In a recent Times article, Philip Howard pounced on the deplorable word 'Valorisation' which seems to be trying to edge its way into the English language. 'To enhance the price, value or status of by organised ... action' is one of the meanings he quotes for it. Here is an example of one such usage: 'the literary critics' valorisation of tradition'. This phrase occurs towards the end of W.J. McCormack's dissection of Anglo-Irishness as a literary and historical concept, Ascendancy and Tradition. 'Valorise', indeed, is a verb much favoured in this book, along with others like 'energise' and 'traumatise'. There's a word that might be applied to this style of writing: unstylish. At one point we catch the author of Ascendancy and Tradition considering the way in which Joyce and Yeats 'as a binary and mutually dependent cultural production confront the totality of history'. There the two unfortunate literary figures stand, symbiosis thrust upon them. At another moment, the history of Ireland is called 'bifurcated', which makes it sound like a pair of trousers. It is very provoking of W.J. McCormack to write in this benighted way. The less he has to say, the more fussy and fustian his manner becomes. On the poem 'Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen', we get this:

LRB 5 September 1985 | PDF Download