Monday, 14 April 2014

The Word Police

He and I are good at grammar.

Me and him aren't good at grammar.

The rest of us don’t really think about grammar.

But should we?

As a writer I sometimes find myself umming and ahhing over the proper use of words, pronunciation and grammar in conversational speech. More specifically, I think about the Word Police. And how Luddite they are.


For me, communication should be clear and comfortable. I don’t care if people invent words or use them in unusual ways. To me communication is about function over form. Rules can break and bend as much as you want - as long as you’re understood, you’re doing it right.


But not the Word Police. They need rules when they talk. They need to follow all of them. And they need you to follow them as well (the ones they can remember, anyway). And it’s all because they’re so smart, right? Smart people know all the rules. Science has rules. Maths has rules. Language has rules. Rules are there for a reason, so you better stick to them.

But anyone who understands communication knows that language hinders as much as it helps. That the rules exist only as long as they aid communication. And that they only aid communication as long as people use them. If nobody uses the rules, they have no purpose. New rules will emerge in their place. First as slang, colloquialisms and jargon and then as ‘real’ words. That’s all it is. We use the rules that work for us and scrap the ones that don’t. Like evolution.



Language is a code. Portuguese, mathematics, musical notation, Morse (the code and the inspector), and emoticons. Codes have two main features; to relay a message between two parties so that both understand; and to relay a message between two parties in the presence of a third party so that they (the third party) are not able to understand.

And because every language is a code, all of them exclude a certain portion of the population whenever they are used. Old people don’t understand texting, young people don’t understand Shakespeare, and nobody understands politicians.

So codes have their pluses and minuses. You can share information with people who know your code and exclude the people who don’t. This can be annoying, even condescending. But it is a symptom of the function of language. The codes of spoken language were built for the majority, but they can never be understood by everyone.

By the same token, if you can make up a word and have it be understood, then it’s a word. If someone says you made that word up, you can just tell them that all words are made up. 

Language is not based on common rules but on common symbols. As soon as those symbols are no longer common they are no longer part of the language.

Which is why the Word Police have no business correcting us. All they are doing is telling us we’re not talking in a way that was useful fifty, one hundred, two hundred years ago. They are trying to show off by proving they know the rules, but all they’re really doing is proving how little they know about actual communication.


If it was of some benefit to pontificate like an academic at the dinner table, then I’m sure a good number of us would partake in such eloquence at every opportunity. But it doesn't benefit us. It benefits academics. In an academic setting, academic speech is great. Perfect, even. It does what the language needs to do in that environment, at that time, in that social context. If the Word Police show up here, we will happily oblige.



But language in itself doesn't call for obedience, it calls for invention. If all we did was obey the language of our forebears no language would even exist because there would be no flexibility, no room for change or improvement or evolution.

Did you know that ‘pants’ was a rude word in the early 20th century? In Victorian times, ‘leg’ was offensive. So was ‘bottom’. Should we go back to those rules? If we once talked like that, shouldn't we always talk like that? If following the rules is what matters, that’s exactly what we should do.


But it isn't what matters. In a few decades we've had ‘gay’, ‘cool’, and ‘partner’ all shift through different meanings. Are they correct in some meanings and incorrect in others? Nope. Just more and less offensive and more and less common.

I’d like to see how a member of the Word Police would go in the southern states of America. They speak English there, but it isn't 'correct' English. And yet however ‘correctly’ the Word Police spoke, the locals would not understand. So who’s speaking incorrectly in that scenario? Answer: whoever is failing to be understood by the majority.



Because understanding a language is exclusive to social context, not education. ‘Smart people’ know the same amount of correct language as ‘dumb people’. Which is why it is wrong to correct someone when they say lie instead of lay. Or me instead of I. Why belittle their use of language with your more correct but less useful version of the same language? Who is that helping? Conversational language operates under a Darwinian hierarchy, not tradition. What’s popular and what’s right are pretty much the same thing. 

The famous Webster’s Dictionary exists largely because an American named Noah Webster wanted to ‘Americanise’ the English language. So in the 19th Century he decided to put out his own dictionary and change the spelling of a bunch of words. It wasn't evolution or contextual selection. It was one guy deciding he wanted centre and humour to be center and humor. He wanted to give his language exclusivity. He wanted his code to be secret.



And that’s exactly what the Word Police are trying to do. Showing off their knowledge of some long forgotten secret code as if it’s still relevant. The rest of us then mistake our ignorance of the code for intellectual failure when it’s actually our brains being efficient. Remembering the words that are useful. Because anything else is a waste of time unless you actually work in language.

And those are the only circles the Word Police should serve and protect; English, writing, and academia, that’s where the rules matter because that’s where they’re still useful. We want writing and academia to be poetic and illustrious and pragmatic and accurate. But casual conversation doesn't need to be because that’s not what it’s for.


The Word Police don't know the difference between small chat over capsicum dip and a graduate address at Harvard University. They're social simpletons. And their veiled attempts to prop themselves up in the tree-house of special language secrets with a sign that says: ‘No mispronounciation aloud’ are so misguided they might as well be trying to catch all the ants in the world to stop them evolving into other more successful kinds of ants.

So the next time someone corrects you for your misuse of him or I or lay or lie, ask them if they know about ‘pants’ or ‘leg’ or good old Noah Webster and his made up dictionary of special differences. Tell them that all words are made up, that language is what we want it to be.

And if they still don’t understand you, tell them to go dump an android farm on an empty of twelves.

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