This morning, I got a link from Stan Dubinsky to an article headlined, “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” I replied:
Sure it does. And limiting our thoughts intentionally is double-plus ungood.
Which is not to say I don’t love Big Brother, in case he’s reading this. I just don’t like to see the language messed with for political purposes. (And if you doubt the power of such tinkering, see if you can have a discussion of the disappearance of the inclusive “he” with a group of mixed gender without somebody getting angry.)
Which is not to condemn the natural growth and evolution of language. But I do tend to greet new constructions with some suspicion, feeling they must prove themselves in general use before being accepted. This morning I had occasion to wonder about a certain buzz phrase, since it seemed to burst upon my consciousness with all the subtlety of the German advance in the Ardennes in December 1944.
The phrase is “walk back.” Maybe it’s old hat to you. Maybe my noticing it three times this morning was just that trick of the mind whereby the first time you become conscious of a word or phrase that’s been there all the time, you suddenly see it anywhere.
Anyway, I first noticed it this morning in this piece from CNN:
Earlier this month, Obama was accused of giving two conflicting statements regarding a planned Islamic community center and mosque several blocks from Ground Zero in New York City. His August 13 remarks seemed to lend support to the project, but he told CNN’s Ed Henry a day later that he was “not commenting and [would] not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque” near Ground Zero.
In the NBC interview, Obama denied walking back his original statement.
“I didn’t walk it back at all,” he said.
That’s twice. And my initial impression that CNN made up the phrase is set back (walked back) by the president himself using it. So I got to thinking, “Maybe this is another one of those things that people who watch TV “news” hear all the time, so it’s just new to me. Which is distinctly possible.
Then, less than two hours later, this appeared on CNN’s Political Ticker Twitter feed:
Crist walks back same-sex marriage remarks http://bit.ly/cC8tLQ37 minutes ago via twitterfeed
So it is just me, or did this just appear in the latest edition of the Newspeak dictionary, and nobody told me?
And what do I think of it? Since its use seems to be pejorative by implication (the president denied it when accused of it), is this another blow in the battle to train us NOT to think? You know, another shot fired in the effort to cause us to see the reconsideration of positions as a bad thing — along with “flip-flop,” which is used to condemn anyone who actually continues to consider his (note the use of the inclusive masculine!) opinions in the light of new data or changed conditions — which a thoughtful person would think of as a good thing?
Or am I just being overly touchy?
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I used to get very annoyed with Gordon Liddy when he would go on and on about the correct usage of the English language. Here we have Brad getting all hyper-sensitive about a commonly used phrase that’s becoming a part of our language. This is the second time recently. Language evolves and that’s as it should be. It comes across as a bit arrogant, frankly, when folks start to constantly question others for using modern phrases in new ways. And that’s an opinion that I won’t walk back from.
I’ve always wondered how you yell at people in Newspeek. Do you stress ‘double-plus’ or ‘ungood’ or do you just yell, ‘double’ at them as loud as you can? Perhaps that was Syme’s real downfall. The Proles may have been animals, but they had to have had some daily affect on the languages.
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As Syme was leaving the ministry he saw two proles going at it. His first thought was that there was no Newspeak word for fisticuffs, ‘hand bad, perhaps, no, that breaks the whole logic of it’. Syme was never one for athletics.
“I’ll dub’ew you …ovah!”
He stood there with this mouth open, completely disheartened at the mangling of his life’s work. You couldn’t possibly double someone, that was impossible. He turned around and re-entered the ministry. “No matter how hard I try to remove it, they will always put it back, the animals. Not even BB could save them.”
As the clocks of London struck eight-teen, he returned the word, ‘God’.
I have heard “walk back” used in corporate law settings (where the wannabe biz types glom onto any bit of hip-sounding slang) several years ago–and it wasn’t necessarily a negative term –more the sense of retrenching/rethinking. The word that has gotten out of hand imho is “tranche” — used in securities to describe a batch– a sort of set – of a securities issue, it has come to be used as a “thingy” word = “a bunch of.” It is cool sounding, though, more so than “batch.”
While Bud doesn’t, Jesse seems to get it.
Some of us just love language, and are fascinated by inventive uses of it, whether for political or aesthetic or other purposes.
Best inventive use of language in modern popular literature, better even than Tolkien or “Dune”? Burgess’ “Nadsat” in A Clockwork Orange… Every slovo of it is horrorshow.
Is “horrorshow” really inventive? it just phonetic Russian word “Хорошиo” for “good”.
I’ve heard “walk back” for quite some time. It’s more of a clarification of one sentence versus changing ones position on a subject 180 degrees.
I don’t put it in the same category as “flip-flop” (as in: “John McCain flip-flopped on his views related to illegal immigration in order to win the Republican primary but it came at the cost of his honor” versus “Lindsey Graham walked back his statement that people against illegal immigrants are racists by saying only most of them are racists”
I do agree with Brad’s point about reconsidering an issue. Why has it become such a negative to change one’s mind? Sometimes folks do incorrectly change their minds. Seems like John McCain has cornered that market. Yet sometimes it’s a good thing when a politician re-thinks a position. John Kerry for one reversed course on his support for the Iraq war. That was a refreshing walk back.
Burgess used to hole up in a nondescript hotel in a location entirely uninteresting, and get room service. In this manner, he’d write an entire novel in something like 10 days.
You are right on the money. This afternoon, while driving home and listening to NPR, I heard “walk back” used no less than 4 times in 15 minutes. I first heard that phrase about 2 weeks ago. It’s apparently the new phrase of choice for the media. I laughed out loud while alone in my car.