Happy Imbolc/Candlemas/Lunar New Year!
A few nights ago, I had dinner with a chef. He didn’t make the dinner; he just happened to be there. Someone at the table asked him a question, and his wife interceded with, “Don’t ask him—he hates food.” The chef elaborated that he didn’t so much hate food, just the people he worked with who saw it as a commodity, as a budget item. I could see how that would frustrate a person who has dedicated his career to creating meals with respect for the ingredients and the end users. It’s difficult to love something and watch other people treat it like a plastic bag.
But you probably already know this if you are a writer of any kind. Your story, your science, whatever you’re putting out there for people to read is drafted with love and respect for the raw materials: words. The right words get the job done, whether that job is explaining a newly hatched theory or making someone cry. If you don’t love the words, if you don’t cringe when you hear people abuse them, it’s possible that you are in the wrong business.
If you aren’t using the correct words to say what you mean, then you have no idea what you’re saying, and neither does anyone else. The grant application is misunderstood and denied. The novel excerpt is scanned and rejected because agents can spot a callous amateur in less time than it takes to hit Send on your query letter.
I could ramble on, but dozens of semioticians, semanticists, linguists, and my fellow pedants have thoroughly harrowed this ground already, so I’ll settle for some entertaining examples of linguistic ignorance (underlining is all mine).
- “‘Bill Stepien has not broken any laws,’ the lawyer, Kevin H. Marino, wrote, arguing that the subpoena violates his client’s rights against self-incrimination and unreasonable search and seizure.” New York Times article
- “It wasn’t until the Renaissance that true theater enjoyed a rebirth,” Kaplan CSET Subject Examination for Teachers
- “As they say, the problem with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur.” Newsweek article
To be fair, the first quotation is from an attorney, and they get paid for intentional obfuscation, but it’s still worth mentioning. The others? No excuse. I would also like to point out that all three examples were brought to my attention by a person who learned English as a second language. This fortifies my theory that the best way to learn about language is to study a different one.
Let me contrast my usage shaming with a reference to some of the most remarkable nonfiction I’ve discovered in decades. I say discovered because I didn’t actually read it; it’s from a TV series called The Story of Film: An Odyssey. You can watch it on Netflix and probably some other places. It was written, directed, and narrated by a guy named Mark Cousins. Watching it will not only give you a thorough yet condensed education on the history of film, it will, if you have any sensitivity to the language at all, make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck the way they do when you hear the very best lines of poetry. The film is based on a book, which I suspect would be a joy to read, but watching the series gives you the moving images and the words together. Remember “Poetry makes nothing happen”? Film makes light happen.
Anyway, love your work. Learn to do it mindfully and with respect, or find something more suitable. Accept that other people will stomp all over it and react with hostility and scorn when you try to educate them. Feel free to complain about it in the comments; I understand.