LettersOn English usage, the Trump effect needn’t be the last word

Traditionally, the rationales for using “good” English with precision have been well explained. First, as George Orwell argued in his essay “Politics and the English Language”, the decline of standards in politics and that in the use of English can reinforce each other: our language becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. Second is the need to appear respectable, which Bergen and Cornelia Evans assumed in the 1950s everybody in America had. As late as 1985, both of these rationales were cited at the beginning of a well-respected guidebook for English usage.

Francis Fukuyama recently explained the Trump phenomenon on BBC’s Newsnight by referring to several trends, two of which are relevant to the discussion on language use. The first one is the tremendous resentment of the less educated in the United States against the educated elite now running many of the country’s big institutions. The second is the rise of the internet and social media on which, Fukuyama said, “anyone can say anything”, by implication including “in any way they like”. It remains the responsibility of those intent on preserving the quality of English in general use – as opposed to fossilising it – to express themselves through different channels in such ways as to prevent the coming into operation of the equivalent of Gresham’s law in the realm of English usage.