English language, its problems and potentials for sociodramatic exploration

[Adam Blatner]

Hello colleagues, here's a mini-essay of about 6 paragraphs for those who wonder about language, in anticipation of the forthcoming IAGP conference in Rome (which, alas, I cannot attend). 

A "lingua franca" is an interesting phrase: It is Latin, which was the international language for educated people in Europe until the Renaissance. Gradually, French became the lingua franca for a few centuries, beginning in the mid-17th and extending through the early 20th. I have proposed that "role" be the unit for a kind of lingua franca among the many languages (jargon) and schools of psychology and psychotherapy. So I'm interested in problems of translation, in how we may make efforts to ease communications. As we become more internationally connected, I've become aware of the need to be a little more humble about my good fortune in happening to be born into a country where the first language just happens to be becoming the de facto lingua franca. 

Reading a fascinating book, The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the future of English, by Mark Abley (2008, Houghton Mifflin Company). The author notes that English is becoming the operant "lingua franca" of the world, and that many countries that host numerous cultures and sub-languages are turning to English-e.g., Nepal, Mongolia, Chile, etc.

However, there's an interesting sociodramatic issue that has been raised. For native speakers, this can seduce us into the indulgence of privilege. English is a difficult language.

So here's a provocative thought: Abley, pg 96: 

"Dear English speakers: Please drop the dialects" wrote Mikie Kiyoi, a Japanese woman who worked as an executive with the International Energy Agency in Paris. French was a distant second language in her professional life; Japanese was not used at all. "I have to live with this unfortunate fate," Kiyoi added. Still, she accepted fate. What she declined to accept was how her Anglo-American colleagues spoke English in a colloquial, idiomatic fashion that she and other Asians battled to understand. She called this an abuse of privilege. "We non-natives are desperately learning English; each word pronounced by us represents our blood, sweat and tears. Our English proficiency is tangible evidence of our achievement of will, not an accident of birth. Dear Anglo-Americans, please show us you are also taking pains to make yourselves understood in an international setting.,

What Kiyoi means by "dialects" includes a host of allusions, idioms, colloquialisms, and so forth. What we need to do is recognize and be willing to engage in some determined subtraction; it means stripping the language of the colorful images and expressions that native speakers often cherish.

In another book, "I Love it When You Talk Retro," (2009, St. Martin's Press), Ralph Keyes makes the point that the number of allusions in our conversation has outstripped our own pace of cultural evolution, so that young people today may be unfamiliar with many of the ideas and names for things-like 45rpm (referring to a short 1-song, smaller sort of vinyl record, popular in the 1950s, that was to be played at 45 revolutions per minute on a record player). In turn, many moderately educated folks from the Boomer generation may have heard allusions from a previous generation and hardly have known their origins. In other words, there is no dearth of opportunities for confusion when it comes to language.

A third book, In the Land of Invented Languages, by Arika Okrent (2009, New York: Spiegel & Grau), a fair amount of space is allocated to those who have sought to create an effective language for international communications, such as Esperanto. In fact, there have been many variations and literally hundreds of efforts in this direction. However, they all have problems and sociologically-and also because of the spread of the computer, radio, television, movies, and Western media and styles-it seems to be English that's getting that way.

Moral of the story: For those going to the IAGP, your observations of this cultural dynamic would be interesting. As I said, it could make a good psychodrama. I am always shamed, interestingly, by my good colleagues who write something in broken English, and apologize for that, when I can't speak more than a few phrases from more than a few other languages and that's it. Anyway, including the language dynamic in our thinking as psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists would be useful. 

Finally, I imagine a good sociodrama about this---about the unspoken feelings and thoughts related to accent, dialect, mis-spoken grammar, spelling, punctuation, the temptation to get all entitled and snotty when folks don't live up to "our" standards, the denial of the fact that large sectors of the population are sliding into many different patterns of usage---text-messaging, "valley girl" teen talk (more in the 1980s humor), speaking very fast, soft, variations of comfort with the use of casual cussing and obscenities, and so forth.   

            Warmly, Adam

Adam Blatner, M.D.
   website: www.blatner.com/adam/   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20090804/1504d5e4/attachment.html>