Appointment News

Great find, and nice essay.  Here is a question about Inglis’s claim that “This is no mere abuse.”  Pullum seems to imply that Inglis’s sentence was self-referential and counterfactual — i.e., that Inglis is indeed guilty of abuse.  But my first inclination was to read the sentence as meaning “this in fact goes beyond mere abuse” — in line with phrases such as “the royal wedding was no mere celebrity event.”  Yet that would not make sense if Inglis had been referring to his own article, as if to say “Dear readers, I exceed the boundaries of what it usually called abuse!”  Isn’t it more likely that Inglis is referring to the abuse of language typified by the Browne Report?  It would also be in line with the main thrust of Inglis’s essay, which is to critique the stifling “technism” (Inglis’s word, with Inglis’s quotes) endemic to our economy.  Despite the purple prose, Inglis makes a very strong argument.  

Inglis’s screed reminds me of the response I used to write every now and then when some marginally literate author manque would send a letter full of misspellings, bad grammar, faulty vocabulary, weird punctuation and capitalization, and so on, brusquely demanding to know why our publishing house, which specialized in political theory, philosophy, history, etc., didn’t want to publish their ten-page “manusript of a story I have wrote,” and by God, I just couldn’t take it any more. It’s very therapeutic to write such a letter.

But you don’t mail it, much less publish it. If you did, people might think you were crazy.

Whilst discussing the interesting draperies, Pullum fails to remark the lion crouched in the parlour. To wit, I cannot help but ponder whether Pullum would likewise identify Orwell’s masterpiece as just “that book about Newspeak.”

The totality of Inglis’ essay is a slug of honest, red-hot political angst, and should not be overshadowed by the well-deserved glee we experience when he lambastes the bland polysyllabic diction of managerial technocrats. We have “Office Space” and such things for such pure catharsis.

Pullum appears to identify the source of Inglis’ “ungovernable rage” as the grammarian’s contempt for the atrociously-written budget memo and the “unenlightened application of the vocabularies of management…” to higher education. In the attempt to spotlight the relevance to English style of Inglis’ essay, he inadvertently mis-characterises its central point.

There were so many serious and legitimate grievances articulated in Inglis’ piece that I lost count, but few were as inconsequential by themselves as his plaint about stodgy language. It is only insofar as such language cloaks a will-to-dominate that originates in a value-system largely incompatible with the traditions of liberal education that Inglis seems moved to pay it heed.

The villains in Inglis’ account are not barbarians and toadies because they come bearing paperwork (and poorly-written paperwork at that), but because they are in his diagnosis the foot-soldiers of a global movement bent on dismantling the last vestiges of higher learning and replacing them with something that does a better job of securing an ever-more disproportionate distribution of wealth among the world’s citizens.

Disagree, agree, or abjure with the political message: at least acknowledge Inglis’ central point that academics, by dint of being part of this whole society thing, are as entangled in the political discourse over the historical economic transformations presently afoot as any U.S. presidential candidate. Our collective reply to the question of whether we will embrace such a political role or continue to exude an “amiably passivity ” seems the only rejoinder Inglis is interested in.

While I sincerely applaud Geoffrey Pullum for directing Chronicle readers to this article, and for highlighting the elements special interest to the readers of this great blog, his incomplete rendering of the motives behind the original work will inevitably lead some readers who do not click through to conclude that the vitriol displayed in Inglis’ piece is wholly disproportional to the alleged crimes, when in point of fact, had one of us just enumerated such a lengthy list of political and economic grievances dear to our own hearts, it would surely take most of us weeks to wash the taste of invective from our mouths.