Let's Be Clear and Table It

Today my esteemed Australian-Czech colleauge and branding expert Paul Kucera siuggested to me that we should table a subject we were discussing for our next meeting. "Table in which sense of the word,?" I asked. "Both,"he replied. And so we agreed.

Paul is Australian and has worked with many Americans during his long marketing career. I am an American but lived in England for many years. We were both keenly aware that the use of "table"regarding topics of discussion in the deliberative sense of the word can be ambiguous.

Odd as it may seem. To table something in America means to postphone, even cancel it. A bill tabled in Congress basically dies. But everywhere else in the English speaking world to table something means to put it up for discussion. A bill tabled in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and England will be talked about, discussed and maybe.....just maybe....voted on.

So how did this happen and what is to be done?

Let's get our cards on the table and be clear about two things. First, the phrase to table something arose in the context of English Parliamentary debate and by some estimates, at least as early as the mid-seventeenth century. A matter was either tabled or put on the table for discussion. Second, the phrase had the same meaning in America in the eighteenth century. The records of the Contential Congress contain the phrase that a matter was to "lie on the table," and that clearly meant that documents were placed on a table for members to read ahead of the upcoming discussion. The Univeristy of Pennsylvania's Language Log offers a comprehsive series of citations in support of this fact.

The trouble began in nineteenth century American politics. Two citations are offered at the U of P:

1849 Whig Almanac1850 22/1  Senator Westcott tried to table the bill, but failed: it became law.

1866 Daily Tel. 30 Jan.,  To table a resolution has nearly the same effect in America as the order to read a bill ‘this day six months’ has in England.

And thus, the seeds of discontent, misunderstanding and ambiguity were born. To table a matter had two diametrically opposed meanings in the same language, depending largely on place and to a lesser extent, on context.

Call it what you will - autantonym, contronym or Janus word,. They all point to the same thing - a word with multiple meanings (senses) of which one is the reverse of another. Incidentally, Janus refers to the Roman God Janus who was depicted as having two faces, each looking in opposite directions.

By the mid twentieth century it was painfully clear that the meaning applied in America was vastly different to the meaning applied back in England. Winston Churchill remarkednon this in his memoirs.

1950 W. S. Churchill Second World War III. ii. xxxvi. 609  The British Staff prepared a paper which they wished to raise as a matter of urgency, and informed their American colleagues that they wished to ‘table it’. To the American Staff ‘tabling’ a paper meant putting it away in a drawer and forgetting it.

Yet even in America something on table has a completely different meaning than a matter that has been tabled. Dinner on the table means it is time to eat. A matter on the table during negotiations is most certainly open for discussion. And yet, if a matter has been tabled, clearly it is not open for discussion. At least not now, maybe at a date in the future, perhaps or even likely not at all.

So who is right? The British, the Austrialians, the New Zealanders and the Canadians? Or the Americans?

To paraphrase from the epic American tale Gone With the Wind, frankly I don't care.

What I care about, however, is that, when something can have two opposite meanings, language becomes garbled. Communication suffers. Even if the outcome is the same once miscommunication is corrected, this linguistic plate of spaghetti must be untangled.

American English, which clearly drifted away, must be reigned back and re-defined so that tabling a motion in Congress or tabling a topic among diplomats means exactly what it means everywhere else in the English speaking world.

And what to do with all those bills tabled in Washington D.C, the home of political paralysis? I say shelve them. Or deepsix them. Or take them off the table. Do anything but table them unless they are truly open for discussion and therefore on the table.

Returning to my erstwhile colleague Paul, when he told me that tabling our discussion had both meanings, he was right. The topic was tabled in the American sense in that discussion was postphoned. But at the same time, the topic was tabled in the traditional English sense in that the matter is on the agenda, on the table for our regular Monday partners' meeting.

'Nough said?

Michael Sonenshine is CEO of Symfonie Group, a multinational team of experts in finance, marketing and business development.