Uncomfortable Words

A CIVIL TONGUE

by EDWIN NEWMAN

207 pages. Bobbs-Merrill. $8.95.

Who can save the English language from the galloping blight of jargon, pomposity, staleness, imprecision, ugliness and plain nonsense? Not authorities or institutions, writes Edwin Newman. The only hope is "individuals or small guerrilla groups" who practice "rebelliousness, buccaneering and humor."

NBC Correspondent Newman justifiably sees himself as one of those individuals. Yet his tactics lean mainly toward humor. In the battle against corrupt English, he clearly believes he serves best not as a guerrilla but as a leader of the loyal opposition, even as a court jester.

Newman's previous book on the decline of English, the bestselling Strictly Speaking, seemed to consist largely of dreadfully apt examples Newman had stuffed into a desk drawer over the years. These prompted readers to send him their own favorite examples. A Civil Tongue appears to be written from the mailbag. It offers a plethora of mangled speech and prose, drawn not only from advertisers, politicians, sportcasters and sociologists, but also from people who should know better, such as educators and journalists (among the most cited offenders: the New York Times, TIME* and Newman's employer, NBC).

Late Bloomer. California Governor Jerry Brown, reports Newman, once declined a ride in a limousine by saying, apparently with a straight face, "I cannot relate to that material possessory consciousness." A Chicago Tribune dispatch from London describing the U.S. ambassador at the opening of Parliament explained that "his seniority admitted he and his wife to the front row." A program note for Manhattan's Lincoln Center characterized Dvorak as "a late bloomer, composition wise."

As the guide through this gallery of horrors, Newman tries to keep everybody's spirits up with wisecracks. His chapter headings give the flavor: "A One-Way Streetcar Named Detente," "Ize Front," "Paradigm Lost." But the charm of persistent jokiness begins to pall long before the tour is over.

For that matter, so do the horrors. They are too much of a bad thing. The reader soon longs for Newman to interrupt with some sustained comment and analysis. What generalizations he does provide are unexceptionable but also unexceptional ("We are all safer when language is specific. It improves our chances of knowing what is going on"). In his 207 pages, there is scarcely as much intellectual substance as George Orwell offers in the 15 pages of his celebrated 1946 essay Politics and the English Language.

On the other hand, Newman, instinctively a popularizer, does not want to risk losing his audience. (Nothing clears the room faster than a whiff of intellectual substance.) Already, he notes, he is viewed in some quarters as "cranky and pedantic." Since his cause is crucial, and the need for converts great, perhaps he is right to be content with taking a different risk: that A Civil Tongue, as it follows Strictly Speaking on the bestseller lists, will be found merely entertaining by the people it ought to Sting. Christopher Porterfield

*In which, Newman finds, old soldiers are too often "grizzled," comments are nearly always "candid," points tend to be "successfully refuted," and things are occasionally "surrounded on all sides."

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