There has been a lot of discussion about precise meanings with the “Downing Street Minutes” in particular what was mean by “fixing around”. Much of this has been couched in terms of what the Oxford English Dictionary definition showed. This type of confusion is going to continue and mistakes will be made, even among those who have a knowledge of everyday UK English unless you clearly understand what language you are reading.
English has many variants besides the schism between the USA and Britain. Described as a language that goes out and mugs other languages for words, it is amazingly adaptable and can be used highly creatively. Fusion with other cultures produces new words and structures. Words change meaning and are frequently misused – like the common conflation of “imply” and “infer”. Often a double meaning can be used for comedy or deliberately concealing the actual intent. Let me give you a personal example.
More years ago than I care to remember, I worked for a chain of photographic and electrical retailers here. In our shop we stocked a number of well known brands in addition to the company’s usual ranges as we served a particularly well off area (as an example, we stocked the upper end of Nikon cameras). One particular customer purchased a radio/cassette recorder made by a well respected (brand x)name. Putting it bluntly, it did not meet the expectations he had of it at the price – these were the early days of such machines and things like Dolby were yet to trickle down. He returned it and we first exchanged it for another example. The third time he came back claiming the performance was not adequate we sent it for repair. It came back after being in the repair shop and he came back with it the following day. That time we had it thoroughly tested and they found the example he had exceeded the stated performance figures given by the manufacturer in their documentation. I got involved at this point and explained this to him. He scrutinised it and claimed there was a crack in the plastic of the cassette mechanism. After I got one from the display and another from our storeroom, he finally agreed with me that it was indeed a moulding mark. I then suggested that as a goodwill gesture we could exchange it for a different make and pointed him to one of our own-brand models that we had found was both better quality and more reliable at the same price. I told him that I would have suggested it to him when he first came in (I knew he had insisted on buying this brand name). He aggressively demanded to know why we stocked brand X. I am afraid that I snapped at this point and told him albeint calmly (even sweetly) “Because people like you buy them”. Now this was intended, and delivered, as meaning “because f***ing idiots like you insist on buying them because it has “brand x” on it”. However if I had been challenged I could have claimed I said “Because people, like you, buy them” meaning we stock them because there is a demand in the area for that brand.
Yet if English is capable of double meaning, it can also be extremely precise. This is probably more so in standard British English rather than the US version. Thus in the UK it is possible to distinguish between:
A computer program programme and
A computer programme program.
The first is a scheme to install software, the second a program to schedule a scheme to introduce computers. Here we are getting nearer the language of the DSM. We are moving away from slang or informal to formal English. The sort of language you will see in British newspapers on in news broadcasts from the BBC. Even these are diluted to be more friendly to even a well educated audience. The DSM are however written by those using and even more formal version which you could call legal or Whitehall English. The minutes were not written by a junior clerk who would use slang. These are official documents meant to be precise historical records. If the leaks had not happened they would have only become public in 30 or 50 years when they are finally declassified under the Official Secrets Acts.
Blair uses this linguistic difference to mislead without lying. Listen carefully to his answers and you will find he makes statements in precise legal language which if not critically examined will deceive if you assume he is using informal English. It is how the Pentagon, learning the same trick, are able to say that Napalm bombs were not used in Iraq. No bombs using Napalm were, bombs containing a chemical with a different combination of chemicals that had very similar incendiary effects were.
Which takes us back to the “fixing around” quote from the DSM. As I said, these were not written by a menial using esturine English. They were written by senior, highly educated graduates who had been trained in Whitehall procedures and the proper use of language within formal documents. This is why it is important not to isolate “fixing” from the sense of the extract. This formal sense of accreting the information to the policy is as in ” the Christmas decorations were fixed around the tree”. There is absolutely no circumstances under which the slang or informal usage as in “the boxing match was fixed” would be used in these official documents unless they were directly quoting someone. In the context of the minutes, this is not the case. Commentators like Hichins who have claimed otherwise are either disingenuous or, as is possible from someone who shared the “public school” education of many of these Whitehall “Mandarins”, he is setting out deliberately to deceive.
