Lazy Language

I believe it was Walt Whitman who wrote, “Language is the liquid that we’re all dissolved in.” No, wait. It was Modest Mouse. At any rate, it’s true. Language also provides the framework for all of our thoughts, and all of our emotions. Beyond the service that written history provides, the legacy left by a culture’s music, poetry, philosophy, and literature not only tells us that they lived and died but what they wanted, what they feared, how they loved, what they knew in their minds, felt in their hearts, and believed in their souls.

That’s fucking amazing, eh?

There are those who believe that language is in danger. Camille Paglia believes that the act of blogging has given too many people permission to publish bad writing on a whim. A bit of a harsh stance, perhaps, but with availability of a medium like the Internet people have an accessibility to each other’s writing that has never been seen before. The Internet is also more public than it is often given credit for, and remains largely mysterious to a great many of us. Does this stuff ever go away, or is it locked somewhere in cyberspace forever? In the past we’ve published discovered journals to give us a glimpse into peoples’ lives at a certain time or during a certain event; in the future they may have an endless amount of blogs to choose from in order to gain an insight into us, those who lived at the beginning of the century.

One thing they’ll learn is that many of us seemed to have a lot of free time while at work, and occasionally took quizzes like “Which Alcoholic Beverage Are You?”

Blogging isn’t really the end of the written word that Ms. Paglia seems to think it is, but it is something to think about. Your use of language is how you present yourself to the world; it’s how we communicate with each other. It’s also interesting to bear in mind that anything you write may last longer than you assume it will. So feel free to fall in love with your own language. Use it; it’s there to help you. Get a “word of the day” calendar. Even better, use www.freerice.com; you’ll improve your vocabulary and feel like you’re feeding hungry people. Read when you get the chance. Take part in the occasional word game. And if you don’t feel up to doing all those things, at least buy a thesaurus and use spell check.

© 2007 Krystal Lyons

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