Monday, December 17, 2012

Abbreviated Language

First of all, it is NOT cute that you shorten the word vacation to "vaca."  "Delish" is a word that seems less likely to describe a tasty treat than to signify a level of socially superior exclusion.  I know, our language is being abbreviated due to the effect of social media on the ways we communicate.  I get it.  We are all so busy nowadays that it is a challenge to utter a word more than a couple of syllables long.  Rushing around, paying bills, working, practicing, studying, eating, sleeping, bathing, all the activities we must include in our daily routines, make the importance of using language properly fall on the level of something like mailing a letter to your great aunt or picking up litter on the side of a highway.  No offense to those who actually write letters to their great aunts, I'm sure your efforts bring comfort.  And forget about the trash.

Language evolves, I get that.  I also understand when Derrida explained how written language, if not completely privileged over oral, is at least AS important.  (I mean, if we all went around saying SMH or LOL in our conversations, we would come across as being one stick away from a boomerang).  That is sort of what he was getting at when he coined the term diffĂ©rance, to show how a word that is read can hold meaning in a way that it cannot if simply heard. Consider "there, they're, their" or "its, it's" or "your, you're" and you'll have an idea of spoken vs. written communication.

There is a reason we shorten our language, and there is a lot to be said for economy.  Only shortening words like "brilliance" to "brills" and "fabulous" to "fabu" does something to our culture that pushes us closer to the abyss of cutesie than towards the realm of substance.  It also means that if you systematically replace whole words with approximations, the odds are that you are a snob.  It is one thing to quickly tweet a message where you say "prof" instead of "professor" or "info" instead of "information" as it shortens the character count and allows your complete idea to be unimpeded.  It is an entirely different matter when you're speaking with your pal and brag about how you picked up some great "merch" when you visited the brewery.

I'm not sure I can explain how "ridic" it is that we abbreviate some words.  When I hear certain shortcuts, I immediately cringe as if someone has inserted a chalkboard into my soul.  I am not opposed to the idea of making our language more fluid and expressive.  Rather, it is an attitude that is attached to the process of shortening. We are so infatuated with our quickness and cleverness when we use such terms, that our self-satisfaction supersedes our good sense.  It is one thing to grow up in a culture where terms are learned and used, quite another to denigrate them intentionally because they sound hip or slick.  It is not going to stop and my disdain will only serve to keep me agitated.  Still, something must be said about how important our language is to our lives, and how by slaughtering it, we slaughter a little bit of ourselves.  Just imagine every time someone says "delish" somewhere in the fabric of space/time, a rupture opens and something like ice cream disappears.  It could happen.

I do wonder why I think it is okay to say "prof" and "info" but not "marvy" or "presh."  It is all a matter of personal taste I suppose.  I can understand why someone would enjoy getting  a "mani-pedi" or goes to the "fridge."  I know that in kitchens, asking what the "temp" is on that steak is commonplace.  There are some words that easily lend themselves to abbreviation.  I feel like I should be composing a defense of all words and how they are used, how it is okay because it follows the line of short attention spans, how language is beautiful no matter how it evolves.  Language is the single most important tool developed by humanity and it serves us in extraordinary ways.  Maybe I should stop right here and rejoice in the fact that I can even communicate at all.  I C it will never change and it comes across as if I'm a H8er.  MayB I M, N this particular context.