February 25th, 2010
I tend to think in analogies and parables. Lately, now that I have a team of people I manage, I sit in our Monday morning meetings and have to fight my urge to talk and analogize for the entire hour. I'm sure my team appreciates the restraint I show. When given the choice, I'm happy to lecture at length.
How tedious that must be for others.
Anyhow, I bring this up because it is so obvious that I am o' them commyuuuuunicaterz. I am the natural enemy of people who are self-conscious of their spelling, grammar, punctuation, enunciation, or vocabulary.
I mean, my words are poly-syllabic. And let me tell you, the chicks really dig the poly-syllabic guys. Forget the cars, muscles, wads of cash, or fashion sense. A few six-syllable words and some well-used punctuation, and you have to fight them off with a cudgel.
Or not.
It doesn't really matter: I am what I am. If I am wordy, that's because I am inclined to be. I don't say "y'all" just because I don't. And that isn't just some anal-retentive adherence to 19th-century rules regarding language usage. I don't always follow those rules myself, even if I have a pretty good (at least above-average) understanding of them. What I realise is that there is a line between grammar and pure animalistic psychology, though it is very fuzzy. People define themselves to others using their language, and though it can be changed, modified, augmented, refined, etc., who we are at the base of our brains—our very essence—informs our choice of words, the pauses, the inflections, our enunciation, etc.
Example: I once sat at a coffee shop and listened to a girl tell another girl a story. At one point she said, "It's ... just ... like ... you know." It would have irritated me, but the other girl knew instantly what she was saying, would be irritated at me for spelling it out, in fact.
And I've learned, from both sides of the fence, that starting to pick apart someone's language is not really about the language, anyway. It's a classist statement made to someone else about ourselves. It's a clash of psychologies, and although there are clearly "right" and "wrong" usages in language, it's pretty hard to say the same about psychological dispositions.
And, before this thought escapes me: So far as I know, nobody has ever been able to identify the character of a person by the language that person uses. Lots of value judgements have been made based on language use, but that's different; that's elitism. And, frankly, I'm too much "of the people" to ever practice elitism.
What am I getting at here? Well, put simply, I'm saying that too often language is used as a hammer to control people. To subjugate. To diminish.
So, when some well-spoken, big-vocabulary geek like me comes along, I am met with suspicion, sometimes open hostility, because I potentially represent one of those language-based controllers.
Whether I like it or not, I am the natural enemy of the down-homers ... and all because I am well-spoken.
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