Friday, December 14, 2007

Life is a Battle of Semantics

In a world where less and less emphasis is placed on proper word usage and sentence structure, one might think it would be the charge of the higher education institution to take up the cause of preserving the last few remaining vestiges of proper grammar. It is, but that's not the entire equation, it is up to all of us, individually and as a whole. You can go just about anywhere in today's America and be assaulted by improper punctuation on signage, misspellings in newspapers and magazines (publications which have specific employees whose job it is to ensure accuracy) and a complete lack of couth in radio/TV/online marketing. Who is to blame for all of these perversions? In no particular order, the main culprits we will examine here are the President of the United States, the general apathy of the American public, the Internet and the education system as a whole.

Start a discourse on improper word usage and one need look no further than the appointed leader of this country and cringe at the word vomit that comes spewing from his mouth. The supposed leader of the free world famously inquiring (on the campaign trail in 2000) "Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" helped to spurn an entire industry based on one man's malapropisms. Is this making too big a deal out of nothing? Imagine if everybody who has spent twelve dollars at any one of the many stores that sell the little desk calendars of 'Bushisms' had spent that money instead on a book for a child who didn't have one to read? The fact that there is an entire cottage industry built on the foundation of the President of the United States' inability to wrap his tongue around a well-spoken sentence should scare people senseless. But it doesn't, does it? Why not? Because people just don't care anymore, laziness is everywhere and the linguistic perversions it permits are pervading our patterns of speech.

As the famous author and professor Norman Cousins asserted in his autobiography Human Options, "It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete." While it would be nice for college-level instructors to be able to truly prepare their students for 'the real world' by polishing their language skills and tailoring them to fit the students' path of study, there probably just aren't enough hours in anybody's day to see that become a reality. Too many assumptions are made giving college students the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their competency with the written word. How many college freshman, upon the successful completion of the requisite composition class, can properly define all of the following terms: alliteration, hyperbole, juxtaposition, irony, run-on sentence and redundancy? Probably not many, but then how could one conceivably complete a college composition class without knowing which of the countless words we have at our disposal to use at which specific point in any given sentence at any given time to properly make the requisite point required to clarify what needs to be made clear?!?

It is not fair to lay the blame solely at the feet of the instructors of the higher education institution, to be sure – much of it has to do with the tools given them. Students used to have to be able to read books to do research papers, whereas now it is not out of the realm of the feasible to think that one could get through 80% of college without actually having to open a book, all other research/reading/writing would be done through a computer. That may be all well and good, but is the assertion of this writer that something is lost when the words are pixels on a screen as opposed to ink on a page. Words on a computer screen feel sterile; they don't have the depth and meaning that the same words do spelled out in ink across nice thick pages, when the musty smell from the binding glue permeates the air as an old book is opened in a windowless room. The image of words flashing across a monitor is just that, an image of the words, fleeting, soon to be replaced by other images. It is the very fact that those words (or images thereof) are so fleeting that lends more fuel to the fire – most people delete emails after they're done reading them, most people who send emails know this, so they don't worry about capitalizing or punctuation because, hey, it's just an email, right? Falling victim to this trap is just another step down the slippery slope we are now sliding down - we as a society are losing our ability to communicate effectively.

What can we do to slow this decline? As mentioned earlier, buy a book for someone who needs it and wouldn't otherwise be able to get one. Donate your used books to a local school library. Sponsor a neighborhood child in their summer reading program, as those programs get more attention, they will hopefully get more recognition and funding. A library skills class should be an 8th grade graduation requirement and high school teachers and college instructors should be encouraged to assign research papers where no online resources are allowed. Call for more accountability from your superiors/teachers/instructors/government officials/journalists – anyone who uses words for a living should be thick-skinned enough to have them evaluated.

If you see a mistake in a newspaper/magazine/online resource, take the time and nicely point out their mistake to them – some will actually appreciate it.

Above all, don't further perpetuate the stereotype of the 'typical lazy American' and just put your name on something that you've done that looks like it might be finished, especially if it is at all important. Read it, re-read it, give it to someone else to read, then re-read it again. Take some pride in your use of words and you'll be better positioned to succeed in whatever path you follow throughout your life.