This is not about whether you should use cuss words or not, because you should not. This is not about whether it is acceptable to elicit laughter and popular approval by being vulgar and by regaling one’s listeners with profanity, because it never is, if you were raised properly. This is about an oblivion of accepted rules and conventions of writing and of speech that have to do with our sense of decency. To many, all this might seem trivial, but fatal malignancies often start with trivial manifestations!
Let us start with people styling themselves “Dr.”. In the first place, MDs who claim that only they have the right to be called “doctor” are downright wrong. The MD is in fact not an academic doctorate, but a professional degree, much like the Juris Doctor (JD) degree of law graduates. In Spanish, you never say “Voy a llamar al doctor” (I am going to call the doctor), because Spaniards are only too aware of the fact that doctors are found in universities and lecture halls, not in clinics and hospitals. The proper term is “medico,” which only emphasizes my point.
In the US, PhDs usually do not call themselves “Dr.”, but this is not the US of A, and here, we love titles. We bristle at the omission of our titles, and we take offense at the misstatement of titles. So most Filipino PhDs call themselves—and ask to be called—“Dr.” as if their fortunes depended on it. And lawyers will similarly suffer from sleepless nights, mental anguish and besmirched reputations—the traditional formulary introducing a claim for hefty moral damages— if they are addressed as “Mr.” or “Ms.” because, in the Philippines, we call them “Atty.”, whether in court or out of court, or whether or not they have ever entered court at all.
When the world was still a decent place to live in, nobody would sign: “Dr. Magandang Asal.” He would rather sign: “Magandang Asal, M.D.” or “Magandang Asal, Ph.D.”. Today, in our indecent times, it is not rare for people to cause their names to be printed with the “Dr.” or “Atty.” attached as an essential particle before their names, over which they sign. I had a very intelligent lawyer-friend, Manong Fred Tadiar, who was once examining a witness in court. And the questioning started with the usual preliminaries: “Please state your name.” The witness, a physician—and one very jealous of his title—answered: “I am Dr. Mahangin Pala.” Manong Fred would not let that pass. He asked the witness: “Is Dr. found in your birth certificate or certificate of live birth?” At first I thought that Manong Fred was wasting court time on an inconsequential matter. But he had a perfectly legal pretext: “It goes into the very identification of the witness” he told me, with a smirk on his face. I knew that all that he wanted to teach the physician was a little decency!
It is when you address one with a doctorate degree that it is proper to write: “Dr. Mataas Maningil,” but, Filipinos that we are, we exaggerate. So this atrocity is not infrequent: “Dr. Mataas Maningil, M.D.!” Does that iteration serve to forewarn patients of an outcome more dreadful than the disease? It is perfectly correct to write “Mr. Hindi Nanalo” and below that name “Attorney-at-Law.” Just as it is correct to write “Mr. Laging Talo, Esq.” where “Esq.” does not refer to a popular, cheap drink but to an American importation of a medieval title, frequently used by lawyers, but lawyers do not like that, because they require even their parents to address them “Atty.”! We are a pathetic nation indeed. On the other hand, there is no reason to be bashful about degrees, in the proper social contexts, provided that the degrees are properly and legally earned. In a roster of faculty members printed on a graduation program, there is no problem at all about attaching a string of degrees even longer than your name. But it is certainly ridiculous to attach all your degrees to your name on the return address of a greeting card you send a friend!
And when you are a local legislator delivering one of your long-winded but thoroughly pointless speeches on the floor, do not refer to the chamber of which you are a member as “this august body” because you are flattering yourself. In more vulgar language, you are engaging in self-stimulation! Let others acknowledge the augustness of your assembly, if it is indeed august and not a “congress”—which, the dictionary says, can also mean a congregation of baboons!. Similarly, judges should not refer to the courts over which they preside—more practically, to themselves—as “this Honorable Court” for the self-same reason, and for the more basic reason that not all of them are honorable! Leave it to lawyers and litigants to address you with the honorific “Your Honor,” and then you can preen and bask in the glory of this fleeting act of obeisance.
Finally, when a bishop signs his name, he never signs as “My Excellency” because that would immediately assure us all of his lack of excellence. It will not even be correct for him to sign as “The Most Reverend” because that is a title others address him by, not something he calls himself. He signs his name preceded by a cross—which unfortunately some who are not too informed take to be a sign that the signatory is deceased. But how it can be that he is signatory while already having passed on to the next life is a logical puzzle that the confused leave unsolved! The cross has been the traditional manner by which bishops identify themselves as bishops in their signatures. The Pope, by the way, does not put a cross before his name. “Franciscus” is how Francis signs, and “Joannes Paulus II” is how John Paul II used to sign. The more pious believe that the cross is meant by the bishop to bestow a blessing on whomsoever reads the letter—but that might be an aspiration, rather than reality.
No, these are not really trivialities. These are about conventions that have evolved and that bespeak of a modest appraisal of one’s worth and a respectful regard of others. It is really about what decency demands, and how slovenly we can be about its exactions on us.