Airline lingo

I took a flight today, and was reminded at almost every turn of the immortal words of George Carlin: "Something else we have in common --- flying on the airlines, and listening to the airline's announcements, and trying to pretend to ourselves that the language they're using is really English."

I can't possibly do justice to his brilliant observations on the topic, so here he is to do it himself:


But I couldn't help but notice that there's (at least) one linguistic quirk that escaped his notice, and hence his scorn. Luckily, I am here to fill this need.

Have you ever noticed how often airline personnel use the helper verb "do"? It's crazy, and now that I've pointed it out, you will see it everywhere. "We do hope you've had a nice flight." "We do apologize for the delay." "We do ask that you keep your seatbelt securely fastened." What the hell is this? Is there any reason for anyone to speak this way?

I know, this isn't technically grammatically incorrect. The verb "do" is always there, even if it's not spoken: "I cook" is really a paraphrase of "I do cook," and the helper verb moves around if you're asking a question ("Do you cook?") or forming a negative ("I don't cook."). So it's not that these flight attendants or pilots or gate agents are doing anything wrong, really.

But they are doing something weird. Why bother inserting an extra word when the sentence is fine, even better, without it? Why say "We do recognize that many bags look alike" when "We recognize that many bags look alike" is a much more natural phrasing? Maybe because they think it sounds more polite? It's true that longer phrasings often are taken to be more polite, so maybe that's what they're going for. Even still, this "do" thing has seriously gotten out of hand. If I think of it, I'll keep a tally on the way back and see exactly how much the "do + verb" phrases outnumber the bare verb phrases.

In the meantime, I do note that I do appreciate your patronage of this blog, and I do apologize if the jokes aren't always funny. I do recognize that you have a choice of blogs and I do hope that you will choose IPoL again for all your language-snark needs. I do wish you a happy holiday.