2019

[5] Paul R. Halmos, I Want to Be a Mathematician, Springer, 1985, pp. 113-14.

[6] Josef Martin (pen-name of Henry H. Bauer) To Rise above Principle: The Memoirs of an Unreconstructed Dean, University of Illinois Press, 1988; 2^nd edition with added material, Wipf & Stock, 2012; pp. 168-9

[7] “How (not) to measure the efficacy of drugs”; https://scimedskeptic.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/how-not-to-measure-the-efficacy-of-drugs

[8] USA and New Zealand are the only countries that allow this

[9] Deborah Josefson, “FDA warning to manufacturers of AIDS drugs”, British Medical Journal, 322 (2001) 1143; Western Journal of Medicine, 175(2001) 12–13