Good Reads: on the politics of language, Genghis Khan, and the Beastie Boys
Nobody likes a language snob.
This is the person who corrects you in mid-sentence when you make a mistake. 鈥淢r. President,鈥� he shouts, at a press conference, 鈥渨hen you say 鈥榤isunderestimate,鈥� do you perhaps have another word in mind?鈥� And everyone laughs at you, for days.
Language snobs are everywhere, even in France, where they even have an 鈥�,鈥� was designed to define, protect, and regulate proper French grammar and usage. In the English-speaking world, language snobs write dictionaries that practically frown at you when you can鈥檛 remember the difference between 鈥減arameter鈥� and 鈥減erimeter.鈥� (The first is a mathematical term for a constant in an equation; the second refers to a boundary. Trust me, I looked these terms up in a dictionary.)
It鈥檚 easy to ridicule the language snobs, as Robin Williams did in his 鈥渞ip it out鈥� scene in the Dead Poet鈥檚 Society.
But here鈥檚 the thing about language snobs: They are oddly egalitarian. While language snobs might giggle at people who choose the wrong words or who make grammatical mistakes, their underlying premise is that there are universal rules for language. Learning to use those rules is the ultimate ladder to success, integration, and acceptance.
In this week鈥檚 writes about the ongoing debate between language snobs (or 鈥減rescriptivists,鈥� as they apparently prefer to be called) and 鈥渄escriptivists,鈥� who believe that 鈥渁ll we could legitimately do in discussing language was to say what the current practice was.鈥� Ms. Acocella is definitely in the prescriptivist camp, and when she reviews the new book 鈥淭he Language Wars: A History of Proper English,鈥� by Henry Hitchings, a descriptivist, you know you are in for a good fight.聽
All of this might seem petty, but for writers such as George Orwell, the use and abuse of words had the potential to start wars, prop up dictatorships, and justify genocides. In his essay, ,鈥� he wrote:
Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called聽pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called聽transfer of population听辞谤听rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called聽elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
Political language 鈥� is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.聽
For those of us who do love words, and for fellow journalists covering wars and the politicians who use words to justify them, Acocella鈥檚 review is required reading. It is also that rare guiltless pleasure, a 鈥淩umble in the Jungle鈥� for the literary set. Bring popcorn.
Genghis Khan and leadership
In this same realm of self-improvement, you can usually tell something about the times by the historical figures we choose to emulate. During the 1980s, Machiavelli and Sun-Tzu were all the rage. Now, it鈥檚 time to learn business tips from Genghis Khan and Somali pirates.
Genghis Khan, of course, has always been the guy we didn鈥檛 want to emulate. Voltaire called him a 鈥渄estructive tyrant,鈥� and 鈥渢he fiery Genghis Khan, who lays the fertile fields of Asia 飞补蝉迟别.鈥�
Like Attila the Hun, another misunderstood Asian despot, Genghis Khan did carry out a few acts that would attract notice from the International Criminal Court at The Hague. But he also, apparently, left the world better than he found it.
Teasing out lessons from the excellent book, 鈥淕enghis Khan, and the making of the Modern World,鈥� by Jack Weatherford, Ryan Holiday gleans a few useful leadership lessons for our uncertain times. Among them are these: Lead from the front, serve a greater good than yourself, understand your people, and change the world, but change gradually.
, but those who are truly curious about how an illiterate Mongol village chieftain helped to shape our modern world should also read Mr. Weatherford鈥檚 book.
Adam Yauch, a Muslim hero
Finally, those who came of age in the 1980s would have noticed the passing of Adam Yauch (aka MCA), founding member of the hip hop band, the Beastie Boys. Most Beastie Boy fans reveled in the group鈥檚 mixture of punk and rap, and in their topical lyrics. But for , Mr. Yauch was a hero because of his courageous and early stands against Islamophobia, well before Sept. 11 and the war against terror.
On the Al Jazeera website, Mr. Kaan writes, that when Yauch 鈥� a Brooklyn Jewish kid who converted to Tibetan Buddhism 鈥� spoke out against American racism toward Muslims, Kaan began to believe again in an America that had rejected him because of his own Muslim beliefs.
鈥淚 still hoped Adam Yauch, my Brooklyn homeboy icon, and his crew would save the world. I hoped the Beastie Boys would save all of the US from the hatred in their hearts spread through covert funding programmes and religious zealots.鈥�
Surely, just as words live on, Yauch鈥檚 own hopes can live on beyond his passing. Read Kaan鈥檚 touching tribute on .
