A Word, Please: Don’t let state codes rob you of speech
Imagine a world where women aren’t women. They’re females. There are no children, only juveniles. A place where there is no “about” or “near,” only “approximately” and “in the vicinity of.” Where no one gets or uses or learns anything but instead acquires, utilizes and ascertains everything. Here, suspects are suspects and perpetrators are usually suspects, too. And, people? Why, surely you mean “individuals” — or possibly “persons.”
Welcome to the world of law-enforcement speak, where nothing is simple and everything has the tone of covering one’s own backside.
OK, I’m not making fun of law enforcement people or their spokesmen or even the TV reporters trying a bit too hard to report the news with legal precision. Instead, I’m building a case. I’m lining up closing arguments in my own defense against allegations leveled against me recently by not one but four readers of this column.
I’ll let David from Burbank speak for all my accusers.
“In your column of Nov. 21, 2015, you state that ‘rob’ and ‘burglarize’ are synonyms. They are not even by the most generous definitions found in Webster’s online dictionary. A robbery occurs when one person forcibly takes the property of and from another person. Compare grand theft person where no force is involved. A burglary occurs when someone enters a residence of another, although it could also be a locked automobile, with the intent to commit a felony therein or any theft, grand or petit. … For more information, see generally California Penal Code sections 211, 459 and 487.”
David knows criminal law. He worked in the field for more than three decades. But what David doesn’t know is that the California Penal Code, for all its awesome power, simply doesn’t have the authority to tell us how to talk.
But before we get to that, let’s talk about the dictionary. I wasn’t able to figure out what Webster’s David was referring to. Technically, there is no Webster’s dictionary. The name Webster isn’t controlled by any one company. Competing publishers use the name of the late lexicographer.
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary is the default reference for the Chicago Manual of Style, making it one of the most influential dictionaries in American English. And here’s one of its definitions of the word “rob”: “b (1): to remove valuables without right from (a place); (2): to take the contents of (a receptacle).”
Webster’s New World College Dictionary is the default reference for the Associated Press Stylebook, so it rivals Merriam’s in its influence. Here’s one of its definitions of “rob”: “Popularly: to steal something from in any way, as by embezzlement or burglary; to plunder or rifle.”
I’m not sure which Webster’s David was citing, but I know it wasn’t one of the big boys of Noah name-dropping.
So if the California Penal Code says one thing and the nation’s leading dictionaries say something else, whose rules are you supposed to follow? The answer: It depends on who you are and what you’re doing.
If you’re a police officer writing up a report, you should, of course, use precise terminology. But if you’re a guy who works at a Starbucks telling friends about how someone broke into your parked car and stole your phone charger, then you can say you were robbed.
Legislators don’t dictate how we use the language. We, the people, do. Dictionaries, after all, are the product of lexicography, which is based on usage. Our usage.
You might argue that it would be nice if we had someone — even some legislative body — to write rules on this stuff. But as a nonjuvenile female individual with intent to engage in the act of utilizing language, I do willfully object to that characterization and state for the record that this female, for one, is glad that legal-speak isn’t my only permissible course of action.
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JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.