Definitions of 'propaganda' and 'coming to terms'

Prior to the August 8 elections, the word 'propaganda' featured prominently. This was because two sides of the political divide tried as much as possible to score off each other. Things were said that sounded ridiculous or simply did not add up.

The question therefore is; what is propaganda? Simply put, it is a medium of persuasion with the potential of achieving either positive or negative results. Mistakenly though, most people believe propaganda must dwell on the negative; the falsehoods. Propaganda is something we come face to face with on every day basis without acknowledging it for what it is.

That salesman on the bus who goes into a monologue to sell you some brown powder, positively stating it cures arthritis; that radio and TV advert that persuades you to buy the product as a result of the salesman's pitch, boils down to propaganda. Thus, propaganda is that which tricks by shaping our attitudes.

Propaganda

And while propaganda takes on many forms, the two most common are 'argumentum ad populum' and 'argumentum ad hominem'. 'Argumentum' is Latin for 'argument' while the English word for 'populum' is 'people' and 'hominem' for 'human' or 'person' thus the expressions simply mean 'argument to the people' and 'argument to the individual'. Ad hominem is the more prevalent form which, rather than tackle the issue at hand, attacks the individual who raises the issue. Ad hominem is a favourite of the Kenyan politician who has nothing to sell, no agenda and no prospects for bettering the lives of the common man.

When an official of IEBC in the ICT department was reported missing just days to the elections, a loquacious legislator, rather than address the issue of 'disappearance', gave the best example of ad hominem by attacking the person of a man who at the time was lying dead somewhere. After the presidential election results were announced, a prominent member of the Opposition went ad hominem on select individual observers, particularly former American Foreign Secretary John Kerry and former South African President Thabo Mbeki, among others.

And when one of the daily newspapers reported the sad story on the finding of the missing man who had been found brutally murdered, its headline read 'Police recovered body in a forest in Kikuyu on Saturday'.

To 'recover' means to get back, retrieve, salvage or claim. As such, either of the actions mentioned can only be followed by the word 'from'. The word 'in' is appropriate to something that is 'inside' or 'within'. Had the writer omitted the word 'recover' and opted for 'found', using 'in' to describe the position or place where the body lay upon discovery would have been appropriate.

Come to terms

Then while describing the grief that assailed the murdered man's relatives, the reporter wrote: "They are yet to come into terms'. The correct expression is, "they are yet to come to terms". 'Come to terms' means accepting a difficult situation like the finality of death, or simply any great loss.

And while the traditional imparters of news occasionally get it wrong, I was surprised to hear one the political analysts that grace our television sets every week actually say: 'a significant amount of people'. How do we define 'amount'? The simplest definitions are 'quantity' 'sum', 'total', 'volume' and 'extent'. Can either 'sum', 'quantity' or 'volume' apply to people? The word 'amount' is misplaced in the sentence. Because the analyst intended to statistically prove that many people were for, or against a certain issue, rather than use the word 'amount', he should have used the word 'number' hence; 'a significant number of people'.

Finally, let's look at 'first language interference' on the English language. First language interference is manifested when pronunciation of words in a foreign language is dictated by how we pronounce words in our mother tongues. Notably, there are communities that cannot pronounce letters 'r', 'l', 'f' and 'p' because they do not feature in their mother tongues.

But with conscious effort, this can be overcome. Most radio adverts take advantage of this and make stereotypes of certain communities. Rather than clearly understand 'election' to be what it is, we have often heard the word unconsciously pronounced 'erection'. I have friends who, absent-mindedly pronounce 'p' like 'f'. Imagine what you would hear if one was to say 'park the car'.

Mr Chagema is a correspondent at The [email protected]