Rant 03 - Bloody English
I have this paper due tomorrow. I haven't started it yet because I can't understand what the bloody hell it's trying to tell me to do.
It's a more common plight than generally recognized. Students run up against this all the time: we get an assignment and we have no idea what the teacher wants. This is especially prevalent in “creative” classes, like Art and Creative Writing. The teachers tell you something so general that you have no idea what will get you a passing grade, and what will get you a trip to the administration office. (I've gotten several of those trips).
But what I'm dealing with today is a prompt so complexly worded that even my father, a theologian and master of several languages, could not decipher what the prompt wants. I've been fighting with this damn thing for two days now, to no avail. I mean, the paper is supposed to be about 800 words longer, but the prompt is 680 words itself!
It's times like this that make people hate school, and/or the teacher at it. And this hatred can be largely avoided if our teachers would just take the time to use Common English. I'm not talking about High English, Scientific English, or Slang- Common English. Also referred to as Bloody English.
Bloody English is the idea that our language can be willfully butchered and abused so that it actually makes more sense. The common man does not bother getting all his sentences structured right, nor does he avoid compressing words if the end result is easier to say and understand. If people understand what he's saying then he flies with it.
A great example of this is 'Sup. This horrifying word (to English snobs) is so commonly used that it has layers of meaning. Generally, 'Sup is used as a greeting that requires little to no response. People use it when passing in halls or on sidewalks- they expect little more than a returning 'Sup or a “Not much.” 'Sup can also be used to make an open inquiry- your roommate shows up, you greet him with a 'Sup, which then gives him to possibilities. He can use the sidewalk response, indicating that he doesn't really want to talk or have anything to talk about, or he can actually talk about what's on his mind. Unlike a fleshed out question, which can only be brushed off with slight rudeness, 'Sup is graceful for both situations.
Who knew the common man was so considerate?
Another example of Bloody English would be any application of l33t or IMspeak in spoken English. Calling “HAX!” out to a teammate in a LAN or online game indicates a lot more than any long winded phrase- in three letters we have shown some outrage, some humor, and brought an inequity into the views of all. Similarly, responding to a conversation with “lol” does more than indicating you're amused and you're a geek- it also pokes fun at the subject, and puts the joke in a new perspective, which might make it considerably funnier or may show it to be entirely unfunny.
Bloody English is not complicated, especially if you don't feel like using any Geek in it. It's just a dialect of English that has been reformatted and compressed to make more sense in fewer words. A noble goal that more English speakers should aspire to, especially those who seem to be overeducated.
All that said, brevity is not holiness. I recently joined and then left a forum (mostly because the community is made up of douches), because the moderators did not like the size of my posts. They said that I was wasting time with too many words and taking up space. My view is obviously biased, but I do feel that they were entirely wrong- I gave reasons and speculations, not just vapid waste. You can't just say “The sort of wasted words you might expect from a fanfiction writer, who has no respect for brevity and no practice exercising focus in writing.” My post counted 351 words... about a third of this rant.
Sometimes it's actually a lot better to use more words than try and use vocabulary that is above the heads of your audience. I have a pretty good set of words at my command, but I try not to use the really obscure ones on this website, because it would alienate my audience. So that's another consideration that people should attend to- even if you can compress the sentence down, will it really make it more understandable? If the answer is no, then you're not using Bloody English- you're back to High English.
So don't be afraid to use however many words you need to what you need to. But it's the deliberately complicated, obtuse writing that drives everyone nuts.
-Tentus