From the Archives: On Word Power

First posted June 2007. Some bits of this appeared in Minds More Awake. There were originally some links to this post at The Common Room, which also discussed the political correctness of dumbing-down vocabulary.

"It Pays Makes-Some-People-Very-Nervous-That-You-Want To Increase Your Word Power" 

Okay, have you had time yet to read the Big Words article? [link no longer works]
Is it undemocratic and elitist to celebrate words? Should those who do have large vocabularies back off and shut up because it might make the less erudite feel bad? (erudite: characterized by great knowledge; learned or scholarly: an erudite professor; an erudite commentary.) Did you catch that first line of the article: "With the Lord of Loquacity on trial in Chicago and schools playing down language to level the playing field...." [italics mine]

How long ago was it we were talking about that example from The Incredibles?

Helen: Right now, honey, the world just wants us to fit in, and to fit in, we gotta be like everyone else.
Dash: But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our powers made us special.
Helen: Everyone's special, Dash.
Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is.

But that whole angle of level playing field, undemocratic, elitist is just missing the point. It's not about a few people having talent for words and time enough to enjoy them  Our collective gift of language is one of the most democratic things we have (please take "democratic" as a positive idea there). It is being able to read and understand the greatest ideas that have been written, and express our own as well, that keeps us from slavery--including slavery to propaganda. What kind of a Brave New World would we be living in if we were limited--by political correctness or any other such foolishness--to using "story" for "narrative," "very big" for "prodigious," and "teach" for "instruct?" (See the "Forbidden Words" sidebar in the article, about OISE professor Clive Beck, who believes that "teachers should avoid unnecessarily big words so that they can 'talk on the same level' as their students.") With such spavined vocabularies, we would be locked out of some of the most influential books ever written--like Common Sense. (spavined: adjective 1. suffering from or affected with spavin. 2. being of or marked by a decrepit or broken-down condition: a spavined old school bus abandoned in a field.) What's democratic about that?

How do you teach or learn new vocabulary--by endless drills, by writing out definitions? I can think of several more effective ways:

1. By listening to those who use language powerfully--and that would, we hope, include the teachers Clive Beck wants to limit. (Can you imagine getting "bleeped" for using a phrase like "nefarious villain?")

2. By reading what those same people have written--and though that road may end with books written for adults, it begins much earlier. If we wanted to limit our children's literary menu to books using the easiest and most commonly used words, we wouldn't have read them A.A. Milne, Beatrix Potter ("I am affronted," said Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit), William Steig, the Bible, Jacobs' English Folk and Fairy Tales, Lewis Carroll, Graham Oakley...or Melissa Wiley.

Our Crayons (just turned six) is reading Anne of Green Gables to herself--she doesn't want it read to her. The motivation was that she found a small porcelain Anne doll at one yard sale, and then a copy of Anne at the next one. We already owned two copies, but she wanted this one for her own self, to go with her doll--and it was her quarter. She sits in my grandfather's little rocking chair with her doll beside her, and reads it while Mr. Fixit reads the newspaper. It's way beyond her vocabulary and experience, and I didn't expect her to get past the first couple of pages--but she has read eight chapters already (and did allow me to read her the ninth). I'm sure she skips what she doesn't understand, but she can still tell you a lot about the story, particularly about Anne's imaginary friends. Would she be better off with an adapted version? Define "better off."

3. By reading books that lead us gently through unfamiliar territory--like Melissa's Martha books, set in Scotland in the 1700's. And then there's the whole sad business of their current state of abridgement, which is itself a perfect example of where all this is taking us.) (2012 update: sorry, both of these links are now defunct.) Again it was Crayons who first asked to be read these books. She's now acquainted with box bed, waulking wool, governess, kirk, peat, spindle, flax, loch, dustgown, Hogmanay, and pianoforte. When I asked her if those were hard words, she said (I quote): "Kids know DUST and kids know GOWN so you just put them together and make DUSTGOWN." What's a governess? "A lady who takes care of you." No problem.

4. By actively seeking out the specialized vocabulary that we need to learn to do the things we want to do! Sometimes for pleasure, sometimes out of necessity. Pod in The Borrowers Aloft has a very short time to learn the vocabulary (and thus the technology) of building a hot-air balloon [actually it was gas-filled]; his understanding of words like "ballast" and "envelope" is what allows his family to escape from their kidnappers.

From Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH to Roald Dahl's Matilda, the key to freedom has always been reading, reading, reading--and those are just the fictional examples.

Books fall open, you fall in,
delighted where you've never been;
hear voices not once heard before,
reach world on world through door on door;
find unexpected keys to things locked up beyond imaginings.
What might you be, perhaps become,
because one book is somewhere?....
--David McCord

Consider what happens if we lose the ability to look beyond our own place in time and space. We become small-minded, small-souled, wrapped up only in our immediate interests...and vulnerable because we are unable to think clearly.

"But they couldn't do it,
for their poor brains were such
That they couldn't think often,
and hadn't thought much."

--Virginia Kahl, The Duchess Bakes a Cake

Freedom lies in our ability to discern truth and choose right actions. Leadership, courage, hope, conscience, character, faith, critical thinking, magnanimity--all those things are available to those who take and read--but only if we develop the vocabulary to understand.

P.S. [The link to the comments is gone.] I liked Eileen Reardon's comment: "My first reaction on reading the list of 'unnecessarily big words' Clive Beck would like to remove from teachers' mouths was: Nuts! (Simple enough?) Then I started the cryptic crossword and had a horrible thought: If Prof. Beck has his way, he won't merely be gutting the language of nuance, he'll be taking the fun out of crosswords. Egad!"

The many uses of homeschooling

I did a conference workshop last weekend and mentioned that reading Architecture Shown to the Children can improve your ability at crosswords (words like APSE).  They thought I was joking.

A couple of days ago I posted about Gothic architecture and ogees.

The crossword in today's paper has the clue, "Pointed arch."  Which has come up before, but this time I didn't have to look it up:  OGEE.

So there you go.  Homeschooling has its advantages.

Just read the story already

I was asked to do a story-and-craft session with the preschoolers at co-op tomorrow. I came across one book I liked, and thought I'd do a quick browse online to see if anyone had come up with fun activities to go with it. The book's been around for a long time, right? Some preschool teacher somewhere has probably used it for storytime.

This is the first thing that came up for it.

And that's why we homeschool.

(That also reminded me of the DHM's recent conversation with her young friend Blynken, where she refused to define a big word that she'd used. Sometimes we need more story, less explaining, right?)

P.S. I'm still deciding on a book. I'll let you know what I picked tomorrow.

"I have a woeful feeling, as if the double O of doom were sticking in my throat."

From the ongoing discussion about Big Words (of course some people would call it just blog chatter, since we're all supposed to be non-professionals not entitled to consider these things):

The Deputy Headmistress weighs in again on all of this, and mentions a high-ranking clergyman who says (in big words) that he would like to simplify church language for the rest of us.

"Why is he allowed words the rest of us aren't? Is it because they taste yucky, so we won't like them anyway?"

Ah! I love it, it makes so much sense. Not that any of us believe in a conspiracy to limit our language or turn us all into Alphas, Betas...Epsilons...

The DHM's reference to "yucky" refers to a motherly deception she once tried to keep one of her offspring from asking for the pop she was drinking. (She is very, very sorry now and will never do it again.) It reminds me of some friends of ours who used to give their toddler plain yogurt while they were eating ice cream. It worked--until he got old enough to notice that there was a difference! (And it NEVER worked when the younger ones came along.)

And goodness knows I do like yogurt myself--I have some yogging on the heating pad as we speak. But speaking strictly in terms of "something somebody else has that's better than what you've been given"--is it possible that we've been gradually slipped more and more yogurt in place of the Vanilla Chocolate Chip that might give us ideas about Mocha Almond Fudge or even White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle?

Like our toddler friend (who's now an almost Goliath-sized teenager), demand your semantic rights as loudly as you can, and be a voice for the vocabulary-impaired.

"Black showed his teeth and made a restless gesture. 'Taking a single letter from the alphabet,' he said, 'should make life simpler.'

"'I don't see why. Take the F from life and you have lie. It's adding a letter to simple that makes it simpler. Taking a letter from hoarder makes it harder.'"--James Thurber, The Wonderful O

Big Word Response

The Deputy Headmistress reprints an argument over the word "behooves," posted to the comments on the Globe and Mail's Big Words article. It behooves me to point you over there for this interesting exchange, and also some ideas on children's writing from Phyllis McGinley.