Thursday, August 17, 2017

Why Can't the English - Part II.



Why Can’t the English…. ??? – Part II.

We are suffering, as a culture, from little errors in communication all the time.  Some of them don’t matter; some do.  But cumulatively, the little errors are leading us to the deterioration of the language system as a whole.  It works like this:  Every interface is an opportunity for one party to Encode a message, attempting a delivery; and the second party to Decode the message, attempting some sense-making of the words.  Sometimes all it takes is the removal of ONE WORD from the sentence and it changes the meaning.  The new meaning can cause trouble.  The MEDIA in the United States KNOWS this and is capitalizing on this to cause deep turmoil in our culture. 

When we read articles or listen to news pieces, we can miss a critical word, or it can be removed on purpose at the delivery of the message, and there are important ramifications.  For instance, when we are talking about drugs – one word may change the value of the message:  legal.  A legal drug can be a prescribed pharmaceutical substance that can heal someone.  Granted, in the wrong hands it can become illegally used by someone to whom it has not been prescribed… or perhaps worse it could fall in the hands of a child or mentally compromised person and have tragic results.  But the word still matters “legal.”  “Legal” is an important distinction from “illegal,” in a sane world.

Words paint a picture.  The media has been playing a colossal word game, at least since 1973, which is about as far back as I am able to remember.  When the country became divided on the issue of abortion, the media began crafting words to sway public opinion.  “Choice.”  Every American soul rallies to the sense of entitlement to be “master of my own ship, captain of my destiny.”  The word “choice” deeply resonates within us.  But we forget that choices can be morally good, or morally evil.  When my choice eclipses someone else’s choice because they cannot speak for themselves, that is a significant problem and a grave injustice.  When we strip the word “choice” of an adjective that defines the morality of a choice itself, we do no one any favors…. Not the woman who undergoes a mechanical rape, not the child who is removed from the safety of the womb, not the culture amidst a war of words.  Instead of us as an entire culture, striving to support women in making better preliminary choices (ie. chastity outside of marriage), we deify the choice-making machine itself, and the social problem continues.

Here’s another example of the value of one word.  A couple of years ago, I sat in a very important meeting of parish leaders in a community.  I said to them:  “I refuse to teach an irrelevant Catholicism.”  The woman next to me shouted:  “Catholicism is not irrelevant!”  I replied:  “That’s NOT what I said.”  She only heard part of the sentence, where the descriptive article “an” was removed.  She came away with an entirely different message than I delivered to her because her pre-existing bias blocked her ears.  I see the same thing happening in the media today.  I see it primarily on Facebook where people react, react, react.  So much of Facebook users’ weighing-in on political news-pieces is a reaction.  We lack the intellectual thoughtfulness to craft a better response when we let the knee-jerk typing take over.  I know.  I’ve done it myself a couple of times.  Then you ask yourself, “at the end of the day, did I share something that really mattered, or did I just vent?” 
  
I look at how the conversation-based interview shows go on television and I can only tolerate a few minutes.  You can begin with the presumption that, like most everyone else, I am tuning into shows that are of particular interest to ME for some reason… and yet I can hardly tolerate listening to the interface.  How I HATE interruptions!  And yet, most of these talk shows are bantering without allowing one person to fully complete a thought before there is a response. This is just very, very bad communication technique that leads inadvertently (I think) to the wholesale breakdown of communication.  It is how teenagers sometimes deal with parents – the “but’s and the and’s” and the attempting to talk over the adult’s A-to-Z monologue about whatever.  It really terminates any sort of true communication.  I am seeing this more and more in the routine of daily interactions.  It is going to bring us to a very bad place.

You may or may not have heard of St. Thomas Aquinas but I think his method of explaining would be a useful guide to all of us.  I believe he borrowed his technique from St. Albert the Great who was very big into the sciences.  And some may recall how back in our own educational days we learned the scientific method.  You would have a hypothesis, proofs, and conclusion.  Aquinas actually took that and applied it to his theological study.  He began with re-stating the question of his intellectual opponent in a way that led you to conclude he had listened carefully enough to understand it, and therefore he would be able to competently address it.  He then undertook to present logical proofs or statements to either support a position or prove its non-sequitur (“It does not follow” ie.: it’s nonsense).  Think of the possibilities if we took this technique into our classrooms, our business dealings, our marriages, our friendships.  How much conflict could be alleviated!  Yes – it DOES take longer to get to where you are going with this method, but it provides a clarity that we cannot live without.

Back in the 1970’s, the Psychological world was teaching us a method of this in conflict resolution.  Condensed, it goes like this:  Person A says something.  Person B responds:  “What I hear you saying is < and repeats what A said>.”  Then Person A can say, “Yes, that is what I meant” or “No.  Let me re-state that more clearly.”  Nowadays, we just call the person a name or slap on a derisive label and move on.  The lack of respect for both people and the process breaks the whole system of communication itself down.  This has an impact on the wholeness/integrity of culture itself.

Can we afford a society of babbling imbeciles?  Ooh. I’m sorry did I say that too clearly?  Can we afford to keep the divisive rhetoric going, at the expense of PEACE within our culture?  Should we continue to let the Media hold the baton and call the moves for how we relate as a people who live in the Nation with the very greatest opportunities to be excellent in so many ways? 

In the classic movie “My Fair Lady,” Rex Harrison sang a song that encapsulates the importance of the use of good English diction but I would propose that it also relates well to my point on content and culture.
                “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak? 
                Norwegians learn Norwegian.  The Greeks learn their Greek.
                Use proper English, and you’re regarded as a freak …
                Oh why can’t the English?!  Why can’t the English?  Why can’t the English
                Set a good example ….”

Yes.  Why can’t the English …. And the Americans as well …


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