I think we’re a nation with a penchant for verbal tics. Lower down the newspaper for a second and listen in to the hum of conversations taking place around you.
“To be honest, it doesn’t look like the Gozo Bishop’s pilgrimage for rain has worked, has it?”; “I absolutely love Panama hats, to be honest”; “Well, to be honest, I fancy watching Konrad Mizzi doing the Maori Haka dance in New Zealand”; “To be honest, I’m taking a tub of crisps with me to the marathon in case I get peckish half way”. (I’m not inventing these, promise).
Now spot and count the ‘to be honests’. Have you noticed how we pepper our daily chats with this verbal preface? We use it instead of a comma. It’s like a heralding trumpet; a group of three words to announce in fanfare what we’re about to say. It is so ingrained in our discourse that we even use it in our texts and online chats, and it has its own little acronym for those typing in a rush: tbh.
‘To be honest’ is the new ‘like’ – as in “I went to Sliema, like, and couldn’t find parking, like”. It replaces ‘personally, I think…’ and it has killed off ‘frankly’ and ‘tipo’ and ‘I mean’ and ‘iva ta’. All of these words are fads, bookends to our sentences; they do the rounds for a number of years until they become part of the language culture.
But such tics always have a context; they reflect, in ome way or other, traits of society. My beloved George Orwell in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ talks about the importance of the use of language in public life and bemoans how political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind” (he wrote this in 1946, although he could easily have written it this week). Then in his fiction book 1984, he explores how language can be manipulated to change reality.
So today I am wondering why this need of declaring honesty before we speak. Are we surrounded so much by lies that we are all the time trying to invoke integrity? Is it a subconscious effort that we are collectively making because we want things to be less dishonest? Are we using ‘to be honest’ like a psychological punctuation mark?
Is it a subconscious effort that we are collectively making because we want things to be less dishonest? Are we using ‘to be honest’ like a psychological punctuation mark?
First things first: where did the phrase came from? We imported it, of course. From the States. My uncle, who has lived there since he was 18 years old, has used it for decades. Sometimes on the phone he applies the American-twanged Maltese version too, for emphasis: “Kristina, to be honest, biex ngħidlek il-verità, Americans are worried about Donald Trump”.
There are scores of American websites dedicated to discovering the reason behind people’s uttering of ‘to be honest with you’. Some say it’s a way of asking permission to be more blunt; others say it’s a way of lowering down the boundaries when you are talking to a stranger; others see it as a manner of softening a comment that otherwise may sound like criticism or complaining. In short they consider the phrase as a tool of tact.
They are of course being very American about it, and they’re wrong. Have you noticed how the phrase is almost always accompanied by an ever-so-slight roll of the eyes and a tilt of the head? That’s because ‘to be honest’ is a filler which we use to plug ourselves. Not unlike a marketing slogan.
Bear in mind we are living in an era where we are on show all the time; exposed 24/7 on social media. Since the dawn of CNN’s 24-hour news cycle, public figures have become acutely wary of what they say, and everyone speaks in soundbites. We, the viewers took that on and consequently it’s like we are all geared up to promote ourselves all the time, to the detriment of frank authenticity.
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article on what they called ‘verbal tee-ups’ and they quote a syntax expert saying: “You are more likely to seem like someone who is perfectly honest when you are no longer commenting on it”.
It is not easy to eliminate a verbal tic, especially when it has creeped so much in our daily speech that it becomes like a form of décor – like a verbal accessory. Also saying ‘to be honest’ wins you a few seconds to formulate your thoughts before speaking, replacing ‘err…’ and ‘um…’
But with everyone saying it every other second, it’s becoming highly annoying and irksome. Therefore, seeing as we’re going into March this week, I think we should really spring-clean our conversation and make a collective effort to stop saying it.
*Tomorrow, February 29, is leap day. According to an old Irish legend, St Brigid struck a deal with St Patrick to allow women to propose to men on this day, which comes every four years. So, on your knees ladies, and don’t accept any verbal tics for answers.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti