Whatever happened to the once strong, vital, unique American language?
It hasn't been seen in some time. It's been completely obscured by the
thicket of "you knows" and "whatevers" and other verbal tics that now cover
the language like kudzu.
In recent years, a tumorous mass of text-message techno-lingo has only added
another layer to the overgrowth. Sometimes you wonder if there's still a
language somewhere underneath all that mess trying to get out - or if it has
simply rotted away. And with it, any hope of coherent thought.
Years ago a less-than-great book with a great title - "The Inarticulate
Society" by Tom Shachtman - offered three reasons for the general decline of
American as she is spoke. He claimed the decline could be traced to "three
interlocking cultural courses that influence and exacerbate each other."
The first was the move away from the written word toward other means of
communication - telephone, television and popular music.
But the written word has always owed much of its power to the spoken. Even
now writers are told to "find a voice." And one test of good prose remains
how it sounds when recited aloud.
Demosthenes was scarcely less eloquent because he was an orator, not a
writer. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill could hardly be described
as inarticulate; yet their most stirring words were delivered not in print
but over the radio. If we have grown inarticulate, the fault lies not in our
media but in our selves.
The second reason for the decline of American speech, according to Mr.
Shachtman, is the lack of good public models in recent times; he cited the
preppy awkwardness of the first George Bush and the deceptive glibness of
Bill Clinton. The decline continues at an ever greater pace; both of those
presidents would now seem veritable Ciceros compared to the dyslexic speech
of our current head of state.
But it's not as if American presidents determine how articulate American
society will be. Hasn't the model American hero long been the strong, silent
type - that is, the inarticulate type - at least since Gary Cooper?
Yup.
So is all this mourning for American articulateness just the usual
generational complaint about the younger set?
No, there's something more to it than that. If you seek evidence of the
language's decline, just listen to some of the conversations around you in
public places.
Or turn on your television. Almost any comedy from the '30s - see the Marx
Brothers - sounds so much more articulate than its clumsy counterpart in
these verbally soggy times. Those old movies actually have dialogue rather
than the simulacrum that so often passes for it today.
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