Tuesday, May 28, 1996Language busters
Editor:
As a white Anglo-Saxon of the male persuasion, I have become
accustomed, over the years, to reading The Bruin and finding the
motives of my ancestors, culture and gender maligned. What I was
not prepared for, however, was to see these attacks spread to the
very language I speak.
As a native speaker of English, I was surprised and offended to
hear Christine Shigemura state that "written language is one of da
massa’s tools … constructed so as to reinforce the white
supremacist patriarchy" ("Stitching a different kind of story," May
17). A few days later, I was privileged to read about "the
underlying psychology" of English, which, according to Jung-Eun
Son, "is marked by filthy imperialistic contempt" ("Accepting a
mother’s refusal to learn to speak English," May 21).
My immediate reaction involved a vocabulary that was strictly
Anglo-Saxon. Unfortunately, being fluent in no other languages
besides FORTRAN, I shall confine my remarks to English.
Apparently, Shigemura would have us believe that a structured
grammatical language was conceived by conquest-minded white males
as a plan of world domination. Interesting indeed, when one
considers that the earliest known written languages seem to have
originated with the great ancient civilizations of the Middle East
and Asia. People there were writing poetry when, as far as I can
tell, my ancestors were still wearing bear skins and painting
themselves blue.
These authors would seem to believe that English is responsible
for all the modern oppression the world has witnessed. Well, I hate
to break it to you two, but violence is unfortunately a universal
language. The Holocaust was not conducted in English. Neither was
the recent violence between the Hutus and the Tutsis. I have yet to
hear anyone blame this more recent tragedy on Westernized,
imperialistic, English-speaking testosterone, but I am sure someone
will try.
What disturbs me about this column and this viewpoint, though,
is not just the content of their myopic messages, but the examples
of English grammar that were used. Time and again, I read sentences
such as "English speakers are easily distinguished from others
because … they are often polluted with pride and at times,
hatred."
Were Son to read such blanket statements about the speakers of
other languages, I venture she would have no trouble recognizing
these sentence structures for what they are: examples of
over-generalization, irresponsible exaggeration and
stereotyping.
When I was learning English, we learned a word for this:
prejudice.
And that’s inexcusable in any language.
Andrew Walston
Graduate student
Electrical engineering