KVMR commentary - 'The blue of the grass'

[This commentary was recorded last week at KVMR FM 85.9 for its postponed airing today 9 April 2010.]

‘The blue of the grass’ is the color green in an African language.  That’s a lot of letters compared to the five letters in the word ‘green’ to get across the same message.  But it’s also getting harder to communicate in English.  In the last several decades English has lost much of its ability for clear, concise, and complete delivery.  Techies call this ‘information carrying capacity’, and the capacity of everyday English has been going down.  We are paying a price for this loss in our public dialogue.  Hi, I’m George Rebane.

Our world is getting more complex while our language is dumbing down.   Back in the old days when you heard someone called a ‘hero’, you could be sure that the person had knowingly gone above and beyond the call to risk life, limb, treasure, or honor.  Not any more.  Today a ‘hero’ is a millionaire athlete making a lot of touchdowns, or a father helping his son build a go-cart, or a GI running through a withering crossfire to bring back a wounded buddy.  If we want to discriminate between the GI and the athlete, we have to use a lot more words.  Hero doesn’t cut it any more.

Disabled or handicapped people aren’t disabled or handicapped.  They are ‘challenged’.  If a person has a problem with math, they’re math challenged.  Hell, I’ve spent my life being math challenged.  But if I said that to someone, they would never know that math has always been my strong suit, and the basis of a rewarding career.  Nevertheless, I’ve been challenged by math problems many a time.  Today ‘challenged’ has so many meanings that we have to tell a story instead of simply using the proper word.

Speaking of problems - people and organizations no longer have them.  They’ve traded them in for ‘issues’.  So if a meeting agenda has on it the discussion of certain issues, you have no idea whether it calls for a group problem solving session or simply a boring report.  Again, more explanation is necessary to avoid confusion.

The same disease has struck a passel of other words like ‘discriminate’, ‘racist’, ‘right’, ‘prejudge’, and ‘immigrant’.  The name of the disease is political correctness.  People afflicted with this malady seek to convey a flattened world that has no distinct edges or shapes that efficiently define the specifics of a landscape.  Doing that would expose them to being ‘judgemental’ – and heaven forbid, no PC person would want that tag hung around their neck.  Nice people are non-judgemental, they never decide that this is not that.  Or do they?

Today we are told that immigration reform season is here again.  But our handicapped language no longer supports a clear discussion of the illegal alien problem.  We have decisions to make about 12 million of them here in a country that has thrived from liberal immigration policies. 

For the record, immigration is a two party process.  An immigrant is a foreigner who receives permission from the welcoming country to enter, work, and make it their new home.  He becomes an illegal immigrant when he violates the conditions of his lawful immigration while remaining in-country.  Our laws say that such individuals are not in the same category as those who enter our country illegally.  But for us to talk about them requires that they have a unique label.  Historically that has been ‘illegal alien’.  Today the PC disease has banished the label and its clear meaning.

For political purposes illegal aliens have been softened to ‘un-documented immigrants’.  Everyone knows immigration is as American as apple pie, and these so-called immigrants are merely challenged by the lack of a few pieces of paper with some words on them.  Why should we discriminate against their ability to work and receive government benefits because of this bureaucratic inconvenience?  And so we will again start talking past each other, because we have lost the correct words from a once-rich language.

I am George Rebane, and I expand these and other themes in my Union column, and on georgerebane.com.  The opinions here are mine and not necessarily shared by KVMR.

Comments

[bill tozer]

George, what is up with all these crises? Every time the wind blows there is another crisis. Crisis in confidence in our government, banking crisis, foreclosure crisis, unemployment crisis, teen cyber-bullying crisis, energy crisis, global warming crisis, education crisis, obesity crisis, ADD crisis, teen pregnancy crisis, and just being rude crisis. Sure, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a crisis, but not getting the latest flu shot is not a crisis.

[Michael Anderson]

George,

This is provocative for sure. Let's work with your thesis for a moment.

I have been following this subject for a number of decades and I believe we are progressing and growing with language, rather than regressing. The problems you describe are ones of nuance. Yes, they can cause discomfort. Nonetheless, when we inculcate nuance and play with language, we are the richer.

I know you seek absolutes; we all do. But I think the human brain is gray, not black or white.

I like this reference: http://bit.ly/dePu97

M.

[George Rebane]

Bill - agreed, 'crisis' is another word that has been diluted out of its original meaning and impact.

Michael - Not disputing the coloration of the brain, however, the problem that I describe is definitely NOT a matter of "nuance". As technician, you know how the technical language is vigorously and unabashedly grown by the workers in the various fields. (We have adopeted many of its terms and concepts into common usage.) And that growth makes communication efficient and supports further growth of the involved technologies.

In our daily round the (formal) information carrying capacity of English is simply decreasing due to PC and the declines in our public education that are reducing the vocabulary available. In journalism and literature, 'don't use a big word when four or five small ones will do'. Advancing civilizations have had a common attribute, their language has expanded in syntax and semantics to support and reflect their advance.

The author you reference addresses other 'nuances' related to language evolution.

[RL Crabb]

As a cartoonist, I have been taken to task many times over the years for language and imagry. I spent many years doing underground comics, which was akin to the first amendment on steroids. We used racial and ethnic stereotypes, not to be mean but to get at a larger truth. Sometimes it would backfire on us.

One such case was a story done by underground icon Robert Crumb. He did a satirical piece called "When the N****** take over America." His intent was to ridicule derogatory images of black people, but the story was pirated and used by skinhead Aryans as a recruiting tool.

Language is a powerful weapon. You have to be careful where you aim it. The trick is to find a balance that doesn't reduce its potency to that of a squirt gun.

[Mikey McD]

Obama's just this a.m.: From the AP- "No one I've met is looking for a HANDOUT. And that's not what these tax cuts are," Obama said. "Instead, they're TARGETED RELIEF..."

The use of "WAR" comes to mind in conjunction with Tozer's comments...
"WAR on Drugs"- "WAR on illiteracy"- "WAR on terrorism"- "WAR on hunger"- etc.

The Good Book highlights the power of our tongues. Old Testament and New Testament warns us of our own tongue and the tongues of others.

I find it more difficult to stick my foot in my mouth when my mouth is closed.