THE PROBLEM OF LANGUAGE -- BP CHAIRMAN SLIP OF THE TONGUE!

THE PROBLEM WITH LANGUAGE -- BP CHAIRMAN SLIP OF THE TONGUE!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© June 17, 2010

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“The common people do not accurately adapt their thoughts to objects; nor, secondly, do they accurately adapt their words to their thoughts; they do not mean to lie; but, taking no pains to be exact, they give you very false accounts. A great part of their language is proverbial; if anything rocks at all, they say it rocks like a cradle; and in this way they go on.”

Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784), English author, lexicographer, conversationalist, and author of the Oxford English Dictionary.

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Nerves are on edge, people are suffering, tempers are about to explode. This describes the provincial indigenous peoples of the Deep South that hug the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

People of this region are hard working, passionate, and for generations fisherman, oilrig workers, entertainers, restaurateurs, and craftsmen.


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Hurricane Katrina knocked them to the floor, but they got up, only to be knocked back down with the Great Recession of 2008, which is still on going, with nearly 10 percent unemployment across the nation. Unemployment, before the oilrig disaster, was even greater than this along the Gulf coastline.

Now oil in the Gulf has robbed them of everything while blackening their future and horizons.

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So, it is understandable that many become exercised when British Petroleum Chairman of the Board, Carl-Henric Svanberg, a Swede, with American English most likely his third language, said, “I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don’t care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people.”

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Samuel Johnson knew how proverbial and provincial was language. It can cut like a knife when it is actually trying to butter our bread.

My sense is that Chairman Svanberg misspoke. Language is idiosyncratic full of nuances and hidden meanings, meanings that can offend when the intention is quite the opposite. I think that was the case here. He meant to convey that BP cares about all people. Freud would see it as an unconscious slip, but I don’t.


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I am an American who has had the advantage of a long and involved academic experience. Yet, I can offend in the only tongue I know, which is American English, and regional at that, being a Midwesterner.

Imagine what I could do if I could actually converse in another language. Goethe once said, “A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is ignorant of his own.” My limitations often remind me of that fact.

Hopefully, the good people of the Gulf region will look past this faux pas with the grace and generosity of spirit of which they are famous.

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