Friday, January 10, 1997
LANGUAGES:
Communication with diverse tongues may result in exclusionBy
Scott Sahlman
In John Lemke’s article, "Limiting word choice stifles evolution
of language," he claims that having a standardized English
language, aside from being illogical and inane, is elitist and
propagates racism and intolerance. While one could certainly make
valid arguments to support these accusations, there is a very
important reason why there is an attempt to have a standard
English: clarity.
If you have ever been to an English-speaking foreign country, or
even if you have only seen a foreign movie that is in "English,"
you can appreciate the importance of standards. For example, can
you catch a train in a London subway? Would you date an Australian
"lorry"? If someone asked you to get the pram for the baby, would
you have any idea what that was? (For those of you who are curious,
a London subway is an underground crosswalk beneath a street, a
"lorry" is a truck, and a pram is a baby carriage and a very
popular word in our newspaper crossword puzzles). I have been to
England myself and was very surprised to find that I had a
difficult time just trying to understand a cab driver despite the
fact that we were both speaking English.
Even now, regional and cultural differences exist in American
English. Simply by talking to you I might be able to tell whether
you "woalk your doawg in Central Park," "pahk in Hahvahd Yahd," if
y’all are from the South, if you’re like totally from the valley,
or if you’re from, like, Southern California, dude. I’ve listened
to rap songs and marveled at the number of new and different slang
expressions for sexual intercourse. Not to pick on just rap
artists, but it is actually very common for new slang expressions
to arise for potentially uncomfortable topics such as various
bodily functions. We’ve all heard them from parents, friends and
media, and we’ve probably figured out what many of them mean. At
the same time, we’ve also probably heard slang or regional
expressions and had no idea what they meant. Is this not also a
form of exclusion?
While tolerating differences is certainly important, tolerance
of language differences, as John suggests, can also lead to
problems. If it were acceptable for all cultures, regions or even
individuals to create their own form of English, would any of us
ever understand each other? Would you want to live in a country
where instead of just trying to learn one form of English, you had
to learn five, 10, even 100 forms so that you would be able to talk
to someone across the country?
Clarity is essential in a language whether it is oral or
written. Entire lawsuits can be waged simply over the clarity of
the wording of a sentence. While we may joke about "legalese," it
does serve a very important and necessary purpose  namely,
clear and precise wording.
Consider a doctor. Would you have any confidence in a doctor
that told you, "That organ thingy, you know, the one that one that
you don’t really need, has got, like, yucky stuff in it and will
have to be removed"? Sure, you might understand that your appendix
is inflamed, but would you want this doctor to operate on you? The
type or level of language that we use affects the clarity of our
speech and also influences others’ opinions of us, for good
reason.
John also criticizes the arbitrary "morality" of words. Even
this can serve a purpose. For one thing, he fails to discuss the
difference between the denotation of a word and its connotation.
Each of these shapes the meaning of a word and its use and can
actually increase the expressivity of the language. Besides, would
we ever get any satisfaction out of calling someone we didn’t like
a genitaliahead?
English is by no means a perfect or even entirely consistent
language. Anyone who has ever seen a Gallagher show has no doubt
seen many examples of the follies of the English language. Sure, we
drive in parkways and park in driveways, and certainly we’d be
risking our life if we were to light a match around inflammable
gas. Despite these problems, even the attempt to maintain a
standardized language is better than the alternative of allowing a
language to evolve and change boundlessly and differently from
region to region. Even while there is a resistance to a language
evolving, John is correct in stating that the language does
continue to evolve, and this is a good and necessary trend.
One of the strengths of the English language is its ability to
absorb new words of varying origins if there are no existing
equivalent term in the language. Examples of this are wok, karaoke,
adobe and even toilet.
Slow evolution of the language allows the addition of necessary
words while still allowing us to keep up with these changes. As a
final example, Canada has two national languages, English and
French, and there is a notable movement for the French-speaking
portion to split from the English-speaking portion of the country.
If this can happen in a country with just two different languages,
what about a country allowing several?