First Draft #9: a newsletter on public language
Gary Neville, voter attitudes to corruption and a new cognitive bias
The oratory of Gary Neville
I have long since got used to the idea that Gary Neville is a better footballer than me, but it has come as quite a blow to learn that he might also be a better speechwriter. Our grandmothers were cousins so we are, I suppose, related. We grew up a few streets apart though I am eight years older. When I was 14 and he was six I was a lot better than him at football, I can tell you. But he soon caught up and now he is invading the territory of rhetoric too.
In this celebrated rant at the concept of the European Super League, Neville shows the principles of classical rhetoric are hard-wired. “I am a Man Utd fan and have been for 40 years” he says, establishing his character at once. He has a slogan which sounds a little familiar – “it is time to wrestle back control” – and a plan: independent regulation of ownership. He proceeds to a peroration and a strong summary of the case: “Stop these clubs having the power base. Enough is enough”.
It was a brilliant speech, delivered off the cuff. It was so good that even Roy Keane, in the studio, said he agreed with every word. This is the Roy Keane who was the inspiration for the director David Farr’s Coriolanus at the RSC in Stratford a few years ago. Keane, like Coriolanus, cannot compromise. He cannot say what he does not believe, which, whether we like it or not, has rhetorical force. Roy can also be an effective speaker when he gets into a rage. And he was a bit better than me at football too. (PC)
Do voters care about corruption?
Another Boris sleaze scandal, another week of shadiness being met with a shrug. The PM’s opponents may be consoled to know voter indifference to corruption is not unique to Britain. All over the world, even in nations with strong democratic traditions, electoral punishment for the credibly accused is often surprisingly mild.
The problem is the bar for electoral accountability is high. A paper in the Annual Review of Political Science listed three conditions for democracy to be an effective remedy for corruption. First, voters must know about it. Once they know, they must blame the candidate. Finally they must go to the trouble of voting them out.
Any break in this chain lets corrupt officials off the hook. In Boris’s case, voters have enough to go on. There is little doubt he is to blame for curtain-gate. The problem is the third condition. The study’s authors say one of the main obstacles to voting out politicians is “salience”. Voters must weigh many factors, and corruption, come election day, may not be the most important.
This seems true of the UK. Ipsos MORI chief executive Ben Page last week wrote just 13 per cent of Brits regard political corruption as a top priority. In Poland and Hungry it is 33 and 52 per cent. In Canada and Germany it is 18 per cent. Corruption concerns are lower in the UK than almost anywhere.
Combine this with the fact most don’t trust politicians anyway, and the shrug is not surprising. Plus, it is what we expect from Boris. Classical rhetoric teaches us we judge people not just on their words and actions but on how these interact with character. To borrow Phil’s example, we accept invective from Roy Keane because it is Roy Keane. It is who he is.
Voters let sleaze slide surprisingly often. And Boris, a populist who plays by different rules, has special immunity to such attacks. It’s why, after a decade of Tory rule and a week of bruising headlines, he is on track for a good day tomorrow. (AD)
The struggle to remember less is more
Your task: make a lopsided lego structure symmetrical. What do you do? The vast majority, a new study found, add bricks rather than taking them away; evidence, say the authors, of a cognitive bias toward addition. The bias persists even when subtracting would be more helpful. And it’s not just lego: asked to improve an academic essay, 80% added words. Only 16% cut them.
Writers take note. History abounds with documents, articles and speeches ruined by the urge to add. Good edits tend to shorten and simplify, not add complexity. “If it is possible to cut a word out,” advised George Orwell in Politics and the English Language, “always cut it out.” In other words: subtract.
Knowledge of the additive bias can arm against it. Next time you feel the word count creeping up, stop. See if you can prune instead. (AD)
Jargon busters: upskilling
At school, we learn. At work, nothing must be childish, so a new word was required. Enter: "upskill". Not a beautiful word, granted, but one that certainly contains the joyless gravity of age. While there is beauty in learning for learning's sake, no one upskills for the sake of upskilling. And there is no escaping it. The word's roots are now so deep that a headline writer can, apparently without irony, write the following: "Civil servants to dump ‘management jargon’ and upskill to do expensive consultants’ jobs themselves." However hard we fight against jargon, some people will never learn. (JW)
Language and beyond
Bob Dylan holds unique sway over writers’ imaginations. Sam Leith asks why.
Boris’s “let the bodies pile high” echoed, unintentionally, the 1918 poem “Grass” by US poet Carl Sandburg. It is a poem about forgetting; how tragedy is engulfed by time and work. A similar sentiment, in a way, to the PM, though the poem is far from flippant. Born poor in small-town Illinois, Sandburg left school at thirteen but ended his life with three Pulitzers: two for poetry and one for a biography of Lincoln. Read about his extraordinary life here.
“The reader is a friend, not a spectator, not an adversary.” Jonathan Franzen’s ten rules for writing. His new novel, Crossroads, is out this year.
The late Shirley Williams was a titan of 20th century politics and a brilliant writer, as this 2013 piece marking the death of Margaret Thatcher shows.
Jonathan Bouquet notes the linguistic vandalism of cricket.
How listening to competing views can help you make better judgments. Ian Leslie’s debut in The Atlantic.
“You look like a thing and I love you.” What computer generated chat-up lines tell us about advances in AI.
The Economist on Cosmic Bazaar, the UK’s search for skilled predictors of the future. The verdict? Superforecasters need to be better storytellers.
“A multilingual person can be multiple people, inhabiting multiple worlds”. Simon Kuper on why, and how, you should learn another language.
New from us
Phil in the New Statesman on Abrdn’s disenvowelling.
Josh stands up for activist investors in City AM.
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At The Draft we’re specialists in writing and rhetoric. We help businesses and public figures make their case more persuasively. If you could use our help, get in touch. And if you enjoy First Draft, forward it on. Thanks for reading.
Wonderful newsletter but please stop calling him 'Boris'