Mind your language | 26 June 2010

That nice Tristram Hunt, the meteorologist’s son turned MP, was on Newsnight Review and used the word mitigate.

That nice Tristram Hunt, the meteorologist’s son turned MP, was on Newsnight Review and used the word mitigate. ‘You mean militate,’ cut in Germaine Greer. And he did.

We all commit malapropisms. The brain fumbles for a ready-made phrase and picks up the wrong one. On the same programme the clever Phillip Blond kept using phenomena as a singular, and I thought, with a little surprise, that he must know no better. But later on, after Dr Greer’s schoolmarmish intervention, he managed a phenomenon or two without strain.

I am not familiar with the speech patterns of Eric Pickles, the new Secretary of State for Communities, whatever those are, but on Any Questions last week he repeatedly said BT when he meant BP. I learn is known for such verbal slips, which can hardly be called malapropisms. They are more like dysphasia.

We hear more from Mr Pickles now that we hear less from John Prescott. Mr Prescott’s speech has sometimes been described as full of malapropisms and spoonerisms, but it was syntax he mangled. In describing government transport policy he once said: ‘We are now taking proper, putting the amount of resources and investment to move what we call extreme conditions which must now regard as normal.’

That is not a matter of malapropism. Mrs Malaprop was a most successful comic character when The Rivals came out in 1775, and for long after, but I do not think we find her so funny now, for three reasons. First we can hardly spot the misused words amid the slightly outmoded speech. Secondly we find it difficult to know what she intends. Take this celebrated line: ‘If I reprehend any thing in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!’ Do we, unprompted, immediately see that reprehend is meant to be comprehend, or oracular to be vernacular? Thirdly, we hardly like to laugh at such misuse, even by a fictional character.