Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies by Marilyn McEntyre

Caring For Words in Culture of Lies has been on my radar for a couple of years and I was thrilled when a friend gave me her copy. It pushed all the right buttons for me since it's about the necessity of preserving beautiful language - not just flowery words, but words that say precisely what they mean.

I underlined page after page in this book, which reinforced all the reasons why I blog about literature. Reading and writing generate an interior, where an active and sometimes contemplative life goes on, carried out through those essential elements that constitute the modern human being: a memory, a conscience, and a self.(p. 80) Basically, we are what we read. And a steady diet of drivel weakens us.

In an age of information overload, McEntyre says her students have a constant barrage of sound bites thrown at them. They hear so many words so constantly, their capacities to savor words - to pause over them, ponder them, reflect upon them, hear the echoes of ancient cadences, and attune themselves to allusiveness and alliteration - are eroding. (p. 19)

Just as we should be good stewards of natural resources, McEntyre writes that we should also be guardians of another precious resource: words. Like any other life-sustaining resource, language can be depleted, polluted, contaminated, eroded, and filled with artificial stimulants. Like any other resource, it needs the protection of those who recognize its value and commit themselves to good stewardship. (p. 1)

Like food, language has been "industrialized." Words come to us processed like cheese, depleted of nutrients, flattened and packaged, artificially colored and mass marketed. And just as it takes a little extra effort and attention to find, buy, eat, and support the production of healthy foods, it is strenuous business to insist on usable, flexible, precise, enlivening language. (p. 16)

She goes on to say that as usable words are lost, experience becomes cruder and less communicable. And with the loss of the subtlety, clarity, and reliability of language, we become more vulnerable to crude exercises of power. (p. 6) This is one of the chilling themes of Orwell's 1984.

Among her many suggestions and strategies for preserving rich language are 1) deepening and sharpening reading skills, 2) cultivating habits of speaking and listening that foster precision and clarity, 3) sharing stories, 4) indulging in word play and 5) refusing clichés and sound bites that substitute for authentic analysis.

This book is not for everybody, but it's a definite must-read for stewards and lovers of fine language. 

1984 and Newspeak

If we listen to the daily news we know that the world is "going to hell in a handbasket." Although I tremble at how these events will affect my children and grandchildren, I tremble even more at God's judgement on a people who have learned to call good evil and evil good. (Isaiah 5:20) What better example in literature is there than Orwell's 1984 in which the government teaches, "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength"?

Orwell's book gives glimpses of a world gone mad, where people are not allowed to think or believe anything outside the party line. It is a world of re-written history books, broken families, and moral poverty. Call me nuts, but what struck the most terror into my soul was Orwell's vision of a world without beautiful words.

In the appendix to the novel, Orwell explains the intricacies of "Newspeak", the language meant to abolish all possibility of thinking deep thoughts. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought (a thought diverging from the principles of the government) should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as though is dependend on words. (p. 299)

Vocabulary was divided into three groups. "Group A" consisted of words needed for every day life (hit, run, dog, tree, sugar).  But all ambiguities and shades of meaning had been purged out of them. So far as it could be achieved, a Newspeak word of this class was simple a staccato sound expressing one clearly understood concept. (p. 300) The words "warm" and "bad" were replaced by "uncold" and "ungood."

 "Group B" consisted of compound words invented for political purposes. Expressions such as "orthodoxy" and "exchange of ideas" were replaced by words such as "goodthink, crimethink, and oldthink." The words honor, justice, morality, democracy, science and religion simply ceased to exist. (p. 304)

The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologicallly neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness... A Party member called upon to make a political or ethical judgment should be able to spray forth the correct opinions as automatically as a machine gun spraying forth bullets... Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all. (p. 307)

"Group C" involved words having to do with science and technology and were known only to the men and women who used them in their field of study.

The overall purpose of truncated language was to inhibit any thinking that would go against the reigning powers. With powerless words the worst thing one could say against Big Brother was that he was "ungood". Furthermore, as "Oldspeak" became more and more a thing of the past, literature and history books written in previous centuries (with their richness of language and thought) would become unintelligible.

Even more than the rest of the book, the appendix to 1984 gave me much to ruminate over. It's been three months since I read it and yet whenever I come to a potent word in a book I'm reading, I think to myself, "This wouldn't exist in Orwell's world."

I even started a list on my Kindle notepad of words that would be lost forever: languid, luscious, copious, salient, piety, virtue, indefatigable, petulant, steadfast.

It's enough to break your heart.

Mourning the Death of Beautiful Language

        I felt a pang when I read this sentence in my new recipe book: No one disputes the healthful properties of fish.  All those great omega thingies protecting our arteries and keeping strokes and heart attacks at bay.  But fish is also the hurried cook's BFF. (emphases mine)

        Last night I was leafing through a Scholastic Book catalog that arrived at our house.  I remembered how I used to read it as a child, carefully savoring each title and circling the many books I wanted.  But what a sad surprise to see a plethora of titles such as, Underpants Thunderpants!, Cinderalla's Bum, and Me Want Pet! (These may be wonderful books, but the titles would seem to belie that.) Further perusing led me to the book, Wind in the Wallows, a knockoff title from the great children's classic, which is, sad to say, a book about flatulent pigs. What a horrible literary legacy we are giving our young!

        I believe the Bible should be accessible to all people in all places and have no quarrel with recommending translations that are more understandable than the King James Version. At the same time, I deeply regret that many newer versions eradicate all the beauty and majesty of biblical language.

        Psalm 18:18-19 in the New American Standard version reads: They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay.  He brought me forth into a broad place; He rescued me, because he delighted in me.  A more modern version reads: They hit me when I was down, but God stuck by me.  He stood me up on a wide-open field; I stood there saved - surprised to be loved!  Am I the only one who thinks that this is distressing? It makes God sound like my BFF, which is certainly belittling to His greatness, power and love.

        I know I will be accused of curmudgeonliness, but I can't help but think that when we translate phrases to their lowest possible difficulty of meaning that we are robbing our children (and ourselves) of one of life's exquisite beauties - words that take us beyond our daily reality and lift us to a higher plain.

        On a more positive note, a second grader was reading to me recently from a book called Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. Most of the book is in simple, childlike language, but occasionally Henkes throws in a word to savor like: "Pish!" or "winsome" or "jaundiced." I loved it that he respected kids enough to trust them with big words.

A Word to Ponder - Intolerance

Perhaps it would not hurt to be reminded that the Incarnation was, in fact, an act of colossal intolerance on the part of God, by which I mean to say that it was an act of immeasurable love. He loved us so much that he would not let us die in our sins. He was intolerant of our slavery and was born among us for the express purpose of doing something rather drastic about it... It may well be asked if such a tainted word can be properly used to describe a characteristic of God. He is, after all, rich in mercy and slow to anger. But it must be remembered that both the Old and New Testaments speak of times when the justice of God must act - for he will not permit evil to devour everything.

... This is the intolerance of the physician who is prejudiced against viruses because he has seen an epidemic ravage a people. This is the intolerance of a mother who fiercely protects her little ones from predators. She suffers from a bias against rattlesnakes and wolves. This apparent narrowness is the wisdom of those who have known many roads and have found only one sure route out of the regions of desolation.

(From A Landscape With Dragons by Michael D. O'Brien, p. 161-163)

Words Matter

Recently my husband and I heard a WWII veteran talk about his experiences in a Japanese POW camp where he was allowed to write home once a month. Since his parents had moved while he was being shipped overseas, he sent his letters marked "general delivery." 

His captors, with their limited grasp of English, assumed he was writing to a military general and tossed all of his letters in the wastebasket. It was years before his family knew he was still alive. One little word led to one major misunderstanding.

The Bible tells us that Jesus was the “Word made flesh”. He must have seemed like a harmless little word when he arrived as a baby, but as he grew and began to fulfill his Father’s purposes, He became downright dangerous to the Jewish leadership. They couldn’t understand God’s definition of a humbling, suffering Messiah. Even today we have trouble wrapping our minds around the mystery of God “veiled in flesh”. One of the joys of the Christmas season is singing hymns that grapple with this truth.

In 1639 Thomas Pestel wrote:

Hark, hark, the wise eternal Word,

Like a weak infant cries!

In form of servant is the Lord

And God in cradle lies.

(Amazing words! Amazing gift! See the whole hymn here.)

The Real Meaning of "Prodigal"

Occasionally I'll come across a word definition that leaves me gobsmacked. Imagine my astonishment when I learned the real meaning of the word "prodigal" in my recent meanderings through literature. (It comes up twice in Count of Monte Cristo.) I've been raised on Bible stories since babyhood and have a degree in theology so you'd think I would have known what it really means. In common (incorrect) usage a "prodigal" is someone who leaves and then returns. In actuality it means: someone who is wastefully extravagant. It makes perfect sense in the context of the story of the Prodigal Son. But it makes even more sense to say that his father was "prodigal" because he was wildly lavish with his forgiveness and grace. I'll say it again, I'm astonished!

Related words:

prodigious - impressively great in size, enormous

prodigy - a person with exceptional talent or powers

(painting by Rembrandt)

Poetry for Children

Most book lovers are word lovers. They love words that are beautifully woven together. Nowhere is this more readily seen than in poetry where a great deal of meaning must be packed into just a few words.

I love great poetry, but as a mother of young boys I combed through many a library bookshelf only to come up short on poetry compilations that touched the heart as well as tickled the funny bone. The older the book (I liked the outdated Childcraft encyclopedias that I found at yard sales) the better were my chances of finding substantial poems. Most of the modern poems were just too sing-song-y. Or just plain annoying.

Lewis Carroll’s "Jabberwocky" was one of our favorites. We “chortled in our joy” over such phrases as “frumious Bandersnatch” and “vorpal blade”. We saw (in our mind’s eye) the Jabberwock that “burbled as it came”. What a word feast! The closest I’ve come to finding a “perfect” book of poems (meaning I rarely skipped over any of them when reading aloud) is A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. These delightful verses are all written from a child’s point of view. Some other authors who have gentle, but unobtrusive rhymes are Dorothy Aldis and Eleanor Farjeon. Listed below are some exceptional books of poetry for the young.

Leaves From A Child's Garden of Verses ( “best of”)
Whiskers & Rhymes - Lobel
A Book of Americans  – Benét (American history in poetry form)
Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast – Prelutsky (funny dinosaur poems)