Gramma Ain’t Yo Mamma’s Mamma

BY Kane Daniel

When George Orwell wrote in 1946 that the English language “becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts”, his complaints centred on “dying metaphors” and “pretentious diction”. Despite the fact that people have been prophesying the imminent death of proper English for centuries, I am very much with Orwell on this point. He was living in a world of stock metaphors, lazy, meandering sentences and an agglomeration of waffling, verbose nonsense. What he would make of a world of omfg, 2moro and cul8r is beyond me (it makes my blood run cold to think that I have even contemplated the possibility of using those accursed abbreviations in any sort of written communication typed, much less actually typed them).

It is interesting to note that within just over fifty years the nature of the perceived threats to the English written language has altered almost diametrically. Orwell complained of the use of tired metaphors; I would very much like to meet a MySpace user who could use a metaphor, never mind whether it is tired or hackneyed. Orwell complained of a pretentious preference for words of Greek or Latin provenance, rather than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. It would seem the contemporary dilemma is less about etymological heritage than it is about whether one is lol or rofl. How concerned should we then be about the proliferation of new tangents that the written language is taking? Should we be concerned at all? What coinages are beneficial and which are harmful? For if Orwell is right then we are certainly abbreviating our way into dullardness.

I don’t mean to sound curmudgeonly, anal or angry, but usually accusations of the decline of English bemoan the egregious lack of people unable to make a distinction between the words uninterested and disinterested. The trend of the English language becoming increasingly abbreviated, coupled with people showing an increasing disregard for grammatical conventions, seems much more insidious than the debates that have traditionally dominated the correct use of English. The advent of the internet and other forms of mass communication has created a generation of people for whom the addition of a period to the end of the end of a sentence is unnecessary, as is any form of capitalisation or, indeed, any letter in a word that isn’t absolutely necessary for its basic phonetic pronunciation. This, I think, is due to the inherently ephemeral nature of writing in a world increasingly dominated by digital communication. When an email, messageboard post or blog post disappears into a vast electronic ether, it becomes easy to forget that it uses the same set of conventions and dictums that have governed, and helped express many of the greatest artworks that humankind has produced.

One of the chief defining characteristics of English is its ability to evolve, absorb and assimilate words and aspects of other languages; and that ability has always afforded English the ability to become ever more subtle and expressive. The increasing crudity of written expression, particularly in the electronic realm, makes me wonder whether we are cresting the top of a bell curve, preparing to take the plunge down into a world where language is only able to express the most basic of imperatives. The emergence of some of the lazy, ignorant forms of internet English are nothing more than the language cannibalising itself, eating its own flesh until nothing but a skeleton remains. Without wanting to sound genuinely apocalyptic, is a science fiction future of a language so emaciated that it can only be used to express the most basic of concepts so far away? Perhaps it is a shade on the dramatic side, but certainly within the bounds of plausibility.

The perplexing thing is that children are still being taught English every day. I realise that whether or not to split an infinitive is no longer the hot topic it used to be in educational institutions, but I am not, like language mavens the world over, impetuously demanding that everybody know what a gerund is. I am merely noting the disappointing lack, in any sense, of pride in our language. It seems to me the English speaking world is increasingly abandoning the notion of elegance of expression or a sharp turn of phrase as a desirable characteristic. It is far beyond the scope or intention of this article to question the ability of our educational institutions to educate our children in the multifarious glories of our language; nor, indeed, to lay blame at any institution whatsoever. It does, however, give one pause. When basic rules of written communication are being flouted with an ever increasing flippancy, one cannot help but wonder exactly what the hell is being taught to these children. This is not to say I am expecting people to talk like Oscar Wilde. I take great relish in crudity and profanity. But is it unreasonable to ask that crudity and profanity be used grammatically?

All this talk of declining standards in English usage exists in a somewhat abstract realm. The criticisms are all well and good, but the reality is that individuals are communicating in this way on a day to day basis. It seems to me that when you reduce the ubiquity of condensed, grammatically loose forms of written communication to an individual level, you realise that people are accepting this as normal and acceptable. The seeming normalcy of text message abbreviations and internet acronyms brings me to an important point, hopefully one which will not make me seem like a hopeless crank, angry at anyone who doesn’t know what a subjunctive is. Namely, there are many examples of English usage that have developed on the internet that are wonderfully creative and apt examples of a linguistic play.

One of the most apropos is known as a shibboleth. For those who aren’t acquainted with the term, a shibboleth is, in essence, an in-joke. The term, however, connotes something more important – a word or phrase being used to distinguish people who are either a part of or outside a group. The idea has reached its zenith in wartime, to guard against espionage or enemy infiltration. To wit, the word Scheveningen, without getting into linguistic intricacies, is pronounced differently in German and Dutch and was used by the Dutch resistance during World War II to root out German infiltrators. A more benign example would be the distinction between the way Australians and New Zealanders pronounce ‘fish and chips’ or ‘sex’. You can see how this flows into the realm of the internet, which by its very nature is conducive to exclusive communities of people sharing very specific interests. This, in turn, gives rise to forms of written language being used as a test of induction into a specific area of knowledge.

A further example of this idea is leetspeak or, rather, 13375p34k. Leetspeak is a loose and very elastic cipher constituted by the substitution of letters for numbers or other characters existing on a standard computer keyboard. For example, ‘Is Not Magazine’ might become ‘15 n07 m4621n3’. An admittedly crude example of what almost constitutes a separate language, but you get the point. Leetspeak gained currency in the hardcore internet gaming world, and was used to distinguish experienced players from so called ‘n00bs’; the very term ‘leet’ is a derivation of ‘elite’. I would argue that this is a fantastically complex and creative application of English, extremely different to conventional usage, almost to the point of dialecticism.

As is so often the case, what raises this beyond simple juvenile ignorance and crudity is how it is used in an ironic fashion. There is a streak of humour and parody in its usage. It serves as a self-referential way both to acknowledge and mock the seriousness with which the person writing plays the game Counter Strike. There are myriad other internet memes that perform this function, but leetspeak is a corruption of English usage that does something else. First, it assumes a working, fluent understanding of the English language. Second, it does not situate itself as genuine substitution for correct English usage. It seems to me that text message abbreviation, for example, does not fulfil the second criteria; it genuinely posits itself as an alternative to the correct usage. In addition it does not possess the ironic flair of leetspeak or a host of other internet memes like ‘teh’, ‘pwned’, et cetera.

The difficult thing, in my opinion, is that even though I can appreciate the irony and humour in these derivations, the sheer frequency with which they appear on the internet might persuade other people to disregard them, to forget the reason the words were originally coined, to forget the meaning behind such corruptions. Without wanting to get poststructural about it, this turns the words or shibboleths into simulacra, representations of words or ideas that no longer exist. It turns them into empty shells. It is as if the original ideas behind these usages have been erased, and nothing but an echoless void of vapidity remains. It is a frightening world indeed when the very things that were used to mock ignorance become used by the ignorant.

What is important about this is that the limitless ideas that constitute humanity, that enrich our most beloved artworks and enliven our most fondly recollected conversations, do not exist in a vacuum. Human ideas and thoughts are not a priori; they are inevitably and ineffably tied to language. In short, if our language erodes, so does the quality and subtlety of our thoughts and ideas. I suspect I am, again, being a shade on the dramatic side when I say this, but it is the wonderful elasticity of our language, its flair for ambiguity and subtlety and its rich vocabulary, along with attributes too many to name, that allow us to understand our world and ourselves. I hope you understand that I am not advocating a rigid, authoritarian approach to language that precludes any kind of inventiveness or unorthodoxy. What I am advocating is that the adoption of new words and forms into our language occurs in an intelligent way, mindful of the evolutionary process that has made our language so great.

A humorous yet somewhat sobering example of the perverted way in which English has become trivialised is the American Dialect Society nominating the neologism ‘plutoed’ as their word of the year in 2006. Just in case you were wondering, they defined the term as “to demote or devalue someone or something”, a reference to Pluto recently being robbed of its status as a planet. This is the word of the year? I sincerely doubt anybody reading this magazine has read or heard that term outside of the context of either this article or many others parroting the press release from the American Dialect Society. This is an extreme example, but I am sure you are familiar with articles in the media informing us of the newest additions to such august publications as the Oxford English Dictionary or the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The words are almost invariably neologisms that no-one has ever encountered, much less used. Is it disappointing only to me that institutions that are meant to be the arbiters of, and authorities on, English usage have been reduced to such cheap publicity stunts?

So, if I may, I shall return to Orwell and posit that “the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts”. Our language has has always afforded us flexibility and elasticity in its use. The willingness of English to incorporate new words, phrases and usages has resulted in our possessing, arguably, the most syntactically rich language in the world. This process has primarily been one of evolution, not devolution. Moving, as we are, into realms where communication is becoming increasingly rich, and increasingly easy, we must always be mindful of what got us so far. If we do not heed this, all the technology, all the opportunities we have created to communicate with each other, may be in vain.