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In a recent blog posting in his “Usage Tip of the Day,” American etymologist Bryan Garner explains how to use the term “just deserts.”

Garner notes that the term, which means “the treatment one deserves,” is “occasionally misrendered ‘just desserts.’ Sometimes, of course, it’s a playful pun . . . . But sometimes it’s sloppiness or pure ignorance — e.g. ‘The deliciously wicked Francis Urquhart gets his just desserts [should read “just deserts”] in this third installment of the story’ ” (“Best Bets,” Commercial Appeal (Memphis, 21 Feb. 1997, E2).

Garner also notes that in the above example, “the adverb ‘deliciously’ creates a nonsensical echo in the word ‘desserts.’ ” Too bad that this word play was based on an error in usage.

Using “just desserts” is one error that I’ve made in conversation many times, in the past. Have you done so, as well?

It’s good to know what the correct version is, despite my susceptibility to chocolate and cake!

What are your linguistic or grammatical bugbears? Please share them with me and I’ll use them in upcoming postings.

My last blog posting looked at lost literary references and “malapropisms” (errors in references that usually have a comic effect).

Perhaps coincidentally, one of Bryan Garner’s “Usage Tips of the Day” this week delved further into malapropisms, arguing that “deliberate errors in reference go back to Shakespeare’s day” and not only to Sheridan’s 18^th Century play (The Rivals) whose character (Mrs. Malaprop, named for “mal à propos,” or “inappropriately” ) gave the rhetorical strategy its name.

Garner says that in a malapropism “deliberate errors . . . [are] usually for comic effect,” always in the mouths of lower class characters who are unsuccessfully aping the usage of their social and intellectual betters and saying something quite different (sometimes scandalously different) from what they meant to say” (Garner, March 17, 2015).

An example of Shakespeare’s use of malapropism that Garner cites is Elbow (the “incompetent constable in Measure for Measure) who refers to a bawdy house as a “respected [suspected] house.”

I recall Mrs. Malaprop referring to another character in The Rivals as “the very pineapple [pinnacle] of politeness.”

Malapropisms usually have a comic effect, but that effect relies on the reader having greater knowledge and recognition than the incompetent character. In less obvious examples, some 21^st Century readers won’t get the joke. They won’t recognize the error.

Some 21^st Century readers don’t recognize literary allusions, be they straightforward or ironic. Literary history and culture are definitely being lost, when students would rather “google” a quotation than research and read the original text.

The problem isn’t limited to studies of academic English literature. Garner cites a modern lawyer’s confusion between “meretricious” (superficially attractive but false) and “meritorious” (likely to succeed on the merits of the case).

Here are some others that he cites, also from the field of law:

“infinitesimal” (very small) vs. “infinite” (boundless)

“nefarious” (evil) vs. “multifarious” (greatly varied)

“voracity” (greediness with food) vs. “veracity” (truthfulness)

“serial” (consisting of or taking place in a series) vs “surreal”   (bizarre, having qualities of surrealism)

Journalists also often cite confusions such as that between “infamous” (terrible) and “famous” (well known) in a story referring to the “crime that occurred at the infamous Stanfield’s Underwear factory.”

Younger generations may view the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) or other reference volumes online now, but some won’t bother.  Canonical texts that I was trained to read as an undergraduate are increasingly overlooked (and not only by the students in class who have always preferred to watch “the movie,” instead of reading the book  . . . .)

I don’t mean to say that we are not gaining culturally through Rap or Hip Hop music, poetry contests over social media and the like. But in a time when technology experts sing the praises of how portable devices vastly improve our lives, we should recognize that they also gobble up time and energy that were once invested in old-fashioned reading.

If you work with or hire a freelance writer and/or editor, how important is it to you that they know their literary (or legal or journalistic) history, terminology and avoid malapropisms or other errors?

How much more do people need to read and study in order to build and maintain a literary and/or historical background that is important for all disciplines of writing — be it academic, creative, journalism, business writing or another?

“In the past our culture’s body of common knowledge — its frame of reference, its possibility of comprehensible allusion — changed slowly and superficially; the amount added to it or taken away from it, in any ten years, was surprisingly small. Now in any ten years a surprisingly large proportion of the whole is replaced.” (Randall Jarrell, A Sad Heart at the Supermarket 74 [1962]).

American Etymologist Bryan Garner cited the above quotation (from American poet Randall Jarrell) to support the argument he made in his recent blog that allusions to classic (western) literary texts are becoming increasingly unknown to new generations of readers. These students and armchair bookworms don’t recognize references to specific lines of poetry, drama or verse, including such as prominent as Shakespeare’s.

Garner gives the example that students will recognize the “To be or not to be” phrase of Hamlet’s soliloquy , but miss the lesser known portion of that same speech, where the Danish prince refers to “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” (Hamlet 3.1.61-62, emphasis added).

You may ask: why does it matter, anyway?

Garner (who tries not to be pedantic in his analysis), argues that such an “allusion works well even for the reader who doesn’t recognize the Shakespearean echo. Ideally, the words in an allusion flatter those who recognize it while not bothering those who don’t” (“Tip of the Day,” February 17, 2015).

The function of literary allusions has been discussed by scholars for generations and influences many forms of art. But Garner says that a (correct) “allusion, if it isn’t too arcane, can add substantially to the subtlety and effectiveness of writing. To work, the allusion should refer to a common body of literature with which every cultured person is familiar.”

But he goes on to acknowledge: “Increasingly, though, there isn’t any such body of literature. . . . So it’s hard to bring off a good allusion if it doesn’t relate to current events or popular culture.”

Those of us who studied literary classics in the age before Google, mobile technology and social media, it can be hard not to feel sad at how reading and writing have changed, in the last 10 to 15 years. So much seems lost. And yet, writers like celebrated marketer, cultural critic and poetry lover Seth Godin (to name only one) find much in today’s world that is creative, rigourous, and involves readers or consumers who can participate (more than ever before) in the making of art.

Mistakes in literary allusion made by inexperienced speakers can become humourous (or embarrassing, depending on your point-of-view). Such is evident with malaproprisms (i.e. quotations whose errors inadvertently become funny).  Many years ago, I recall hearing a student misquote those much cited Robert Browning lines (from “Andrea del Sarto”):  “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his gasp [sic – “grasp”] / Or what’s a heaven for?”  Literary allusion is bungled there.

Garner doesn’t take sides on the issue of lost literary reference. He instead notices its passing. What is your view of misrecognized or unrecognized classic reading, writing and artistic history? What do you notice has been gained? If you write for the business world, how has the creative landscape changed through quoted authorities, buzz words and other elements, in recent years?

For my blog posting today, I want to consider Seth Godin’s own posting, from February 18 (2015). It raises the crucial issue of politics in marketing and communications or in any kind of cultural work.

My comments will follow this long citation, after the crosses, below:

“Kicking and screaming (vs. singing and dancing)

Unfair things happen. You might be . . . demoted for a mistake you didn’t make, convicted of a crime you didn’t commit. The ref might make a bad call, an agreement might be abrogated, a partner might let you down.

Our instinct is to fight these unfairnesses, to succumb if there’s no choice, but to go down kicking and screaming. We want to make it clear that we won’t accept injustice easily, we want to teach the system a lesson, we want them to know that we’re not a pushover.

But will it change the situation? Will the diagnosis be changed, the outcome of the call be any different?

What if, instead, we went at it singing and dancing? What if we walked into our four-year prison sentence determined to learn more, do more and contribute more than anyone had ever dreamed? What if we saw the derailment of one path as the opportunity to grow or to invent or to find another path?

This is incredibly difficult work, but it seems far better than the alternative” (Godin, February 18, 2015).

+++++

If you read my e-newsletter, or even my blog, you’ll know that I regularly find food for thought in American marketer Seth Godin’s books, articles and blogs. He writes provocatively about such issues as the psychology of marketing and communications. He has much to say about contemporary culture and not only marketing. For instance, in my mid-February issue of my newsletter ( www.elizabethshih.com/newsletter), I wrote a précis of his new book, What To Do When It’s Your Turn (and it’s always your turn) (2014). There I focused on his arguments on creativity, fear, failure and risk.

In that issue, the only criticism I make (and it wouldn’t surprise Godin) is that he tends to bracket off political realities (tragedies such as untimely death, extreme poverty and the like). These realities would challenge his arguments for how to create culturally in the world’s new (21^st century, high-tech) economy.

So in the blog that I cite in full above, I find it crucial that he does acknowledge fully the “unfairnesses” that life in this new economy often brings (see his first paragraph, above).

Godin polemically sides in such cases with the attitude and action of “singing and dancing” (more than “kicking and screaming”) our way through life’s intractable difficulties. His doing so emphasizes the importance of new creative cultural work. And he acknowledges that doing such innovative work in context of the tragedies and losses of contemporary life is “incredibly difficult.”

I want to suggest something that is not radical, but that nonetheless bears mentioning.  The binary between the “kicking and screaming” and the “singing and dancing,” is, as Derrida has said for generations, is a false one. The two polarized concepts do bear some relation to each other. No, they are emphatically not identical and their differences must not be ignored. But the terms do bear relation: if we are in fact to go on creating great art through periods of great personal or cultural struggle, we have to do both the “kicking” and the “singing.” (We need what post-modernists and post-structuralists in the 90’s called a “both-and,” not an “either/or”)

Yes, eventually survivors of devastation or tragedy may recover. And, in time, they may find the space to “sing and dance” again. But not before they deal with their realities, which require us first to “go down kicking and screaming.” We must oppose the injustices that are inflicted on us (or that fall to us, randomly). We do first need to show that we’re “not  pushovers.” We cannot afford to be passive or learned helpless.

But the “diagnosis” and “outcome” will never be stopped if we give in to thinking, as Godin says, that the “diagnosis” won’t be any different. This thinking veers into political quietism that Godin is vulnerable to.

What he refers to as “incredibly difficult” work is to live through the injustices, protest loudly, advocate powerfully against those who value money more than human life (or whatever the issues are). AND then move on to creating and working again, with energy renewed.

What I’m saying here, of course, isn’t new. Betty Friedan famously said in the 1960s that “the personal is political.” Godin knows this. But he understates it and even obscures it, as in his blog posting above. He leaves it for lesser writers and readers like us to fill in the gaps. But it’s a gap that is too easily drowned out in the noise of contemporary (high-tech, mobile-friendly) culture. I fear and dread quietism (and if you don’t, you should, too).

So my call-to-action in this blog is to be vigilant about what gurus like Godin often bracket off.  Don’t forget about the world’s injustices, so that unethical companies, organizations and people can perpetrate them. Don’t give in to thinking opposition is futile. If we don’t protest tyranny and genocide, there will be no one left to do it.

In opposition and creativity, we will find that the very forces we must protest may furnish the creativity and ideas that we ultimately need to make art (to “sing and dance”).

We cannot afford to separate these values.

Both we (our collective cultures) and our art will be the better for it.