June 18,2020
[Previously published October 4, 2018]
OK, now this is pretty funny.
I think it has to do with the idea of Richard Dawkins’ memes, which definition I find it difficult to keep in mind. But in this case it is a TV meme rather than an internet one, although there is crossover in that many people obtain their news videos on various websites.
Anyhow, back to the word, used a zillion times this week in relation to the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. The actual word, or perhaps I should say the word up until now, has been corroborate. From the Latin prefix: co (cor), together, and robarare, to strengthen.
Note that there are no “w”’s in the word.
There is, however, a very common and well-known Elmer Fudd speech impediment, where he refers to Bugs Bunny as “that Wascally Wabbit!”, also exploited by the scientist character in “The Big Bang Theory” called Barry Kripke. He refers to himself as “Bawwy”, and pronounces every r as a w.
In this day and age, when to mock a disability is a mortal sin, it is hard for me to understand how anyone can get away with making fun of a speech impediment, but there you have it.
There is, and I wish I could remember who it is, a news reporter who has a mild form of this speech impediment, and manages a sound that is half-way between the r and the w. I think I recall that Barbara Walters had a touch of it as well. But this week there have also been several non-lawyer senators and others, who, even initially, used the Elmer Fudd pronunciation.
Almost everyone with legal training has learned how to pronounce corroborate properly because it is such an important idea in the law, that testimony often requires corroboration in order to become credible. But the countervailing influence in this case is the tendency for any repeated usage to become a meme by simple mimicry. In the case of TV news, one can hear a linguistic error, uttered by one newscaster early in the morning, spread to several others, even on other channels or in other countries, by the end of the day.
By my count, about 40% of the people using the word corroborate, after just over a week of the Christine Ford controversy, are saying “cowwoborate”. Strangely, they morph the first two r’s into w, then leave the last r unchanged. Proving this is clearly a meme rather than a contagious speech impediment.
Watching the news just now, I found myself yelling, “IT’S CORROBORATE!” at the images on the screen. They didn’t care a bit. Within a decade sixth-grade teachers will be teaching: “cowwoborate, c-o-w-w-o-b-o-r-a-t-e, cowwoborate”.
And now you will know why.
END