An Irishman's Diary

I might not go so far as the Gospel of St Matthew (5:37) which, warning against the use of unnecessary oaths when speaking the truth, advises: “Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.” But if it’s not the work of the devil, quite, the rise of the word “absolutely” as a substitute for “yes” in radio or television interviews is at least one of the most annoying trends of our time.

Rarely can so many things have been in doubt, and known to be in doubt, as now. We live in an era when those great harbingers of uncertainty – economists – dominate public debate. And when the only thing we can be sure of, apparently, is that we are where we are.

Despite which, asked their opinion on just about any other subject, every politician, media commentator, and dog in the street now feels compelled to begin his answer with: “Absolutely, Pat”. Or “Absolutely not, Marian,” as the case may be.

I don’t know when the A-word became so ubiquitous. In fact, it’s already hard to remember a time when it didn’t feature in every interview.

Even so, I vaguely recall a more modest age, when – for example – a Danish brewing company could still have a global success with an advertising campaign claiming that its product was “probably” the best lager in the world. So the trend must have begun some time after that.

There’s a school of thought that it was OJ Simpson who started it, in 1995. Like all trial defendants, he had been offered a chance to swear on a Bible (including Matthew 5:37) that he would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But that wasn’t enough for him.

No. Asked if he had committed murder, he didn’t confine himself to a “Yea, yea,” or even a “Nay, nay”. He said instead that he was: “Absolutely 100 per cent not guilty.” Maybe that’s when the habit went viral (as we didn’t yet say then). In any case, the A-word is now the mere entry level of self-assurance required from all public interviewees. And what’s worse is that, given the constant inflationary pressures on language, even that soon won’t be enough.

Indeed, searching for the word in The Irish Timesarchive, I noticed its most recent use in reported conversation was – surprise, surprise – in last week's exchanges between the former Anglo Irish Bank CEOs David Drumm and Seán FitzPatrick.

Commenting on the latter’s claims to have distanced himself from the former’s running of the bank by the time of the “Anglo Ten” controversy, Drumm declared that, on the contrary, FitzPatrick had been “absolutely and utterly” informed. This is probably where we’re headed next.

STILL ON LANGUAGE, there was a fascinating article in the New York Timesthe other day about a hyper-intelligent dog – a border collie – that appears to have a vocabulary (not a spoken one, I hasten to add) of more than 1,000 words.

Her name is Chaser and she was taught the words by her owner, a retired psychologist, using toys, balls and other objects. In each case he would name an item up to 40 times, then hide it, and saying the name, ask her to find it.

Along with specific objects, she can also recognise generic terms, as when required to “fetch a frisbee”. She can engage in processes of elimination too. Asked for an object with a name she hasn’t heard before, the dog will ignore the things whose names she does know.

So far, all the words Chaser recognises are simple nouns, which is just as well. If she understood adverbs, for example, you could foresee problems. The owner might ask her if she knew where a named toy was, whereupon the dog would nod the word “Absolutely!” and then change the subject.

But the next challenge the psychologist has set himself is to teach her "elementary grammar". His longer-term hope is that the experiments will help increase communication between people and dogs generally. In the meantime, says the NYT, the cautionary tale for he and all such students of animal intelligence is the so-called "Clever Hans effect".

Clever Hans was a horse that achieved fame in Germany about a century ago for its apparent ability to solve arithmetical problems and tap out answers with a hoof.

That was until a psychologist who studied the phenomenon noticed that Hans picked the right answer only when the questioner also knew it. Then he was able to show that, rather than doing mental arithmetic, the horse was merely responding to minute movements by the questioner: such as a habit of tensing as the hoof began tapping and then relaxing when it reached the right answer.

Owners are often tempted to attribute more intelligence to their pets than the animals really possess. That said, I owned a horse myself once. And I’d swear on the Bible that it used to say “Nay, nay” all the time.

• fmcnally@irishtimes.com