FOR WHAT WE ARE ABOUT TO PERCEIVE
Sebastian Faulks on a
new abuse of language, afflicting even the otherwise literate
EVERY now and then a word is misused so badly that it becomes a major public hazard. We all remember the 'situation' epidemic of the mid-Seventies which now seems mercifully to have passed. But there is a new menace, and one that, instead of being derided by the press, is being taken up by them. It is impossible to turn on the radio now without continuously hearing the word 'perceive' and its noun 'percep- tion' being used in a new and brutal way. In the space of about a year, the meaning of the word has been turned through very nearly 180 degrees. Where it used to mean it clearly, apprehend, se rendre compte', !t is now used by politicians, pundits, interviewees and the press to mean 'view subjectively, believe, suppose, see partially or mistakenly.' The misuse is so widespread that one already feels self-conscious about using the word in its proper sense: 'Jane Austen's gift of perception . . .'; 'Trevor Brooking's skill and perception in midfield . . .'; 'He was able to perceive the weakness of the enemy and act upon it . . .'. Whenever the word is correctly used, it has the sense of truthful, accurate, indeed unusually acute apprehension. But consider recent usage. 'What we have to do is try to improve the black community's perception of itself . . .'; 'the BBC's perceived independence . . .'; 'Neil Kinnock is not only perceived to be a nice chap, he really is a nice chap!' In each of these examples the word carries a connota- tion of inaccuracy, wrong-thinking, and subjective or blurred ideas. In the first example the speaker is not implying that black people have a correct view of them- selves which needs to be improved, in the second he is not saying that the BBC is rightly thought to be independent and applauded for it; in the third, most extreme example the speaker implies that fact and perception are almost directly opposed. You can take it for granted, he is saying, that if the public 'perceives' something, it is probably wrong. Given the actual meaning of the word, this is a logical nonsense.
I first heard it used in its new sense by a council officer in Bradford in May 1984. He worked in one of the newer disciplines, where respect for language is not a prior- ity, and I assumed, rightly or wrongly, that he had picked it up from the closed world of sociology where simple things are often given long names to make them sound more important and more worthy of salar- ied inquiry. It was not until this summer that it reached epidemic proportions on the radio and, to a lesser extent, in newspap- ers. What is sad is that it is not only the rougher hacks who are doing it.
Gordon Clough, the gravelly, slightly impatient presenter of The World At One is one of the worst offenders. This is dis- appointing, because everything else about him is first-class. The Kinnock example quoted above comes from the journalist Edward Pearce, who is generally thought to be a good writer. (Quite a different thing from being perceived to be a good writer.) Michael Charlton's recent Radio 3 interview with Jimmy Carter on the arms race could have been subtitled 'Mutually Perceived Destruction'. On Any Questions on 26 October a young American asked the panel: 'Is there any difference in the way that America and Europe view the Soviet threat?' The presenter, John Timpson, took the question and 'improved' it. `Thank you. Our first question,' he told the panel, 'is about perceptions of the Soviet threat.' Which of course is exactly what it wasn't about. The torture of the English language that took place over the next seven or eight minutes as the panel took their cue from the chairman was awful to hear. In the Times Literary Supplement of 18 October 1985 Maggie Gee, the novelist, wrote:
Because Vonnegut is popular, he is not perceived as experimental. It is not just a question of how he is perceived and pre- sented; Vonnegut has made some very diffe- rent stylistic choices from Burns.
The first 'perceived' means 'believed to be' or 'thought of as'; the second 'perceived' makes it clear that the writer thinks the word has something to do with mistaken reading and distortion. (The words after the semi-colon do not bear close inspec- tion, either, but that's a different problem.) It is a bad misuse for several reasons. First, it is pompous. Second, it is unneces- sary, since there are so many words (viewed, thought, seen, believed, sup- posed etc) to choose from, and any one of them can give a finer nuance in the required context. Third, it diminishes the language: 'perceive' in the proper sense has no exact synonym, and if the word is to be hijacked off to an area of meaning already well served, then the range of expression open to us is, however minute- ly, reduced. Fourth, it is just wrong: perceived doesn't mean what these people want it to mean. It is especially irritating when journalists and politicians of some standing can throw away the acquired verbal habits of 50 years and change the meaning they give to a word overnight, just because the next man has done so.
When people used to talk about 'con- frontation situations' and the like, the press were quick to pour scorn on them, and now the usage is limited to the very, very dim or to the jocular — `Did you get into a group sex situation?' has a pleasantly dated and sarcastic spin to it. The cam- paign against `hopefully' used in the sense of 'with any luck' as opposed to `with a song in one's heart' has been less success- ful. This is partly because the abuse may have met a genuine need; there certainly does not seem to be a single word that covers the meaning it has now acquired. Sir Robert Burchfield of the OED and others defended its use.
With both of these words the press did its best, and a scoreline of won one, lost one, is not too bad, especially when one considers that there are strong arguments for the new use of 'hopefully'. But 'per- ceive' is a different matter. The press appears to be leading the assault, not holding out against it. Just how a solecism escapes from an enclosed world and is foisted on the general public is something of a mystery (advertising is possibly one route); but until the mystery is solved, it is worth remembering that when Aldous Huxley wrote about his drug experiences in The Doors of Perception, he did not mean to imply that there was anything false in the reality he encountered. He did not call it 'the Doors of Supposition.'
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