Language in the Air

We've come across her work before. Sarah Lyall must be the London bureau chief for the New York Times. I suppose I could try and confirm this through a little more research, but I don't think it really matters. Sarah's work comes with a London byline, and she seems to get the juiciest of assignments. She likely assigns them to herself.

The latest piece is about language, appearing in today's NYT. If William Safire were alive he'd be able to weigh in on Sarah's work, as she reports the proceedings from a British trial trying to determine if the defendant is guilty of "committing a racially aggravated public order offense." It is explained for us lay people that this is: "using a racial slur."

The origin of the complaint comes not from the soccer player who this slur was aimed at, but from an off-duty policeman who was watching the soccer match on television, and who determined that the defendant, Mr. John Terry, said what he said because you could figure out what he said by watching what words he mouthed toward the subject. Something bad.

It is not known if the trial is televised. You have to go back some to find an American equivalent. But there is one when you remember the confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court when Utah's Senator Orin Hatch kept repeating the title of a porno film, "Long Dong Silver." Americans are seldom outdone by anyone.

Ms. Lyall dances around the verbiage and neatly tells us the defendant, John Terry, used a rude adjective and a rude noun, sandwiching the word "black." Here, the British do pull away from we Americans, by requiring a basic knowledge of diagramming sentences, a discipline that disappeared soon after Latin left the school house building half a century ago.

There wasn't just the one exchange in the complaint. There was a whole transcript of pitched insults that the two soccer players kept aimimg at each other.

The defense introduced that all of Mr. Terry's utterances were "handbags," normal verbal exchanges that soccer players say to their opponents during the course of the match. These are gently defined as calling the other player "fat," or describing what kind of sex their mothers enjoy in other cities.
Local sex with strangers is apparently not fair game.

Ms. Lyall's piece is about the Thursday proceedings, with the ruling expected to be revealed today, Friday. The defendant, Mr. Terry, faces a maximum fine of $3,000. Considering that he makes $185,000 a week when he plays soccer, the fine, if invoked, will be more symbolic than punitive.

And who knows, Mr. Terry might meet the fine with a fresh batch of "paint peeling profanities" that will refreshen the proceedings before the bar right up to the Olympic opening ceremonies. Something like the ending to "Witness for the Prosecution."

And therefore, like the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing, NBC is expected to cover the soccer profanity proceedings with their usual "plausibly live" coverage, wrapped around whatever physical or mental ailments the parties and their families are recovering from.

It's going to be a summer filled with fun. I wouldn't miss it for all the f______ tea in Britain.

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