The following article by Raymond O'Connell was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
INVECTIVE is one of those words that matches sound to sense. It sounds nasty. It is pals with sarcasm, castigate, vilify, diatribe and even stepping up a class vituperation or hyperbole. Maybe put-down is less intimidating. Most such comments are said about people rather than 'to their face' but there are some gems of the latter variety, such as 'who licked the cream off your bun'.
Indeed, what about humour, does that take invective to another level? Is there a distinction between crass and foul-mouthed abuse and more thoughtful criticism paired with wit, biting but also entertaining? Is there low and high invective? At present we have a personification of the former, but I would suggest life would be all the poorer in the absence of the latter.
Despite Basil Bernstein's theory that the workers spoke in a restricted language while the 'quality' spoke in an elaborated code some of the 'cutting down to size' of my earlier years remains expansive. 'Mutton dressed as lamb' was a favourite of my dearest Mama and could apply to either males or females – there were only the two back then. When we thought somebody was 'getting a bit above themselves' we would use a metaphor (though we didn't know it at the time) and say; 'he thinks he's the fellah in the big picture'. This may need some clarification. Back then there were two films shown, a big picture and a wee picture (usually referred to as a B movie which was a short). Stars were strictly in the former while the butt of the comment was at best a B movie type masquerading.
Of course some brilliant invective is to be found in the world of politics. Gladstone came in for some deadly abuse. One example is effusive in its use of language while another is totally the opposite. His archrival was Benjamin Disraeli who said Gladstone was 'A sophisticated rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity'. When the grand old man was won over to Home Rule for Ireland erstwhile liberal Presbyterians were aghast. One cleric urged caution though saying 'we should remember he is an old man who once had a reputation to lose'. I have to add this is top of my invective hit parade. Its linguistic frugality is all the more devastating.
It would be very remiss not to include Oscar Wilde, the doyen of the witty and biting phrase. 'Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much' and 'he has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his friends'. Mind you the American writer Ambrose Bierce (author of the brilliant short story 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' made into a brilliant short film) said of Wilde he was 'a sovereign of insufferables' with an 'opulence of twaddle and his penury of sense'.
However the comment of Wilde's I most admire is directed at himself. Dying in straightened circumstances he comments 'dying in Paris is so expensive'.