Barbara Presnell: Language, leadership, and America’s loss of character
Barbara Presnell
Consider this:
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
And this:
“Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich.”
The first comes from our 34th president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Republican, who served two terms from 1953-1961. The second from our current president, the 47th, Republican Donald Trump.
I expect you aren’t surprised by the difference in the message, because we’ve grown used to the egocentric, wealth-focused thoughts of our current president. Nor are you surprised by the language; we’ve grown used to the sloppy rhetoric coming from the presidential mouth.
Most concerning is how his mouth has become the mouth of our nation—without eloquence, distinction, civility, respect, or culture.
Yes, I’m a long-time English teacher with multiple degrees in writing and literature. I love words.
But I’m not a “grammar-nazi” and this is not about correctness; I believe strongly that our language lives and changes with the times, that a lot of the old rules we were taught don’t matter anymore. What I’m talking about is vocabulary, word use, and style.
According to non-partisan analysts, who have analyzed the words of all presidents according to the Flesch-Kincaid reading scale, Trump scores lowest in our history as a nation, measuring at the 4th grade level. In comparison, George W. Bush tests at 7th grade and Barack Obama at 9th grade. The scale examines words per sentence, syllables per word, and uniqueness of word choice. A score between 7th and 9th grade is considered appropriate for a general audience today. Ronald Reagan typically sat at 11th grade.
Trump responded to this report, calling himself a “very stable genius” and “like, really smart.”
We need a leader who understands language. We need a leader who can elevate our thinking and our speaking and writing beyond elementary.
According to a recent NPR report, the end of government accountability in education in 2013 marks the beginning of the decline in literacy in America. The rise of texting and social media certainly contribute to the problem. But writing studies experts see those and other digital media as simply other ways of communicating, and all of us need to know when to talk “text” and when to talk “sentence.” We learn to code-switch early on, to adapt our language for the social situation we are in. That’s not “dumbing-down,” it’s simply communication.
So, our decline didn’t begin with our current leadership. But the swing from the poetic eloquence of Barack Obama to the slop bucket of choose-your-basest-word by Trump is to step from the beauty of Zion National Park into a mud-hole up to your elbows. Trump has reduced our national language ten-fold.
We live in a copy-cat society. We set our standards by what we see, which these days is largely on a screen, whether a television, computer, or phone screen. In the past, our heroes were our leaders. Whether we agreed with their politics or not, we could trust that they would speak clearly, decisively, and, in many cases, beautifully. Today, our heroes tend to be sports celebrities, music and fashion influencers—who, in general, have much better vocabulary and expression than our president—but also the people we see every day, whether in classrooms or work places, or gyms.
Our language reflects who we are to a world that is swiftly losing confidence in America’s civility, thought, dignity, and respect for itself and others. We need to stop speaking Trump.
This is not an elitist or political argument. Note that I am only comparing him to other Republican presidents. The argument has nothing to do with race, class, nationality, gender, or even education level. Anyone can and historically has used our language with grace and eloquence.
Remember Sojourner Truth, a woman of color, born into slavery in 1797 without formal education? Her “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech is one of the most well-known, well-loved, and most powerful in our history.
She knew what Trump doesn’t know, that words matter.
From a language-only perspective, here are just a few of his problems.
He uses “potty language” like a 4th grader. I don’t need to give examples, other than to note that my 3-year-old grandson laughs hysterically whenever anyone says, “poop.”
He normalizes violence through bullying and cursing. Most of us would agree that cursing (but not bullying) has its place, but when curse words are used to the degree that he (and consequently, a growing number of our population) uses them, they become meaningless. They lose impact. The best cursers know when to curse and when not to curse, and they use those words sparingly.
He litters his speech with fallacies. His favorite is the red herring, or shifting the focus off of the current issue and onto something else. When too much attention is given to something, say Epstein files or a ballroom nobody wants, he shifts national attention to, say, bombing Iran or the need for taxpayer funded security for said ballroom.
Another of his favorites is ad hominem, or “to the man,” where the speaker, instead of addressing the issue, attacks his opponent with name-calling or other accusation. It’s a camouflaged way of dodging a real issue. A few names he’s used for women who have challenged him include, “piggy,” “pssy,” “dog,” and “whre.”
And of course, he loves the fallacy of the non-sequitur: the winding, rambling talk that begins one place and very quickly goes off the rails until nobody knows what his point is.
That is his point, to not make a point but to rely on a slogan, like “Make America Great Again,” when he can’t actually verbalize what he means.
He lacks imagery. Look as hard as you want for a good simile or metaphor, but you won’t find it. His only reliable imagery is hyperbole, or speaking in extremes. For instance, "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again." Yeah, right.
Am I being too hard on him? No. Should we expect more from the leader of our country? Absolutely!
Here’s what our sitting president would say in response to this column: “I’m very highly educated. I know words, I have the best words.”
My 3-year-old grandson tends to scream when he wants something he can’t express. “Use your words,” my son says, and the boy squints his face and forms the words.
To our president, who screams daily and often in the wee hours of the night, I say, “Use your words.” But he screams on.
Our last Republican president, George W. Bush, would say, did say, this: “Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time.”
You don’t need multiple degrees in writing to know that words matter. All you need to do is put a minute of thought behind what you say and write, and all of us—our entire nation—will begin a return to civility that is quickly slipping away.
