Adjectives
Both articles are calls to action in our use of adjectives. But where The New York Times article leans heavily into the complex and compound sentence structures, passive verbs and ornate language of the past, The Harvard Business Review prioritizes simple sentences and active verbs as they focus their lens on a linguistic injustice. If The New York Times article asks us to lean back and consider, The Harvard Business Review tells us to stand up and take notice.
Yet both serve their different rhetorical situations well. The New York Times’ author argues for clarity and reduced redundancy by leaning on the authors of the past to make a point directed at an educated audience who will recognize their examples in the present. As a book excerpt, it is afforded a lengthy indulgence to spend time arguing numerous passively constructed points inside a greater whole about rights and wrongs in the craft of description, but without the need to have the reader conclude anything specific. The Harvard Business Review also talks about rights and wrongs, but they are deliberately real-world and consequential. They are directed towards those who can do something about it. Their use of simple sentences and active verbs, less abstracted nouns and interrogative adjectives, combined with rigorous concision reflects the urgency of their intent. For their audience, an author’s clever use of minatory means little compared to the aspects of faint praise, negativity and hedging females experience in job applications.
