If your language did not include the words red, pink, and coral, would your mind work the same way as it does now when you look at a geranium? How accurately can you compare democracy, communism, and socialism without using words? Without language, how would you go about planning and communicating the details of a party three months in advance?
No one denies that the way people use language is braided together tightly with the way they think. But exactly how much language actually shapes thought, and vice versa, is an old argument.
LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT
Do Different Languages Make People Think Differently?
One unresolved issue concerns whether speaking different types of languages makes people not only think differently about the world but also perceive things differently. [1, 2] Some researchers have suggested, for example, that speakers of a language that includes in its vocabulary only a few color names (corresponding, perhaps, to shades of light and dark rather than hue) would perceive only the color values for which they had words. It is hard to grapple with the notion that in their minds geraniums might look quite different. According to this idea, Arctic Inuits who have several hundred words for different types of snow could be expected to reason more precisely about snow than members of cultures with fewer terms -- and possibly, fewer shades of meaning.
Precision of semantic meaning can apply to verbs, adjectives, and adverbs as well as nouns (e.g., What is the difference between hurl and toss, or between exquisite and beautiful?). Language users who have these types of distinctions available may have mental access to more analytic forms of thinking than those whose lexicon is restricted to more general words (e.g., throw, or pretty).
The main danger of this position is setting up some types of language -- and the accompanying thought -- as arbitrarily "better" than others. Many linguists now view "good" reasoning as that which works best for the needs of the culture in which it takes place, and the best linguistic training as that which readies children's brains for the specific types of thinking valued and needed in their society. A child in a society primarily involved in food gathering, hunting, or navigation, for example, might never be required to write an analytic essay or research paper; one raised in a culture of artisans, where aesthetic beauty is of primary value, might not be encouraged to reason algebraically and therefore would not need the "language" of algebraic equations. [3, 4]
In our Western culture, where we claim to value abstract, analytic reasoning, children are expected to be prepared to think accordingly. These higher-level abilities are not automatically built into the brain. They come only from specific kinds of language and educational experience that prod synapses into patterns we deem "more intelligent."
Many scientists have speculated about how language specifically affects intelligence. Alexander Luria, a renowned neuropsychologist who was fascinated by the workings of growing brains, insisted that language physically builds the brain's higher-reasoning centers. He claimed that, without language, humans would not have developed abstract, categorical thinking: [5]
Language, in the course of social history, became the decisive instrument which helped humans transcend the boundaries of sensory experience, assign symbols, and formulate certain generalizations and categories. When the child names something, pronouncing, for example, "that is a steam engine," he begins to understand that in the movement of the machine named, steam plays a role and that it moves other objects. In mastering words and using them the child analyses and synthesizes the phenomena of the external world, using not only his personal experience but the experience of mankind. He classifies objects, he begins to perceive them differently and with this to remember them differently [italics added]. [6]
David Premack of the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, wondering if language could change the reasoning skills of animals, taught a form of language to chimpanzees to see if it would improve their scores on IQ-type tests that were oriented toward verbal meaning. Although chimpanzees cannot speak, Premack taught them to communicate by arranging plastic chips standing for words into simple grammatical statements (e.g., "Give Suzie banana."). He then retested their ability to reason in certain ways and also tested human children on the same types of tasks. We should all be happy to learn that even educated apes are not about to take over the world, since Premack clearly showed that human children, even before they learn language, think more incisively than chimps do. Nevertheless, these experiments showed with equal clarity that language symbols did change the chimps' abilities to reason. Simply teaching them words for the concepts "same" and "different" enabled them for the first time to see this distinction among categories of objects and thus pass more of the tests. [7]
Language is, of course, not the sole route to thought. Chimps -- and people -- can reason nonverbally, and a lively human mental life also uses visual imagery and nonverbal symbols to interpret and remember experience. Painters, sculptors, and architects do not rely heavily on language to develop their artistic ideas. Likewise, highly abstract mathematical reasoning may ultimately call on systems in the brain other than, or in addition to, those used for language processing, even though the learner must master the basic language of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.
Despite the obvious importance of nonverbal forms of intelligence, there is as yet no substitute for language, used in tandem with visual reasoning, to hone precision of expression and analysis. In the schools to which we consign youngsters for so many hours of their lives, written language is the coin of the realm. Allowing children to enter with shallow linguistic resources puts them in intellectual jeopardy and creates dangerous tensions within education.
Syntax: The Grammar of Relationships
The grammar of language is one of the main ways by which people reason about relationships. When I speak of grammar, or "syntax," I am not talking about the rules we learned in school, but rather about the ones we figured out for ourselves, starting before age two. Putting the verb before the object ("Get cookie") and adding s for more than one are simple examples.
This ability to induce rules, for which the human brain is noted, is probably the reason basic syntactic abilities are said to be "experience expectant"; we aren't born with noun and verb rules clinging to synapses but rather with an innate ability to figure out categories and apply principles that let us generalize about the regularities in any domain of experience. [8] If a young child becomes frightened by a dog, for example, he may start to categorize all dogs as mean until he broadens his rule system to include friendly as well as unfriendly ones. When he notices that adding s makes more than one, he will apply this rule to all words ("mouses") until he broadens that system. The basic drive to make this kind of sense out of the world has doubtless helped keep our species alive.
Learning such rules takes many individual experiences before the general principle is finally internalized. Thus, children who are not frequently exposed to "literate language" may never internalize understanding of this kind of discourse, either its vocabulary or its grammatical rules. Children who do not have the sound of more complex language "in their gut" have particular problems understanding the subtle distinctions in meaning that are carried by abstract "little words" (or, if, would, might, did), and word endings ("I think" vs. "I am thinking"). The order of words in a sentence also conveys many important conceptual relationships that become increasingly important for clear thinking, reading and writing after primary grades. [9]
Her father fed her dog the biscuits vs.
Her father fed her the dog biscuits.
Students not attuned to processing fine distinctions in the sequence of words get all mixed up by sentences like this, whether they hear or read them. Another frequent stumbling block is the grammar of time sequence and cause and effect:
Before John ate dinner, he played ball.
Because the last train had left, he stayed all night.
Still other confusing but common constructions are embedded information:
The bill vetoed by the President . . .
and passive voice:
... was not the one that had been recommended by our committee. Understanding tense markers (when did the veto take place: before or after the recommendation?) also requires syntactic ability.
''These fine points of language take the person beyond the threshold of the visual world," says Priscilla Vail. "Without language, we're limited to our visual horizon; language allows children to move beyond that hidden machinery of cause and effect. If parents want their kids to do well in school or get into a good college, they have to start with language. A rich vocabulary is the foundation, but the ability to describe, compare, and categorize with language is what leads to our ability to think in analogy -- that's the highest level, and it's also what is tested on the SATs!"
How the Brain Handles Grammar
In terms of what is happening to children's brains, it is important to understand that the orderly, grammatic, syntactic details of a language, its sounds, and probably the fine-grained distinctions in word meaning, are handled by the left hemisphere of the cortex in most right-handed people. More general understanding of word meaning, gesture, and interpretation of visual communication (e.g., facial expressions) is mainly directed for most of us by the less analytic right hemisphere. [10] In the sentence "The dog was chased by the cat," for example, right hemisphere semantic systems probably connect the words (e.g., cat, dog, and chase) with mental pictures and/or networks of previous associations. In order to understand the details of what happened (Who did the chasing? Is the time now, yesterday, or tomorrow?), we must use the left hemisphere. When I hear students' conversation these days, I often wonder if both sides are getting sufficient exercise!
Even verbal fluency, per se, does not signify full development of left-hemisphere language systems. Sometimes seemingly precocious vocabulary development and pseudosophistication fool adults who believe that a child who chatters a lot must have good language development. Not true! Some of the hardest learning problems to treat are those of kids who talk on and on but have trouble getting to the point. They have a large set of general associations, but they have big trouble synthesizing them and getting the details in order: Their words ride around their thoughts like Indians circling a wagon train, but they never get around to the attack. Many times, because these students also have trouble talking to themselves about what they're thinking, they don't even know what their point -- or their question -- is! "You know. . ." substitutes for verbal -- and mental -- precision; it is up to the listener to fill in the blanks. This problem is clinically classified as a form of "language disability," but it seems to be increasingly evident among "normal" students in today's "McLanguage" environments.
Since it has long been recognized that problems with verbal precision can result from deficits in the left hemisphere, language therapists speculate among themselves about how much the overwhelming visual presence of television and video may be exacerbating the problem by neglecting left-hemisphere language areas. In the next chapter and in our discussion of television, we will look more critically at this possibility.
Slipping syntax leads to fuzzy thought. Difficulties using grammatical language to identify relationships between ideas may account for many of the problems in logical thinking, science, and math that are becoming so evident in our high schools. Many problems with thinking go unrecognized until students must formulate ideas clearly enough to put them down on paper. In observing classrooms, I have commonly seen students "get by" in class discussions with short, superficial answers or a lot of gestures and verbal circling of the topic ("You know" -- and the teacher does, so the kid is off the hook). The teacher is usually unaware that the class is responding at a conversational, not an analytic, level. When he assigns an in-class writing assignment, however, their cover is blown.
"These kids can't think!" wails the teacher.
Writing: The Last Straw
Writing is the road test for language as a vehicle of thought. An alarming number of students coming off our linguistic assembly lines are failing it. "Very few of our students can write well," states Archie E. Lapointe, executive director of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. "Most students, majority and minority alike, are unable to write adequately except in response to the simplest of tasks." [11]
Well-reasoned and well-organized writing proceeds from a mind trained to use words analytically. No matter how good, how creative, or how worthy a student's ideas, their effectiveness is constrained by the language in which they are wrapped.
Teachers are more discouraged by the quality of students' writing than by anything else except their ability to listen well. Why is writing so much more difficult than other language tasks? First of all, it demands a firm base of oral language skill. Students who have not learned to line up words effectively when they speak are not going to be able to do so on paper. Secondly, good written language is quite different from colloquial "talk written down." Awareness of its sound comes only from extensive listening to and/or reading quality prose and poetry. Moreover, expressing an idea on paper demands that the writer remove language from the here and now; gestures and "you know's" just don't work!
Writing allows us to give our ideas a life of their own apart from the immediacy of speech, but this more abstract approach requires use of more complex syntax to link ideas together. Otherwise we get what I call "Dick and Jane" prose ("See Spot. See Spot run."). The most difficult aspect of writing clearly, however, is that it demands the ability to organize thought."
A teacher who was trying to help her second graders learn to write fluently came to me for advice about an otherwise good student who was having terrible trouble producing even a simple story. Her handwriting was good, she could copy anything quite easily, and when answering questions raised by the teacher she used age-appropriate language. When she tried to write anything original, however, she and the paper remained equally blank.
We decided that the teacher would offer to act as "secretary" and ask the little girl simply to tell her a story. Here is a sample from the child's first narrative:
And then she was ... Dan ... she was ... Danny was probably wondering what Tanya was thinking.
'Cause he was wondering like ... Tanya was, um, smiling " ... she was probably thinking and ... "
Danny was thinking what ... was wondering what Tanya was thinking.
No wonder this child can't get ideas down on paper! She has not yet learned to arrange them in her mind.
When students in second grade show such difficulties, we expect to work with them to correct the problem. Now, however, university professors are starting to complain that they must also teach writing and thinking skills they used to take for granted. A Harvard professor recently began sending thank-you letters to the high schools of his students who can write clearly and intelligently.
"As I note the increasing roughness in student prose, I find myself heartened by rare examples such as the one presented by Miss X," he wrote in one. Later, in a telephone interview, he explained, "I think there's a definite decline in the quality of student writing. There's something fuzzy there; it's actually an imprecision of language reaching into a fuzziness of thought. They're beginning to lose the concept of words like better, so they think of good and best, or tall instead of tallest. What is interesting to me is how frequently I cannot get my students to write down what they mean. I spend a lot of time with them on their writing -- far more than I think I should have to at a college like this. They simply can't do many of the things that were fundamental fifteen years ago when I started here."
The Grammar of Mathematics
Most people, even math teachers, are not aware that problems with language can cause difficulties in mathematical reasoning. The verbal tools that clarify relationships in reading and writing do the same job in math, and studies of children with exceptional mathematical talents often reveal similarly high verbal skills. [12] On the flip side, even bright hearing-impaired children are likely to have problems with math beyond computation, possibly because they have not had experience with the necessarily precise, sequential uses of language. Some words important in beginning math are those that tell about the direction in which the numbers and the thinking go: (e.g., before, after, into, above, under, away, over); causation (e.g., if then, because); or actions (e.g., add, multiply). The terms borrowing from, dividing into, or multiplying by are only a few examples that often confuse children who have trouble attaching the sequence of the language meaning to the numerals on the page. Advanced math courses such as algebra demand special skills in logical, sequential reasoning that often come wrapped in a form of syntax.
"Paying attention to words can help students cope with numbers," declares Joan Countryman, a nationally known math teacher who is working on a book called Writing to Learn Mathematics. She has found that having students write about problems helps them with the kind of logical thinking they need to come up with good solutions. Improving their language skills is her first step in improving mathematical reasoning.
Other teachers have hit upon this idea out of desperation. One algebra teacher from Tennessee, who described today's crop of students as "terrible problem solvers," commented, "I think the lack of understanding of English is the problem. I have to go through each problem step by step, underline the subject, the verb; we look for the verb that shows what equals what, then we take the prepositional phrases and analyze them. If we have a problem with a statement like 'It took John two hours longer to go the same distance,' they have to understand the language before they can get a picture in their mind about what is happening. Until then, there is no way they can really understand what kind of an equation is needed."
In her book Twice as Less, Eleanor Wilson Orr describes her own awakening to the ways in which use of prepositions, conjunctions, and relative pronouns can affect students' concepts of quantitative relationships. Working with students who spoke nonstandard English, she became convinced that their "reasoning problems" were, in actuality, reflections of differences in use of the language.
In a chemistry class a student stated that ... the volume of a gas would be half more than it was. When I asked her if she meant that the volume would get larger, she said, "No, smaller." When I then explained that half more than would mean larger, indicating the increase with my hands, she said she meant twice and with her hands indicated a decrease. When I then said, "But twice means larger," ... she said, "I guess I mean half less than. It always confuses me."
By initiating math and science courses that start with words as a basis for understanding, Ms. Orr is helping students improve their learning by using the "power of language as an instrument with which one can reason beyond the observable." [13]
Differences in the way children are taught to talk about numbers may even account for some of the gaps between achievement of Japanese and American children, according to two California researchers. In a new and provocative study they demonstrated that language differences make it easier for Japanese children to understand "place value," a cornerstone of math competency and one of the things teachers have a lot of trouble getting most American children to understand. The reason for the difference, they say, may be that, unlike English, many Asian languages have spoken words for numbers that systematically describe their written relationship to ten. For example, in Japanese, 11, 12, and 20 are spoken as "ten-one," "ten-two," and "two-ten(s)," much less confusing for a child than the terms eleven, twelve, and twenty, which do not easily translate into any linear numerical equivalent. Many American youngsters mix up such numbers as seventeen and seventy; Japanese children can understand them more easily because 17 is spoken as "ten-seven" and 70 as "seven-ten(s)".
In a study of forty-eight high-achieving first-grade students in both countries, these researchers showed dramatic differences in their ability to represent numbers according to place value, giving the Japanese a real leg up on more complex computation and reasoning. Whereas American teachers labor mightily teaching place value for addition and subtraction in second grade, Japanese students at the same level master it handily and move on to multiplication. While one variable clearly cannot account for all differences, additional research on the way language shapes mathematical thinking may show other important variations. [14]
Why Aren't Children Learning Grammar?
The solution to all these problems seems to be simple. The schools should teach grammar. When schools attempt to teach "grammar" as they currently define it, however, they try to paste labels (e.g., "adverb," "clause") and rules ("adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs") on a system that needs to be embedded in the brain in a fundamentally different way. Without the foundations, beating "grammar" rules into brains is difficult; sometimes it seems impossible.
Evidently, little grammar is learned from watching television. Children may gain some vocabulary knowledge, but no one has shown that they pick up syntactic forms. Studies of preschoolers who watched Sesame Street showed that they learned to recognize more words than children who had not viewed the program (the tests merely asked them to point to pictures representing words, not to say anything), but no syntactic gains were noted. In another study, experimenters showed Dutch children TV programs in German in an effort to get them to learn German. They did not.
Several interesting studies have shown that TV was an equally poor language coach for normally hearing children raised by deaf parents. In one example, two normally hearing brothers were cared for at home only by their deaf mother until soon after the eldest was enrolled in nursery school. When the children were first tested at ages five and two, their only language experience had come from television and, for the elder child, brief exposure at school. His language, particularly his grammar, was peculiar and his younger brother had no language at all. Fortunately, both children were still within the sensitive period for language development, so their progress was rapid once they began to interact with other speakers. The investigators commenting on this case point out that, beyond the most basic level, grammatical speech (and its understanding) seem to be the aspects of language acquisition most vulnerable to deprivation and also that children must use language in an interactional setting to discover and learn the rules. "All these interactional aspects of communication are missing when language is heard from an indirect source. Even an indirect source that used simpler language than that used in adult speech (for example, television programs for children) would provide a poor context for language acquisition," they state. [15]
Studies of normally speaking mothers and their children confirm the importance of direct personal experience for learning these refinements of language. Although youngsters pick up basic vocabulary words and meaning quite well despite the speech style of their mothers, they miss out on higher-level grammatical abilities if their mothers fail to use them. It may not matter very much what language is being spoken, as long as the brain learns to process some well-developed system of grammar.
Some interesting recent studies of deaf persons who learned American Sign Language (ASL), which has a complete set of grammatical rules comparable to those of spoken English, have also proven that there are special slots in the developmental schedule for mastery of more complex syntax and for the little words and endings that carry subtle meanings (e.g., the differences between saying "A teacher is in the room." and "The teacher is in the room."). Dr. Elissa Newport tested deaf adults who had first been exposed to ASL, at different ages: at birth, between four and six years, or after age eleven. She became a believer in sensitive periods for the development of syntax when she discovered significant differences in the subjects' proficiency depending on the time of their first exposure to ASL -- even though these people had all come from similar school and environmental backgrounds and were between fifty and seventy years old at the time of the study. After age eleven, it appeared, their brains had lost the ability to master more complex forms of syntax. They made the same types of errors that show up increasingly in the writing of today's schoolchildren. [16]
Clearly, to be well prepared for reading, writing, listening, and speaking, children need to interact with increasingly advanced language during the years of childhood. But consider briefly the current situation:
• Busy schedules or uninterested caretakers militate against oral reading and thoughtful dinner-table conversation. Much of the "talk" that does take place, even in concerned families, may center around the mechanics of the moment (e. g., "Get your hat and mittens." "When does your shift at Burger King end tonight?" "Finish your homework or no TV.").
• The quality of language models in the media is highly variable. Even if the child chooses programs with more complex language, it may be of little use without an adult around to encourage verbal response.
• Most elementary-level children read textbooks that contain a thin, watered-down syntactic gruel.
• Time and motivation for reading are increasingly usurped by television and other nonliterary demands such as extra-curricular activities, computer practice, or drill-type homework.
Is it reasonable to expect that an English teacher can patch up all the holes -- and still do a thorough job of teaching literature, expository writing, spelling, public speaking, poetry writing, reading comprehension, etc.? When kids arrive in middle and high school, we assume they should be able to ask good questions and write a grammatically coherent essay -- but most of them cannot. We also expect them to understand the books that have always been staples of the curriculum -- but whose syntax sounds to them like a foreign language!
Tom could not get away from it. Every reference to the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his troubled conscience and fears almost persuaded him that these remarks were put forth in his hearing as "feelers"; he did not see how he could be suspected of knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be comfortable in the midst of this gossip. -- Tom Sawyer
Unless such literature is carefully taught by a skilled teacher who knows how to make the text come alive and who is able to make the huge time commitment to help students with unfamiliar vocabulary, grammar, and voice, I can tell you what many kids do -- they simply don't read it. Instead, they continue to practice -- and to embed in their brains -- language that some linguists refer to quite descriptively as "primitive." Herein lies one of the major sources of tension between students and the curriculum.
"RESTRICTED CODES" AND THE LOSS OF THE ANALYTIC ATTITUDE
Linguists argue over whether calling a language "primitive" is either fair or accurate, but most agree that languages differ in complexity. Consider this sentence which most adult English speakers can easily understand:
The woman who lives next door brought the flowers that are on the table.
Some languages, however, can't get all these thoughts into one sentence because they lack devices to subordinate information. Speakers of such a language are limited to simpler propositions:
A woman brought the flowers.
They are on the table.
She lives next door. [17]
As another example, compare this description of a cause-effect relationship:
The meeting was not productive. The chairman was frustrated. The chairman appointed a new committee.
with this one:
Because the meeting had been unproductive, the frustrated chairman appointed a new committee.
In the first example, the absence of complex syntax forces us to infer why the chairman changed the committee and also obscures the time sequence of the events. Forms of language that contain these more complex grammatical devices are called elaborated codes. Those conveying ideas without such complex grammatical structures are called restricted codes and are the ones viewed as more "primitive." They are most useful when one speaker can see another's gestures and already knows the details of the message. "The expressions used by many peoples standing at a primitive level can be understood only if the concrete situation is known and if their gestures are observed," says Luria. [18] The simple, visual content of many television programs lends itself particularly well to this type of talk.
According to Dr. Paul Kay of the Department of Anthropology at UCLA, elaborated codes can be distinguished by their longer sentences and more varied and explicit vocabulary. They have more expressions for logical connections (e.g., thus, therefore, moreover, because, if, since, nevertheless). Restricted codes, on the other hand, are much more immediate, requiring the listener to fill in the gaps that the speaker has not made explicit (e.g., placing one's own interpretation on devices such as "You know").
Both types of speech obviously have their uses in everyday life. If you had to deliver a lecture at a neighboring university, you would be well advised to stick to elaborated codes; but if you used them when making love to your spouse, they might not be too appropriate. The trick is to be able to "code-switch" and use the best kind of syntax for the situation at hand.
Elaborated and restricted codes also differ in the use of two types of words: content words and function words. Content words are our descriptive palette of verbs, nouns, and adjectives referring to specific things, actions, or attributes (e.g., house, beautiful, running). They are also called "open class" because we keep adding and subtracting new words to these categories all the time. Our new gastronomic lexicon (e.g., quiche, sushi, pesto) or some discarded relics (e.g., buggy whip) are examples of changing open-class words. Such words are used in both types of codes and are primarily handled by the right hemisphere.
On the other hand, function words are used in more elaborated codes. They are harder to understand because they don't stand for real things. These "little" words, word endings and prefixes, conjunctions, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, etc. (e.g., if, but, so, did, might, un-, -ment) develop much later in a child's speech. Also called "closed class," -- their usage changes only slowly over time. Function words require use of the more analytic left hemisphere.
Use of these different types of words enables different degrees of complexity in language. Sentences containing mainly content words
Children like to run.
Children like prizes.
are the type termed "restricted," or "primitive." Adding some function words enables expression of more complexity.
Some of the children in this group might like to run if we offered a prize.
Brain circuits for getting beyond restricted codes and using language analytically ("If you have already spent your allowance on a videotape, you may not be able to go to the movies tomorrow") do not develop automatically. One linguist who recorded mothers' conversations with their preschoolers and then measured the children's language development found that unless mothers used function words themselves, their children did not pick them up. [19]
Languages are always in the process of change. Traditionally, open-class nouns and verbs have been the ones that have changed most rapidly. Among the young, however, it appears that the closed-class and syntactic markers are fast becoming obsolete. These differences may represent the source of many of the declines observed, not only in academic achievement, but also in traditional, formal reasoning.
Who Is "Primitive"?
The words primitive language are loaded ones because they imply some sort of cultural judgment. Researchers who tried several years ago to apply this concept to groups of children got into trouble because they unfairly concluded that lower-class children are socialized to use only primitive, unelaborated, forms of language and are therefore incapable of learning elaborated speech and irrevocably doomed to school failure. Subsequent research has drastically modified this overgeneralization. It is true that families with less educational background are more likely to use language that is not "schoollike," and that children from homes of "lower socioeconomic status" (which is predicated on both educational and occupational levels may have less experience than others with the types of language found in books (although this situation may be changing, as we will see in a later chapter). Few would argue with the reality that the ability to use "elaborated codes" confers a real advantage in our culture both in school and in many occupations, but assuming that all members of "lower classes" lack this tool and that all "upper classes" have it is clearly ridiculous.
Dr. Paul Kay, who is regarded as an expert in the evolution and cultural development of language, believes that issues of class and language are important but should not be overgeneralized. First of all, a more complex society has traditionally impelled all its members toward more abstract speech. In a simple "face-to-face" local community, he explains, everyone shares common experiences and can get by with simple words, short sentences, and a lot of gestures. As people become more separated, they need to develop ways of communicating about problems that are much more abstract and emotionally neutral. The more specialized we become, particularly when we begin to reason in specialized technical fields, the more we need elaborated codes. Having to put new concepts in writing, Kay believes, provides a special impetus to keep us from reaching an intellectual "dead end."
In any society, he says, some people need elaborated codes more than others. "When a society develops writing and differentiates into social classes, literate persons will usually have more occasion to speak explicitly and will tend to develop a speech style more attuned to explicit, technical, context-independent messages." But speech that sounds elaborate does not necessarily signify higher class or intellectual quality.
A businessman recently handed me a letter that he says typifies much language usage in today's business world. It begins: "Reference is made to the above automobile which was purchased at your dealership on November 30, 1988." For two closely typed pages, the author attempts to sound important while he "explains" a simple problem of replacing a fuel pump. Eventually we reach his concluding statement: "I request your explanation in writing that all of the pumps are this way or, however you phrased it, as you again refused replacing this pump saying it was replaced once already." This man seems to believe he knows what he is thinking, but his overelaborate language suggests only confusion.
Look out, warns Kay, for the difference between "speech that is 'better' only in the silly snobbish sense and speech that is in some real sense more effective, which communicates the speaker's message more explicitly and economically." "Bureaucratese," for example, is a "misguided attempt to achieve a high-sounding style" based on someone's confusion about what educated speech really sounds like!
Columnist Russell Baker recently engaged in a bit of elaboration himself when he lambasted some political language: "whiny, oily, sneaky, deceptive words posing as the soul of uptown refinement and civilized polysyllabic politeness." Baker thinks that the public should rise up and protest the meaningless and deadening "cotton wool" that constitutes American political discourse. [20] But how will the upcoming generation know the difference? When teachers tell me that their students seem more inclined to mouth gobbledygook than effective and economical language, I am not terribly surprised. They are, after all, saturated with models of pretension masquerading as precision.
Code-Switching: From "Teenage" to English
To think and express themselves clearly, reason and write well, and understand what middle and high schools expect them to read, children need to learn the codes of formal education. Yet, the communication style of many adolescents, even when they are trying to cope with academic language, is often in the "primitive" category. And because they seem to be less able to "code-switch," they are even more at odds with the adult world than teens of previous eras.
It is nothing new for teenagers to talk differently in English class than when hanging out in the cafeteria. The itchy autonomy of adolescence requires its own lexicon. Yet, in order to adapt to school demands, students must be able to change languages when they cross the border.
Until recently, children growing up could hardly avoid exposure to elaborated codes. In the media, most characters at least tried to talk like grown-ups, and families sat together and discussed what they saw on the news. Time was spent in talking on other occasions, as well. "Kids used to have to be able to code-switch to talk to their grandparents," commented one linguist. "But the grandparents aren't around the house anymore, and if the parents are home, they seem more willing to switch to the kids' form of talk than to try and force the issue."
Now, for a quantity of hours that exceeds that spent in school, even preadolescents are isolated in their own culture. TV and video talk (if they do at all) either in the teens' own language or in the increasingly agrammatical obfuscations of Madison Avenue. With a few notable exceptions, programs rely heavily on picture, gesture, music, and color to get much of the message across. Who needs "talk" containing long clauses, subordinated ideas, and connectives such as "meanwhile," "however," "nevertheless"? Emotionally charged words, not syntax, carry the news. Careful listening becomes irrelevant. Reasoning defers to the surge of immediacy; language use focuses on the literal, the here and now.
Even "literary" models for teenagers are beginning to emphasize the rift with adult culture and its language. In a recent interview, the twenty-five-year-old editor of a new magazine for teenage girls attempted to describe her mission: "Other magazines have, like, a stereotypical or idealized vision of teenagers," she said. "Maybe what parents or teachers would like. Not really what teenagers are about, you know." [21]
School is a foreign country! "It's like, well, you know" does not fly on essay exams. Untrained neural circuits rebel as lectures get longer. Increasingly, students tune out when the teacher talks, avoid literature whenever possible, work silently at their desks or with computer programs, and wait for lunchtime when they can have a "conversation" that makes sense to them.
Should it be any surprise that when they get to the syntax of Mark Twain, the analytic reasoning of math and science textbooks, or the abstract organization needed to write clearly about something not personal or present, they are lost? Their brains have been molded around language, culture, and thought that are alien, even antagonistic, to those of the school.
