The Death and Birth of English

photo from Grammarly

A friend of mine recently posted the photo from Grammarly featuring the quote from Conan O’Brien. The most surprising thing about it is that it is almost a year old and still making the rounds. I have previously mentioned various words of the year as named by various groups. Each so-named word-of-the-year generates the usual pitiful wails from the language purists who remain convinced that Shakespeare, or Dickens, or (insert favorite English author) had the language in its perfect form and we are fools for changing it.

To those purists who have nothing better to do than grouse about the perversion of our language based on societal change I say, “Get over it! English ain't Latin." (Like it or not even spell check knows ain’t is a word.)

Some argue the words selected are too silly or represent a fad. Often they do. Not!* The truthiness** of the Occupy*** movement was challenged by some, but not if they had a subprime**** mortgage. The rise of words expressing the dynamic of society generate the energy that keeps English alive. Rather than killing the language, these words represent the continual birth found in any living language.

Truthfully, those decrying the various words of the year are not attacking the word so much as they disagree with the circumstances that promoted the word to prominence. That is not a question for the linguists who study trends in language but for the society that allowed “selfie” to become a thing. Why are people so preoccupied with taking photos of themselves? I would argue that in a world where everything is social, it’s a cry for attention, “Hey, look at me,” and when the world does not, the selfie offers the illusion of attention, “I’m looking at me.”

Maybe selfie is not so silly.

People, look beyond yourself.

No. Really. Pay attention to the background! No one wants to see your dirty underwear or any of the other embarrassing things captured in that moment of self-affirmation.

In November the various organizations that compile the lists of influential words will again offer their collections. At this point in the year I am at a loss to predict what words will be selected, but I know there will again be the usual uproar predicting the death of our diseased dialects. If it is the typical year, my voice will rise with the others - with the understanding that those cries do not draw us to the funeral parlor, but to the nursery, where we view the continuing birth of English.

*1992, **2005, ***2011, ****2007 words of the year. We may not use them as much, but we still know what they mean.

Inspired NOT Stressed

One of the most eye-opening discoveries in my graduate school counseling preparation was that everything is stressful and has been assigned a point value by Holmes and Rahe  on their stress scale. Even events people regarded as positives in life carry degrees of stress based on the amount of adaptation a person has to do in their life routine to adjust to the event. They connected the measure of stress to a likelihood of physical ailment based on the number of “points” accumulated in a year’s time.

Since the mid-sixties when Holmes and Rahe’s research was published, stress has become the catch-all boogey-man for any type of inconvenience we have (such as performance expectations at work). It becomes the reason for mistakes and the low-quality work. These interpretations of Holmes and Rahe’s work completely misrepresent what they believed about stress: it is necessary for life. Our reactions to the stressor are where the harm lies. Some current research reminds us of that understanding.

WATCH: Turns Out, We May Have Gotten the Science of Stress Completely Wrong | TEDTalks:

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McGonigal cites a study that reported on the effects of the view of stress and health consequences, not the stressor itself. They re-discovered that our response to stress determines the likelihood of illness and even death. Holmes and Rahe assigned the points on their scale based on the general reaction people have to the event - not the event itself. That is why the birth of a child merited fewer points than the death of a loved one. Likewise, a promotion at work scores lower than losing a job. We generally experience less disruption to life with the first examples than the second.

Since discovering the work of Holmes and Rahe in graduate school, I have considered situations differently. I work in a stressful field - education. The challenges differ from school to school and some of them are entrenched and cultural. As long as they are challenges, I have the power to seek and implement solutions that may make them less challenging. When I call them stressors, I have given up seeking solutions.

I am glad that some are beginning to reframe the conversation around stress. For so many years so much misinformation spread so widely that if the number of times a lie was repeated changed it to the truth, then stress would be the villain. Replacing the false understanding of stress with a correct one faces an uphill battle at the start, but I believe it will be readily received: the old news about stress was a tale of weakness, but the new understanding is one of power! Shifting the conversation to our response to stress rather than the stress itself puts control over it within our grasp: we control how we react. We control the effects of stress.

We control our lives. There is no longer a reason to use stress as an excuse.

Accentuate the Positive

I cannot remember a time when I have had so little sleep over such a long time as I have in the past month. As many mentions as I have made over the years to coffee and energy drinks (my webpage is called “The Highly Caffeinated Educator” after all), my thoughts now do not lead me toward another paean to the power of chemistry. This time, the energy to go on came from outright terror and the anticipation of something new and good which I was responsible to make happen.

The first week of school has passed and everything is working. Some tweaks remain to be made so everything operates as smoothly as possible, but so far everything has functioned according to plan.

Except for furniture that did not arrive until 6:00 PM the night before school opened.

And late busses.

And an air-conditioning system that randomly picks a room not to cool each day.

Our motto has become, “It is what it is.”

As easy as it might be to focus on the glitches and the inordinate amount of time they take from my schedule, these best laid plans going awry have been overshadowed by the things that have gone right. The teachers have handled every glitch with grace as have the students. Teaching and learning are taking place in all the classes. The students like and value the environment designed for them. The community is proud of the program we have in place.

The glitches have been just that - glitches. None of them harmed anyone or disrupted the activity of the school. I left work each day with a smile on my face. It is really easy to focus and point out the positives with everything working as it has so far.

The outright terror I experienced for the last month that kept me awake pondering every scenario helped get the the right plans in place. Terror can be productive that way. I did not sleep much, but my attention was focused. I have a feeling that every year I am the administrator of a campus I will experience similar terror. As a teacher and counselor, the start of the school year brought long hours and anxiety, but it was nothing like that of an administrator.

The success of the year’s start excites me and has set the tone for a positive year. My goal now is to keep the positive energy going for the entire school year.

Shaped by an Era

(Since the original articles came out and I began writing my response to them, I have read much more about things that Deen said/did in recent times that crossed the line of acceptable behavior. She cannot use the excuse that it was “ok when I did it.” It extended into current times and to actions that are far beyond the use of language we now consider unacceptable. While she is now a less than perfect example for illustrating the point, the point that we need to use caution when judging historical behavior based on today’s standards stands.)

The recent scandal involving Paula Deen and her use of racist language has been challenging for me. The reports that she had used the “N” word came as a major “duh!” for me. She is a generation ahead of me from the south - of course she used the “N” word in her lifetime. It was a regular part of southern culture through the eighties (at least). It did not stop with the Civil Rights Act in the sixties: racist language did not cease because the laws changed. Unfortunately, it was a normal part of southern culture.

That it was a normal part of southern culture does not make racism ok; it simply recognizes that it was a real, regular part of life in that region at that time – and it was acceptable to the bulk of people living in that region at that time. We look back upon it with disdain, but history records its prevalence in that region at that time.

I do not excuse anything Deen said or did, but as a proponent of social justice, I believe we must be cautious about casting judgment, not just when someone is accused of racism, but of violating any contemporary social standard. I am a product of my generation and can guarantee that something I have said or done will be considered offensive by future generations. While I believe, somewhat, in psychic phenomenon, I do not profess to possess the ability to predict how society will change by the end of my lifetime or how things considered acceptable in my earlier life will be the object of scorn by the end of it. I do not expect past generations to possess any greater power. As a result, I feel an obligation to give due consideration to the generations that preceded me. Just as I do not want to be judged by the standards of future generations for living according to acceptable standards in my time, I must be cautious about judging previous generations for living according to the standard of their time by the standards of today.

The dynamic nature of society comes from our ever increasing understanding based on new knowledge. I have a hard time condemning any past group of people for operating based on their knowledge at the time. I have a problem, though, if we do not learn from their mistakes based on the knowledge we have now. Failure to recognize how changes have taken place over time stem directly from a lack of historical perspective (just ask a social studies teacher!). We live so much in the now, it is easy to jump on the bandwagon of outrage anytime we become aware of something that does not match contemporary sensibilities. We rarely contextualize the situation and nuance is often lost without the experience of proximity to the event.

In the age of Twitter, CNN, TMZ, and other round-the-clock media, would even Jesus have appeared perfect? By contemporary standards his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman (Matthew 15:21-28 & Mark 7:24-30), for example, would have required a good PR specialist. Even though he did what she requested, the racist and misogynistic language he used in the passage would have been the headline despite it being used as an opportunity to educate. The whole story is never as memorable as the sound-bite. Even when the complete story, miracle and all, has been told, the sound-bite has stuck.

The current political climate has all sides responding in increasingly hostile ways to situations that historically would have merited little to no notice. The raw emotion created by the rapid change within society has put even people who should know better on edge and changed the norms under which most of our leadership learned to function. The rules and core beliefs of generations are being rejected. We know those rules and core beliefs were based on incorrect information, but that does not make the change any easier for the people involved. If anything, it makes it even harder for them to accept because the “facts” that shaped their world were not really facts. What then can they believe? When their entire mindset has to be altered, it is simply easier to reject the change outright.

We are all products of our generation. As much as we would like to believe we have worked it out and operate under enlightened rules, history tends to judge differently. As easy as it is to judge others for their shortcomings, let it be said about us that we extended some of the grace we hope to be shown when the foolishness of our ways is exposed.