 |
version seven. http://demongin.org |
A Severe Strain on the Credulity
An early morning reverie in which Yours Truly reflects on arrogance, communication disorders and catachresis: business as usual, essentially.
Friday, 2009-09-04 | Language, Science, Social Studies
| As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt... for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react... Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. |
| New York Times Editorial, 1920 |
Almost anyone can tell you about a person who they dislike based on that person's tendency to use words that he clearly doesn't understand in a misguided effort to make himself appear to be more intelligent than he is. It's a rarer individual who can tell you the names of the various psychological and physical afflictions that cause people to pathologically misspeak.
There is, for starters, a pathology called, cleverly, "expressive language disorder" that has been used to describe people who have difficulty with basic recall and thus cannot remember words or grammatical constructions. These people can barely communicate. And, while my personal and professional experiences have caused me to become reluctant to underestimate the towering and casual cruelty of Man, I don't imagine that "almost anyone" (to use my phrase from the beginning of this essay) would dislike a person thus impaired based solely on his tendency to misspeak.
It would be sort of like hating a three-legged dog for limping around the house.
Moving on, then, there is the so-called "mixed receptive-expressive language disorder". Actually, before moving on, a word on hyphenation. In communication disorders and disabilities, the hotness used to be hyphenated constructions. Back in the time, when the writers and clinicians were first imagining all of this, they liked to build a certain set of implications right into the definition of a disorder. Dominant among these implications was the idea that a communication disorder affects more than one capacity. As you might imagine, a "receptive-expressive" disorder concerns the grey area between understanding (or comprehending, maybe) and then being able to express (or convey, maybe) that understanding.
And, as you might have guessed from its longer name, this particular disorder is a slightly subtler creature than the humble expressive language disorder. Individuals in whom the former pathology has been detected will have very little difficulty communicating verbally but will be able to do almost nothing with the quill. They will be able to receive or understand communication from the outside, but will be nearly helpless to respond correctly or appropriately in a non-verbal manner.
Which is to say that such persons are less likely to come across as obviously "disabled" and thus are likelier to irk the ire of "almost anyone".
And even though a person afflicted in this way might have a difficult time expressing himself--choosing words incorrectly, constructing sentences in a manner that will generally be described as "off" in some way--it doesn't necessarily follow from his disability and his difficulty with written communication that that he would have that annoying tendency to use words that he clearly didn't understand.
If you look around, you'll sometimes see this disorder called "dysnomia". Truth is, however, dysnomia (when I was growing up, at least) is a little too much of an umbrella term for any communication difficulties a person might have that are systematic enough to name. By which I mean to say, one would use the term "dysnomia" in the same way one would use "dyspepsia": to describe a malfunctioning system without making any strong assertions about what, exactly, was malfunctioning or why. To suggest that someone suffering from a mixed receptive-expressive language disorder was dysnomic or potentially suffered from a mild dysnomia would be an excessively clinical way of saying "he has trouble choosing his words and setting down his thoughts."
But anyway, mixed receptive-expressive is a red herring: dysnomia isn't what we're after. What we're looking for is something even subtler than the systematic inability of an individual to choose words correctly when expressing himself non-verbally.
Moving up the chain, then, from complete dysfunction to more "normal" function, we come next across "semantic pragmatic (language) disorder". I've enclosed the "language" in parentheses because, while it's in the old resources, it doesn't appear to be included in contemporary materials. Additionally, it's worth noting that the "semantic" and "pragmatic" are often hyphenated here in contemporary writings, in order, I guess, to convey something of the grey area between apprehending semantic subtleties in language and then reacting appropriately to those apprehensions.
At any rate, sufferers of this particular communication pathology tend, as you would expect, to have a difficult time acting appropriately. Depending on the severity of the affliction, the afflicted might be simply "awkward" or, in severe cases, might be border-line autistic in his inability to interact with those around him.
Someone with a very subtle case of SPLD (the old acronym) might have, as the manifestation of his disorder, that annoying preference for five- and ten-dollar words which we have, so far, been trying to attribute to a damaged brain or a ruined capacity for processing language. Someone with a very subtle case of SPLD might fire off un-funny near-malapropisms when describing the "largesse de richesse" evident in the conduct of this or thatTop 40 musician or he might simply trip, Dick Van Dyke style, over a word with a built-in negative while trying to make the case that Afghan paramilitary fighters have "no disregard for human life."
But, again, though such habitual misspeaking might be slightly vexatious, it's not the same habitual misspeaking we're trying to describe here.
And that's because we're doing exactly the thing we are decrying. By attempting to feel isolated, different and distant from someone we dislike--in short, to make ourselves appear more intelligent--we've attempted to use clinical language to diagnose him with something that is beyond his control.
We use clinical language in our time, as that is the vogue, but a few generations back, people used magical language--he or she is afflicted by demons, spirits, etc.--to do exactly the same thing. It's an easy habit to embrace, but the fact of the matter is that some people are just assholes.
And people who use clinical language to rationalize their holier-than-thou attitude towards their fellow Man are definitely some of the hugest assholes you're going to meet.
