Language and Social Position

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Language and Social Position

As I sat in my never-all-that-comfortable seat at the theater to watch "Titanic" for the second time on the big screen, a thought quite alien came over me: good usage in language. This film, based on the 1912 disaster, went to the extremes on details to make everything about it convey the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The language of the film was scripted as best to the year 1912 as was the model made of the ship itself. The film showed the language of both the upper crust ("nobility" of America) and the lower class of different nations of the world.

Concentrating on the educated, monied, upper-class, their language was so pure, concise, and definitive. The best example that I can quote from the film was a line from young Rose, when trying to get it through her thick-skulled, snobbish mother's head that there were not enough boats for everyone on board, in fact less than half of the passengers would get a spot on a lifeboat. She says to her mother, "Not enough by half!" In four words, Rose has said what would have taken me at least ten words to say in our modern language usage, something similar to "There are not enough [boats] for even half of the people!"

"Not enough by half" is a phrase I easily comprehended, but I have never heard a phrase so worded in my life (in contemporary conversations, dialogue, speeches, etc.). It reminds me more of diction in writings from the past, that authors such as Shakespeare or Benjamin Franklin may have used.

Why isn't a phrase like "Not enough by half" used today in modern American English? This phrase is clear, concise and is not difficult to say. Robert Hall would probably praise such a phrase as a fine example of good usage. It ...

... middle of paper ...

...ld've thought "groovy" and "crazy, man" would have made a comeback, huh?

Language usage should not be the criterion by which we judge one another. Language was created to communicate, and shouldn't we communicate in the easiest and most efficient manner? We should heed Robert Hall's advice and make the rules of good usage based on "the most efficient way of saying" (hand-out) govern our language usage. However, in reality, it seems that William Tanner's thoughts creep into our opinion of good usage and connect it with social etiquette, thereby creating judgments of social class and distinction based on one another's speech. We, as listeners and speakers, need to make a conscious decision to stop judgment of others based on language usage and to start to become followers of Hall (we'll call ourselves Halloons), and make our language clear, concise and efficient.

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