ON THE SAD IMPOVERISHMENT AND THE THREATENED DEMISE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
I was recently poking around a website I sometimes visit, and I came across a thread in which members were complaining about authors who seem to do their writing with a dictionary or a thesaurus in hand. They started out (quite properly, I thought) discussing authors who sprinkle in words they apparently don’t understand themselves, words that jar, that don’t match the tone of the rest of the story. I won’t mention the names of the specific authors, because I’m not familiar with their work, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment; let’s just say that I approve of the general principle. But then the conversation turned to one of our more literate and respected SFF authors and his use of words like “onager” and “fiacre.” The general consensus, at least at the point where I entered the conversation, was that these words were unpardonably obscure, and that no reader forced to undertake the mighty labor of looking them up would ever have the need or the opportunity to use them thereafter.
Now it happened that I already knew the definitions of both words and have seen them used ... if not frequently, at least often enough that neither one strikes me as especially exotic. An onager is a wild donkey, and a fiacre is a type of small carriage. Some would undoubtedly say, “then why didn’t the author just say ‘wild donkey’ and ‘small carriage’ and make what he was saying perfectly clear?” My answer would be that he was being perfectly clear. Since the word onager is more usually attached to the wild ass of central Asia (with accompanying historical and linguistic associations, from ancient Greeks and Romans to medieval seige weapons), and a fiacre was not just any small carriage but a boxy, four-wheeled little coach (usually for hire in Paris, like a cab), in each case the author has chosen the precise right word to convey everything he meant to say. If a reader knows either word, he or she gains a whole wealth of interesting associations that would never be conveyed by the more general term. And if the reader doesn’t know the word ... is it really too much work to open up a dictionary and look something up, every once and a while?
I also bewail the fact that it apparently isn’t enough that the English in everyday use is becoming blander and blander, and less and less precise, but that writers (the very people who should be cherishing the language and making good use of its richness and variety) are expected to abet the ongoing impoverishment of our vocabulary, and God forbid that any one of us should challenge the reader with the occasional unfamiliar word!
Now I find this appalling. I also find it distressing, irksome, offensive, and altogether odious. All of these words describe my feelings, but none of them describe exactly the same one, although you may find some of them under the same heading in your thesaurus. There are shades of meaning in most of our English words -- the ones that haven’t already been drained of all their force and color to the point where they’ve become practically useless -- and while some of those differences are subtle, others are highly significant, and if we allow ourselves to lose those lovely gradations of meaning, our language will become a dull and listless thing. But even more than that: Clarity will suffer instead of being enhanced. It will be like putting aside a glorious selection of colors in favor of a palette of dingy greys, difficult to distinguish one from the other. If we don’t ultimately die of boredom, it’s possible that the English language will.
And shouldn’t we, as avid readers, writers, and aspiring writers -- and especially as readers and writers of the fantastic -- be resisting this trend, rather than participating in and encouraging it?
I have said elsewhere -- and I have said it often enough on these forums that people may be tired of hearing me say it -- that a writer should not use words in writing that he or she would not use in conversation. But this is simply to say that we should use words that we ourselves feel at home with, words that we use easily and naturally, not that we should limit ourselves to only those words we can be sure that every reader will understand. Instead, we should seek out good books, expose ourselves to the works of writers who inspire us with their masterly use of the language, absorb and internalize the very best that the language has to offer, so that rather than limiting our working vocabularies we will expand them. One doesn’t gain a wide and flexible vocabulary by thumbing through a dictionary or a thesaurus (although I’m all for consulting these useful resources in their proper time and place), one achieves it by seeing words used in their proper context.
We are the ones who can keep the language vital and exciting. We can provide the inspiration and the context for readers and writers now and in the future. Whether we’ve asked for the job or not, we have a place among the stewards of our shared linguistic heritage; what it will be to future generations is partly up to us. Will we pass on something expressive and moving, lively and witty, terrifying and invigorating -- or a drab handful of words that have lost whatever vitality they once had?
I welcome your thoughts.
