Educate the Masses!

A few years ago I began courting a girl as I'd recently split from another and I, subconsciously, am terrified of being single. I remember the date exactly, not because this story is particularly interesting, but because it happened to be the day I passed my driving test - first time I might add.

It was a frosty late December morning, the 29th, and I made my way from Hastings to Ashford to meet this girl. We had an average day, little happened other than watching Gavin and Stacey in her callously central-heated home - the cooling systems in place were not to turn down the thermostat, but to open windows above radiators, allowing the warmth to seep out into the Kentish suburban sprawl. So I was already annoyed. More to come...

Towards the end of the day I found myself stood in the hallway talking to the girl and her mother (for some reason mums like me, unfortunately I did not return the feelings in this case).  We were discussing a topic of unrivalled thrills and intrigue - my home village of Northiam. I ventured to describe it as quaint, to which the mother simply agreed. Unfortunately - for her at least - the girl looked confused as asked, 'What does quaint mean, mum?'. In doing so, she tumbled down in my estimations (Vocab snob, I know. I have no shame in being labelled so). The mother then, with a wry look of 'I almost got away with that' ashamedly had to utter the immortal phrase we all dread after blagging intelligence; 'I don't know'.

Needless to say, I left swiftly and this has lingered on my mind ever since. How can a women so bereft of both language skills and honesty be trusted to successfully raise five children!? This still irks me - as I'm sure is obvious from my retelling of it over two years on. I would genuinely love to bolster our country's grasp on its rich, diverse and almost infinitely malleable language, especially as it would not take all that much to change to make a significant difference.

Unchallenged conventions and blindly accepted rules are often a hotbed for problems, at least in my mind anyway. One recently asserted to me is the necessity to stick to simple lexicon in journalistic writing, under the argument that full and proper communication of facts to audiences is the most important element in this form of storytelling.

It seems to me, though, that this act is diluting our highly evolved language and casting it back a few thousand years to a flat, lifeless language that merely comments on what is seen, and fails to give any depth to the described. This continual repetition of the same old jaded phrases in the tabloid papers does, indeed, allow for the ignorant masses to effortlessly digest the poorly nutritional morsels printed every morning, but it also perpetuates their own ignorance and failure to broaden their own vocabulary.

I propose that if newspapers - probably the most widely read literature daily - were to expand their vocabulary to include just some of the more wonderful words and sayings currently residing under the banner of obscure , we could use our fantastic linguistic tool to far greater effect, both as writers and readers. By drip feeding in such a way, it would become possible to extend the nation's linguistic education far beyond our school years.

I do agree that proficient communication is paramount in journalism; with less and less space to give our messages we must be concise, interesting and engaging. All within 160 characters, it seems an impossible feat, but we all are so keen to know what is happening now, so we are all slowly becoming experts and condensing messages, be it through utilising the ugly txt spk, or by deliberating our messages and making every word count, we all do it.

Something that is not, never has been and never will be, in question is that a larger arsenal will give journalists (or anyone else, for that matter) better communication. The unfathomable 32 demonstrative pronouns that Aleutians have access to can pinpoint descriptions in incredible detail that is difficult to fathom in our language. Equally, I'm sure that the varied choice of adjectives available to us would confound any ice-dwelling man.

By saying a man 'smiled', one can paint a picture, but by saying he 'smirked', or 'grinned', or 'beamed', or 'sniggered', one can compose a photographic image of any situation. Surely that would be preferable to writers? By making use of the tools available to us, we can both report news more efficiently and accurately, but we can sound more intelligent whilst we do it, and no-one can resist sounded intelligent when they can.

I cannot pretend that the feeling of using words others are unfamiliar with does give a smug sense of superiority, especially when that person is your self-assured arrogant lecturer (that was a good day), but the revelation of continually learning new words and communicating with exponential proficiency  would be infinitely preferable to the guilty and unfounded superiority complex that festers within me

Something needs to change to allow this to happen, the obsession with dumbing down has to stop before we are drummed into the ground believing that uneducated interpretations and poorly thought out opinions are as valid as researched and respected studies.

Now get out there are start saying 'quaint' to mothers overburdened by five-too-many children that they are unable to educate themselves. And yes, it is definitely the job of parents to educate their offspring, don't pass the buck and expect Miss Wilson and CBeebies to do it all you fat slob.

Happy new year!

Also, it seems as though Sky have moved into the sex-trade with an advertisement Facebook provided me with just now.

The Language of Sexism: A Big Fuss Over Nothing

NB: I have been reliably informed from a number of sources that I come across in a sexist light from this post. I would like to reference my lecturer again to rectify this issue; feminists are not exclusively women, everyone should be feminists as the concept of feminism is equality between men and women.

This post does not attack women, or even feminism, it simply attacks one small area of one of feminism's arguments. I am not a sexist and I would not like people reading this to make that assumption.

Thank you.

Gender & Sexuality is the newest wonder to glide so effortlessly into my life and cause me yet more frustration and petulance in the face of getting this bloody degree.

In a recent lecture, feminism reared its foul head and began to approach my disinterested notepad. I’d seen it as it clambered over the horizon and begun its fetid journey towards me, yet its arrival was still greeted with a steely gaze and a smattering of unrepeatable phrases.

One such point made in said lecture was one of the word ‘mankind’ being inherently sexist as it assumes that ‘man’ is the focus and therefore more important. I see the point and, unsurprising, would like to challenge it. Our lecturer suggested that ‘humankind’ would be a more ambiguous, and therefore less sexist, term to use in this context.

I can only, in my ignorant and heavily prejudiced male brain, imagine that the offending articles in the word ‘mankind’ are the three little, generic symbols m, a and n (in that order). If my assumption is correct, why are they ignored in the supposedly-acceptable ‘humankind’? Surely they hold the same potency, here, as they do in the aforementioned frowned-upon word choice.

It seems to me that so-called feminists are ignoring the fact that adding letters to words does, in fact, allow the newly-born lexicon to disregard the previously associated meaning of the former word. Although they do embrace this rule with accepting ‘humankind’, is it suggests they approve of the word ‘human’ which has had its meaning changed by ‘hu’.

The power afforded to the humble ‘hu’ by these feminists is pretty powerful, although one ought not be surprised as the letters ‘man’ manage to conjure up such potent and uncomfortable meanings for subscribers to this line of thinking.

The claim that the word ‘humankind’ is less sexist than ‘mankind’ utterly ignores this linguistic (and simply logical) fact, that there only a finite number (26 in modern English, for those of you unbeknownst of this fact) of letters, so repetition is fairly likely when a language reaches the lofty heights of containing a dictionary with the wealth of upwards of 700,000 words to its arsenal.

I am not so ignorant assume the occurrence of ‘man’ in ‘mankind’ is random and is not inherently linked to the meaning of a male Homo Sapien, I realise the relationship they have. But, in terms of the evolution of language, the creation of ‘mankind’ is not a sexist attack on women, it is merely a description of the entirely of highly evolved apes on this little planet.

It is fairly obvious in the currently linguistic climate that words and phrases are no longer (not that they ever were) stitched irrevocable to the meaning they currently have; ‘gay’ once meant joyous, ‘wicked’ once had the connotation of evil, and sick used to mean both vomit and disgusting. Nowadays, these words can mean drastically different things – their original meanings still drifting around somewhere in the ether – as the new age of language architects and engineers – namely the youth generation (as it seems to have been for many generations) – craft new meanings and significances for previously familiar words.

I often hear people of my generation using words that I simply have no grasp of, I believe the (unjustly) popular TV show The Only Way Is Essex has managed to cast a handful of new words into circulation. This is simply what happens as language is very malleable and adaptable to the wants and needs of its users. ‘Ream’ now means sexy and good (at least I think so), when it used to be a bundle of paper. Things can change dramatically; it’s the nature of the unnatural construct of language.

This is why I feel the claim that ‘mankind’ is sexist is madness, by stitching ‘kind’ onto the arse-end of those arbitrary, yet ‘offensive’, letters changes what it means and uncovers an entirely new meaning for those of us open and accepting of the phenomenon of change.

I have asserted than youth culture tends to drive linguistic change, yet the majority of the most uttered words in normal conversation (those naughty swear words) were invented by adults. The secret language of cursing was conceived to discuss wholly adult topics whilst children’s delicate ears were present.

It is this ability of mankind – yes mankind – to create words and hidden meanings for personal use that shows both the weakness and brilliance of words; they both mean nothing and everything at once. They can be split down into their most raw building blocks and shuffled into new shapes to transform an abstract verb into a concrete noun, language is not – and never has been – fixed.

The meaning of the letters l, i, v & e, can mean ‘live’ as easily as they can ‘evil’. And yet, before they are interpreted by the understanding human mind, those letters are simply the sum of their parts and hold no meaning. It is in the decoding of letters that the power nestles, and not in the words themselves.

This seems to be drifting evermore towards the concept of language in the brain and away from a discussion of feminism. Well if that’s the road it has chosen, then so be it.

Language and meaning is literally (in the ‘proper’ meaning, not the overused and undervalued common use) nothing without man (meaning people, not just men. I’m sure I don’t need to point that out, though). A) It would not have emerged without people, culture and civilisation, and B) without man (you know what I mean) to decode the arbitrary combinations of symbols they would remain exactly that – arbitrary and meaningless.

Therefore, the only reason for feminists to decide than ‘mankind’ is a sexist term is simply for the sake of creating a sexist term to allow them to decode it as sexist and thus make a fuss about it. Language tries to bridge gaps between people and the chasm that exists between individuals’ minds, but it falls down in that we all attach our own meanings to words. For example: I, for years, believed the word ‘vivid’ meant vague and weak – the polar opposite of its ‘true’ meaning, yet in my head that word fitted my meaning exactly and I was sure of that.

No matter how hard we try to tap into the relationship between words and cognitive meaning, language will probably never reach the goal of full and proper correlation between what is said and what is meant.

‘Mankind’ is fine, 'humankind' is also good. I will continue to use them interchangably, as is my wont.