Do Words Work Good, like Instruments Should?

Rarely has the publication of a book sparked a controversy as intense as that produced by the appearance of Webster's Third International. Since when should a dictionary lead to disputes more impassioned than those attending, say, Nabokov's Lolita or Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer? That a scientifically "justified" acquiescence in the word "ain't" should touch so many raw nerves is on the surface surprising. But not really.

For beneath the surface lie many crucial issues about the prospects for linguistic integrity in our cultural democracy. Unfortunately, instead of clarifying these issues, we display a rare talent for getting sidetracked. A recent addition to the debate by the distinguished poet and critic John Ciardi so illuminates these useless confusions that I comment on them at the risk of adding the further fuel of attention to his senselessly inflammatory remarks. If the episode has taught me anything, it is that a good poet and fine critic is not necessarily even a mediocre linguist.

Ciardi alludes, first of all, to a TV encounter with Bergen Evans on "The Last Word." I confess to having for a long time been put off by Professor Evans' linguistic latitudinarianism on that series: it struck me, mistakenly I must admit, that Evans seemed to be over-compensating for a certain personal prissiness by being the archetypal good guy about permissiveness in language.

But Ciardi recalls challenging the usage "a crusading Egyptian newspaper" on the grounds that Moslems were de facto disqualified to engage in any Crusade, for religious reasons. Evans was perfectly willing to extend the original meaning of the word to include "any campaign or concerted action toward a good cause." Ciardi was loath to give up the, to him, crucial connotations of "cross" in the word crusade. Is that really the crux of the matter? Poet Ciardi crossed himself up surely by confusing his own professional need to explore the life histories of words with less Olympian mortals' obligation to see and say as clearly as possible.

Another linguistic "cause celebre" cited by Ciardi was his blue pencilling the word "arrive" in an ex-Navy student's autobiographical sentence: "We arrived at our mid-ocean rendezvous point." Why? "Arrive" comes from the Latin ad ripa, meaning "to the bank." Ever heard of a river bank in the middle of an ocean? It is really difficult to take seriously this kind of nit-wit picking.

More convincing is Ciardi's complaint about the sloppy fusing of distinctly different words like "imply" and "infer" into fuzzy synonyms. But the basis of Ciardi's complaint is less credible: "Imply" comes, he says, from the Latin "to fold into" and "infer" from "to carry into." Interesting etymological minutiae, but what real light do they throw on the basic problem, viz. "imply" meaning "indirectly suggesting" as opposed to "infer" meaning "deducing." Do I infer from his etymological sortie that he imimplies that 'where a word came from a thousand years ago is more important for school children to know than what educated men agree it means today? I should hope not.

His own brilliant explication of the term "broadcast" suggests a more thoughtful alternative. The original metaphor, of course, is that of a sower flinging seed into the ready earth with a broad sweep of his arm. How many who use this word today are aware of its metaphorical roots? Does it hurt their thought and expression not to know? It would surely enrich them to have a deep curiosity about the history of their language. But I doubt if it would make them more thoughtful and mature men. Mr. Ciardi's unconvincing arguments in his Saturday Review piece (October 27, 1962) further suggest etymology and logic are only distant cousins if related at all.

If one is unconvinced, finally, by Ciardi's "crusade" against Webster's Third, still it is easy enough to share his too free-floating anxiety. Discourse, public and private, is not nearly as clear as it needs to be in America today. And Ciardi is right in stating that the English teacher has a great responsibility for purging our common habits of language of their debilities.

But our alternatives must not be limited, as they are at present, to a narrow middle range of sullen anger and frustration at the pushy hordes of democratic vulgarians. We must be both. more comprehensive and more particular. More comprehensive, in that we must show how the gathering forces of politics, salesmanship, and entertainment condition everything we do in the schools. Give us, then, philosophies to make our textbooks and teacher training institutions sophisticated enough in their discussions of the corruption of word and argument in the modern world.

And more particular too. For in the last analysis there can be nothing but a painful transition from the traditional society where a few do the thinking for the many to the open society in which everyone must learn to think for himself. It is complicating matters today that some thoughtful and humane people want Everyman to run to high poetry before he has mastered the lowly art of walking in rational discourse.

The pain stems from our assigning frequent themes and worrying over them with the students who need to know how to be clear and logical. It would be more pleasant for us to talk about poetry, fiction, and drama. But pruning the wrong word, the superfluous word, the awkward sentence, the lack of evidence and logic is the way to improve the state of our common language. This is drudgery. There are too few ready to accept the challenge of this drudgery.

In my judgment, too much energy and intelligence in the English profession is invested in scholarship only vaguely productive of the civilizing qualities assumed to flow automatically from the humanities. Too much criticism is oneupmanship in narrowing circles of communication. To use a Galbraithian analogy, the private sector of our cultural economy concerned with studying literature and its criticism is overdeveloped; the public sector devoted to such mundane skills as using the right word, writing the clear sentence, and developing the logical paragraph is underdeveloped.

We may have to change the priorities in our economy of English teaching. Fewer poems, fewer explications: more themes, more blue pencils. Not the makings of a "crusade" here, surely; but, then, we aren't supposed to choose our own crosses.

The trick is lugging gracefully the one society or one's chosen role inflicts. Business before pleasure, please.

Source: The English Journal, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Feb., 1963), pp. 147-148
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English