Last week I railed against the over-the-top use of superlatives and exclamation marks. There was an interesting response, with most agreeing with me.

Now that was AMAZING!!!!! AWESOME!!! in fact.

But since then, I have noticed another linguistic abomination or two. One has been around for a while, and is what I consider a Rudd-ism. The other seems to have snuck up unseen, but is none the less grating, overused, misplaced and equally abused by journalists, commentators, politicians and radio shock jocks and their guests alike.

Let’s take the first one and assume a hypothetical question from a TV journalist to a pollie. The answer invariably starts “Look …..” and then blah blah blah.

“Look”?

Why? And at what?

It reminds me a little of a GoughWhitlam-ism that once started, was picked up by every politician ever since, especially mastered by Paul Keating, and that was to repeat things in a statement or answer. Viz:

“The Opposition Minister has stated blah, blah, blah, but I can assure you that the reality of the situation, the reality of the situation, is , …. Blah blah blah”

OK, so they are trying to emphasise something, but why does it have to be mimicry of someone else? Why not find your own style? Or is it homage to brilliant oration?

And this applies equally to both sides of the House? They ALL do it! If mimicry of brilliance was the norm, how would we react to a whole bunch of actors trying to sound like Orson Welles? Or God forbid, Forrest Gump?

The second linguistic abuse is the use of the word “actually”. Today, in an interview with ex-Defence Minister Peter Reith on the ABC’s 7:30 for example, it was used four times in five strung together sentences. I have heard worse, but this is a good example.

Why do we “actually” do something as against just “doing it?”

“I drove to work yesterday”.

Works for me.

“I actually drove to work today”.

What? As against?

I accept mannerisms and popular phraseology can sneak into language, and some can even further the richness of the same, but this is just laziness. When it creeps into the writing of journalists and commentators, who I feel are at the forefront of the use and protection of language, it seems that the standards are slipping. We are not thinking about what we are writing or saying. Just look at the use of the word “like” of late. Both in the context of “And he was, like, and I was, like …” and another pet hate, favoured again by TV journalists especially, “In countries like Australia”.

Pardon? Which countries ARE like Australia? Oh, you mean “Countries such as Australia”.

Call me a language snob if you will. I’ll wear that tag with pride. I would just hate to see this sort of thing appear regularly in creative writing, screenplays, film scripts and the like.

Imagine the writings of Shakespeare, Salinger, Asimov, Tolkien, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy, Waugh, Greene, Shute and their ilk writing like this. What pap it would be.

“Look, like, I need you to actually like, open the pod bay doors, HAL. That would be so AWESOME!!!”.

Where’s the Scotch? That is just too hard to deal with. Sorry I took you there. Really, I am.

By David Hague

David is the owner and publisher of AusCam Online. He has a background in media dating back to 1979 when he first got involved with photojournalism in motorsport, and went from there into technology via a 5 year stint with Tandy Computers. Following that, he ran a software distribution company on the Gold Coast and was one of the first to recognise the potential of Microsoft Windows.

Moving back to WA, David wrote scripts for Computer Television for video training for the just released Windows and Office 95 among others, and was then lured to Sydney to create web sites for the newly commercial Internet in 1995, building hundreds of sites under contract to OzEmail including Coates Hire, Hertz Queensland, John Williamson, the NSW Board of Studies and many, many more.

He went back into full time journalism as the Managing Editor for Channel 7's 'Gadget Guy', Peter Blasina's publications VideoCamera and Pixelmag, before starting Australasian Camcorder magazine when these publications were shelved. He lives at Sydney's Avalon Beaches nearly on the ocean front with dog Budweiser and in his spare time is a nut for motor sport, road safety, fishing, science fiction - especially Dr Who - and technology.

David can be contacted via david@auscamonline.com