The Bottom Line: College -- The Society of Affirmation
Jerard Fagerberg
Issue date: 11/17/09 Section: Opinion
The poet Anis Mojgani has said, "Your mouth is a sign of how sacred your life actually is."
I find these words rolling around sarcastically in my head as I sit, near-collapse and rich with morning breath, in my 11a.m. while some girl in a distant corner of the room rambles on, barely teetering on the edge of meaning. Allow me to paraphrase: "Like, what [irrelevant philosopher] is saying, I think, is that, like, people need happiness. Not like they need happiness but, like, they spend their lives sorta looking for it, you know what I mean?"
And the answer is a resounding, "No, I do not know what you mean."
See, you've inflated your possibly correct response with enough qualifiers and unnecessary clauses to confuse Gary Busey. Any conviction you were trying to relay to the rest of the class has abruptly been smothered by the down pillow of your own inarticulation.
I sound angry -- I'm not. I'm frustrated.
Although this situation may be hypothetical, the experience is all too common. This generation (men and women alike) suffers from a unique inability to correctly articulate itself, an utter reluctance to put forth strongly-formed beliefs for fear of being perceived as, like, critical thinkers, or whatever. I see it all over campus.
We weaken ourselves and make ourselves seem less threatening and more acceptable for our vanilla approach to the bigger questions. We play this roundabout game where we can avoid saying anything declarative while still being understood as contributing. Qualifiers such as "like," "sort of," "kind of" and "not really" find their way into our everyday language, making our verbs less absolute, taking the power from our adjectives, and belittling our once-mighty nouns with their circumventive connotations.
Then, there's the interrogative tone; what poet Taylor Mali called the "invisible question marks and parenthetical (you knows?)" that we use to supplement our language, to position ourselves as not entirely committed to what we're saying. These questions are a reaching out; a search for the comfortable affirmation of agreement. We are afraid to disagree with each other, or to be misunderstood, so we cushion our statements with phrases like, "Do you know what I mean?" and "Okay?" We pry for the approval of others, inviting them to hit the "Like This" button on our convictions before we are comfortable laying them down - sort of, anyway.
I find these words rolling around sarcastically in my head as I sit, near-collapse and rich with morning breath, in my 11a.m. while some girl in a distant corner of the room rambles on, barely teetering on the edge of meaning. Allow me to paraphrase: "Like, what [irrelevant philosopher] is saying, I think, is that, like, people need happiness. Not like they need happiness but, like, they spend their lives sorta looking for it, you know what I mean?"
And the answer is a resounding, "No, I do not know what you mean."
See, you've inflated your possibly correct response with enough qualifiers and unnecessary clauses to confuse Gary Busey. Any conviction you were trying to relay to the rest of the class has abruptly been smothered by the down pillow of your own inarticulation.
I sound angry -- I'm not. I'm frustrated.
Although this situation may be hypothetical, the experience is all too common. This generation (men and women alike) suffers from a unique inability to correctly articulate itself, an utter reluctance to put forth strongly-formed beliefs for fear of being perceived as, like, critical thinkers, or whatever. I see it all over campus.
We weaken ourselves and make ourselves seem less threatening and more acceptable for our vanilla approach to the bigger questions. We play this roundabout game where we can avoid saying anything declarative while still being understood as contributing. Qualifiers such as "like," "sort of," "kind of" and "not really" find their way into our everyday language, making our verbs less absolute, taking the power from our adjectives, and belittling our once-mighty nouns with their circumventive connotations.
Then, there's the interrogative tone; what poet Taylor Mali called the "invisible question marks and parenthetical (you knows?)" that we use to supplement our language, to position ourselves as not entirely committed to what we're saying. These questions are a reaching out; a search for the comfortable affirmation of agreement. We are afraid to disagree with each other, or to be misunderstood, so we cushion our statements with phrases like, "Do you know what I mean?" and "Okay?" We pry for the approval of others, inviting them to hit the "Like This" button on our convictions before we are comfortable laying them down - sort of, anyway.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 3
Nikki C.
posted 11/17/09 @ 4:26 PM EST
I wholeheartedly and completely agree with this thoughtfully written essay. Too many young people (of my generation and younger) litter their speech with qualifiers and acceptance-seeking words--"verbal fillers" one of my acting teachers used to call them. (Continued…)
Ben Tramer
posted 11/19/09 @ 4:17 PM EST
What, what's going on?! This isn't the guy who normally writes for The Bottom Line! WTF??!!
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