Let me start off by saying that no one holds Stephen Fry in higher esteem than I do. In fact, even though he’s only a year-and-a-half older than I am, I still want to be him when I grow up. And yet, despite my admiration and abstract sort of affection, I do not think him a deity and feel completely comfortable in disagreeing with him when the occasion calls for it. And, unfortunately, this is one of those times.
In the most recent installment of Stephen’s podcast, entitled “Language,” he makes some statements concerning language and correct usage and such subjects that, while well-intentioned and well-argued, are wrong. This is not to say that he is completely wrong or that he doesn’t make reasonable points, however, the conclusions he draws are, I believe, mistaken.
Stephen’s main point is that language is changeable and malleable and that some are often too strict in approaching language. It is not a compilation of rights and wrongs, and those who would nitpick every perceived error need to take up ballroom dancing or Parcheesi or perhaps even sex. And I agree with this. I, too, used to be an absolutist, but found over time that my absolutes didn’t always apply and weren’t always as solid as I had supposed. However, Stephen goes on to assert a kind of feel-good doctrine in which all words and usages are equal and are merely an expression of the exuberance of language itself. In truth, as in most facets of life, ignorance often trumps exuberance and many usages that gain currency are, to use the horse racing terms, by stupidity and out of laziness.
We’ve all heard a person, usually young, say something on the order of “he like said, you know, whatever,” and I would argue that this is not truly speaking. It’s semi-organized grunting. Just this morning, I read a blog post on The New Yorker’s website in which a young woman who works for The New Republic was quoted as saying,
“It was, like, ‘Do you want to take Monday off work to drive in Obama’s motorcade?’ ” Lear recalled. “I went, ‘Yes, absolutely. But who is this?’ ”
This was a presumably college-educated person talking to a reporter. Is saying “went” instead of “said” any more efficient a way of expressing the idea of communicating? No. The same number of letters and syllables. Is “went” somehow clearer or even as clear? No, because that leaves us with this as a possible sentence: “She went, ‘She went.’” No, it is mere dribbling, a childish lingo forged in the furnace of laziness. When we consider the elegance and subtlety available to human expression, should we accept such palaver as being as good as anything else? Nonsense.
Now, Stephen relies heavily on the ideas that language is innate in humans and on the Chomskian idea that thought and language are separate. Now, both these notions are true. As he points out, where no language is provided, new languages evolve. And anyone who has ever observed a cat or a dog has seen clear evidence of thought. Animals consider and anticipate, both of which must constitute a thought process of some sort. In this he is correct. However, Stephen does not take the process far enough. For while thought can exist without language, reasoning cannot. And reasoning is shaped by words and one’s use of them. Let us consider, in the shadow of his brutal tenure, the administration of George W. Bush. Has there ever been a better example of a person who spoke poorly and reasoned as well as he spoke?
This is not to say that everyone who is well spoken is also reasonable and of a like mind. All the swirling influences of society and temperament affect such things. But to send someone into that maelstrom without the weapon of well-honed language is to send them defenseless to be buffeted and drowned by information they cannot process and leaders they cannot interpret. While I am not a fan of George Orwell’s essay on language–it’s soporific effects made it almost impossible for me to drive after reading it–I do agree with the main point he makes. He says, “Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” And people who do not use language with subtlety and skill have no chance of cutting through the forest of propaganda that the average citizen finds himself in every day of his life. The young lady I quoted earlier went through the experience of driving a vehicle in the Obama motorcade on Inauguration Day without a scintilla of insight. Her main concern was the celebrity of the people she drove, and that she spends her free time texting people instead of reading The Mill on the Floss, which she brought with her, is, I think symptomatic of this entire problem.
Stephen assails the language purists–and some of them are downright Puritans–by questioning their abilities with words. He claims to know that they have no poetry in their souls, but I do not know how this can be proved. It is a moment of bigotry in a remarkably unbigoted person, but we all have our faults. In fact, I would dare say that the people who, by traditional standards, misuse the language are less likely to have poetry in them and that their misuse is liable to degrade any language to a point at which poetry is no longer possible. Members of the military and politicians and football coaches are the leaders of an assault on language. It is they who have given us “impact” and “reference” as verbs, two examples of a myriad of lead balloons that pose as speech.
Now, Stephen defends the verbing of nouns, and he has a point. He points to Shakespeare, but Shakespeare is an example extreme in relation to the rest of us. And however much Shakespeare liked to verb, he still did so selectively and strategically. This is why he was capable of tabling, but not dooring. And this is my problem with “impact” and “reference” as verbs. In the case of the former, it is a disingenuous attempt to sound important and manly. It has the same meaning as “affect,” only with a thick coating of pretension. It is a strutting Spanish Captain of a word, veneered in braggadocio but empty inside.
“Reference,” on the other hand, is just plain unnecessary. It has come to replace the verb the noun originally derived from (for we can noun verbs as easily as we verb nouns), the humble word “refer.” I have yet to see what advantage “reference” offers. It takes just as many syllables to reference something as it does to refer to it, and in the past tense, it actually adds a syllable more. And there is something clumsy and clunky about it. Meanwhile, “refer” is lovely in its short five letters. The reason why “reference” has gained so much currency of late is that it sounds officious and pretentious, not because it is a better or easier word to use. The person who references must be important, or so the speaker would have us think. Since words should lead us toward reality rather than away from it, I can’t admit the usefulness of “reference.”
This is the problem with declaring all words to be “good.” Linguistic egalitarianism hides the fact that some words are better than others. They are less pretentious or more precise or more apt. They reveal rather than hide. Some soar and others waddle. Some illuminate while others snuff out the light. Simply because the language evolves through usage doesn’t mean that each mutation is a good one. Some will survive and others won’t. Some deserve to be euthanized. It’s really best for all.
He also criticizes those who are forever on about punctuation and grammar. Now, in terms of grammar, he just might be right. In spoken language, grammar is more a matter of the ear than the mind, and in written language, we are often weighed down by rules that have no basis in practice. Two of the more notorious examples are the prohibitions on split infinitives and in ending sentences with prepositions. Both are rules devised by people in the 18th Century who were trying to make English work like Latin. Which it doesn’t. In Latin, infinitives are single words. In English, they are two-word forms, such as “to split.” and, in English, infinitives often beg to unequivocally be split. It’s a matter of ear.
Ending sentences with prepositions is another such nostrum and is foolish and prissy. Sometimes a preposition just wants to make its way to the end of a sentence and if it doesn’t get there you end up with something along the lines of Winston Churchill’s famous (and perhaps apocryphal) parody, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” Again, the ear is the guide.
However, in his insistent railings against people who are consumed with the proper use of apostrophes, he misses the point of punctuation and why it matters whether one tiny little squiggle mark is present or missing. Punctuation is an aid not to the writer, but to the reader. It has evolved over an expanse of time, and the point is to make comprehension easier and not just to give a bunch of self-satisfied prisses a means for feeling superior. Let us take, since Stephen so furiously has, the lowly apostrophe. It exists in three states: before the final “s,” after the final “s,” and in place of missing letters in the middle. Let’s start with its use with possessives. As readers, it tells us one of three things. If it comes before the final “s,” it means that the noun is singular, which can be of some use to know. If it comes after the final “s,” the noun is plural, which can also be of use on occasion. If it does not appear at all, then we know that the noun is plural and precious moments are relieved of the burden of trying to parse noun/verb agreement. Its absence or misuse may not constitute a tragedy, but it is a help, both to the reader who wishes to not be confused and the writer who wants the reader flying through his or her work instead of having to puzzle over every possessive.
That people can get carried away with these rules of punctuation is undoubtedly true. There are martinets in every field of human endeavor. And there are those who confuse matters of style–such as in the use of serial commas–with the basic rules of punctuation, which exist only to aid us.
Here in the U.S., I’ve noticed a puzzling fashion in which people have signs made that use quotation marks quite wrongly. For example, there is an auto repair place near us that has a sign hanging prominently that says “‘English’ spoken here.” Now, quotation marks around a word in such a context usually denotes irony, if not downright sarcasm. Were these folks implying that their English was not very good or a mere facsimile of English? Or did they mean to have the word either underlined or italicized in order to indicate emphasis? It may be pedantic to note the difference, but a difference there is. And it doesn’t make me superior to those who made the mistake, merely more knowledgeable. If there are, as Stephen would have it, no wrong words, is there no wrong knowledge? Is all knowledge the same and those who would espouse a greater knowledge on a given subject pedants? I think not.
There is a certain kind of snobbery that attaches itself to the apron strings of language. Of course there is. It is a human product. And wherever humans go, there is pride and snobbery and ignorance and foolishness. There is also knowledge and insight and reason and thoughtfulness. We are strange creatures filled with loves and compulsions, interests and indulgences. It is not, in my view, a burden to ask people to use language well–as well as they can. It is a shame, however, to expect the least of them, to banish them to a land called Ignorance, to shield their eyes from the light of reason. To write well, to speak well, to use the full vigor, power, and beauty of English is not a vice, and to ask the best of others is not a crime.
