Scarlett.
She's "the most accomplished
woman in e-sports" and "is known for her macro mutalisk style and
kick-ass creep spread." according to New Yorker. I don't need to ask
Dorothy if we're still in Kansas any more or if they still speak English
there. If this were a 'tweet' or a 'text,' or if I were 14, I'd say
WTF? It's not your fathers English any more, it's your granddaughter's
and Madison Avenue's. And yes, sometimes Madison is still an avenue and
back in 1957, for a short while,
a dance that made you hip.
Being
willing to bet that a mutalisk isn't the gastropod it might appear to
any speaker of Old English (last Thursday's) to be, I looked it up.
Apparently there's a
Heart of the Swarm and a
Wings of Liberty version of this beast, for beast it is or would be if virtual reality were more real than virtual.
I
suppose that knowing I'm dealing with Video game dialect and that
indeed it is a dialect separated by several degrees from the language
formerly known as English, relieves me of the need to look up e-sports.
This being the age that it is, the universal and sole metaphor for
defeat is the kicking of ass. Movies today can be based on video games
which are based on Comic books which are based on life as people
fantasize it with the aid of movies. As I said, the hip world is
removed by several degrees as is the language they speak there.
A cartoon in the same issue carries the punch line: "@FBarnes12 favorited a prophecy you were mentioned in" WTF?
Language has to change,
rufft uns die Stimme.
And of course, like it or not, it does change. LHTC is not just a
dispassionate observation I fear, as much as a phrase usually used to
stop all conversation about the nature, extent, causation or direction
of that change or the question of whether the change is inevitable as
much as it is profitable, a thing of politics, a thing of choice -- of
proclamation, hortatory or compulsory or sought after. I often think
that the inevitability of that reaction, the peremptory attitude and
conclusive pose of that retort smells strongly of one of those social,
cultural or academic cults that proliferate and evolve, expand and
contract like planes in a Multiverse, and like universes, resist the
transit between or access to each other. Things all that are for me like
reading Kierkegaard -- things of nausea and sickness unto death. It
doesn't matter whether I walk, or march or ride or crawl as much as it
matters -- where.
While cultures world wide seem to be
agglutinating and homogenizing and Americanizing, there is a level at
which it is fragmenting and racing apart at an accelerating rate.
Gamer-speak or Business school babble of last week is harder for me
than Chaucer and the number and compartmentalizing of dialects follows
suit. The question for me however is whether this change is a "must-be"
or an attempt to make the fool seem intelligent, the nerd hip and the
outsider belong. Do we accept clumsy, indecipherable English because the
English Department bullies insist we do, or because we are so afraid
that if we can't understand it, it's because we are inadequate? Did the
Sokal hoax
succeed because people who needed to seem smart thought it was over
their heads, because we thought that academics talked like this? I hate
the Imperial nudity fallacy, a form of the argument from ignorance, but
sometimes -- hey!
It's been suggested that the main
attraction of being able to quote Derrida or Foucault is that it sounds
impenetrable and thus immune from contradiction because it puts the
opposition on the indefensible defensive and at the point of aporia. I
have to ask whether this is the kind of change that
has to happen or is this, like so many changes we see:
simply marketing.
Do changes in nomenclature reflect diversity of objects as much as the
desire to create false choices, make things more attractive or less
undesirable -- to cover the emperor's ass? We used to laugh 50 years
ago at the insistence that we call the garbage collector a 'solid waste
transfer technician' while we don't seem to be amused any more at
ordering some tongue twister at Starbucks instead of a cup of coffee. Marketing of marketing, all is marketing.
Is
the LHTC, Language Has To Change catechism here mostly to support this
sort of thing? Is the teaching of English now no more than rigid
spelling exercises? Do we indulge and feel good about ourselves because
video game lovers want to be seen as athletes, participants in
"e-sports" instead of nerds, because 'homes' are more attractive than
houses or apartments, pre-owned sounds less sordid than used. Are we
suddenly "gifting" presents at Christmas instead of giving them because
it sounds more technically knowledgeable to the easily confused? Do
things "negatively impact on" rather than hurt, damage, harm, degrade,
retard or a dozen other nuanced words because we think it elevates our
speech or because it reduces the need for vocabulary? Are we seeing
change for change's sake, for business sake, for political reasons, for
the furtherance of a cause -- for social climbing, for social equality,
for identifying with criminals or saints or intellectuals or food
faddists? When we talk about gluts or abs are we trying to seem
athletic and fit in with those who are? Again, it doesn't matter that
change is inevitable, but where it inevitably takes us.
Orwell had a grand old time showing us the benefits of change in
1984, where language had to change because
you
had to change. Whether you call it Obamacare, the ACA or Swiss style
or Socialized medicine has everything to do with who you're trying to
keep on track for your station as well as which track you've been put
on. Control the language, control the thought, control the purchasing
and call it lifestyle.
Yes, jargon has a use.
Acronyms and abbreviations have a use although we so often use them to
ridiculous extremes SOS or QRM make life easier for the telegrapher,
ALS is easier to say than Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but so much is
simply marketing or euphemy or other ways to hide fraud, fallacy and
fakery: FFF if you will. There does seem to be an expansion in that
universe, but contrary to the message of the LHTC,
all change isn't the same,
doesn't serve the same purpose and may or may not be deleterious (may
negatively impact on) to your health, well being, freedom of thought or
solvency.
We have to have new words -- sometimes. We
don't necessarily have to learn to talk like people who are 12 years
old or are illiterate, confused or dialect infused, although we might
buy more or more foolishly if we do. We don't have to think we're
sophisticated multilingual sophisticates by ordering an Americano in
Fargo like a phony. We don't have to assume Liberal means Fascist or
Conservative means Anarchist or that
calling Asia the Orient
means you're a racist any more than you are just being current, hip or
up to date by thinking your uncomfortable chair might discomfit you.
How much of LHTC is really "follow orders" posing as "do as thou wilt?"
The
question is not whether language has to change, but whether lack of
education is to be the driving force or whether the need to deceive,
persuade or to sell should never be interfered with, that any idea must
be allowed to masquerade as something else and most of all the self
esteem of the unread should never be risked. Telling us it has to
change is more than a way of giving up, it's a way of facilitating
deception, interfering with cognitive function and increasing the
difficulty of communicating.