IMPROVING MY ENGLISH? Code Switching?Is writing the answer to being a better communicator?
If you can only express an idea through an idiom, what does that mean?
I have been listening to a lot of very "good speakers" recently. I listened to Trevor Noah and Jordan Peterson's mainly. I had a sort of game with an Italian friend of mine. She is constantly trying to say things using the most obscure words possible, and sometimes I stop her and ask her why she used X instead of Y. She would say that it's "better" and if pressed she would say it's more "cultured." She's been my close friend for like a decade, and I really didn't mind as it improved my vocabulary, and she was the one person who would always win my "corrections for beers" game (look at the posts from when I was in Italy.)
I knew about prescriptivism vs descriptivism and I have a cousin who speaks pure Tuscan but is a real wordsmith and great at holding any group captive, even those who tended to almost always play the "I know more smart-people-words" game. I just wrote it off as something young Italians do to make a good impression. I grew up aware of the stigma that southern dialects held, and I never really paid this any mind. I always thought it was an unfortunate situation, although I remember finding it funny. I think that it's how I grew up, our family would laugh at our quirks. The Irish side would laugh at the ridiculous of some Irish things, (or Irish American.) The same goes for the Italian side of my family as well.
I read Chungs posts about the intensive Czech school in Prague and I actually remember that thread better than perhaps any other forum post I've read. I remember the post about how he gave a speech and used Czech in order to get his message across. He then wrote, from what I remember, that he was asked by his professor that why he used such simple language, and when he explained that he spoke the way he spoke because he wanted to be understood, the teacher told him something along the lines of the language is not the medium, it's the medium and the message; he was to
communicate his mastery of the language through the way he spoke. The language was not just a means of communication but a means of communicating his mastery of the language. This is what I remember.
I find with some Italian friends that they learn a crazy word and use it non-stop for a bit then switch onto another obscure word. We all make fun of the people (there are two in particular) who do this.
The whole focusing on the medium as much or more than the actual message is a European thing. I know that it's silly to generalize Europe, but take this an invitation to correct me, I doubt it is so black and white. I want to say that Ireland has a very strong oral tradition, but it seems that it is more of the poetic beauty and delivery of the speech that is valued above all. I am writing this to figure this out, so I'm sure I'm wrong about a lot of stuff.
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A quick note on the politicization of accent, identity, and dialects
Fast forward to around a month ago. I was talking to a very close Italo-French (odd, yes.) friend of mine who leans very left on almost every politicized topic that we discuss. He's amazing at English, and very intelligent. If we were to take a standardized exam he would definitely score higher than me. He's also a very skilled polyglot. However, he never bothered to learn certain expressions, (African American expressions, "ebonics" I don't know what to call it.) He is not racist at all, but he would rather learn words like "Acerbic" than a really unique expression that communicates a lot. He just thinks that it's not becoming of a professional to speak that way. - That's something one may expect from someone who one may consider to be sympathetic politically with politics right of center? But from what I see it's the exact opposite in Italy? I don't know...
But this politicization was taken to a new level in New York City.
So my school is the opposite of this. It's MUCH too extreme. According to a poll, only one person, (me) chose "disagree" when presented with the sentence, "There is never an appropriate reason to encourage a student to improve their pronunciation." I also learned that there's no such thing as unintelligible speech. I looked up unintelligible and it's cognates in 3 languages and then asked the professor sincerely if I had misunderstood as I couldn't believe that this is a widely held belief. An accent is fine, I love accents. The biggest thing I lament regarding Polish is that Poles of my generation, from Poland, (and not Lithuania / Belarus etc.) have no discernable accents.
(Zanim jakiś Polak powie coś w stylu: "Są trzy sposoby mówienia na zewnątrz, które różnią się w zależności od pochodzenia geograficznego", to proszę być poinformowanym, że jestem bardzo tego świadom. Jestem zszokowany przez fakt, że 20-latek z Gdańska wymawia wszystkie słowa niemal identycznie jak 20-latek z Rzeszowa. To przykre. Przed wojnami i migracją wewnętrzną było wiele gwar. A obecnie jest chyba tylko kaszubski i śląski. )
( - Zapomniałem wspomnieć o Białymstoku i Katowicach! Wiele osób z Katowic, nawet dwudziestolatków, którzy nie potrafią mówić po śląsku, mówi inaczej. To prawie tak, jakby wysokość dźwięku podnosiła się na końcu każdego zdania.) I had one professor tell us that "latinx" students who learn to speak English with no accent are suffering from internalized oppression. So I guess one would say my professors are what some might call left, (
ie. a professor does anti-racist training at corporations... yet, ironically she's my favorite... as in we zoom one on one to discuss things we respectfully disagree about outside of class - and that says more about one's character than anything that they believe.) Left? Right?
WHO CARES. I noticed that these speakers, such as Trevor Noah use language masterfully when speaking if his aim is to "transmit" his thoughts to me. He uses "smart" words when they're of use, and code switches when that is of use. He speaks about it a lot in one interview. Jordan Peterson also does something similar. He switches between simple, at times idiomatic and "uncouth" language and very precise academic, professor-like words to communicate a vague concept very precisely.
I am looking at the way they speak, the way they can transmit an uncommon idea in a way that everyone can understand. Jordan Peterson did at times seem like he was struggling to find the right words, I guess that's probably necessary in order to try to use language to clearly communicate something that seems ineffable in a way that millions understand in seemingly the same way.
I would love to hone this ability, I took English for granted. I never forgot the language, I just wasn't as used to using English in a way that my peers would understand best. I used a lot of idioms and dialectal expressions, New York English, and then lots of Irish and African American English. I wonder if I would ever be able to replicate this level of pragmatic competence in a foreign language. I am trying to start by writing in English more. I reread some papers I wrote, and nearly half the sentences could have been worded better. I speak much differently than I write. When I read my posts here, I either sound like a 6th grader or an ESL student from the 1850s.
Writing requires the use of nothing but words. You cannot use body language to compensate for your failure to come up with a better way of using the language to explain things.
Many expressions are highly contextual, we can see this play out in everyday life. Nearly every one of us has at least one story about how texting led to a very big misunderstanding.
The cultural competence required to be a great communicator is "a whole other can of beans." How one can go about developing the linguistic competence required in order to effortlessly communicate even the most ineffable of ideas with
great precision across multiple registers is worth considering. It seems that I've known this implicitly for a long time, but it was never something that I actively thought about. I don't like writing because I feel as if I am not as capable of expressing myself as when I speak. I also know that there is a risk involved when attempting to explore a topic that may or may not be politicized as then your language must be extra accurate. I think I will start to focus more on writing itself, as despite reading quite a lot I never pay attention to the way things are written the way I pay attention to a language I'm learning.
I guess this whole post was just me realizing that mastering one variant, register, dialect, etc. of a language is not sufficient if one wishes to be able to confidently communicate. What about Spanish? There are so many variants
I guess I'll have to pick one if I wish to be as good of a communicator when in Spanish-speaking environments as I am in English-speaking environments. It's not really anything important, but I was thinking about this. I took English for granted and I realized that when I came back to the US. Now I want to work on Spanish also, so I guess the answer is just to keep reading, writing, speaking, listening, and asking questions, ( and also thanking those who are kind enough to correct you for free!)
- OMG, I wrote a book here
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