Are we boorish users of language…or actually really particular about it?/Image: Licensed Adobe stock, ArTo.
Text-based greetings, Alt-reading lovers!
Thank you, thank you: no applause. And by “no” I mean “tons of.” Humility is for liberals, after all! And I ain’t no liberal, readers. Who am I? By now, you should know, although you’re right wing and you also think racism has ceased to exist when black teenagers are being shot for holding cell phones, so I can’t really assume you know anything at all.
As always, it’s beyond gratifying to find you staring blankly, slack-jawed and knuckle-dragged at my endless rows of ultra-right-wing literary trash: Ann Coulter, Dana Loesch, Glenn Beck–the examples of awesome human-hood and mediocre intellect just keep on coming, I know. I see you’re a fan of the tactile-kinesthetic sensations of all things book–the paper-cut-living-on-the-edge blade of the edge of each page on your finger pads as you turn a page; the hills and valleys of the binding under your epidural integumentation as you walk down the length of these shelves dragging your finger behind you (more manual dragging–go, you!); the heavy, mute weight of the textual rectangle as you clutch it to your chest. While some may think these small joys are lost on a conserva-cretin, like you, I…well, I too am pretty sure they are as well, TBH, I just wanted to be generous and entertain the notion that they weren’t. I’m done now.
Related: The inaugural column in our Fantastic Fetus™ series.
Sgt. Scourge: Word Police
Speaking of undue generosity, a book that I’m enjoying lately that I wanted to fill you in on a central point made within is Verbal Hygiene by Deborah Cameron. It’s about efforts of all sorts to make the English language “healthier,” be those efforts those of a bun-wearing schoolmarm, a Henry Higgins paternal Svengali-type, or our least favorite over here on the right wing of the political spectrum, the shrill finger-waggers of the contemporary left. Notice that none of those inspire our ire like the last. Most people assume that the reason for only the final in that list making the loudmouthed, insufferable Tomi Lahrens of the world yell and scream like petulant children about how proud they are of and how they will never but never cease their use of language to derail, delegitimize, and dehumanize all non-Christian, non-hetero, non-male whites is that they’re just verbal bad-asses who won’t be tamed. It seems like that’s kind of what those people themselves think, as they’re all drunk on their own swagger and like, “I’m politically incorrect and proud, son,” as a clip of Kid Rock that plays over and over in my head reminds me.
Cameron, however, in one of the points in her book that stuns in its artful grace and intellectual vanguard notes:
“What many people dislike, specifically, is the politicizing of their words against their will. By calling traditional usage into question, reformers have in effect forced everyone who uses English to declare a position in effect of gender, race or whatever. There is a choice of possible positions: you can say ‘Ms. A. is the chair(person)’ and convey an approval of feminism, or you can say, ‘Miss A. is the chairman’ and convey a more conservative attitude. What you cannot do anymore is to select either alternative and covey by it nothing more than, ‘a certain woman holds a particular office.’ Choice has altered the value of the terms and removed the option of political neutrality.”
Right Wing Rude
If we take Cameron’s point to be true, what the anti-PC crusaders like Lahren, Kid Rock, and other conserva-numskulls who make it a point to act out verbally in defiance of the would-be assmunch-reducing of English every chance they get, are much less clumsy, artless, brain-dead morons who just DGAF about anything than that they are ultra-sensitive to the vagaries and power of each and every word. They’re simply pie-in-the-sky hoping they can still live in the good ol’Â halcyon days of Ye Olde Innosense (which never were), when we could just use some words to flatly, plainly say, “Here’s this thing I see in front of me. It’s nothing, ‘just’ reality as anyone would see it.” Naive much? Also: lazy much? Really–you can’t be bothered to take a little care with your words? B-O-O-H-O-O as John Bender, played by Judd Nelson, said–or spelled, rather–in John Hughes 1980s celluloid classic, The Breakfast Club.
And: 3 products to help you be silent in the face of ongoing Trumpian horrors.
Sit With This In the Seat of Power
As many of us conserva-columnists say over here at SYRW, the entire right-wing project of late can be said to be a desperate, panicked reaction to the inevitable decline of the Christ-worshipping white guy. And to most people, the bratty, spoiled, indignant anti-political-correctness dumb-asses just seem like the ones taking the breath in the last gasps of this dying culture. Clearly, Cameron has a much more refined, ungrudging intellect. She sees these I-won’t-be-tamed word cowboys, myself included, as really just wishing that they could sometimes use words only to perform one function. I assume in most cases that would be “mere” expository exercise of the language faculty to neutrally point something out.
Wow–it feels weird when someone recognizes our inherent worth by presuming there might actually be something besides polluted air in between our temples. And that’s probably a fair recognition overall. But the final word, pun intended, is likely somewhere in between that we’re all, on the right, a bunch of jerks who couldn’t care less that everything we say and do matters and that we really just want to be able to sometimes say some things and have them not be a big ol’ political deal. Wishing something doesn’t make it so. If you can’t accept that language is always. already in a dynamic, reciprocal relationship with political realities, well, then I can’t help you, readers. This doesn’t mean that you should be executed for using the male generic, for example. But it does mean that we all would be well-advised to take care with our morphological choices.
Clearly, we won’t, though, does it, my Alt-brethren (see there–I used the male generic).? No–no, it sure does not.
By this time next week, I expect you, readers, to have read exactly nothing. It’s a dangerous activity unless you have a tyrannical guide like me by your side, because then I can be sure you’ll get out of the act of book-browse only what I wish you too. See you then!
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