avevale_intelligencer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2010-04-16 01:10 am
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2010-04-16 01:10 am
Language
A 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.
no subject
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
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.