What do you mean by that?

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
        -- Lewis Carroll, 1872

This was done by creating quasi-natural sentence material with decreasing semantic, syntactic, and phonemic information (i.e., jabberwocky sentences, in which all content words were replaced by meaningless words; pseudoword sentences, in which all function and all content words are replaced by meaningless words; and delexicalized sentences, hummed intonation contour of a sentence removing all segmental content).
        -- Ann Pannekamp, others
        Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience , 2005

“This is America,” he said. “They must learn to speak English!”

How many hundreds of times have I heard that battle cry? It has logic to it – an undeniable appeal to those who are uncomfortable when they can’t understand what others are saying.

Finally (I never cease to amaze myself at how long it takes me to put two and two together), the most appropriate retort to this logic occurred to me.

“Because this is America,” I suggest, “we are free to speak any language we choose – including pure gibberish, if it suits us.”

It’s true. The First Amendment declares that we all have the right to free speech. We can utter what ever words we like, in almost any context and using whatever vocabulary we wish – including words that originated outside our borders … er … the borders of England, where some of our ancestors used to live?

In fact, the logic – if there is any – behind “this is America, speak English” is far weaker than, “this is northern Colorado, speak Arapahoe,” or “this is southwestern Colorado, speak Ute,” or “this is South Dakota, speak Sioux.”

Today’s lecture (forgive me, I’m on my soapbox again), however, isn’t about languages – though it is about communication.

I have enjoyed meeting and speaking with hundreds of senior citizens I’ve encountered on this trip, but I have to admit that I can count the number of conversations that were “deep” on my fingers and toes.

There just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of interest in trying to get to the root of a matter or to reach an understanding – even to define terms so we know for sure what we’re talking about.

I hate when someone uses a big word or complex sentence to impress others; but I love it when words are used properly to make a clear and precise point.

Consider the quotes provided above.

The first, penned by Lewis Carrol, is a perfect example of how one can appear to be making sense while uttering absolute nonsense.

And the second, written by scholars, is a great example of how a point can be made clearly.

I respect people able to communicate so clearly and accurately – in fact, I envy them. Those who dedicate themselves to the systematic study of something must surely have a far deeper appreciation of them than the rest of us who have only explored the surface. How strange that we don’t depend on such people more when we must make decisions regarding matters within their spheres of knowledge.

The ability to grasp both fundamentals and nuances, to analyze one situation and then apply what’s learned to another, is a good thing. Most Americans – including our leaders, I fear – tend to shoot from the hip, taking issues out of context and often making choices without applying much history, science, psychology or scholarship of any kind.

Author Norman Mailer died this week. As I watched some clips from interviews he gave over the years I recognized that we’ve lost someone who took few serious matters lightly. He was an egomaniac, a college dropout** and a man with strong opinions that sometimes got him into trouble.

But Norman Mailer brought something to the table. He added to the discussion, challenging others to think.

Though a bit uffish, he was brillig and lived life frabjously.

(** NOTE: Mailer never dropped out of college; see comments)