Researched Paper

Is it acceptable to write the way we speak?

Amy Tan, the writer of the Threepenny Review, a highly freelance business writer (Britannica), on her essay “Mother Tongue” there was something that got me thinking was when Tan said:

“Apart from what any critic had to say about my writing, I knew I had succeeded where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict: So easy to read.”

(Mother Tongue pg.5)

What Tan did was envision a reader for the stories she would write, and that reader was her mother. She started writing her stories in “The English” she spoke to her mother and by that she wanted to capture what language ability can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts. Showing all these qualities while you tell stories in writing is not an easy task, but it requires quite a lot of skills and the ability to connect with the readers through letters, and not everyone who writes is successful in achieving that. However, Tan reached a way larger group of interested readers by just writing in the way she always speaks to her mother, in other words she did that by just being herself and not forcing herself to follow a format with rules and standards.

Also, one other thing that Tan mentioned in her essay was that:

“Sometimes teachers are steering students away from writing into math and science, just because they come from a background that they are known to be good at math and science, which is what happened to her.”

(Mother Tongue pg.4)

This statement of hers proves that we as students are somehow limited in our choices just because the system and the people that work within it do not see that we fit in a certain area. And this is where the system must stop and think of how to improve on this aspect and respect students’ decisions, being supportive of them but not affecting them in any way.

What I mean writing in the same way we speak, is being able to write in our Spoken English or how Kyle Caney calls it “Conversational English.”

What is considered Conversational English? This answer I will explain through the article “Conversational English: The real way people talk” that Kyle Carney wrote:

“Conversational English is the language used by everyday speakers. It is casual and informal. It is the type of English that is used in grocery stores, at the gym or when speaking with friends and family. It is, for most speakers, the language used to communicate.”

(Conversational English: The real way people talk)

With simple words I would conclude this as the form of English we use every time when we are not writing something school or profession related. Just like Carney says:

“It is a form of expressing ourselves with no rules or no structure, it is much freer and flexible.”

(Conversational English: The real way people talk)

The diagram below will show some of the examples on how different the Conventional and Standard English are:

[1]

          My point that I’m trying to make is that since Spoken English is a very big part of our lives and is something that we all embrace of and we give a value to it for showing personality and personal touch to the way we choose to communicate with each other through speaking, why cannot we embrace it as a form of writing as well? This sends me back to Amy Tan “Mother Tongue”, and how much the audience appreciated and loved Tan even more than what they did before, just because she used the English, she speaks every day with her mother.

     However, when I started reading the article “We learned to write the way we talk” written by Gretchen McCulloch (internet linguist), I was able to see another side of my research, and it made me start approaching my study also from another point of view.

“When we write in ways that a red pen wouldn’t approve of, we give our interlocutors the chance to show that they care more about us as a living human presence than they do about some long-dead or absent authority. In return, being more open and flexible with language rewards us with the capacity to convey the humor and irony and double meaning in writing that we’ve been craving for so long.”

(We learned to write the way we talk)

McCulloch also says:

“We’ve been taught the lie that homogeneity leads to understanding, when in truth, understanding comes from better appreciating variety. Understanding does not come from insisting on a list of rules, shouting the same thing only louder like a hapless monolingual tourist in a foreign country. Understanding comes from being willing to use gestures and a handful of semi-remembered words.”

(We learned to write the way we talk)

This reminds me of the time when they started teaching us English Language back in school. It was a very traditional way of learning the language, which was full of rules and regulations, and we could not mistreat them, or take them for granted. But we were supposed to always follow them and be careful in the way of how we use them while speaking but especially while writing. So, the entire time at school we were told that English must be spoken and written only in a certain way which was the standard British English [2], because only in that way people would be able to understand us. And that fact would make the process of learning the English language harder for me, since following these language regulations whom I call them “Language Barriers” would not give me the freedom of expressing myself in the way the language would come natural to me, but I was restricted to use a certain way when I talked or wrote in English, and that would automatically restrict my thoughts when it came to me trying to express myself in English.

The problem with this tradition is that it is a jealous god — rather than say, “Here is a style that’s useful sometimes,” it says, “Here is the only correct way to write, and any variation from it is Bad and Wrong.”

(We learned to write the way we talk)

This is a very realistic statement and a valid point for me to fully agree with McCulloch.

“I don’t need National Geographic to start replacing its photojournalism with selfies, but when my friends go on vacation, I want to see the trip filtered through their eyes — their semi-ironic selfie in front of the Eiffel Tower or the tiny cafe they found on a rainy afternoon means more to me than a generic landmark photo, however beautiful.”

(We learned to write the way we talk).

This statement of McCulloch made me rethink the way I want English language to be approached also in other perspectives. And, I agree with it, that yes, we should have certain subjects that must be spoken or written in Standard English, because that way we give them more value, and we see the importance that they carry, and yes, the form of language we choose to talk about them indicates a lot on that part. But outside of these subjects I still agree with the fact that we must be free to write in the way we want (in our Spoken Englishes), bearing in mind what we are writing about, where we are choosing to write and to whom we are writing to (the audience). Just like Carney in the article “Conversational English: The real way people talk.”, wrote:

“We want to be free and flexible in writing when we give our opinions in a topic same as we do when we speak about it, all we want is to be understandable by people.”

(Conversational English: The real way people talk)

     Lately we have seen “English Language Changes” on the Internet as well when it comes to “Written English.” The way we write while we communicate through the internet is different from the way we speak but also different from the way we usually write as well. Grady Constance analyzed the book “Because Internet: Understanding the new rules of language,” written by linguist Gretchen McCulloch.,” and Constance drafted the article “The Internet has Changed the way we talk. In because internet, a linguistic shows us how.” where she says:

“The internet has fundamentally changed the way we communicate with each other. It has given us GIFs, memes, emoji, and more initialisms than anyone can count — and in the process, it’s created a whole new set of norms for informal writing, there are also specific ways, or forms that we use most likely unintentionally while we communicate through the internet, such as expressing our current emotions while we communicate, and what is interesting about them is the way we express them.”

(Because Internet: Understanding the new rules of language)

Constance also adds:

“You know how when there just aren’t words to express how you’re feeling, you have to smash the keyboard at random and create a string of incomprehensible characters to convey your sense of utter emotional overload? Well, it turns out we are not really smashing those keys randomly at all.”

(The Internet has Changed the way we talk. In because internet, a linguistic shows us how)

According to McCulloch:

Keyboard smashes almost always begin with “a,” often begin with “asdf,” and almost never include numbers or letters of different cases — they are either all uppercase or all lowercase. But lately, a new kind of keyboard smashing has begun to trend, one that is heavier on g’s and b’s and h’s than a’s and d’s and f’s. That’s what keyboard smashing looks like on the touchscreen of a smartphone, and it’s on the rise.

(Because Internet: Understanding the new rules of language)

This reminds me of my own self as well, and it made me think that I actually do the same thing from time to time, such as when I am laughing I smash the keyboard, and the words begin with “ahahhahah” or “hahaha” they may both sound similar maybe but to me when I start it with an “a” is because I am using irony towards whoever I am communicating to and I want to emphasize to them that I was right in my statement(s). However, when I start it with the letter “h” is just an expression of my genuine laugh and happiness at that moment.

      This is just an example of how English is involving, and if today we are talking about Standard versus Spoken English, there will come one day that we will talk if we should use the writing in “Standard English” or “The writing we use on the internet to communicate with?”

English as a Language is used and known almost all around the world and it is involving and going through drastic changes every day. Just like Constance says:

“English is involving because of the need of finding new ways of communicating with each other more effectively than ever.”

(The Internet has Changed the way we talk. In because internet, a linguistic shows us how)

[1] https://www.berlitz.com/blog/conversational-english-the-real-way-people-talk#

[2] In my country, since it is in Europe, we learn British English.

Works Cited: