Yes, yes, yes. I know you've heard it all before. Something like this:
...I'll start with a moan about how language is devolving and falling apart like the society that creates it, how it then mirrors the fallenness of society because its syntax is as wrecked as mouldy cheese...Then you'll get all smug and point out that wasn't it ever thus, haven't people always been ranting throughout the centuries ever since the first mouth slackened and swallowed off a glottal stop instead of rising above laziness? You'll then glibly say that akchully, language is not degenerating into slang, it's doing something wonderful like eveolving day by day into new and wondrous forms....and thus we'll just have the same poncy and circular argument flapping away like a frisbee in a washing machine.
And yes indeed, at any given point in history, you can often find someone bewailing the fact that langauge changes, seemingly for the worse, whether it be medieval Parisians viewing Norman French as rather vulgar and too full of rough northernisms, or the glut of vile English lower-classisms taking the place of good refined speech after the plagues of the 14th century as everyone left alive started to have ideas(and the language to express them) well above their station.
I myself pride myself on being able to use "from which" or "to whom" correctly in a sentence, knowing full well that I'm incandescent with prejudice because I was educated in the Rousian latinate grammar school mode of the 20the century, long after its sun had set much earlier in the 1950s.
So, I won't waste your time and my precious breath by whining about how many apostrophes do or don't appear when you expect the writer to know better. I mean, we can all(if we know the difference) smirk at the signs that advertise a certain sprout, wherein the writer has thrown in a few apostrophes in the hope that at least one will hit the mark. I won't go on about the spelling of mackerel, how recognise is right and recognize is wrong. The real point of me refusing to do this is because it will not make a blind bit of difference to anything.
However, I must...I really must...let you into what really pisses me off. And it pisses me off even more than, say, having to watch 10 seconds of Bruce Springsteen stretching and gurning his dumb red neck ,wailing some teeth-itchingly awful song about unemployed Detroit mechanics over which he's decided that a "cajun" shuffle and steel guitar would in some way ennoble the content. And then there's the 20 key changes, as he cranks it out wann moa tahme, ratcheting it up a semitone at a time until you think the audience's polyester trousers will self-immolate in a steam of chemically-replaced oestrogen.
Yes, there is something that I loathe even more than that.
And it is this:
It is the vile phenomenon of, upon asking how someone is, being told that they are not well...that they are in fact good.
"How are you?"
"Yeah, I'm good!."
Er, hold on a minute.
Since when, upon someone asking you about your health, did you decide to reply with a statement of your self-assumed spiritual or moral rectitude? In fact, what gives you the right to firstly pointedly ignore my question, to brush aside my inquiry about your health...then, as if this sleight is not rude enough, you then have to arrogate yourself to a position of moral ascendancy?
Sheeee-itt! You think you are good, do you? Did you get for Christmas some kind of boddhisatvan Stanna stairlift that ascended you to some superior plane of being? Do you completely believe that all your thoughts and actions today are entirely without self-questioning, completely and successfully philanthropic: that you have wafted about all day with that smug, cheery and self-congratulative smirk on your fat face, entirely believing the crap you have just said? "Yes, I'm good, thanks!"
And is your statement of your goodness reflective of your complete satisfaction with yourself...or are you still working on T-Cutting your patina of glib, self-successfulness to new tolerances of superficiality? Or even, do you actually believe that IF you go about turning people's questions of your health aside with a repeated mantra of your goodness, you might actually "fake it to make it" in terms of your being in complete denial about yourself?
And what are you really saying, when you reply that you are "good"? That all your actions are either right or righteous? That suddenly you are transformed into the perfect Christian you pretend your self to be, by being cheery? Or have you really grasped, totally unlike the rest of us poor saps, that yes indeed, you are indeed good in the sense that you are justified..and are in a state of knowledge of that justification?
Because, quite honestly, you have cultivated that projection of success, of being a happy member of the team, of being so corporately successful and on top of the latest Company Newspeak, for so long, that you are quite ready to believe that, yes, you are good, and that the reason for your breezy grin is because my hapless question about your health has triggered for you the surge of dopomine that accompanies the masturbatory hand of lotus-eating denial. In fact, you say thanks, because you are made more good every time someone asks you; you relish the chance to remind yourself exactly how good you in fact are.
I'm good. Thanks. I know I am under Grace and mercy; I am fully so knowledgeable of God-with-me, it is like having God on a swing in a playground next to me, as my gross body waddles off and does the shopping, knowing that I am covered by His blood, justified, alive in the heavenlies because I'm already dead and crucified; I am justified because I was chosen; and because I am justified will be glorified.....
...and that is really why I say, with all good cheer, yes, I'm good, thank you....
...And if that is the case, if that is what is really going on for them when they say they are good... then my own problem with this hip use of language is because I am convicted, reminded of how little I abide, how much I lurch from crisis to crisis because I am rebelliously addicted to false beliefs, the chief of these being that in fact, though I am a Christian.... I am not good....
Have you also noticed the increased and incorrect use of the word "so"?
You see, this word indicates in normal use, a consequence, a following on, a logical progression; it is a conjunction.
For example, in normal usage: " I was hungry, so I went to get something to eat."
Here, "so" is used correctly: it indicates an action, having just informed us of hwat happened or was considered before that action.
And that is the point: it is used because we are already in a conversation, already in a transaction, already listening. Niceties and courtesies have been exchanged, confidences invited and a mutually open and inviting setting has been agreed bewteen two parties. Thus, after this proper erection of and understanding of polite boundaries, and only after, are we then at the familiar stage of being able to converse in terms of developing linked and consequential ideas.
Thus, it is loathsome and annoying when I read forums or emails that quite without these forms being adhered to, actually start with "So"!
For instance, I was reading a post in a guitar forum the other day. Quite without any introduction, a boundary-less neanderthal wrote the post from a cold start thus:
"So, I just bought a new stratocaster..."
Er...I beg your pardon? What do you mean, "so"? Why have you assumed that already have a conversation, thus allowing you to join the first causal bit to the second consequential bit?
I mean, I don't know you. You've not been invited into a conversation by me,...and yet you assume I wish one. You also assume I in some way am interested in listening to you; you assume my boundaries are relaxed enough around you to address me as if we're good frneds, as if there has been already set a precedent that allows you to interject with a "so".
Thinking on this some more, can you see what an arrogant and abusive liberty has been taken here...it's as offensive as any other liberty taken that is not invited.
Listen, chum: do not use the word "so" at the beginning of a sentence; it makes the assumption that you have already informed me of what by inference came before it! You know full well that you have not discussed this with me, and thus you believe you have the social advantage of me, as if I am the one that is remiss for not knowing what the feck you are talking about.
So...do not ever presume to use the word "so" with me as a conversation opener; it is a conjunction. For you to use it this way is the conversational equivent of bullying or burglary. In fact, I do know why you do this: you assume(correctly) that no-one is going to be bothered to listen to your acquisition-based self-glorification...I do not give a monkeys who you are, what guitar you've just bought on a whim, or what camera you've bought just to have bragging rights. You are a social irrelevance. Indeed, it is your fear that you are thus, that enabled you to throw away any consideration for the wishes of others, and make captives of us by immediately using the word "so".
So...don't use "so". Ever again.
It is exactly the same mentality of arrogance that assumes I wish to buy a copy of The Big Issue from someone who has never lived on the streets or suffered addciction in their life. It is exactly the same lack of respect that assumes I have limitless amounts of secondhand clothing in numerous warehouses within the confines of my home, thus giving you the right to infest my home via my letetrbox with plastic bags that purport to be from the Sally Army, Somalian Whale Children, Afghani Goat-Comparers or somesuch.
And while we're on the subject, it's exactly the same degree of manipulation that assumes I wish to spend exactly £19 to adopt firstly a puma, then a bloody panda, then a sodding white tiger.
Why on earth do I want part-share in all manner of extinction-events..and to pay £19??
Heck, it'll only be a short time before we see a "adopt 3 endangered species for the price of 2" surely....I can hear the ad now:
" For only £38 you can adopt a white tiger and a panda cub...heck, we'll even throw the abused and beaten kid in for nothing..."
...or...
"...please, donate £19 right now, and we'll change the cold-blue black-and-white harrowing pictures of abused children to something more nice and glowing instead; you know, like all those grinning bignosed happy warm kids on the Lloyds bank adverts on telly."
Invasive, manipulative, assuming a level of confidence and personal relationship that does not exist: adverts reflecting society; society producing its language code that reflects the boundary-disrespecting arrogance and selfishness of its members.
I ask about your health...you ignore my question and tell me your summation of your moral or spiritual rectitude; you assume it's your right to trample across my boundaries without asking or wiping your feet, and using the word"so" in the assumption that I'll listen; you assume my letterbox is a receptacle for your scams to sell my old clothes and make money from me; you assume that because you sell Big Issue in a eastern european accent, it's my duty to buy from you, despite you not being a homeless addict. Perhaps you think I'm softened up already by thinking you sound like the meerkats in the insurance ads...?...or maybe you're relying on me being confused about Kossovo and refugees and stuff...?
You assume too much. And another thing: even my friends do not call me "mate". They call me by my name. I am not your mate; I wish no friendship with you. I am of even less disposition to be your friend now you have arrogantly assumed your right to "mateness" with me.
It is all the language of self, of arrogance, reflecting the belief that the only real and good thing is you, that others are no more than an extension of you, or ways to meet your wants about yourself....
....For you are indeed good in your own eyes....and thus in real fact, most certainly and sadly not well, were I to ask the same question in the hope of receiving a truthful reply.
This is all well and good, of course. Just hope no-one asks you how you are and means it....
Shaun Reeder, January 2011
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