Another Language

Recently another language has grown up within the one others use. The new language has a special way: it avoids saying obvious things as if they are not so obvious; it never proclaims something that the kind of person being addressed is presumed to know already; it courteously gives credit to the needs but so to the dignity of the person addressed; it feels uncomfortable if it distorts the proportions of discourse — if under the pretense of being eloquent or fervent it dwells on self-serving statements.

This new language tolerates unconventional or “incorrect” talk or writing much more than it tolerates implicit discourtesy or dishonesty. The new language is the native tongue of those who grew up during that period when they found correctness used for deception, the years of official evasions and duplicity, Viet Nam and Watergate and on.

Speakers of the new language are seeking not just freedom of speech but freedom in speech — their own lives embodied in language.

–William Stafford

Painting by Siobhan McClure

HT to the image of fish

Tags:freedomInterpretationlanguageSiobhan McClurespeechViet NamWilliam Stafford