It can be said that the most basic display of patriotism is the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Following is a linguistic analysis of the Pledge of Allegiance that may shed light on a new interpretation of this tradition.

 

On March 30, 2010, NPR printed an article by linguist Geoff Nunberg called, "I Pledge Allegiance To Linguistic Obfuscation."  In the article, Nunberg said, "Obscurity has been built into the [P]ledge [of Allegiance] since Francis Bellamy created it in 1892...to rouse the patriotic attachments of schoolchildren, particularly the recent immigrants who might need extra encouragement." He goes on to theorize that Americans have managed to keep the words contained within the Pledge of Allegiance from meaning anything at all.

 

This statement is not a judgment of people's patriotism or complacency; it is an observation that several words and phrases within the Pledge run the gamut from arcane to mystifying. He adds: "In fact, 'pledge allegiance' is what linguists call a hapax legomenon, or hapax for short -- an expression that only occurs in a single place in the language, like wardrobe malfunction, Corinthian leather or satisfactual. Or let's not leave out my favorite, ginchiest. People don't pledge allegiance to Hadassah or the U.S. Marines or Kappa Kappa Gamma, much less to other inanimate objects. We only use the words when we're either quoting the flag pledge or riffing on it. So there's no independent reference point, no way to know what you've just signed on for that you weren't down for already."

 

It is fascinating to hear that the phrase "one nation under God" is said to have been inserted by Congress into the Pledge of Allegiance at the height of the Cold War in 1954, ostensibly "to underscore the difference between American values and those of the atheistic Communists." Nunberg proposes that its actual meaning is unclear. He asks, "Does it affirm our faith in God or assert that we have his special protection? Is it a ceremonial deist formula with no especial religious character? Or is it merely a historical nod to the beliefs of the founders?" He says that "one nation under God" is a hapax legomenon that doesn't occur anywhere else in modern English. It is said that the words were taken from the Gettysburg Address ("this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom"), but Nunberg points out that "under God" did not modify "this nation" but instead modified the latter part of the phrase.  He adds that in Lincoln's time, "under God" was a euphemism for "with God's help" or "the Lord willing" that circumvented the incidence of taking the name in vain.

 

Nunberg makes some further suppositions, such as what Lincoln's attitude toward the phrase in question and the pledge might have been, and calls the whole pledge "just one big hapax legomenon, a string of syllables that only comes to life in classrooms and school assemblies." Ultimately, though, he contends that the meaning of the words is not as important as the bond the pledge creates between impressionable children and their flag and country -- and there's a difference between saying or analyzing the words and incanting them.

 

Follow this link to read the entire article.

 

Following are some highlights; click the link at the bottom to see the entire speech.

DHF encourages you to visit the links below for more information and for the full speech.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927.html (excerpts and scholar interpretations)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html (full speech)