Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community  

Go Back   Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community > Chatter > General Discussion


 
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
Old 11-03-2008, 08:32 AM   #1 (permalink)
Leaning against the -Sun-
 
little_tippler's Avatar
 
Super Moderator
Location: on the other side
Literacy at a Low

Yes, here we are again. Another thread where we commiserate about bad spelling standards. Only this time the world over.

What prompted this thread, was this article:

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Telegraph UK
Students Shamed with List of Exam Blunders   click to show 


Link to Article
The article is humorous and harmless enough. But, it got me thinking about how standards have fallen over the years. I take pride in being quite good at spelling and writing. Both in English and Portuguese.

This also reminded me of a recent occurrence in Portugal, that I think you might find interesting. A few months ago, Portugal signed a treaty whereby over the course of the next few years, most accents and silent consonants in words will be removed from written Portuguese, like acto will turn into ato (act) . All foreign words we use in daily language, such as dossier, atelier, and others, will be turned into portuguese words, like dossiê, or ateliê.

This viscerally upsets me. It's like levelling our language off by the lowest possible standard. Basically this is being done so all other Portuguese speaking countries have an easier time with the language. I am all for promoting harmony, but this is preposterous. I can't recall how many different petitions I have signed against this language treaty.

Well just imagine, it would be like saying now everybody in the world has to write in a particular type of english. And it has to be the simplest version of english you can think of.

I don't mean to discriminate and say that there are better versions of the language than others, but to entirely and unnaturally change the original seems a bit mad.

It seems like instead of teaching people to read and write properly, we're all just slipping into worse versions of the original language. It's lazy and I hate it. I think there is a place for slang, but it's not a substitute for the original language.

What do you think about this?
__________________
Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.


Fernando Pessoa, 1918
little_tippler is offline  
Old 11-03-2008, 09:34 AM   #2 (permalink)
warrior bodhisattva
 
Baraka_Guru's Avatar
 
Super Moderator
Location: East-central Canada
I take pride in language "purity" as an editor, but that's usually within the context of books. Even then, I often let authors get away with much because I work on books published for the general reader, often in the self-help genre.

But another side of me views language as an uncontrollable and evolving phenomenon. In the past, intellectuals attempted to cement the English language in terms of spelling and grammar rules, but this failed. You can take some of the best writing today and compare it to traditional rules and find many "errors." We are much more lax now than they were in the past. Rules change.

The problem we face today is the nature of language and communication in the information age: e-mail, forums, text messages, chat rooms, etc. The mode of communication is what changes language. We no longer hand-write long letters to relatives. The literate is no longer an exclusive and wealthy class. We expect everyone to be "literate" to some degree.

When the aim of literacy is to be all-inclusive, you get variations on what we view as "literate." We gauge literacy by degrees, rather than "literate" or "illiterate." We say things like, "He reads and writes at a grade ten reading level."

We communicate beyond words more than ever as well. Internet, television, movies, video games, etc. We are moving from a world where text was king. Now we communicate to a great degree using images, speech, and maybe some well-written text if we're lucky.

Communication changes, sure, but the biggest concern I have is with clarity. Confusion arises between speaker and listener, writer and reader, when there is uncertainty. Inaccurate language can be dangerous. In the least, it can be disorienting. This is a factor in both writing and speech.

If anything, we shouldn't be concerned with how we communicate so much as how we communicate meaning. Does our message make sense as it was intended?

I pose this question: Do you think there is a problem with the communication of meaning in light of this lack of high standards of traditional literacy?

Maybe.

Personally, I think the problem is that there are few people who like to read books anymore. (I mean the good kind.) But I won't get into that yet.
__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Last edited by Baraka_Guru; 11-03-2008 at 09:41 AM..
Baraka_Guru is offline  
Old 11-03-2008, 09:36 AM   #3 (permalink)
Riding the Ocean Spray
 
BadNick's Avatar
 
Location: S.E. PA in U Sofa
I totally agree with you, l_t.

My one thought to the contrary, though, comes from my suspicion that what is considered "traditional" forms of many languages today have already greatly changed since centuries ago; and if they've already greatly changed, why cast them in stone now?

In spite of the fact that languages have a life of their own and can evolve and change over time, I'm in favor of adhering to traditional language and grammar in order to preserve a sense of history...sort of like maintaining old historic buildings rather than tearing them down and building a strip mall. I can see allowing common usage to change and become widely acceptable, but keep the formal details intact.

I wonder if this type of thing happens in spite of our objections because when the "least common dunces" grow up and become politicians, they pass these laws so their stupid progeny have an easier time with life...where's your sense of history and tradition!!???
BadNick is offline  
Old 11-03-2008, 01:47 PM   #4 (permalink)
I have eaten the slaw
 
inBOIL's Avatar
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru View Post
Communication changes, sure, but the biggest concern I have is with clarity. Confusion arises between speaker and listener, writer and reader, when there is uncertainty. Inaccurate language can be dangerous. In the least, it can be disorienting. This is a factor in both writing and speech.
QFT. I've noticed an increase in the pride and arrogance with which people misuse the English language. It's as if they're too cool to do it the right way, and anyone who expects them to communicate properly is being unreasonable. This attitude is particularly grating when their improper usage results in miscommunication. It's as if they're saying "I'm going to speak/write however I want and if you can't understand that's your problem."
__________________
And you believe Bush and the liberals and divorced parents and gays and blacks and the Christian right and fossil fuels and Xbox are all to blame, meanwhile you yourselves create an ad where your kid hits you in the head with a baseball and you don't understand the message that the problem is you.
inBOIL is offline  
Old 11-03-2008, 02:41 PM   #5 (permalink)
More Than You Expect
 
Manic_Skafe's Avatar
 
Location: Queens
Lil'tip I don't think this article supports your argument very well. The blunders of a few uni-students hardly says anything definitive about literacy as a whole. Lord knows stranger things have happened when you couple crunch studying with binge drinking

Quote:
Originally Posted by inBOIL View Post
QFT. I've noticed an increase in the pride and arrogance with which people misuse the English language. It's as if they're too cool to do it the right way, and anyone who expects them to communicate properly is being unreasonable. This attitude is particularly grating when their improper usage results in miscommunication. It's as if they're saying "I'm going to speak/write however I want and if you can't understand that's your problem."
Well what exactly is the right way and who gets to create and maintain that definition? It's like the argument for hath versus has - our language is exactly as live as we are and with all of the social and cultural underpinnings inherent in our use of language, there are plenty of instances in which the use of the sort of english that's commonly taught in public schools is the wrong english to use.

In the same sense that your clothes define you, the words you select define you. Certainly you wouldn't wear a three piece suit on poker night.

Besides, I'm sure their arrogance is rather pale in comparison to the sort of arrogance it must take to write dictionaries, teach english courses, and assert that standard written english is the very best of them all.
__________________
"Porn is a zoo of exotic animals that becomes boring upon ownership." -Nersesian
Manic_Skafe is offline  
Old 11-03-2008, 02:53 PM   #6 (permalink)
Kick Ass Kunoichi
 
snowy's Avatar
 
Location: Oregon
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru View Post
I take pride in language "purity" as an editor, but that's usually within the context of books. Even then, I often let authors get away with much because I work on books published for the general reader, often in the self-help genre.

But another side of me views language as an uncontrollable and evolving phenomenon. In the past, intellectuals attempted to cement the English language in terms of spelling and grammar rules, but this failed. You can take some of the best writing today and compare it to traditional rules and find many "errors." We are much more lax now than they were in the past. Rules change.

The problem we face today is the nature of language and communication in the information age: e-mail, forums, text messages, chat rooms, etc. The mode of communication is what changes language. We no longer hand-write long letters to relatives. The literate is no longer an exclusive and wealthy class. We expect everyone to be "literate" to some degree.

When the aim of literacy is to be all-inclusive, you get variations on what we view as "literate." We gauge literacy by degrees, rather than "literate" or "illiterate." We say things like, "He reads and writes at a grade ten reading level."

We communicate beyond words more than ever as well. Internet, television, movies, video games, etc. We are moving from a world where text was king. Now we communicate to a great degree using images, speech, and maybe some well-written text if we're lucky.

Communication changes, sure, but the biggest concern I have is with clarity. Confusion arises between speaker and listener, writer and reader, when there is uncertainty. Inaccurate language can be dangerous. In the least, it can be disorienting. This is a factor in both writing and speech.

If anything, we shouldn't be concerned with how we communicate so much as how we communicate meaning. Does our message make sense as it was intended?

I pose this question: Do you think there is a problem with the communication of meaning in light of this lack of high standards of traditional literacy?

Maybe.

Personally, I think the problem is that there are few people who like to read books anymore. (I mean the good kind.) But I won't get into that yet.
I loved your entire post, Baraka.

Perhaps what we are lacking is not so much a knowledge of particular rules so much as we are lacking a general knowledge of style. Knowledge of style would certainly help with some of the clarity issues you referred to.

The other point you made that I've been making for years (especially when people correct me when I make a mistake speaking--this is very common as it seems that people think that because I have an English degree I must be a perfect speaker and dislike slang, when in fact the opposite is true) is that English is a living language, and therefore it must grow and change to suit the needs of the people who use it. The same is likely true for Portuguese--of any language that people speak on a daily basis. It's better that a language grow and change than die off for lack of people using it.

There are certainly places where displaying your literacy at its best is called for, particularly exams and papers (that article was a hoot on the one hand, but I wish I could say that I hadn't seen such mistakes at my own university, in my own department, but I did), but it isn't always called for, and that is perhaps what is lacking more than anything: situational awareness of what usage is appropriate.
__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau
snowy is offline  
Old 11-03-2008, 04:39 PM   #7 (permalink)
 
roachboy's Avatar
 
Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
first off, this is about writing rather than about all ways of using language.
it is curious that there's such distance between what is written and spoken. that distinction is largely about social power and it's reverse in exclusion.

i assume that there is an institution that "runs" portugese the way the acadamie francais "runs" french yes?--so changes in written portugese has far more to do with the composition of that institution and the prevailing ideology within it than it does with conditions in the world. one of the dimensions of that ideology would be the extent to which the population is understood as changing the language--this may or may not have to do with "decrased literacy" so much as the emergence of other rationalities, some of which might well link written to spoken language in a different way than was the case in the old days to total classification.

on a related note, it's probably more accurate to think of "correctness" as itself a style rather than as the measure relative to which styles operate. and given the choice between reading someone who writes correctly and reading someone who may not write correctly, but who has something to say, i'd take the latter.
if you have nothing to say, writing it correctly won't change that.

on the other hand, i like words, i like reading and trying to write things. i like the density of words, that they are never single, that they can be bent in various ways--within limits, which tend to follow from structure.

i also like trying to get words and sentences to do things they can't do--writing has trouble with motion, so i like to try to build a sense of movement into things. which could pitch me toward being more traditionally minded about the topic at hand--but i would prefer to have it both ways, really, and not to see in changes like this necessarily a loss of anything.

you might say "but poetry: where will it go?" and i'd think that it will change and that it is generally good that poetry change, like everything else does.

i think you should know the tradition, know the past, because they open up possibilities in the present--i'm less interested in them as antiques that you keep around on a shelf and take out to look at from time to time. i figure folk make the past static because they're afraid of how fleeting the present is. but it's fleeting regardless of what you think.

i value precision of thinking, but i am not at all sure that precision of thinking and correctness of writing necessarily have much to do with each other--but on the other hand, it's hard to be precise if you cannot be correct.
but i think that follows more from the fact that it's easier to push steps together if your writing is incorrect than it is if it is correct.
does that mean that correctness and clarity are the same?
if it is, then the reverse should be true: all sentences which are correct are precise.
but that'd be wrong.

i notice, as i am sure you do, that there are no caps here.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Last edited by roachboy; 11-03-2008 at 04:41 PM..
roachboy is offline  
 

Tags
bad spelling, bad writing, language treaty, literacy downfall, low standards

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



All times are GMT -8. The time now is 06:33 PM.

Tilted Forum Project

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360