Michael Longley - Green wank and Orange wank

Michael Longley with his portrait by Colin Davidson. See Longley with Mallie and I here.

Michael Longley met David Remnick on his 1994 visit to Belfast. They went for a walk and talk at the Giant’s Ring in South Belfast in 1994.

"These sides are divided from each other in their souls. They adhere to ridiculous visions of themselves and their histories. I call it ‘the green wank’ and ‘the orange wank’."

Sinn Fein's logophobia of "Northern Ireland"

Cartoon by Ian Knox

Martin McGuinness might be a chief administrator of a devolved province of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, but he can't seem to say the name of the place which he governs, opting instead for the term, "the North". Holywood man Paddy McEvoy wrote a letter to the Irish News about the increasing use of "the North":

"The term “North of Ireland”... has crept into common parlance in recent years. This now seems to be a generally accepted code for those who think they are staying on-side, striking a blow for freedom by refusing to say Northern Ireland, just as some on the non-conformist wing of politics refuse to say the “Republic of Ireland”, they prefer “Free State”, “26 counties” or “the South”."

George Orwell - [Loyalists] and the English Language

Loyalists Against Democracy (@LadFleg), myself and others in the public sphere are regularly reproached for making fun of illiteracy, bad spelling and broad accents. I'm regularly rebuffed as a "snob". A charge I reject, refrain and responded to directly here and here.

Those are made fun of for bad spelling and for poor grammar have committed unpardonable and intolerable acts. They are not beyond criticism. When they commit gratuitous and promiscuous criminality they inflict social and economic misery across the whole of Belfast and the whole of Northern Ireland.

Fintan O'Toole on the hyper-inflation of language and emotion

Father Alec Reid claimed on October 18 2005 here that Ulster unionists treated the Catholic community "like the Nazis treated the Jews." Fintan O'Toole responded to this with an article in the Irish Times with the title 'Comparison with Nazis is absurd'. He said:

"I happened to be in the Polish city of Wroclow. At lunch that day, when there was some talk about historical memory, I was on the brink of mentioning the controversy to my Polish hosts, but I just couldn't do it. I was too ashamed.

Fintan O'Toole called it a "combination of historical ignorance and monumental self-pity." He continued: 

"How could you possibly explain that Irish nationalists, who are thought to be so steeped in the past, know so little about the recent history of the continent they inhabit? There is no excuse for not having at least a general sense of proportion, for being wary of camparisons that are as inaccurate as they are offensive."

He spoke of the cognitive dissonance and contradictions:

"The irony of all the hyper-inflation of the experiences of Catholics in Northern Ireland after partition by involving the Nazis or, as Sinn Fein tends to prefer, apartheid Africa, is that it actually occludes those experiences themselves. It discredits history itself as a context in which we can understand the present."

In full here. Fintan O'Toole also wrote in The New York Review of Books here in 1998 that, "The analogy between Irish Republicans and Mandela is not in fact valid."

Mark Forsyth - The Elements of Eloquence

On November 11 2013 Radio 4 ran a feature on the new book authored by Mark Forsyth (@Inkyfool) called The Elements of Eloquence. The book examines what makes a beautiful sentence. Here's some of the oratorical tools and techniques which add taste and texture to any delivery.

One. The AABA pattern (also known as diacope) is very common rhetorical tool. For example: "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo"; "my horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse"; "alone, alone, all alone"; "You villain, villain, you damned, smiling villain."

Two. Another rhetorical device is antithesis. The use of opposites in the same sentence, as deployed by Charles Dickens and then singer Katy Perry.

Three. Another tool is Chiasmus, a rhetorical device that originates from the Greekchiazo, meaning "to shape like a letter X." It is a figure of speech in which the second half of an expression is reversed to mirror the first half, i.e. A/B, B/A (where the letters represent words, phrases or parts of speech).

Perhaps the best known example of chiasmus is JFK’s "ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country." Another is, "We don't get stop playing when we get old, we get old when we stop playing."

Mark Forsyth also explained how he wants to move public speaking up the value curve in schools and society. He said:

"Since the 19th Century no one has really been taught rhetoric. That's why I want to bring this back. Shakespeare was steeping in it."

First broadcast on the Today programme on Monday 11 November, you can listen here. Read my previous posts on public speaking, including a post on Dale Carnegie here and here.