You’ve been on the receiving end of backhanded phrases, and admit it, you’ve used them, too. A discussion on Ask MetaFilter prompts Grant and Martha to talk about the ways people use sugar-coated snark. By the way, if you want a fancy word for veiled criticisms like “bless her heart” and “let me know how that works out,” it’s charientism, from a Greek word that means “the expression of an unpleasant thing in an agreeable manner.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Sugar-Coated Snark”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
I got a really big kick recently from an online discussion. This was at the site AskMetafilter.com, where people were talking about socially acceptable ways to express negative opinions to people. I’m talking about those backhanded phrases like, oh, how nice for you. Or, let me know how that turns out.
You know, growing up as a child of the South, I used to hear all the time and used to use all the time sort of the mother of all backhanded phrases, which, as you know, Grant, is bless her heart, bless your heart. I mean, you can get away with saying anything if you just add bless your heart to it. You know, she’s gained so much weight since that last baby, bless her heart.
And almost all of these expressions have something in them where they could be read both ways. So if you don’t want to believe that the other person met you ill will, you can just let yourself go along merrily, right?
Oh, exactly. I might say, isn’t that interesting?
Yeah, that’s a good one. And you might believe that I actually think it’s interesting rather than just like passing you off.
Right, right. So it’s sort of this social contract almost. How nice for you.
Yeah, I love that one. And the other one I learned when I was a teenage babysitter was, oh, yes, Mrs. Jones, your children were as good as they could be.
I have a colleague who I won’t mention who has the bare minimum of politeness in a single expression, and she’ll go, huh.
That’s a good one. That’s it. There’s no language there, really. I’ve got to assume that that was just an expression of interest, right?
I don’t know.
Yeah. Well, we should link to this on our website because, I don’t know, I was just laughing the whole way through, partly because I’ve been on either side of it. You know, I’ve used those expressions, and I’ve been the recipient of them.
So do you have a favorite socially acceptable way to express a negative opinion? Let us know, or call us about any kind of language, sayings and idioms, slang and dialects, or speaking and writing well.
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