What is the Morally Appropriate Language in Which to Think and Write?

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From The Literary Hub:

 

At a book reading in Kolkata, about a week after my first novel, The God of Small Things, was published, a member of the audience stood up and asked, in a tone that was distinctly hostile: “Has any writer ever written a masterpiece in an alien language? In a language other than his mother tongue?” I hadn’t claimed to have written a masterpiece (nor to be a “he”), but nevertheless I understood his anger toward a me, a writer who lived in India, wrote in English, and who had attracted an absurd amount of attention. My answer to his question made him even angrier.

“Nabokov,” I said. And he stormed out of the hall.

The correct answer to that question today would of course be “algorithms.” Artificial Intelligence, we are told, can write masterpieces in any language and translate them into masterpieces in other languages. As the era that we know, and think we vaguely understand, comes to a close, perhaps we, even the most privileged among us, are just a group of redundant humans gathered here with an arcane interest in language generated by fellow redundants.

Only a few weeks after the mother tongue/masterpiece incident, I was on a live radio show in London. The other guest was an English historian who, in reply to a question from the interviewer, composed a paean to British imperialism. “Even you,” he said, turning to me imperiously, “the very fact that you write in English is a tribute to the British Empire.” Not being used to radio shows at the time, I stayed quiet for a while, as a well-behaved, recently civilized savage should. But then I sort of lost it, and said some extremely hurtful things. The historian was upset, and after the show told me that he had meant what he said as a compliment, because he loved my book. I asked him if he also felt that jazz, the blues, and all African-American writing and poetry were actually a tribute to slavery. And if all of Latin American literature was a tribute to Spanish and Portuguese colonialism.

Notwithstanding my anger, on both occasions my responses were defensive reactions, not adequate answers. Because those incidents touched on a range of incendiary questions—colonialism, nationalism, authenticity, elitism, nativism, caste, and cultural identity—all jarring pressure points on the nervous system of any writer worth her salt. However, to reify language in the way both men had renders language speechless. When that happens, as it usually does in debates like these, what has actually been written ceases to matter. That was what I found so hard to countenance. And yet I know—I knew—that language is that most private and yet most public of things. The challenges thrown at me were fair and square. And obviously, since I’m still talking about them, I’m still thinking about them.

The night of that reading in Kolkata, city of my estranged father and of Kali, Mother Goddess with the long red tongue and many arms, I fell to wondering what my mother tongue actually was. What was—is—the politically correct, culturally apposite, and morally appropriate language in which I ought to think and write? It occurred to me that my mother was actually an alien, with fewer arms than Kali perhaps but many more tongues. English is certainly one of them. MyEnglish has been widened and deepened by the rhythms and cadences of my alien mother’s other tongues. (I say alien because there’s not much that is organic about her. Her nation-shaped body was first violently assimilated and then violently dismembered by an imperial British quill. I also say alien because of the violence unleashed in her name on those who do not wish to belong to her (Kashmiris, for example), as well as on those who do (Indian Muslims and Dalits, for example), makes her an extremely un-motherly mother.

Link to the rest at The Literary Hub

PG suggests a speaker or writer should personally express themselves in whatever language or languages they wish to use. It is difficult to imagine a more personal decision. It is the practice of despots to prohibit the use of languages as part of their exercise of control.

One of the first things one learns in the study of semantics is “the word is not the thing.” Whatever word a person uses to identify a spider is not the spider and does not affect the nature of the spider. Calling a spider a bug or a fly will not change the nature of the spider.

All languages are artificial constructs, ways for human beings to communicate about things. If the Inuit have 50 words for “snow”, that means they talk about snow a lot and have developed ways to describe its various states and manifestations in more subtle ways than other language groups have found useful.

That said, PG is not concerned with a language requirement in connection with employment, military service or other group efforts in the interest of coordination of the actions of different individuals.

 

5 thoughts on “What is the Morally Appropriate Language in Which to Think and Write?”

  1. We all write in our own little minds the ideas/stories we’re trying to get out, trying to translate it into something we hope others will understand. Normally that means writing in a language we understand best, though sometimes we try in languages that we are not the best at. Trying to describe things that don’t always work is like trying to put words to a dance or a song, it doesn’t bring out the fullness of the other media. And words can be evil – what you say with a word isn’t always what the reader gets reading it.

    I had a teen tell me he wanted to write a story and wanted to know what I thought of the idea. I thought we’d started the conversation in the same language, but by the end I wasn’t so sure! 😉

  2. Sir Isaac Newton comes to mind. And every other European Natural Philosopher who wrote in Latin, not to mention the Theologians, Philosophers, Political Scientists, etc.

    Our English historian may want to reflect upon the influence of empire on his homeland too.

  3. For the sake of readers, when I write prose, I stick to English.

    But it is deliciously fun to write in German. The language is so similar, and yet so distinct, with vestiges of what English once was and has long ago cast off, and plenty of parallel and independent developments. The grammar is regular and prefers reassuringly rigid forms.

    Both are vivid, full, expressive languages. But every now and again I manage to find a thought that I can express perfectly and succinctly in German that I struggle to express in English. And that’s a lovely gift from a chosen second language.

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