Better American Speech Week

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. We talked at the top of the show about National Grammar Day.

And for both of us, it’s a day when you should think more about the sturdiness and resilience in the rich diversity of English rather than peeping for peeping’s sake. And along these lines, National Grammar Day also inspired a fascinating blog post by Dennis Barron, the linguist at the University of Illinois, because in 1918, he notes that the Chicago Women’s Club initiated this thing called Better American Speech Week, and they promoted it in the nation’s schools, and students were required to take something called the Better Speech Pledge.

And Grant, you’ve seen this online. I mean, the posters are pretty creepy.

Right.

Like it goes, Better American Speech Week, one language for a united people. Speak the the language of your flag. Slovenly speech, bespeaks a slovenly mind. Watch your speech.

And it sort of makes you shudder.

Right, because they’re trying to get people to conform to one particular type of speech. And we just know that the diversity of English is bigger than that.

Basically, they’re saying, speak only like me.

Yes.

I’m right.

You’re completely wrong.

Yes.

And they’re relating it to patriotism, too. There’s this other scary poster. It sounds suspiciously like some of the nationalism that came out of World War I and II.

Yeah, well, exactly.

Here’s another poster, and you have to remember that this is a time that was a little bit less enlightened. I mean, it makes students promise that I will not dishonor my country’s speech by leaving off the last syllables of words, that I will say a good American yes and no in place of an Indian grunt, -hum and nup— or a foreign yeah or ya or nope.

Oh, so this is just coded racism.

Pretty much.

Ethnocentrism, okay.

But then it goes on that I will do my best to improve American speech by avoiding loud, harsh tones, by enunciating distinctly and speaking pleasantly, clearly and sincerely. That I will try to make my country’s language beautiful for the many boys and girls of foreign nations who come here to live. That I will learn to articulate correctly one word a day for one year.

And the thing is, there’s interspersed in there are some good intentions.

Yeah.

I do believe that you should work a little bit on improving your language.

Sure.

I do think that if you speak well, it will be appreciated by others.

Sure.

But the things that they’re asking for that are concrete are almost completely wrong, are wrong-headed. And the things that they’re asking for that are more subjective, like beauty and pleasure, you can’t really nail that down. It’s going to be up to the person or the family to decide what’s right.

Well said.

And you can see these posters online at Dennis Barron’s blog. We’ll link to them.

And, you know, I guess there’s one more thing to say, and I have to be careful about this, but I find that in a smaller degree, some of the hardcore peeping we see about language today is also coded. It’s coded racism. It’s coded elitism. It’s coded ethnocentrism.

Sure.

Some of it is coded ageism. Some of it is coded classism.

Absolutely.

And that’s why, again, if you’re going to talk about National Grammar Day, there’s a different way to talk about it.

Yeah, talk about joy and pleasure and delight and not about anger and frustration and aggression.

Well said, Grant.

Well, we’d love to hear your peeves anyway. 877-929-9673.

Or email us your joyful, pleasurable English phrases to words@waywordradio.org.