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avevale_intelligencerA few years ago, when I was working at Mole Valley, we had someone come and give us a pep talk, and I listened in horror to him talk about "growing our customers' spend." I'd never heard such a barbarity before, and while I didn't actually believe he was advocating some bizarre and eldritch form of horticulture involving seminal discharge, it took me a while to accept that this phrase was actually accepted sales jargon for increasing the business's income.
Now, in the last month or two, a new phrase has entered the language. Again, I've never heard it before, but suddenly it seems to be everywhere. An extreme or excessive demand is now referred to, among allegedly articulate and educated beings, as "a big ask." There is a phrase for this kind of thing. It is baby talk, pure and simple. (The phrase "baby talk" itself is another example of the same thing, but that has been around for a lot longer and has the benefit of resembling that which it describes, which "a big ask" does not.)
Now I have never subscribed to the romantic and religious view that a language is a living thing that evolves. (Living things, of course, do not in themselves evolve, but more on that later.) My attitude to this idea is rather like that of a trained mechanic to those simple and good-hearted people who give their car a pet name and say things like "she's feeling a bit off colour today." They have a perfect right to do so, of course, but if I, as a mechanic, were to adopt this view it would hardly conduce to greater efficiency in practising my trade. I am not a mechanic, but I feel sure that if I were, my approach to a car would be to use all my skill and experience to bring it to an optimal state as regards responsiveness, reliability, economy and comfort, and to maintain it in that state as far as possible against the depredations of everyday wear and abuse. Even less would I advocate the subsidiary idea which seems to go with this view of a car, or a language, as a living thing, that any change which occurs is of necessity a good and inevitable change. If a wheel fell off the car, I would not content myself with assuring the concerned owners that it was simply part of the necessary evolution of the car towards a better state of carhood. When a word falls off the language, I take leave to view this as a fault or defect, and I would expect the mechanics of language, assuming such beneficent beings existed, to bend every effort towards restoring it to its place.
But let us for a moment adopt this sentimental view. Let us assume that our language is a living thing, going through the changes that occur to all living things. These changes, as I said, do not form part of any process of evolution; rather, they come in two separate and distinct types. In the first place, a living thing, once born, begins to grow. It learns, it becomes larger, stronger and more versatile, it matures till it reaches its peak, and then the other type of change begins, and the whole process goes into reverse. The living being becomes weaker, smaller, less capable, more dependent on others. Its powers begin to desert it, its knowledge, so hardly won, begins to fade, and the inevitable end, as Shakespeare might have written,
is second childishness, and mere oblivion,
Sans nouns, sans verbs, sans sense, sans every thing.
Baby talk, in other words.
Language is, in many respects, what we conceive it to be. If we look on it as a living thing, subject to processes of evolution or change over which we neither can nor should have any control, then that is what we will have. If we wish it to remain strong and responsive, reliable and economical and comfortable, then we must treat it as the tool, the device that it is, and maintain it against the depredations of everyday wear and abuse. We must teach our children how to use it properly, and allow no slipshod, slapdash cutting of corners. We must service it regularly, improve it consciously and with direction where possible, replace worn out parts, always use the right components and consumables, and lavish on it not the sentimental love of an animal lover for a pet, but the practical love of an artisan for the tools of her trade.
It's a big ask. But it's a needful get. Else our speak will dead on us, and our knows will have went.
Now, in the last month or two, a new phrase has entered the language. Again, I've never heard it before, but suddenly it seems to be everywhere. An extreme or excessive demand is now referred to, among allegedly articulate and educated beings, as "a big ask." There is a phrase for this kind of thing. It is baby talk, pure and simple. (The phrase "baby talk" itself is another example of the same thing, but that has been around for a lot longer and has the benefit of resembling that which it describes, which "a big ask" does not.)
Now I have never subscribed to the romantic and religious view that a language is a living thing that evolves. (Living things, of course, do not in themselves evolve, but more on that later.) My attitude to this idea is rather like that of a trained mechanic to those simple and good-hearted people who give their car a pet name and say things like "she's feeling a bit off colour today." They have a perfect right to do so, of course, but if I, as a mechanic, were to adopt this view it would hardly conduce to greater efficiency in practising my trade. I am not a mechanic, but I feel sure that if I were, my approach to a car would be to use all my skill and experience to bring it to an optimal state as regards responsiveness, reliability, economy and comfort, and to maintain it in that state as far as possible against the depredations of everyday wear and abuse. Even less would I advocate the subsidiary idea which seems to go with this view of a car, or a language, as a living thing, that any change which occurs is of necessity a good and inevitable change. If a wheel fell off the car, I would not content myself with assuring the concerned owners that it was simply part of the necessary evolution of the car towards a better state of carhood. When a word falls off the language, I take leave to view this as a fault or defect, and I would expect the mechanics of language, assuming such beneficent beings existed, to bend every effort towards restoring it to its place.
But let us for a moment adopt this sentimental view. Let us assume that our language is a living thing, going through the changes that occur to all living things. These changes, as I said, do not form part of any process of evolution; rather, they come in two separate and distinct types. In the first place, a living thing, once born, begins to grow. It learns, it becomes larger, stronger and more versatile, it matures till it reaches its peak, and then the other type of change begins, and the whole process goes into reverse. The living being becomes weaker, smaller, less capable, more dependent on others. Its powers begin to desert it, its knowledge, so hardly won, begins to fade, and the inevitable end, as Shakespeare might have written,
is second childishness, and mere oblivion,
Sans nouns, sans verbs, sans sense, sans every thing.
Baby talk, in other words.
Language is, in many respects, what we conceive it to be. If we look on it as a living thing, subject to processes of evolution or change over which we neither can nor should have any control, then that is what we will have. If we wish it to remain strong and responsive, reliable and economical and comfortable, then we must treat it as the tool, the device that it is, and maintain it against the depredations of everyday wear and abuse. We must teach our children how to use it properly, and allow no slipshod, slapdash cutting of corners. We must service it regularly, improve it consciously and with direction where possible, replace worn out parts, always use the right components and consumables, and lavish on it not the sentimental love of an animal lover for a pet, but the practical love of an artisan for the tools of her trade.
It's a big ask. But it's a needful get. Else our speak will dead on us, and our knows will have went.
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 01:21 am (UTC)Which version was the perfect English?
no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 06:43 am (UTC)"Which version was the perfect English?"
The one I speak, of course. "I speak proper English, you use colloquialisms, he uses baby talk." All use of language is based on consensus, and there is no full concensus even among scholars, only "this is what I like" (see, for instance, the "Oxford comma" and others). No, languages don't 'evolve' in a strict sense, but they do something very similar; linguists speak of 'families' of languages, and they are arranged in trees very much like those used by biologists, and there is a form of "survival of the fittest".
Those who try to keep a language static are pretty much doomed to failure. Who was it who tried to expunge English words from (I think) Italian, saying "Boycottez l'Inglese" (or something like that), missing the detail that the word 'boycott' is English? The French instutute hasn't managed it, nor did the German reforms.
Personally, I miss the correct use of the second person singular. That started dying out in English (becoming a 'personal' form) in the 14th century, and was pretty much lost except in some dialects (and prayers in some churches) well before I was born...
no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 08:01 am (UTC)Are we then to take it that, because linguists speak of families of languages, they therefore have a washing-up rota? Because they are arranged in trees, do they therefore require fertiliser? This illustrates my point. The way we conceptualise our language shapes its development, and we do have the choice; to see it as a living thing, uncontrollable, unpredictable and inevitably mortal, or to see it as something created by our ancestors and left to us in trust for our use.
I know prescriptivism is a dirty word these days, but it was not always thus. I'm not interested in creating a divide between those who can speak and write well and those who can't, I'm interested in expending the relatively little effort required to make sure that all can speak and write well if they so choose. (After that they can do what they like.) But for that initial step even to be possible, there must be a clear idea of what is to be taught. Allowing consensus to shape the language makes that clear idea impossible. It's the difference between a metalled road and a sheep track. The sheep track may be the easiest to make, but try driving along it with a case of nitro-glycerine on the back seat. It may be democratic, but so is a stampede. And it may look like a romantic ideal from a distance, but go closer and you can smell the shit. If you'll pardon the Anglo-Saxonism.
There is no perfect English for all time. But there is good English right now, and bad English right now, and that implies the existence of optimal English for our time. The argument against "keeping a language static", the one that talks about preserving it in a glass case or pickling it in formaldehyde, is a straw man, because that's not what I'm talking about. And if the French institute (which was doing all right when I was a boy, if my teachers were to be relied on) and the German reforms haven't worked, then maybe that is a symptom of the same malady, the same abdication of responsibility for something that it is in our power to make or to mar.
It's like a public building. It could be sealed off, put behind a rope barrier and the public kept out, and it would decay uselessly. It could be left, as it is being left, untended and uncared-for, and the consensus would cover it with litter and graffiti and break its windows and complain that it's an eyesore and needs to be pulled down. Or, and this is my favourite option, it could be restored, updated thoughtfully where necessary, maintained, and (most importantly) guarded. That way it would continue to be both useful and beautiful for much longer than it would if either of the other options were followed.
Not perfect. We don't get perfect. But we can make it better, and keep it good. If we choose to take responsibility for it.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 08:50 am (UTC)As far as I can see the closest prescriptivism has ever worked in English was the "BBC Received Pronunciation". That lasted for around a generation among certain classes (the majority, of course, still spoke whatever they liked). Spelling prescriptivism has lasted longer, since the advent of printing, but even there changes have happened within my lifetime (how many people still write 'to-day' and 'to-morrow' with the hyphens?). The use of words has also changed (I still get thrown by 'sanctions', which when I grew up were positive permissions, being used to mean a form of punishment by forbidding activities; earlier than that 'let' used to mean stopping something, as in the wording in passports "without let or hindrance").
When I was at school I was teased (and worse) because I "spoke posh" (i.e. used 'correct' English which was considered out of date). My mother had the same thing when she was at school.
As Galileo was thought to have said, "Eppur si muove". Regardless of whether thou or I wish it otherwise, language still moves, and often in ways we dislike. And the next generation will similarly complain that "it ain't what I was brung up wiv..."
no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 11:14 am (UTC)We could, of course, abandon prescriptive law and allow the consensus to decide what is a crime and what isn't. I fancy that idea might appeal to you rather more than to me; I don't believe it would be a good idea. Why is it supposed to be an unalterable law of nature when applied to that other unnatural creation of humanity, language? Why are people always trying to improve and repair cars and computers? Why not simply let them develop naturally into heaps of useless plastic and metal? Why try to sharpen a knife? It'll only get blunt again, so that's obviously what it's supposed to do and our preference for sharp knives is merely a personal quirk.
I don't approve of entropy. In most cases there's not a lot people can do about it. In this case there is something that people can do about it, and I think they should, and I'll go on thinking they should.
BBC RP didn't fail; it was deliberately abandoned, under entropic pressure. It would be harder to re-establish now (and as it happens, I don't have any quarrel with regional accents as long as they remain broadly comprehensible--I can stand the guy on the advert saying "The Co-op, gid with fid" if I have to) but not impossible.
Fatalism in the face of remediable decay is just not something I can be comfy with. Which probably means I'll spend my life railing against the tide till nobody can understand me any more, or I die, whichever is the sooner.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 12:01 pm (UTC)When someone else talks about "a big ask" when they mean "a big request" they have ruined the door, or blunted the knife, only for themselves. You and I still say "a big request" and people know what we mean. And while I shudder to see someone deliberately using a blunt knife, it is a free country and it is not my place to demand they sharpen it; I am not their mother.
Trying to dictate other people's use of language doesn't seem to have worked well in the past. I wonder if it would work better to do what you already do--create works of art with the version of English you like: works of art compelling enough to make people want to emulate you in the use of language. Instead of shouting "get off my lawn" grow your flowers until the kids next door come over to wistfully watch you pruning and ask how it is done.
You won't ever be able to win over all the kids that way. But you can win some. And you don't need to win them all; language is a majority usage type of activity.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 01:55 am (UTC):-(
no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 08:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 02:03 pm (UTC)Yes, language does change over time, and the current common phraseology for that is 'languages evolve'. They change because things they referred to are no longer used, or only be specialised groups, or because new things have come into use that need new referents - or old ones get adapted to the new needs; shortcuts become common (as in
English is prone to sliding off sideways in somewhat unpredictable ways (there's the old quote about it ambushing other languages in dark alleys). That's still not a good reason for not keeping it upright while it's sliding.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 02:30 pm (UTC)When we were living in Switzerland and I was qualifying to teach English as a foreign language, even the mention of 'good English' was treated with indrawn breath and sanctimonious preaching. But once I was on my oown teaching in-company, I asked all my groups directly whether they just wanted to know what was commonly used, or did they want to know 'good English' as well? Guess what they replied.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 10:03 pm (UTC)