Irony Becomes Her

Vending Machine

I scan the vending machine for something to take the edge off (since I don't get to go home for another three hours), and my eye is caught by a package of eight small cookies. "2 more cookies than 6 count," the wrapper proclaims. Boy. That's good to know.

Besides the simple arithmetic concerned in this transaction, there are other issues at stake. I could get nitpicky and point out that since "6" and "count" are not joined with a hyphen, the phrase could be construed as something like, "Eight cookies make a difference." But nobody would mistake the meaning here, even if there really were any meaning. It takes all of my previous experience with labeling and marketing to make it out.

I've been reading English with an Accent, by Rosina Lippi-Green. Those that are slightly concerned with the hyphenated last name had better not open the book. Lippi-Green flies in the face of every English pedant, especially in the area of spoken language. Everyone has a right to queemy own dialect, she says, and no one has a right to tell anyone else how to talk.

Though I concede that spoken and written language are indeed very different, I will not allow an impenetrable line to be drawn between them, especially in a generation which is considerably less disposed to read than its immediate predecessors. Many who argue against a standard spoken language would still support a written standard, but how is anyone to learn the written standard without reading it often? We don't expect children to learn spoken language unless they are often spoken to.

So when we ask them to write, which I will do come September, how will they know what to do? They will write the only language they know--a language which, stripped of its accompanying vocal and physical cues, will be all but incomprehensible. Worse still, they will not have sufficient depth of vocabulary or idiom to express the complex and abstract ideas they will need to express.

I weep in the glow of text messaging's advent. I am too young for this.

posted by Lynn @ 5:37 PM