I wanted to rap the CNN reporter’s knuckles with a ruler.
It was the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings and a doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital was being interviewed. There were, he intoned, many grave injuries to lower extremities. He repeated the words “lower extremities” about six times in three minutes.
Well, we know that doctors like to talk like that. A leg is so mundane, isn’t it, while a lower extremity supposedly connotes a higher intelligence. That’s why medical students are not allowed to read Hemingway, with his insistence on using short words. That’s why Hemingway did not title one of his famous novels A Farewell to Upper Extremities. (Letters to the editor pointing out that “arms” has various meanings will not be necessary.)
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This I know: Hemingway never appended the word “forward” to the word “going” as in “going forward.” He never wrote, or dreamed of writing: “The world breaks every one and going forward many are strong at the broken places.”
Not only do doctors like big words like “myocardial infarction,” they also resort to Latin if they foresee any possibility that they will be understood by lesser beings. And if that isn’t good enough, they write prescriptions in a peculiar longhand that can be read only by members of a secret society.
My beef with that CNN reporter was his enabling of the good doctor’s fancy talk. I see this muddling of the language to be a problem as we search for precision of meaning, not only at this point in time, but going forward.
