Words&Dirt

“In 1993 the journalist James Gorman wrote:

I used to speak in a regular voice.  I was able to assert, demand, question.  Then I started teaching.  At a university?  And my students had this rising intonation thing?  It was particularly noticeable on telephone messages.  ‘Hello?  Professor Gorman?  This is Albert?  From feature writing?’

I had no idea that a change in the ‘intonation contour’ of a sentence, as linguists put it, could be as contagious as the common cold.  But before long I noticed a Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation in my own speech.  I first heard it when I myself was leaving a message.  ‘This is Jim Gorman?  I’m doing an article on Klingon?  The language?  From “Star Trek”?’  I realized then that I was unwittingly, unwillingly speaking uptalk.  I was, like, appalled?

Though uptalk probably began as a reflex of politeness (part of the twentieth century trend toward egalitarianism and social closeness), it is becoming a neutral feature of standard American English, as it has been for centuries in some Irish, English, and Southern American dialects.  The spread of uptalk is a rare case in which we can feel what it’s like to be part of a historical change in the language, watching a construction as it tips from having a transparent rationale to being just a convention.”

––The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, by Steven Pinker, pg. 382

“Try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don’t let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page.  Now imagine just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you, maybe to the side of you, maybe even in front of you, but right where you can’t see it, something is quietly closing in on you, so quiet in fact you can only hear it as silence.  Find those pockets without sound.  That’s where it is.  Right at this moment.  But don’t look.  Keep your eyes here.  Now take a deep breath.  Go ahead take an even deeper one.  Only this time as you start to exhale try to imagine how fast it will happen, with its teeth or are they nails?, don’t worry, that particular detail doesn’t matter, because before you have time to even process that you should be moving, you should be running, you should at the very least be flinging up your arms––you sure as hell should be getting rid of this book––you won’t have time to even scream.

Don’t look.”

––House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski, pg. 26-7