Month: February 2009

long-run trend in writing style

Communicative style varies with circumstances and purposes.  Over millions of years, primate vocal communication co-evolved with sociality among family and friends.  Writing, in contrast, developed about 5500 years ago.  Prior to the last three centuries, use of writing has been almost wholly limited to a small, elite group, and writing has been used primarily for recording information and memorializing events significant to many persons.

Since the eighteenth century, written texts have become in linguistic style more like social communication. This change can be measured in three dimensions: (A) informational vs. personal, real-time involvement, (B) elaborated reference vs. situation-dependent reference, and (C) abstracted-agent vs. agent-oriented.  The first pole of each of these dimensions characterizes informational writing with a broad address, while the contrasting pole characterizes social communication among family and friends.  Quantitative linguistic analysis of a corpus of British and U.S. fiction, essays, and personal letters indicates that linguistic style in these written genres has become significantly more like social communication.[*]

Long-run changes in society’s macro-structure contrast with long-run changes in communicative practices.  Since the eighteenth century, greater spatial agglomeration of persons (in crowded cities and factories) has increased possibilities for interacting with strangers.  During this period, reading and writing skills and engagement increased greatly across a rapidly growing population.  The era of mass media tends to be associated with individuals who transcend particular relations and circumstances to form mediated publics. Yet during this period, given names continually became more personalized (name diversity increased), and written language became more like social communication.

Most persons, in most circumstances, prefer to read and write in the style of social communication.

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[*] See Biber, Douglas, and Edward Finegan (1989), “Drift and the Evolution of English Style: A History of Three Genres,” Language 65(3), pp. 487-517.  While the style of fiction, essays, and personal letters has shifted towards the style of social communication, personal letters remain much more like social communication than do fiction and essays. A general trend toward more frequent expression of stance, as well as continuing differences across genres, also characterizes this period.

COB-31: honor and glory

Perhaps the most important government bureaucrats are tax collectors.  Tax collectors, like other bureaucrats, tend to be humble and self-effacing.  Yet no one should doubt the honor and glory that tax collectors and other quintessential bureaucrats will ultimately receive.

A leading communications industry analyst long ago warned of misunderstanding bureaucrats. He set out the example of an ordinary, foolish person.  This person declared:  “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.” With a keen sense of bureaucratic decorum,  the tax collector ignored the out-of-line fool, looked up to heaven, beat his breast, and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”  Bureaucrats recognize that everyone is like everyone else, including themselves.  Have no doubt, bureaucrats’ keen appreciation for essential uniformity will bring them honor and glory.

Chris Davies, MEP, observes that “close up, Brussels bureaucrats usually seem like ordinary human beings.” They are, and they know it. You are, too, and even if you don’t know it, you will be treated like everyone else.

winterspeak continues to question fundamental macroeconomic orthodoxy.  Bureaucrats are a society’s best defense against fundamentalists.

Helen DeWitt at paperpools discusses Zygmunt Bauman’s book, Modernity and the Holocaust.  This book apparently assigns bureaucracy the blame for the Holocaust.  DeWitt adds, “I’m afraid no school or university I ever attended showed any awareness of the moral implications of its bureaucratic structures.”  We bureaucrats here at the Carnival of Bureaucrats are dedicated to raising awareness of the moral implications of bureaucracy.  We encourage DeWitt to establish a committee to study whether to recommend that educational administrators order teachers and professors to direct their students to read this blog.  Teachers and professors would then, in accordance with standard institutional procedure, grade students on their comprehension of it.

The Jobbing Doctor describes as “a marvel” a letter from a Professor Sue Hill, the UK Government’s senior scientific officer and a highly skilled bureaucrat. We applaud the Jobbing Doctor for his appreciation of bureaucracy.

Tim Bryce at ToolBox for IT displays his complete misunderstanding of bureaucrats. He declares:

we had to deal with government regulators who issued permits, inspectors and others who supervised construction. I think it’s good that we have such checks and balances, but I’m disturbed by the inordinate amount of red tape they create. I also find such bureaucrats to be a temperamental lot who changes their minds at the drop of a hat.

These persons are entrepreneurs, not bureaucrats. Bureaucrats do not change at the drop of a hat.

Matt Steinglass at Accumulating Peripherals compares bankers to bureaucrats. He notes, “financial institutions appear to be able to waste money at an astronomical pace that simply dwarfs the excesses of any government bureaucracy (except perhaps the Pentagon).” We believe that the excesses of government bureaucracy are excessively exaggerated. In contrast, the waste of financial institutions has been totally unappreciated, at least until now.

That’s all for this month’s Carnival of Bureaucrats. Submit your blog article to the next edition using our carnival submission form. Submissions should conform to the Carnival’s regulations. Past editions of the Carnival of Bureaucrats can be found on the Carnival’s category page.