| 词组 | situation |
| 释义 | situation The situation situation is a major concern in British usage circles, but not so much a cause for comment by Americans. Criticism of situation, particularly as it occurs in phrases like emergency situation and strike situation used in place of emergency and strike, appears to be a sort of post-World War II tradition in Britain; the topic begins with Gowers 1948 and receives more space in each of his succeeding editions (1954 and 1973); it is found in Fowler 1965 (which Gowers edited), Phythian 1979, Burchfield 1981, Bryson 1984, and Longman 1988; it is discussed by J. Enoch Powell in Michaels & Ricks 1980 and by Robert F. Ilson in Greenbaum 1985. The criticized uses of situation have also been satirized in the British magazine Private Eye, in which particularly bad examples have appeared in a regular column headed "Ongoing Situations." (The phrase ongoing situation, for which we have almost no evidence, is especially notorious among the British, who apparently regard it as the quintessence of bureaucratic jargon. They also dislike ongoing by itself. See ongoing.) Most of what little American comment there has been on situation can be found in college handbooks, in which it is typically dismissed as padding. The American criticism presumably derives from Gowers (by way of Fowler 1965), but the jargonistic strike situation usage is generally not mentioned by the Americans; they simply treat situation as an overused word. The jargonistic usage appears, in fact, to be rare in American English. Here is a tongue-in-cheek sentence from a British commentator to give you a better idea of its quality: • Clearly 'clearly' is in an ongoing perspicuity situation as a transparently vacuous vogue word —Howard 1980 Ilson in Greenbaum 1985 comments thoughtfully on two compounds—crisis situation and no-win situation—listed as objectionable by Burchfield. Ilson points out that a crisis situation is likely not to be quite the same as a crisis, and that no-win situation is a short way to express a fairly complex idea. These combinations are both found in American English: • ... the family doctor,... now being recast in a modern role as a specialist in comprehensive, continuing medicine, with as much emphasis on prevention as on crisis situations —Dodi Schultz, Ladies' Home Jour., August 1971 • ... the ingenious Mr. Jeffries juggles his plot so that the murderer is faced with a no-win situation — Newgate Callendar, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 8 Jan. 1984 Neither of these combinations has attracted much criticism from American commentators. No-win situation, in particular, is established as a common idiom and is inoffensive to American ears. Other American uses of situation with a noun attributive modifier seem also to differ somewhat from those disliked by the British: • Not necessarily the man for a heart-to-heart, but indispensable in a party situation —Jay Mclnerney, Bright Lights, Big City, 1984 • ... to get the hostage situation out of the way — Charles Allen, quoted in The Tower Commission Report, 1987 We conclude that the British use of situation, especially in official jargon, is a bit different from American use. The jargon of the bureaucrat, the educator, and the social scientist, is, in any case, rather of an eddy along the mainstream of English. Its faults and virtues are essentially unchanging, and it seems to have little effect on general usage. Situation is one of those vague words that is useful when precision is not wanted. No doubt it can be and is used unnecessarily, but in American English, at least, there seems to be no reason to go out of your way to avoid it. |
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