As much as I enjoy
reading Philip Ochieng’s articles and get more enlightened about the English
language with each and every article, I still have some reservations for his
strict, almost authoritarian, treatment of the English language. I confess my
admiration for Mr. Ochieng’s dexterity with the pen. His effortless expression
in the use of the Queen‘s language to display his literary prowess impresses
and displeases people in almost equal measure. Allow me to assert that Mr.
Ochieng’ still carries the almost obsolete notion of a literacy purist who
still advocates for high correctness and usage of language be it at the
lexical, syntactical, phonological or semantic level.
While this is essential
for the reader, in order to understand the message intended by the writer,
sometimes he goes too far with his grammarian Puritanism. The way he reprimands
reporters over their wrongful ‘sub standard’ or ‘inappropriate’ choice and use
of words leaves a lot to be desired.
I have been a regular
reader of the ‘Nation’ newspaper since my junior years. More so, I have been an
avid reader of Ochieng's ‘fifth columnist’and 'Mark my Word' sections. I find the writers of the Nation and almost entire media fatrernity (except some few whom I choose not to mention)
dwelling on the ultimate goal; informing. Mr. Ochieng’ ought to realize that
the linguistic conservatism of those who live in the outposts of the empire
will never augur well with the imaginative freedom of the dwellers of the
metropolis. Kenya is well an averagely educated country and the ‘Nation’
writers communicate to us in the average English language. The morphology of
the words as well as the sentence structure is comprehensible and easily
understood by most of us. The writers’ objectivity is of utmost importance to
the readership, not how complex and gargantuan their literary expression is.
Mr. Ochieng ought to know that a report cannot be written for mass purposes in
a vocabulary that is deployed in such a way as to create a tone as dreadfully
earnest and a protocol as predictable and formulaic as a religious ritual. The
end justifies the means.
