Date:  Sun, 25 Jan 1998 09:41:38 -0500
From:  "Bethany K. Dumas" <dumasb[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UTK.EDU>
Subject: "legal jargon" the "ultimate dialect of scandal"? (Sheidlower &
     Shuyquoted)

The extract below is quoted from today's web edition of the Washington
Post; the story is found at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-01/25/143l-012598-idx.html

         Political Troublespeak: With Each Scandal, a New Lingo

         By Elizabeth Kastor
         Washington Post Staff Writer
         Sunday, January 25, 1998; Page A22

         Remember back in the distant past -- say, Tuesday --
         when it was hard to work the phrase "suborning perjury"
         into casual conversation?

         No more. Scandal has once again infected the city, and
         with it comes that peculiar local dialect, the
         ritualized vocabulary of political frenzy.

         There are instantly ubiquitous catch phrases: "No
         improper relationship" has become the "no controlling
         legal authority" of 1998.

         There are the incantations: White House press secretary
         Mike McCurry's "I'm not going to parse the statement."
         President Clinton's "I am going to cooperate with the
         investigation."

         Public speech becomes simultaneously overblown and
         over-lawyered. Who knew there were so many, many ways to
         say "I'm not going to say anything"?

         "It is very formulaic," says lawyer Leonard Garment, who
         knows from scandal as a onetime Nixon aide.

         "The language becomes very muddy, foggy," he says.
         "Everybody says the same things, or they say what are
         generically the same things. The denials -- 'We don't
         know. We're investigating. It's untrue. It's not a
         problem. I'm not having sex with her' -- in the present
         tense, past tense, the pluperfect. It's very confusing
         language."

         But then, in this dreary gray landscape, colorful
         language explodes.

         "I smell a rat in this," said Clinton lawyer Robert
         Bennett, with ominous inferences and literary gravity.

         Monica Lewinsky's lawyer, William Ginsburg, offered up
         melodramatic imagery with an undertone of sexual
         assault: "If the president of the United States did this
         -- and I'm not saying that he did -- with this young
         lady, I think he's a misogynist. If he didn't, then I
         think Ken Starr and his crew have ravaged the life of a
         youngster."

         And with each new scandal comes the sudden intimacy of
         first names. Fawn. Donna. Gennifer. Paula. And now
         Monica.

         Mistakes were made.

         For those accused, scandal-speak takes no blame, admits
         to nothing. The passive voice is popular: Nothing wrong
         was done by anyone in particular, something just sort of
         happened. "Incident" serves nicely too. How appalling
         can something be if it's only an incident?

         "One of my obsessions is 'the appearance of
         impropriety,' " says Michael Kinsley, editor of Slate.
         "It's the cop-out from both directions. Someone who is
         guilty can say, 'I'm sorry for creating the appearance
         of impropriety.' He apologized without admitting
         anything."

         Words spoken in times like these have literal meanings,
         of course, but they also give off vibrations.

         "There's a need on either side to get the right
         associations," says Jesse Sheidlower, project director
         of the Random House Historical Dictionary of American
         Slang. "That might mean using language that has a moral
         or legal significance, or language that makes light of
         these things."

         So independent counsel Kenneth Starr relies on the
         hallowed standards of American justice: "I have a very
         strong belief in facts and in truth," he said at a news
         conference Thursday, "and that the facts will come out
         and the truth will come out -- eventually -- consistent
         with the presumption of innocence."

         And Clinton adopts a phrase that echoes with nearly
         Victorian propriety: He did not, he has said repeatedly,
         have an "improper relationship" with Lewinsky.

         But sometimes the associations are unintentionally
         eerie. According to reports, Lewinsky referred to
         Clinton as the "creep." The last time that word floated
         through a scandal was back in the '70s and it was an
         acronym, standing darkly for the Committee to Re-Elect
         the President -- Richard Nixon.

         There was no controlling legal authority that says this
         was in violation of the law.

         -- Al Gore, repeatedly, during a March 1997 news
         conference

         So soothing, so precise, so impenetrable -- legal jargon
         is the ultimate dialect of scandal.

         "Lawyers have power," says Roger Shuy, a linguistics
         professor at Georgetown University and author of "The
         Language of Confession, Interrogation and Deception."
         "Their language is impressive. . . . People will say,
         'They know! They say things like 'aid and abet' and
         'heretofore' and 'hereinafter.' "

        [the rest of the story is deleted]

Bethany