May, 2008

Sign language is often seen to be inferior to the spoken language because it does not follow the convention of most languages in that it employs visual representation as its chief mode of expression as opposed to spoken sounds; Creole languages are oft thought inferior due to the fact that it is usually considered the degenerate conjoining of a native language and a lingua franca. Despite the existence of such reservations and prejudice regarding these two unconventional languages the fact remains—as it always has been—that they are in no way politically or linguistically inferior to any existing language in the modern world; They have, rather than to contribute to political and linguistic degeneration as critics of such languages claim, opened doors to new realms and audiences of linguistics and politics.
 
Sign language and Creole essentially share a similar background in that they are both creations borne from linguistic voids of different sorts. Speakers of sign language and the Deaf community eventually overcome the linguistic void of sound and speech before attaining proficiency in sign language whereas speakers of pidgin and Creole languages eventually overcome the linguistic void of a unique vocabulary and codified syntax structure before moving on to become fluent speakers of such languages.
 
In both cases however, the linguistic voids which at face value seems more to obstruct than to help the case of both language types actually serve to become unique assets to each language. Whereas users of Sign language are devoid of communication involving speech and sound, they have access to a more expressive and iconic form of communication in physical gestures and signals. Granted this form of communication has its disadvantage in the fact that the range of communication is basically limited to the range of the user’s sight range, the fact that it employs vision—which for many is the primary sense of perception—as opposed to sound implies that there is less room for miscommunication between fluent speakers.

Linguistic concepts in spoken languages such as minimal pairs or sonority mean that fluent speakers of any language can easily miscomprehend each other simply owing to the fact that the medium being employed in such modes of communications is not perfect, and speakers of such languages are limited to the sounds they can create. For example, let’s take a hypothetical situation in English where two native speakers are engaged in discussion about distributing property. One would expect that being native speakers of the language would mean that neither speaker should have any problem understanding a simple suggestive sentence such as “you can take this”, but the fact that speech is governed by sonority could distort the sound and create a completely different meaning such as “you can fake this” or “you can cake this”, which is especially true for obstruents given that they are the least sonorous of any given sound group in linguistics. With Sign language however, such miscommunication between two native speakers is less likely to happen as each word or part of speech is clearly signaled and interpreted visually, and unlike spoken and speech-based languages, there is virtually no restriction to the arsenal of different vocabulary and “languages” that a Sign language user can use as sight not sound is the restricting factor in the case; it is therefore in theory it would be easier for a speaker or user already acquainted with one language to learn what is considered a “hard” Sign language as opposed to a spoken language that involves constant use of an area of articulation not commonly employed by most conventional spoken languages, such as the click-based languages of Africa.

Although pidgin and Creole users are not devoid of sound and speech, they are devoid of a codified method of acquisition, characteristic of languages borne from a mesh of native and colonial cultures. In Bickerson’s “Creole Languages” the process of language acquisition within Creole-speaking communities is contrasted to the story of Pharaoh Psamtik’s linguistic—albeit unethical—experiment where two children were to be reared by a mute shepherd; whereas their process does not extend to the extremity of having no access to spoken language whatsoever, it does follow within the footsteps of the experiment in that formation of Creole was done so within two mutually unintelligible languages trying to establish an intelligible medium.

Given that the two languages being ameliorated in most Creole are in most cases from two very separate language families—usually the Indo-European language of the colonizers and the native language of the colonized—it is safe to assume that it is almost as if the acquisitors of such languages are devoid of any existing linguistic notions or preconceptions they may have had and are forced to rely on more innate aspects of language acquisition.

Bickerson notes that the acquisition of Creole is similar to that of a newborn baby acquiring language from those spoken by its parents: although the baby is exposed to native speakers whose aptitude in the language is presumably at the highest level of the accepted social standard, the baby will—assuming that the basic token of language acquisition is the act of imitating sounds produced by native speakers—constantly make mistakes in repeating and reformulating sentences uttered by the native speakers. The example provided by Bickerson is that of a four-year-old who tries to explain to his parents that “nobody like[s him]”; in observation the boy repeatedly iterates the words “nobody don’t like me”, and even after his mother corrected his use of double-negation and verb agreement in the case of singular/plural subjects, the boy still resorted to the use of double negatives, claiming this time “nobody don’t likes me”.

This phenomenon implies the existence of what is generally known as cognitive bias in Psychology, or the situation where pre-existing (or in our case, innate) knowledge or standing on a certain subject blocks or hinders new sets information or ideas settling in the brain. In the Bickerson example, it can be said that an innate syntax system, which Noam Chomsky has hypothesized to be a Universal Grammar of sorts, was hindering the process of the new and perceived “correct” English syntax from settling in to his linguistic arsenal; the acquisition of Creole works in the same way that a child grows up in an environment of either pidgin-speaking parents or an environment where the existence of two mutually unintelligible languages are in full collision and is therefore forced to rely on a perceivably innate system of language as a method of communication.

The fact that Creole languages from different ends of the world, formed from completely different sets of language groups follow the same basic syntactic structure concatenates the idea that Creole languages are indeed a legitimate language class; whereas formalized lingua franca such as Mandarin Chinese and English base their linguistic roots on historical and societal trends and changes, Creole languages base their roots on one’s innate ability to gather and materialize linguistic knowledge . The fact that a language is based on self-evident innate factors as opposed to dynamic and changing factors such as historical and social trends means that it is less susceptible to change and deterioration: whereas the syntactic structure of English and Mandarin are constantly becoming altered due to social fads, convenience, etc., the syntactic structure of Creole will quite possibly never change so long as the hypothetical Universal Grammar remains intact (or unless by some magical chance, the genetic make-up of everyone on earth was simultaneously altered to change the Universal Grammar)

One final point I wanted to make in illustrating the legitimacy of Sign languages and Creoles as opposed to their conventional counterparts, is that unlike a lot of the languages in the world which are by each passing day becoming more and more moribund in nature, the population of these languages seem to be increasingly on the rise. According to the CIA World Book, the population of the American Sign Language in 1985 was 350,000 people, which has increased to an estimated two million in the year 2004; the population of Hawaiian Creole speakers in 1985 was approximated to be 400,000 people which has in 2004 risen to 600,000. The fact that these languages are gaining more and more speakers indicates that they are no more and no less legitimate than any other spoken language in the world, and like their conventional counterparts, will continue to stay so until its speakers one day die out.

A somewhat celebrated character in Lewis Carroll’s much celebrated “Through the Looking Glass” pondered the existence of a hypothetical linguistic society where a word, when used, “means whatever [one] chooses to mean—neither more nor less”; in this hypothetical society, people would master language and manipulate it in whatever necessary or possible to utilize its purpose of (pragmatic) existence in being a tool used for communication. If this idea can be seen as a legitimate theory or idea on how language ought to be used, Orwell’s observations on how politics, and the historical events which led to politicking, is affecting the way the 20th/21st century English-speakers commandeer their proficiency in English would be an accurate antithesis of such an idea.

Orwell contends that the decline of the English language is similar to that of a drunk who is caught in a downward looping spiral in the sense that “a man drinks because he feels himself to be a failure and then fail all the more completely because he drinks,” where the toxin of the English language’s choice is politics instead of alcohol, and English is on the decline because of political insertion into the language itself, while further “failing” because it is inclusively exercising politics within its daily use.

Political speech, according to Orwell, is language “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,” or a case of “defending the indefensible.” He claims that the landmark political events of the 20th century— the British occupation of India, the Soviet Republic, and bombs being dropped on Japan to name a few—have provided for a need to be generally concealing and ambiguous in political speech to justify the arguments “which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties.”

Thus the English language, in order to adopt ambiguity and provide a general air of concealing nature, has taken into its wings the usage of “euphemisms, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness” as tools for keeping the people conforming to the influence of the reigning political parties. This linguistic practice in politics—given that language often mirrors the status quo of society—has assimilated into everyday life, resulting in the grocery list of grievances that Orwell brings forth against the post-modern English language: extensive usage of value loaded words and phrases, prevalence of the passive voice, and general hellenification or latinization of diction where simple purely “English” words would suffice in a process he calls “dress[ing] up simple statement[s] and giv[ing] them an air of scientific impartiality” have all been identified as crimes politics have been found guilty of in its role as the corruptor.

Although Orwell specifically does not explicit this idea, it seems that what he is describing is the basis of PC speech, or politically correct speech. Deborah Cameron, in her essay ‘Civility and its Discontents,’ implies that due to such happenings in modern political history people are increasingly becoming aware of the existence of a “Verbal Hygiene,” or simply put, a need to conform to established political norms when speaking in public. Much like personal hygiene when it comes to general cleanliness and agreeableness, it is possible to be completely oblivious of verbal hygiene and at times to forget its existence and implications or just refrain from exercising it altogether. One example provided by Cameron is the ridiculous Fresno Bee article where the publication was criticized for mistakenly avoiding the use of the “politically correct” term “African-American” and instead using the more overtly descriptive term “black”.

Setting the social implications and the history bound to the word “black [man]” aside, this is a prime example of what Orwell pointed out as being one of the corrupting effects of politics in English. When one refers to a person as “African-American” as opposed to “black”, one is politically motivated not to conjure up the images of the less than memorable political stance that the United States had once taken towards people of color; it is in effect, euphemizing their existence or “blurring the[ir] outlines, and covering up all the details” in the hopes that the targeted listener would acknowledge that the speaker is practice of the establish political idea that :”American embraces all people of color” and thereby in practice of good verbal hygiene.

The second subject matter that Cameron professes much of politically-correct speech to center around is the case of gender equality in what used to be a dominantly male society. This has led to the introduction of gender-neutral terms for everyday occupations such as “chairperson” as opposed to “chairman”; “police officer” as opposed to “policeman”; “firefighters” as opposed to “fireman” and etc.; and gender neutralization of traditionally single-sex occupations and titles such as “nurse”, “author”, or “chancellor”.

Cameron notes that both the African-American and the gender equality issue, rather than being “political correct” are merely “accurate” depictions of what society has become and therefore should not play a restricting or euphemizing role that PC speech implies: A man of African-American descent should simply be called so to distinguish him from other types of African descent; a police officer should be referred to as such to acknowledge the recent growth of female officers in the contingency, and not to show underlying apologetic sentiment about the gender discrimination that had taken place for the past nineteen centuries or so. 

Therefore, both Orwell and Cameron argue that although it is indeed courteous and now a socially-agreeable trend to paint murky images through euphemism in speech, but doing so sacrifices our ability to communicate clearly and effectively and is in a way taking away our right to render unto words the ability for them to become “whatever [we] want them to be, neither more or less.” A parallel can be drawn from this to the idea of giving up civil liberties, a political theme that has been circulating far and wide for the latter half of the past decade: in the same way it is believed by some that increased national security comes at the cost of sacrificing certain civil liberties, it is also believed by some that the wages of political correctness—if political correctness can be defined as conforming to what contemporary society views to be non-threatening and generally acceptable—is the sacrifice of free speech, or freely-flowing speech to be accurate.

It is important to note, however, that just as how the idea of “civil liberties” and “national security” is abstract and vague, the idea of “political correctness” is also somewhat ambiguous: although Orwell did not address this problem since the term “political correctness” was probably not as fashionable as it is now when he wrote his essay, Cameron points out that there is no solid definition as to what political correctness is and what its underlying agenda actually is, and it is at best reified from its abstract form to be “vague” and “insincere”.

Amidst all ambiguity and vagueness, however, one thing is for certain: If Humpty Dumpty were alive (and somehow magically crossed over from the realm of fiction into reality) to witness the debacles of the English language where words no longer curtail meanings but meanings curtail words, he would surely have another great fall but with not even the King’s horses and the King’s men to hear him fall this time.