Sunday’s “Week in Review” section of the NY Times had an article by Geoffrey Nunberg discussing a phenomenon I have noticed but not seen mentioned before, the proliferation of participles taking the place of verbs in news broadcasting.
…The all-news networks have begun to recite their leads to a new participial rhythm: “In North Dakota, high winds making life difficult; the gusts reaching 60 m.p.h.” . . . “A Big Apple accident, two taxicabs plowing into crowds of shoppers” — call the new style ing-lish. Fox News Channel and CNN have adopted it wholesale, and it’s increasingly audible on network news programs as well.
The odd thing is that not even the newscasters seem to have a clear idea of what they’re doing, or why. A “Newshour With Jim Lehrer” feature described the style as one of “dropping most verbs, putting everything in the present tense.”
But cable news reporters don’t actually drop any verbs except “to be,” and that only in sentences like “President Bush in Moscow.” And those participles like “plowing” aren’t in the present tense — they don’t have any tense at all.
What ing-lish really leaves out is all tenses, past, present or future, and with them any helping verbs they happen to fall on — not just be, but have and will. Newscasters used to say “The Navy has used the island for sixty years but will cease its tests soon.” On CNN or Fox, that comes out as “The Navy using the island for sixty years but ceasing its tests soon.”
What’s the point of this? The NewsHour calls it “an abbreviated language unique to time-pressed television correspondents,” and points to the need to shoehorn as many stories as possible into a brief space. But the new syntax doesn’t actually save any time — sometimes, in fact, it makes sentences longer. “Bush met with Putin” is one syllable shorter than “Bush meeting with Putin.”
Strangely, broadcasters don’t seem to realize how bizarre the new style sounds. Fox newscaster Shepherd Smith calls it “people speak” and explains, “It’s about how would I tell this story if I were telling it to a friend on a street corner.” But that must be a pretty exotic intersection, if Mr. Smith’s buddies are saying things like “My car in the shop. The brakes needing relining.”
Just now sending phone text message in gerund pseudotense. Think saves space sometimes if worth missing personal pronoun, but ridiculous on news totally agree.
Interesting, if course Nunberg’s analysis is not quite correct. I mean, for one thing the verbs aren’t entirely tenseless- just because their participles and the tenses are relative doesn’t mean there’s no tense. Plus, I don’t think they would say “Bush meeting with Putin” if the meeting was already over (rendering reductiones ad absurdum like “The Navy using the island for sixty years but ceasing its tests soon”… absurd).
But cable news reporters don’t actually drop any verbs except “to be,” and that only in sentences like “President Bush in Moscow.”
What about sentences like “President Bush is meeting with Putin”?
A curious construction. Not ablatives absolute (or whatever case is appropriate), but maybe Egyptian-style circumstantials?
Interesting, this. I’m wondering how much this has to do with the fact that they’re speaking over images, almost like verbal captions. Okay, well, they probably don’t actually show the taxicabs plowing into people. But I could imagine shots of gusting winds where overdubs like that could make some sense.
I barely ever watch tv anymore, so that’s just a shot in the dark. When this kicks in on the net, that would be really interesting.
I’ve been trying to think of languages that have comparable constructions. Bengali has a kind of verbal noun thing, if I remember correctly (which can be used as a non-finite main verb), but I don’t know how common it is.
Every morning, I listen to our local traffic reporter on the radio say some variation of this: “We’ve got an accident working at 39th and Fayette.” Do you suppose anyone has brought it to his attention that his statement makes no sense?
I don’t spend much time watching CNN, but it seems to me if a newscaster actually spoke the words “The Navy using the island for sixty years but ceasing its tests soon,” I think most viewers would be pretty confused, no matter what the context. Unless that was the beginning of the sentence.
I think Mark’s comment illuminates another possible source of this style: Bridget Jones. V. funny.
A “Newshour With Jim Lehrer” feature described the style as one of “dropping most verbs, putting everything in the present tense.”
I like how this is a definition as well as an example of the phenomenon.
They do omit the verb “to be”, but isn’t simply implied by the fact that CNN and Fox are newscasters, and everything is supposed to be happening NOW anyway?
A short email response on the NYT about the topic.