Language

Why do we use the language we use?
I would say words, since as far as the entire language goes most of us only have one or a couple to choose from, except I mean the entire style of language we use.

Its really very interesting if you think about it.  When you listen to your own words in different situations, or think about how your use of them changes over time.

In general I know I have a tendency to use rather precise language.  If I know a word that has all the proper connotations I'm looking for I will use it.  I wouldn't say I use flowery language though, I just end up using words that don't necessarily come up frequently in conversation.  That's my baseline.



But then, I moved to Iceland.  It took a while for me to notice, because I can be rather oblivious at times, but eventually I figured out that perhaps it would be a good idea to simplify my language choices a little bit.  Obviously no one was going to tell me that they hadn't ever heard that word before, but why would they?  None of the Icelanders knew that people teased me in high school for my use of particularly descriptive words.  Its perfectly fine to have a large vocabulary, but you become the subject of mild derision when you decide to use it. And so I started to think twice before using some words.  I have no idea if it mattered, because who do you ask?  My closest friends had actually spent a lot of time out of Iceland and their English was as good or at least nearly as good as mine.

So I returned from Iceland, and possibly the 'bigger' words crept back into my general usage.  I'm not too sure.  But what has certainly happened is that the more time I spend exclusively surrounded by other science nerds, reading scientific literature and working on research, the more science language creeps into my normal conversations.  I have noticed this, but what brought it home was when a fellow science nerd stopped me in mid-sentence after I said that 'I have several data points to suggest that it will be there.' It, in this case, was an article of clothing which I was going shopping for.  So, my language is now gradually being infiltrated by science words, and statistical terms.

This is actually hard for me to notice, because my parents are both statistical dorks and would not bat an eyelash at any of that stuff, my brother is more of a science nerd than I am, my best friend, as mentioned, is a bigger science nerd than I am.  I don't really have anyone currently reigning me in the way my previous roommates did by laughing at me when I got out of hand. Of course, sometimes I specifically choose to get out of hand, but that is not really any fun anymore, because it doesn't phase anyone who I talk to.

Yes, I live in a world strangely populated entirely by nerds.  Its called Cambridge, Massachusetts.

What I didn't mention that started mostly in Iceland but actually has roots much earlier on is the tendency I have to use 'British' English.  I completely understand why English would have a problem with English requiring a modifier when referring to their language, it does seem rather unfair, but when I am in any way comparing them, I always refer to 'American' and 'British' English.  No one gets to have English without a modifier.

Why don't we ever here about Irish English, or Australian English, are there fewer people? Cause Irish English is by no means British English.  The style is very different and commonly used words are also not the same.  The whole cadence and inflection of Irish English is very different.

Anyway, point being, in Iceland I watched a lot of English TV, dated an English guy, met Brits, and some British English started to consciously and unconsciously seep into my daily usage.  Unfortunately, the conscious ones don't really work.  I can't call a traffic circle a roundabout, which seems an absolutely perfect name for the thing, because no one will know what I'm talking about.  Of course no one in the rest of the US would have a clue what I was talking about if I called it a rotary as they do here.  Which seems a peculiarly horrible description.  Another one I loved was how people said 'Are you sorted?' in a situation where here we would say 'Have you got it all sorted out?'  The English way is so much more efficient.  But if I said that here someone would definitely look at me funny.

Up above I was having a hard time keeping out the British.  My instinct was to write 'loads of time.'  Somewhere I think I was going for 'brilliant' and stopped myself.  And I know I was going for 'bloody' because I use that all the time, even if people make fun of me for it.

The other end of British English in me and my history is that somehow it seems that my childhood reading, and there was a ton of it, was all English authors.  So when I was learning to read I learned British English.  My teacher had to make allowances for me on spelling tests because I put 'ou' where there should have been 'o.'  I remember clearly being told that it wasn't exactly wrong, but that's just not how we do it here. Of course I continued to read a lot of English writers, and I noticed something funny happens with some of the old writers.  The clearest example was Jane Austen. After the second time I read 'Sense and Sensibility' I walked around talking like a fucking Jane Austen character for at least a day, highly pretentious, but not purposefully so.

And that brings me to a last thing, the, um, less gentile areas of language choice.
What are our reasons for using them, why do they carry so much strength?
I generally don't 'curse.'  Why? Because there's always a perfectly good word to get your point across without it, and if not, then a lesser word will do, and you can use inflection to make your point.  However, you cannot do this while writing.  Just as there is unfortunately no sarcasm font to help us with short bits of writing, similarly there is no way to provide extra emphasis to a word. (No one appreciates all caps or bold.)

Of course we use freakin and other slightly milder modifications of words deemed inappropriate.  But why are they inappropriate or crude.  Who gives them that power?  Because really that is what they now have.  Of course if your general usage of language is riddled with 'fucking' then it no longer has any power.  But I'm willing to bet that using fucking as a modifier for the character in a Jane Austen book who is most likely relatively mild-mannered if not actually meek (unless of course we're speaking of a mother with daughters of marriageable age) will have caught attention.  In that instance I used it on purpose.  (Well, duh, right?)  But what is really the point?

I remember as a child when I said that someone had really been screwed by something, and my father told me not to use that construction.  I asked why? (Because I asked why? about most things I think.) And he responded something along the lines that it didn't sound appropriate because other people would think that I was using it in a way that I wasn't and didn't really understand.

This left me hugely confused.  Because at that point I had absolutely know idea that screwing had anything to do with sex, and that to say someone was screwed would have anything to do with sex.  If I would have thought about it at all, I probably would have thought that it had to do with the idea that if someone took a screwdriver and put a screw into you with it it would hurt very badly.  Once I did understand the sex angle, I still thought the screwdriver was better, because most of the time when people are having sex they want to, whereas no one wants to be screwed over. Also, no one wants to have someone screw a screw into them with a screwdriver.  I have since learned though that it can be very handy in orthopedics, but anesthetic agents are typically used to avoid the worst pain elements. Still, if avoidable, I would prefer no screws, of the metal kind.

And of course there is the fact that language evolves, probably more quickly than ever now.  There used to be two forms of a language, formal and colloquial.  Usually that meant written and spoken.  But now we have a third level right? and maybe even a fourth.  Because we have written language that is even more colloquial than spoken language.  We read a blog post, or a status update, or whatever, and there will be abbreviations that we understand perfectly.  Things like lol that are clearly colloquial but have no place in spoken language.  (God I hope not.  If someone ever said lol or omg in my presence I think I would immediately lose all respect for them, and only the utter lack of weaponry and the general disapprobation of society would stop me from murder.  Actually, my moral compass is better developed than that.  True murder is irrefutably immoral.)

The way that I usually write in this blog has turned out to be a strange amalgamation of the different ends of the spectrum then.  It has been difficult to write this particular post because I have, except for the intentional moments, kept to traditional, formal, grammatically correct American English.

Its actually very difficult.  I usually use a lot of written ways to convey spoken language, and a very informal spoken language at that, mixed in with cursing, because that gives emphasis to my statement that I may not otherwise be able to obtain, and a healthy dose of my nerdy science writing.  I also generally don't write in anything remotely resembling complete sentences, but I think I have done it here.  

There may be a run-on in with the tangential comments.  I'm reading over it and I see a conjunction beginning a sentence (which can actually be acceptable if intended for effect), pronouns with improper antecedents, hanging prepositions right and left and an appalling lack of commas.  Several sentences have gone past complex structure.  They clearly have too many clauses to be gramatically acceptable, and yet they make perfect sense because we speak in long trains of short clauses.  Maybe only I do.

I will now go back to writing as my thoughts come to me, and never again, in this format, censor my own viewpoint so dramatically.  It was painful.

Edit: Holy shit this is a long post! Probably the most colossal yet.  If you've stuck with me to here, good on you and I hope that you were bored enough that it wasn't a waste of your time : )