You Don't Say

                                                    

Language changes. There's nothing original in that thought. It's hardly a unique insight. Anyone who's tried to read an original version of “Canterbury Tales” will attest to it. Even Shakespeare's works are not fully understandable without explanatory notes. Many of the words and idioms have changed in meaning or have disappeared since he set them down.

But it's not only a process from the past, it is one continuing today. Slang has always been an important component of change. Perhaps it's a tool of rebelling youth – a way of linguistically setting themselves apart from their parents and from previous generations. And their punishment for it is that their slang will be laughed at by their own children, who will use newer slang as a secret language which is opaque to them. What goes around, etc.

Language is also changed by technology.ⁱ Everything is. It's happening more rapidly now, though, than it did in the past because modern technological change is raging, while before it was more likely to have been sauntering. New words are needed daily to describe the new technology and the ideas of a changing society. In addition, the tools, themselves, may demand language changes. Instead of writing we text; instead of sending a long hand-written letter to a friend, we limit our characters and send it 2 him (or her) via “the cloud.” When we reach out to touch someone we only have to go as far as our belt or fanny pack or purse. So we can connect more quickly and with fewer strokes. 2, 4, and 8 are no longer numbers, but words. And, as Cambridge University has been reportedⁱⁱ to have shown,ⁱⁱⁱ if words are used, they need neither be complete nor correctly spelled. As long as the first and last letters are properly positioned, the word will be understood. Orthography be damned.

School marms don't change, however. Deviations from what they learned in school are apt to be circled in red and criticized. They tend to be prescriptionists^iv when it comes to evaluating words. Not that such a perspective is so bad – especially when it comes to early learning. There's no question that kids will learn bad usages, expletives, slang, and dialect on the street. That's where they learn most of what we try to keep from them. And most of the basic language is learned – for better or worse – away from the classroom. So it shouldn't be a surprise, nor is it undesirable, that the subtleties of “standard” language, should be learned at school. Though they may turn in different directions, it seems reasonable that our children should all start on the same page. Whether they follow at all, we have to try to lead.

It's also important to teach the etiquette of speech. It's a large topic ranging from practices like bragging, disparaging, insulting, lying, gossiping, and interrupting, through such activities as speaking when silence would be preferable – like during a funeral or when attending a public performance. Speaking should also be avoided (especially loud speech) on a cell phone in a public place. Additionally, many would prefer not to hear your conversation at all, and would even take offense at your rudeness. It's almost as bad as putting someone on hold or call waiting.^v And when your talking distracts you from more something more significant, it should be avoided.^vi (Some adults should be seen and not heard.)

But those considerations simply reflect lack of concern for danger or for other people. Care and courtesy should accompany all our activities, whether we're descriptionists or prescriptionists.^vii There are many who believe that what makes us human, what distinguishes us from the “lower” animals, is the ability to speak and communicate. We're certainly not alone in possessing those skills, but we may be the only ones to find a way – actually many ways – to misuse that ability.^viii

So we try to use it carefully, and sometimes we monitor others too closely – not just as prescriptionists, but as guardians of all those who may take offense – or who we think should take offense – at the use of what really are accurate statements. The substitution of euphemisms and politically correct speech has been harnessed to protect the sensitive, and those who hear “hate speech” and abuse when it (often) does not exist; an act undermining basic freedom of speech, even if it doesn't actually discard it. But that's one of the ways that change takes place.^ix A genuine prescriptionist would probably have mixed feelings about such usages since while they do represent protective practices utilizing correct, though often misleading constructions, they were taught better and more accurate ways of saying the same thing with a more authentic historical basis. A descriptionist would nod and smile. (“Freudian slips,” spoonerisms, and other such slips twixt the tongue and the lip, on the other hand, reflect errors rather than alterations in language, but we must accept them for what they are.^x)

In any event, we're not going to slow change down. As a matter of fact it's likely to accelerate as modern devices spread new usages and new words at an ever-increasing rate. No matter what we do, that will happen. Prescriptionists may delay things but they won't stop them. And the descriptionists will keep the rest of us up on the results.

According to Voltaire,^xi “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” But you don't have to do that, and it won't help anyway. The changes will occur whether you like them or not.

Next episode: “Mixed Messengers” – Sez who”

 

 

i       Marshall McLuhan said “The medium is the message.” That's not really what I mean. The message is the message – although how we express it may be governed by the way we say it, in terms of both the medium on (or in) which it's being expressed, and who or what [organization] is saying it.

ii    The claim has been made in many publications and widely circulated on the internet, but no original publication has been located.

iii    The idea is appealing, but it isn't at all clear that it is true.

See: http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/

iv   Prescriptionists tell us the RIGHT way to define and use words. They're the ones who are forever correcting you.

v    The same is true, of course, when you speak on the telephone while someone is standing next to you trying to get your attention (your child, perhaps), or when your call distracts you from someone – or something – nearby.

vi    The range of such activities is wide here as well. Most people would think of gabbing on a cell phone while driving, but people may also be distracted while walking. And in addition, people may waste valuable work time while standing around the water cooler when other tasks need to be done.

vii   Descriptionists tell us how words are actually defined and used. They don't pass judgment. They allow some of the greatest perversions of the language without making a peep.

viii    Our prosencephalons (look it up) let us do both.
ix    See the essay “Watch Your Language” that appeared August 5, 2012.

x      Don't give up the slip.

xi    “According to Voltaire” because he probably never said it. At least there is no written record of such a statement. Wikipedia contains the following citation: In his A Book of French Quotations (1963), Norbert Guterman suggested that the probable source for the quotation was a line in a 6 February 1770 letter to M. le Riche: “Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.”