So I was traveling again yesterday. As I rounded the bottom of Lake Michigan, which for those of you who’ve never done it is excruciatingly un-scenic, I looked for some sort of distraction.
Instead of doing something productive, like learning to speak Balinese or dictating another chapter of my book, I turned on sports radio. For two and a half hours, I heard nothing but the endless repetition of the Manti Te’o story interspersed with reaction to the Bears’ new head coach.
It was somewhere around Chesterton, Indiana that I snapped. Can we all agree to stop using the word “narrative” for a couple hundred years? Huh? Can we?
Now, to paraphrase Miss Hoover, “narrative” is a perfectly cromulent word. According to Webster, it is defined as:
1: something that is narrated : story, account
2: the art or practice of narration
3: the representation in art of an event or story; also : an example of such a representation
But after an exhausting and interminable election cycle in which the chattering classes in the media used this word to describe each candidate’s political stance, statements, resume, attitude toward dogs, and whatever else they happened to be talking about, we now have the lazy meatheads in sports media aping them in their overuse/misuse of the word.
I mean, c’mon, what did that word ever do to you?
Now, I’ve often been accused of using an arcane or complex word when a simple word would do. I’ve come to understand my fault and am better at recognizing it when I do it. There’s nothing wrong with stating what you mean, simply and accurately. After all, the dictionary is full of words, do we have to pick one, and then use it all the damn time until it’s completely lost its meaning?
I can see how the media latched on to this word. “Narrative,” sounds somehow smarter than the word “story.” Why use a completely average but accurate word, when another word conveys sort of the same thing with more syllables? We all want to sound smart right?
Unfortunately there are a lot of words that get abused this way. It happens constantly in business where the misuse/overuse of words by barely literate functionaries trying to sound smart rises the level of an art form.
Some years ago, ESPN had a short-lived (with a long “i” thank you!) reality show about kids vying for a limited number of walk-on scholarships for the Texas Tech basketball team, coached at that time by the legendary Bobby Knight. Coach Knight held tryout practices for the kids to show their basketball chops. In one scene, a young man who fancied himself as a great, but as yet undiscovered point-guard, put on a ball handling exhibition during a scrimmage.
He dribbled all over the court. Between his legs, behind his back, right hand, left hand, around, through, and over defenders. He was a blur of motion. Coach Knight watched this display patiently for a while, and when it became obvious that the young man was not going to pass to ball any time soon, he blew his whistle.
Everyone stopped as all eyes turned to Coach Knight. He calmly walked over to the next Nate Archibald and asked him for the ball. The boy handed it to him, unsure of what was about to happen. Coach Knight turned, tossed the ball to one of the equipment managers and said, “Get this guy a new ball! This one’s been dribbled out.”
Point made.
