Doublespeak and gobbledygook

A 60-plus-year-old "ajeossi" (uncle) strikes again. Of course, like so many other ideas of government officials, this is nothing new. He’s only mimicking other “leaders” who have insisted on doublespeak and gobbledygook by calling it “branding.” (Or, maybe it is called K-branding, I’m not sure). It started at least in 2020 with a mandate from the culture and tourism ministry that Korea was officially adopting redundancy in English names for natural areas, cultural monuments and the like.

Back then, the culture folks insisted that Mount Nam in Seoul should be called Namsan Mountain and “XYZGoong” should be called XYZGoong Palace. And now, Mr. Mayor has decreed that the Han River is now to be called “Hangang River.” Never mind that “goong” means palace, or that “san” means mountain — technically “mount" when referring to an individual peak — or that “gang” means river. I’m told the city invited some native English speakers to join its committee, but the foreigners were there in a tokenish display — there’s another op-ed on that topic.

Although perhaps not politically correct, I like what the Chinese have done at most of their famous attractions. They translated the Chinese into English, so we get “Imperial City,” inside of which is the “Forbidden City,” instead of “Hwangcheng” and “ Zijincheng.” The “Gate of Heavenly Peace” is also commonly known worldwide as “Tiananmen” (not Tiananmen Gate).

How much more romantic would Korea’s palace and monument names be if they were translated into something meaningful for the tourists to which this K-branding is being created? While “gyeong” literally means scenery, and “bok” means blessing or good fortune, we could have the “Palace of Beautiful Fortune.” And “Gwanghwamun” could be the “Gate of Great Enlightenment.” Isn’t that much better than “Gwanghwamun Gate.” Most Koreans, and I asked hundreds, don’t know the meaning of these ancient names. How much would visitors and the outside world enjoy getting to know this great land?

Of course, language borrowing goes on everywhere, in most cultures and most language groups. For example, “a la mode,” a French term meaning fashionable. But in American usage, it means pie topped with ice cream. “Arbeit,” the German word “work,” came into use in Japan decades ago and then transferred to Korea, where it meant part-time job. Modern Korean young people call it “alba,” a contracted version of the word “arubaitu,” where the “r” and the “l” are represented by the same Hangeul letter, the “real.”

Redundance and tautologies abound in written and spoken language. We often see, in advertising, “free gift.” Gifts usually are free. “ATM machine,” but the “m” means machine already. (Kind of like the Han River River!). Or “I saw it with my own eyes.” Excuse me, who else’s eyes could you have possibly used anyway? I often see people use “each and every one of you.” But “each” and “every” mean the same. I’m not sure where this next example fits; it’s sort of a tautology but not exactly the textbook definition: air traffic jargon, “near miss,” when what they really miss is “you almost crashed.”

Where “tautology” uses different words to say the same thing, “redundancy” uses more words than necessary. I see this often in this very newspaper. “A total of 300 people,” When “300” is already a total. Or “the victim died of fatal wounds,” when “fatal” means the person died. A related one is “the victim was fatally stabbed a dozen times.” Certainly, the victim may have been stabbed a dozen times, but one of them was the fatal blow, not all of them.

I blame my English teachers during my public school years. They assigned essays with minimum word counts in their zeal to get us to expand our vocabularies. To get to that magic “500” words, we padded and added and used adjectives in lone strings, and although we may have achieved the words required, most of what we wrote was doublespeak and gobbledygook. I didn’t have a proper grammar teacher until my last two years in high school and later at university. Those folks taught me how to write, how to describe, and most of all, how to be clear in what I was trying to say. Redundancies and tautologies muddy the text for a reader. It provides a poor model that continues to be perpetuated by succeeding generations of students and other writers. With more and more artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology, I think the personal skill of crafting a good piece of writing will disappear. The humans involved with the culture ministry and Seoul City are deficient in this department. Humans increasingly communicate less effectively, and AI will sadly become the standard for composition.

But never mind me. I’m just a multilingual native English-speaking writer and editor. But I’m also a foreigner, so what do I know?

Rev. Steven L. Shields, FRAS (slshields@gmail.com) has lived in Korea for many years, beginning in the 1970s. A lifelong member of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea, he has served as a director and president. He was a copy editor of The Korea Times in 1977. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect The Korea Times’ editorial stance.