Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't deliver
Review: Mr. McWhorter says it is inconceivable that anyone in America today would make a statement such as, "Wow, I love the way she (or he) uses English". But, in fact, that's a close approximation to what I said to myself when I heard Mr. McWhorter interviewed and why I went out and bought his book. Although he documents with trained ease the decline of written and spoken English, I was left with the impression that he's not going to take his hands off the keyboard and do any dirty, heavy lifting to reverse the trend. Makes me think of the young man in the FedEx commercial who has an MBA and doesn't "do shipping". An interesting read but in the end disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: Is it Decline, or is it Just Change?
Review: Putting pen to paper with the same poigniant gusto of a great composer interweaving libretto to music, Mr. McWhorter hath produced such an entertaining writing on writing that little escapes his astute gaze and even less escapes the oppertunity to pique our interest and satisfaction.

Okay, enough with the joke. We do not write like that anymore and this book (notice I just said 'book' rather than 'entertaining writing on writing') tries to explain why that might be - why we've become so much more accustomed to and expectant of an informal style in our writing as the years have gone by.

McWhorter's answer, at the risk of sounding cliche, is that we Americans are not in love with our language anymore and that the sixties are partly the pivot point. The anti-establishment, anti-conformity, and anti-tradition notions of the sixties, he writes, made it beneficial NOT to use the highfalutin (some called it artful) languatge of yesteryear, as it connoted tradition, the establishment, and authority.

For those expecting a piss-fest by McWhorter on this point, you are half wrong and half right by that expectation. While he never out-and-out bemoans the happening (and gladly admits that he is imbued with the sixties informalism as much as anyone else), McWhorter will (possibly inadvertently?!) come off as a bit preachy in this book. He goes through chapter after chapter citing what he exalts as florid and artful prose, only to remind us that we'd never even dream of talking like that today.

In fact, this is where my strongest criticism comes. The book is TOO repetitive in that sense. While citing examples is obviously needed to prove his case (and he does a good job of it) it starts to make the book terribly repetitive after the third chapter. Every chapter save the first, in fact, follows this format: take a slew of examples of what writing (music, oratory, or prose) was like in the past, quote some examples from today, and say, "See, we don't do it like we used to and wouldn't dream of it in this day and age." While I understand why McWhorter does this ad nauseum, when done in such high doses, it tends to make one want to skip chapters as I started feeling I could guess them word for word without reading them.

Now I return to a previous point: McWhorter doesn't do a whole lot of side-taking in this book. In a sense, actually, he oscillates. While he occasionally makes explicit the benefits of informalization of language and reminds us that he has been affected by it as much as anyone else, he also seems, with this book, to be bemoaning the fact that the love for colorful and poetic language of the past is gone today. While it is noble to try and remain this agnostic (or at least, ambivalent) it also becomes a detriment as the reader (at least this reader) thought it made his point less clear than it might have been. Was McWhorter taking a stand on this issue? Was he opining for days of old, or neutrally demonstrating a trend? He seemed to oscillate between them, fully comfortable with neither. While in a sense that is good, in antother sense, it gave his book a lack of direction as we don't know, and never find out, which direction he is trying to go with us.

Thus, the reader that holds this book in their eager hands, holds a book that will exhibit tendencies to simultaneously frustrate and fulminate, to unsettle and entertain, to amuse and bemuse, at the self-same instant, that the reader will find herself....oh, screw it. Just buy the book and see for yourself!

Rating:
Summary: a very bad reason to kill trees
Review: The' author's "polemic" basically consits of numerous, misinformed, tendentious tracts soldered together into a rusty heap. You've heard this spiel before, most likely from your grandparents or parents who just don't get it- that they had their time. This is our era. Our use of language reflects and underlines our differences from those who came before.

I particularly didn't like his seeming dismissal/blanket statement on hip hop. He really ain't down with the brothas, which is not surprising, given that he's a black intellectual, and there's nothing established black academics like more than a long-winded, whingeing harangue about the endemic evils of hip hop Kulture. Ugh. He doesn't even seem to possess much of a knowledge of hip hop artists or their work... Nada... There is much that I find execrable in said culture and in it's major 'artists' but still how can one overlook its myriad unifying and artistic elements... Even I manage not to fall prey to an all-too-easy reductionist formula, which seems to be the The main point here- the author views the degredation of the english Language through the lens of pop culture at large (as a bad thing, mind you), it begins in the evil counterculture 60's and... you know...

Digressive, ranting out-of-context mixed with counter-intuitive psuedo-linguistic gibberish. For example, the author holds up both Dylan and Tom waits as examples of artists who are reverred not for their songwriting abilities, but more for their authenticity, thir 'genuineness'. This is plain false. Laughably false. I've never met a fan of either artist who wasn't struck by their strange and completely idiosyncratic use of language. Moreover, the author seems to feel that pop culture music is driven by whites emulating blacks. True, up to a point. I love this stance, and from Chuck Berry to James Brown to Miles Davis to Funkadelic to Fishbone to Bad Brains, to the innumerable black influences on The Clash, I will never tire of pointing out that, basically, it's all black music. One would think that, at least on some level, this is a good thing... But no, it leads back to the counter-kulture (with a k) ideals that have subverted language...????

HUH?

The saddest thing is that, as a reactionary elitist, I'm inclined to agree with many of the author's basic points. But both his presentation and his defense of his points were so hare-brained and wrong, I just felt sullied. With friends like these...

Rating:
Summary: A Study of America's Linguistic Transition to the Informal
Review: There was a time not long ago in our history when an elaborate command of the English language was considered part of the fabric of American culture. Orator Edward Everett kept a crowd hanging on his every word during his three-hour speech (yes, three hours!) at Gettysburg in 1863 because he was an excellent orator in a time when American society valued excellent orators. Even during the first half of the 20th century, a command of spoken and written English on a level that today would confound many college students was not only required by the time one finished the eighth grade, but was the social norm; ain't so anymore.

In Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care, John McWhorter examines this cultural decline in the use of high-fallutin English in contemporary America. He shows that people were taught from grade school, whether or not they went on for higher education, to always put the English language in its Sunday best. W.E.B. Du Bois stands out in particular. Du Bois's first assignment in a composition class at Harvard in 1890 was to write about himself. This is what he wrote:

"For the usual purposes of identification I have been labeled in this life: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on the day after Washington's birthday, in 1868. I shall room during the present twelve-month at number twenty Flagg Street, Cambridge. As to who I really am, I am much in doubt, and can consequently give little reliable information from casual hints and observations. I doubt not that there are many who could supply better data than the writer. In the midst then of personal uncertainty I can only supply a few alleged facts from memory according to the usual way."

And if that's not enough, he finishes with this closing linguistic zinger:

"I have something to say to the world and I have taken English twelve in order to say it well."

This example speaks volumes about the cultural currency that a high command of English possessed back then, and which no longer exists. Can you imagine anyone writing or speaking like this today and not be viewed as pretentious, arrogant or just plain uppity? What happened to cause American society to no longer value such an elevated command of our language?

The authors shows that the 1960's, which scorned the American Establishment as oppressive and constricting, also caused modern-day America to view the highly stylized English of earlier generations as old-fashioned and morally suspect - hence the linguistic shift from the formal to the informal. Americans of an earlier time went out of their way to write and speak good English, and the gap between written and spoken English was indeed wide. The 1960's (McWhorter puts it around 1965 exactly) changed all that. Now, we just talk - and we write how we talk. Using dressed-up English is just so "old school." This counter-cultural revolution is also reflected in poetry, music and journalism. Furthermore, the author points our how this phenomenon is uniquely American: we just do not love our own language today like other countries love theirs (most notably France).

What new American dialect, then, best embodies this new linguistic counter-cultural paradigm? Why, Black English, of course. McWhorter points out how Americans of all stripes since the 1960's have incorporated Black English and its accompanying body language and vocal cadence into this counter-cultural toolkit. By no means criticizing Black English, he devotes considerable space in chapter five analyzing the cultural meaning of the 1970's funk music hit "Play That Funky Music, White Boy." For the P.C. crowd, try to tell a white guy to "Perform with spiritual dedication the bewitchingly vernacular songs familiar to us, young Caucasian male," and see how far that gets you.

Although the author points out that the natural evolution of language in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, as all world languages evolve, he does point out some important drawbacks to the modern-day tendency to "dress down" English. This can be seen particularly in the modern education establishment, where the emphasis on the formal language acquisition of earlier generations has been all but tossed out the window. This does not bode well for anyone, but it is particularly damaging to black and immigrant schoolchildren.

McWhorter covers a lot of ground in Doing Our Own Thing, giving the reader plenty to chew on. It is a fascinating look into how the 1960's transformed American society from one that spoke the language and held it in high esteem to one in which people just talk. Regrettably, it looks as if this trend in linguistic informality (some would call it pure laziness) will continue.

Rating:
Summary: A Study of America's Linguistic Transition to the Informal
Review: There was a time not long ago in our history when an elaborate command of the English language was considered part of the fabric of American culture. Orator Edward Everett kept a crowd hanging on his every word during his three-hour speech (yes, three hours!) at Gettysburg in 1863 because he was an excellent orator in a time when American society valued excellent orators. Even during the first half of the 20th century, a command of spoken and written English on a level that today would confound many college students was not only required by the time one finished the eighth grade, but was the social norm; ain't so anymore.

In Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care, John McWhorter examines this cultural decline in the use of high-fallutin English in contemporary America. He shows that people were taught from grade school, whether or not they went on for higher education, to always put the English language in its Sunday best. W.E.B. Du Bois stands out in particular. Du Bois's first assignment in a composition class at Harvard in 1890 was to write about himself. This is what he wrote:

"For the usual purposes of identification I have been labeled in this life: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on the day after Washington's birthday, in 1868. I shall room during the present twelve-month at number twenty Flagg Street, Cambridge. As to who I really am, I am much in doubt, and can consequently give little reliable information from casual hints and observations. I doubt not that there are many who could supply better data than the writer. In the midst then of personal uncertainty I can only supply a few alleged facts from memory according to the usual way."

And if that's not enough, he finishes with this closing linguistic zinger:

"I have something to say to the world and I have taken English twelve in order to say it well."

This example speaks volumes about the cultural currency that a high command of English possessed back then, and which no longer exists. Can you imagine anyone writing or speaking like this today and not be viewed as pretentious, arrogant or just plain uppity? What happened to cause American society to no longer value such an elevated command of our language?

The authors shows that the 1960's, which scorned the American Establishment as oppressive and constricting, also caused modern-day America to view the highly stylized English of earlier generations as old-fashioned and morally suspect - hence the linguistic shift from the formal to the informal. Americans of an earlier time went out of their way to write and speak good English, and the gap between written and spoken English was indeed wide. The 1960's (McWhorter puts it around 1965 exactly) changed all that. Now, we just talk - and we write how we talk. Using dressed-up English is just so "old school." This counter-cultural revolution is also reflected in poetry, music and journalism. Furthermore, the author points our how this phenomenon is uniquely American: we just do not love our own language today like other countries love theirs (most notably France).

What new American dialect, then, best embodies this new linguistic counter-cultural paradigm? Why, Black English, of course. McWhorter points out how Americans of all stripes since the 1960's have incorporated Black English and its accompanying body language and vocal cadence into this counter-cultural toolkit. By no means criticizing Black English, he devotes considerable space in chapter five analyzing the cultural meaning of the 1970's funk music hit "Play That Funky Music, White Boy." For the P.C. crowd, try to tell a white guy to "Perform with spiritual dedication the bewitchingly vernacular songs familiar to us, young Caucasian male," and see how far that gets you.

Although the author points out that the natural evolution of language in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, as all world languages evolve, he does point out some important drawbacks to the modern-day tendency to "dress down" English. This can be seen particularly in the modern education establishment, where the emphasis on the formal language acquisition of earlier generations has been all but tossed out the window. This does not bode well for anyone, but it is particularly damaging to black and immigrant schoolchildren.

McWhorter covers a lot of ground in Doing Our Own Thing, giving the reader plenty to chew on. It is a fascinating look into how the 1960's transformed American society from one that spoke the language and held it in high esteem to one in which people just talk. Regrettably, it looks as if this trend in linguistic informality (some would call it pure laziness) will continue.

Rating:
Summary: Who is the real Martian?
Review: When I first read about this book, in an article in the International Herald Tribune, I was very pleased that someone was finally addressing the issue of degradation of language. From the title, there was even a hint at humour, which made it that much more appealing.

Having started to read the book, however, (I confess that I have not yet finished it) I find myself very puzzled by both style and contents. Professor McWhorter clearly doesn't, like, care... I am, as appears to be the case with other readers, taken aback by the author's obvious disregard for the language he is writing about.

There are frequent references to what "Martians" might think in this book, but on reading a sentence such as "Among the expectations that modern American undergraduates have of what their college education will yield, greater facility in speaking English is not one of them."(page 34), I began to wonder whether the book was not in fact written by a Martian who learned English using a computer translation system and then "invaded" Professor McWhorter's body to try his hand at the game.

My advice to anyone wanting a good read on the subject of the degradation of English would be to pick up instead a copy of Lynne Truss' current UK bestseller "East, Shoots & Leaves." It's short, witty, to the point and, above all, well written!