Wordwatch: Convinced

Here’s a Times headline from October 2021: “Murray: I could be convinced to play in the Davis Cup”. The tennis champion Andy Murray may well have said this, although it could equally be the result of a paraphrase by the newspaper’s sub-editor. It doesn’t matter: what interests me is the use of “convinced” to replace “persuaded”. And I draw attention to it because “persuade” is a verb that is disappearing from the language. 

“Convince” is used instead, as in my example above, or: “I convinced him to take an umbrella.” But “to convince” is, properly, to overcome (by force or by argument) while “to persuade” is “to bring over” (to one’s point of view). And “convince” should not be followed by an infinitive. 

The conventional construction is with “of…” or “that…” (“I convinced him of the likelihood of my forecast”; “I convinced him that the weather would be wet”). The new use is, I’m fairly certain, an Americanism, but it may have grown up simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic. 

The novelist Vikram Seth could write, in A Suitable Boy (1993): “Aparna was delighted to see her father … but was unable to convince him to do a jigsaw puzzle with her”. Although generally well written in transparent, almost styleless, prose, Seth’s book abounds with unfortunate minor solecisms which I suspect were acquired during his time in California; this is perhaps the least forgivable example. When spoken by characters who are supposed to inhabit the India of 1951, they often create unintended anachronisms. 

So the usage has been around for a few decades now. Already in September 2003, it had gained the imprimatur of the BBC’s Radio 4 News: “[The physicist Edward Teller] convinced President Reagan to spend millions of dollars on Star Wars”. “Persuaded” would have been far better here. Here are some more examples:

“If someone is a very good friend I scratch his head and I try to convince him to scratch mine back.” — Alberto Porta (“Evru”) in The Art Newspaper, Jan 2005. The speaker is obviously not someone from whom one would expect standard English, but this clearly illustrates the difference between “persuade” and “convince”. 

To convince someone of something involves a process of defeating another’s opinion; to persuade someone to do something may require pressure but it is an inherently gentler process and need not involve thought; remember the Aesop fable of the Sun and the Wind competing to separate a traveller from his cloak: “Persuasion is better than force”. “Evru” clearly needed “persuade” for what he wished to say.

Here are some more recent specimens, from very varied sources: “Ronan O’Rahilly: Rebellious founder of Radio Caroline who brought a sea change in British pop and convinced George Lazenby to turn down Bond films” — Obituary, The Times, April 2020. 

“Criminals can impersonate your bank, the police, tax office, investment or software companies and other trusted organisations. They will try to convince you to part with your money.” — Metropolitan Police advice on Phone Scams, April 2020. 

I find this use of the infinitive “to…” with “convince” unidiomatic and ugly. All the examples I’ve given illustrate the dire impoverishment of English by its usurpation of “persuade”, and the concomitant ungrammatical change. 

Jane Austen, of course, knew very well what “persuasion” means, and used it tellingly in the title of her last novel, the word carrying the implication of a process of changing one’s mind rather than being bludgeoned into it: the word sums up the psychological action of the whole plot… if only in her honour, we might resurrect “persuade” to its rightful position in the language.