The Language We Use

The Language We Use
Colonialism left us with the English Language and that was the lingua franca for many years in schools and university. As we were taught by locals who were not native English speakers we often held on to their philosophy of making the discussion brief. To curtail having to read long assays, I believe, this was a ploy by our teachers. More than 100 words for précis or 350 words for imaginative composition invited severe reprimand and a drop in grades! A second mute point was to ensure the language you used was simple without ‘flowery language’. It bored me writing the same style to get the point across so long as it was grammatically correct that I attempted an essay with enough adjectives to cover most of the terms found in Collin’s Pocket English Dictionary culminating in getting 45 % for the paper! That moved my confidence that much lower that I never attempted deviating from the safe zone thence on!
Using bombastic words has its value in showing your peers that you are that bit higher in the use of the language. Though you did not favour such words or what I surmised as meaningless communication I have found that it did sound different. I recall the English book ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ where the opening statement ‘by the pen of Thackary and pencil of Doyle’ or some such statement in introducing the Brown’s ; I thought that was a novel way of starting the page. The mundane ‘it was a sunny day and we were preparing for the picnic we had planned’ sounded so routine that I thought reading the work of others does influence you to some extent.
The word ‘bombastic’ is an oft repeated word that invites equally unfamiliar meaning as being ‘pompous, pretentious, grandiloquent and overbearing’. However when one wants to make life easy for the unintended reader alternate terms for ‘bombastic’ like ‘ostentiously lofty in style and orotund’ takes the cake.
Surfing the ‘net’ for ‘Trilogy of Life’ I came across a feature article written by Leo Goldsmith (http:/notcoming.com/feature/triologyoflife, 17th July 2004). The author was portraying the wonderful works of Pier Paolo Pasolini who was a complex person of very high calibre and a great intellectual who met his untimely death in 1975 in Italy. Apart from writing numerous novels and poetry he was a great filmmaker and activist. The Trilogy of Life related to three famous works; Chaucer‘s Canterbury Tales, The Decameron and The Arabian Nights. I was familiar with the last, had heard about the Canterbury Tales when I was exposed to Medieval European History at the age of 13 but had not heard about The Decameron. The poetical works in the Canterbury Tales was indeed unfamiliar territory and I refrained from reading the book although there is hard copy lying in my home for the last 40 years.
Goldsmith has a smudge of bombastic language, at least to my mind but the articulation is so meticulous that it sends out the message so aptly about the works of Pasolini as a great film director. ‘Pasolini produces feature films where nudity, casual sex and naked flesh are integral to his works’. That sentence by Goldsmith is easy to comprehend. However the subsequent terms like ‘rustic, libidinous pursuit of casual sex’ was a tardy bit too much for me to clearly understand till I reached for my English dictionary. Google’s has made it easier by having the Thesaurus icon just above this page. What do I see in Thesaurus; rustic refers to ‘rural, country, pastoral and bucolic.’ Bucolic’ is unfamiliar to me so I go back to Thesaurus! I return with ‘rural’ but what happens to ‘libidinous’? No results are found! Perhaps my English teacher was right in correcting me that simple language would suffice for communicating the issue , all that is said is ‘ Pasolini often portrayed scenes using naked flesh and loose moral values’. Having said that, I marvel as to how columnists waken me up by infusing such euphemism. “The air of naiveté with which Pasolini infuses this trilogy is entirely calculated’ adds Goldsmith. Such meaningfully placed words spell a deeper understanding of Pasolini as having construed well ahead , the viewer and underscores the craftiness of the man.
Bombastic or simple language, the colonial masters of this nation have left a lasting legacy.
Sivalingam
16th Oct 2011