Strangeness in Language

I often remember words by the way in which they were first used toward me. In eighth grade, I had a project in my drama class whereby each of us had to memorize a speech of our choosing and perform it in front of the class, on stage. Contrarian radical that I was, I decided to memorize and perform a speech by Vladimir Illych Lenin, a rousing call for insurrection against the bourgeoisie and a denunciation of the imperialist Great War. I hardly knew what any of it meant, but I remember practicing with passion and fervor as I chuckled at those classmates who lacked my confidence.

During class one day, when we were all practicing into the walls as a group, she gave an instruction to the class: "give your performances with as much energy and emotion as you can muster!" she turned towards me and cracked a smile, "even if it drifts into melodrama." So I remember the word melodrama. Every time my friends become hysterical over personal slights. Every time a film camera zooms and the orchestra crescendos. Every time an activist declares that climate change means that the end is nigh. I think back to eighth grade, that smile, and Lenin's words shattering as they smashed into a middle school's cafeteria wall.

That particular word makes me ponder on the origins of the diverse lexicons we use in everyday conversation. No two persons "Englishes" are quite the same. The linguists apparently call this an idiolect, and one focus of linguistic studies has been on how an understanding of how idiolects can be used to catch criminals. Ted Kasczyski, the quixotic Harvard mathematician, was incarcerated on account of his use of words: “corrections”, “chick”, and “negro.”

In my senior year of high school English, I was under the tutelage of a wise old sage-- a full bird colonel, a former West Point English professor, a published author, and a reverend. That man, single-handedly, has expanded my vocabulary in recent times more than anything else. He had accumulated a great wealth of vocabulary over the course of his seven decades indulging in the English language, and he spread his treasure liberally. Thus, I know that my writing in those days was apparently gormless.

His sprawling intellect amounted to a class unlike any other. He knew formal grammatical rules like Dewey knew decimals, and he disparaged those who cursed when they knew more powerful words. He buried his students with the strength of a soldier, and then shewed them to the light with all the power of a diviner. One can only imagine my fascination when, the day after I submitted an essay, he turned to me during class and quipped: "When you wrote 'disambiguation,' I thought you were inventing words again." Our Englishes were different. His vocabulary was built by a West Point education, mine by Wikipedia articles. His research began with a note from the author, mine with "For other uses, see (disambiguation)."

However, we do not use every word that exists in our English. My Introduction to Political Analysis class is taught by a young grad student. On the first day of class, as he was going through the motions, describing the dull syllabus in dull terms, he accidentally made an interesting comment: he said he was from Alabama and seriously, preemptively apologized if a "y'all" should ever escaped his lips. I thought it odd that he would feel a need to apologize, but there is perhaps no greater indicator of social class and regional loyalties in General American English than the second person plural pronoun.

A "y'all" is southern, or a "y'all" is black. A "you guys" is Pacific coast, and a "you" is Yankee. "Y'all," once a word of the noble Norman conquerors of England, is now associated with the poor, the rural, and the ghettoized. I didn't learn y'all until later in life. I was raised with the dark horse: "yinz." "Yinz" is a frail, dying word. Its use is regional, chained to a few Appalachian hollers in western Pennsylvania. It burrowed my way into my brain in my early childhood.

My mom, daughter of the tristate area of northern West Virginia, started using it around June, 2006, for when my brother was born, we became a yinz. My mom, college-educated woman that she is, seemed to try to suppress her accent, conscious of its strangeness in Kansas or Colorado; but it came out in her anger: "yinz're outchyer goddamn minds." I wouldn't dare refer to someone as a yinz today. I can tolerate another's bewilderment when I use eccentric language indicative of high education, but I could never be so ridiculous as to use the regional dialect of my lineage.

There is an idea somewhere in the intellectual aether that language is the sole means by which one understands and describes our world and that it is accordingly important in building it. George Orwell's famous and infamous novel 1984 features Newspeak, a state-sponsored language consisting entirely of jargon and neologisms through which the controlling apparatus of society can strip its citizens of the ability to express discontent. I've always thought this idea to be somewhat ridiculous, for it seems to me that words are far more plastic than people. They will always shift to suit the contexts which we desire.

There is hardly a better example of lexical malleability than the word which refers to those with intellectual disabilities. Once content with idiot, academia adapted retarded some decades ago in order to maintain linguistic impartiality. Today, mental retardation is a gravely pejorative insult to those who advocate for social justice, and intellectual disability is the new fashion. Just a few days ago, I overheard one of my blunter professors pejoratively refer to an event as intellectually disabled. Irony soaks every fiber of the quip. The collective decisions of millions, decades of noble activism, wheezing as plastic words are poured into a new mold.

I often remember words by the way in which they were used toward me first. In sixth grade, I was formally introduced to the word retarded. Having long fallen out of favor as a childish insult, I heard it from an initiative that wanted to discourage the use of the "r-word" by the youth. Sheepishly, in my first hour, I asked what the "r-word" even was. By the end of the day, I was joking that they were trying to ban my middle name. Every year I was in middle school, well-meaning administrators invited this initiative into the school. Every year, middle schoolers relished in their newly expanded curse vocabulary. This initiative surely mutated many a child's English for the worse. This melodramatic, gormless initiative surely changed many of yinz English for the worse. Newspeak, be damned.