language
I was watching George Carlin the other day and he talked about how Americans have a fear of the truth. We like expressing things in flowery impersonal terms, so as not to evoke any strong responses. He talked about the battle condition suffered by soldiers that was known, in the aftermath of the Great War, as shellshock. Shellshock is a very direct and harsh word, very appropriate to the condition it describes. After the second World War, the same condition was called battle fatigue; a much more innocuous phrase, and fatigue is so much more polite and delicate a word than shock. After Korea, the name changed to operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to a machine. Now, since Vietnam, the condition is called post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. We've relegated the sufferers of that condition to a medical category, bloodless and inhuman. Just a statistic, a numbers game.
I really love his bit, because I think linguistics is fascinating. I love learning about a culture through studying their vernacular and the history of their language. It never ceases to amaze me, the things that we express every day, completely unconsciously, through our use of language.
I was doing some legal research for my criminal procedures class - or I was supposed to be, anyway. In reality, I'd taken a break and was looking at my mother's published cases on Lexis. It was a total trip to see her name recorded like that, to see her dialogue listed under "defense counsel". Anyway, I was scanning through cases and I found this phrase:
Unlawfully then and there intentionally and knowingly cause the penetration of the female sexual organ of [V.M.], a child, who was not then the spouse of defendant, by an object, to-wit: the sexual organ of said defendant.
He raped a little girl. That's what that says - he raped a little girl. But look how detached it is! Look how the formality of the language puts so much distance between the facts and their representation in words. I've never seen such a heartrending experience rendered in such bloodless, cruel language. It's almost as if it's describing relationships between robots and not human beings.
I understand and acknowledge the necessity for a precise and objective legal language. You can't mince your words or allow emotion to color them when you're examining, executing, or even discussing the law. But when did we get here? Surely even our legal vernacular was once more realistic than this. How did this happen to us as a culture, and what does it mean? Will we someday backlash and use hard-hitting, emotionally charged words without self-consciousness? Or will this machine-like language march ever onward, until we are left with a lifeless newspeak? Can you imagine drama or poetry in a world like that?
Nothing thrives in a world without beauty. Simple, pointless beauty. Shouldn't we know that by now?
I really love his bit, because I think linguistics is fascinating. I love learning about a culture through studying their vernacular and the history of their language. It never ceases to amaze me, the things that we express every day, completely unconsciously, through our use of language.
I was doing some legal research for my criminal procedures class - or I was supposed to be, anyway. In reality, I'd taken a break and was looking at my mother's published cases on Lexis. It was a total trip to see her name recorded like that, to see her dialogue listed under "defense counsel". Anyway, I was scanning through cases and I found this phrase:
Unlawfully then and there intentionally and knowingly cause the penetration of the female sexual organ of [V.M.], a child, who was not then the spouse of defendant, by an object, to-wit: the sexual organ of said defendant.
He raped a little girl. That's what that says - he raped a little girl. But look how detached it is! Look how the formality of the language puts so much distance between the facts and their representation in words. I've never seen such a heartrending experience rendered in such bloodless, cruel language. It's almost as if it's describing relationships between robots and not human beings.
I understand and acknowledge the necessity for a precise and objective legal language. You can't mince your words or allow emotion to color them when you're examining, executing, or even discussing the law. But when did we get here? Surely even our legal vernacular was once more realistic than this. How did this happen to us as a culture, and what does it mean? Will we someday backlash and use hard-hitting, emotionally charged words without self-consciousness? Or will this machine-like language march ever onward, until we are left with a lifeless newspeak? Can you imagine drama or poetry in a world like that?
Nothing thrives in a world without beauty. Simple, pointless beauty. Shouldn't we know that by now?