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Juliette Stryker
Cami Richey
Wrtg 150 12pm MWF
19 September 2014
A Tantalizing Tte--Tte Pertaining to Terminology
As a tight knit community, BYU has the potential to be a major power for social
change. Social media participants can map their location, actions, and thoughts instantly
from pretty much anywhere (except for the basement of the JFSB; the Wi-Fi force is not
strong with that one). In such a great time of efficient communication, as I scroll through
my Twitter and Facebook timelines, or even walk through this very campus, I sometimes
find that I can barely understand what my contemporaries are trying to say. I can not even
guess how many times I have had to ask my good friend, Google, to explain exactly what
bae, on fleek, or wcw meant. Also what is so funny about a British woman saying Get
out me car? I digress. It seems to me that the latest text trends are pushing our general
populations vernacular into the toilet. The popularity of todays slang and shortened
vocabulary are driving modern English into the ground, sucking the elegance of grammar
and composition out of our speech, as well as the precision from our thoughts.
Language, as a functional tool of communicating thoughts, is an ever-evolving fluid
system where new words are added as times change and obsolete words fade out. The
flexibility of language is what has allowed English to stay accessible and useful over
centuries. If our lingo had not progressed past the 17th century version of English, it would
be exceedingly difficult to describe modern life without the lexicon that we have now.
However, with the addition of our fabulous new phraseology, we seem to be expelling too

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many of our trusty old words. Despite how it sounds, these words are not torn out of the
pages of our delightful dictionaries. These forgotten or no-longer posh words shrink to the
edge of the verbal dance floor while the popular words dance and jig to the beat of modern
confab. Weirdly, today when a person replies with a firm Yes, as opposed to the more
comfortable Yeah, it is received as formal and stiff. Why is that? Why is finishing your full
syllabic pronunciation considered aggressive? Why does a lazy and flippant inflection of
voice seem to be so attractive to the youth of today? The issue with creating new words and
shunning our intricate old ones is that we lose the fine details and nuances of those words.
In a May 2014 article for The Washington Post, Alexandra Petri said, the trouble with
losing your vocabulary is that you lose the words to express your unhappiness about
losing your vocabulary. I often find my self in a state of frustration, capable only of
communicating my ire with a loud Ugh! and a whiny I hate everything! This only serves
to fan the flames of my dissatisfaction, as I probe and wrack my brain for an appropriate
way to tell others exactly what Im feeling. Similarly, I recently heard a conversation
between two of my roommates where one simply said Oh my gosh and the other replied
Jeez me too. That was their whole conversation. They parted ways happily, feeling as
though what they needed to say had been said. What about our daily experiences is so
indescribable that we can only vocalize them by utilizing a few worn out, empty
utterances? I believe a prime example of this vocal crutch is swearing. I find it infinitely
annoying when a human is experiencing pain and can only communicate their feelings by
using nonsense words that do not even hold grammatical water. When a person spits out a
four-letter word of their choosing, they are rarely thinking and experiencing what they are
literally saying. This phonic and cognitive fumble is confusing for your brain, due to the

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discordance of your mental picture versus your external stimuli, and it results in your
words of choice simply amounting to a pile of verbal diarrhea. Most curses are so plastic
that they are used to fill in emotional blanks as a modifier that only drives the substance of
the expressed thoughts to their extremes.

These brutish outcries reduce adults to

screeching babes, powerless to articulate the nature of the whirlwind of ordinary, everyday
nuisances.
While this expressive recession is rather humdrum and lugubrious, I happen to have
a solution. It is simple and adaptable for almost all situations. It is a one step program to
help you conquer all your verbal hurdles. It is as follows: the next time you catch yourself
describing someone or something as bae, you feel compelled to say freaking or darn,
or any other nonspecific adjective, stop and think. Really think. Think deeply about what
you are feeling and why. Take inventory of your surroundings, and simply pause for a few
extra seconds to evaluate what you are experiencing, and then say it. Say it, even if it
sounds weird and clumsy. Try out new words and speak illustratively. Take a minute to
find the exact word that perfectly describes your current state of being. Who cares if it is
not as easy as allowing your natural reactions to thoughtlessly fly out of your mouth? It is
far more satisfying to say precisely what you mean to say, right when you need to say it.
Conversely, as simple as my solution is, expression is truly only as efficient and
accurate as each individual determines it to be. If in a moment on panic, you let out a couple
blush-worthy words, who can blame you? The language we use now ha been good enough
to function well for a quite a long time. In Ecclesiastes 6:11 it reads, The more the words,
the less the meaning, and how does that benefit anyone?

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Therefore, I issue not a call for long-windedness or ramblings, but a challenge to be
brave enough to say what you mean. Exaggeration will do you no service, but precision in
language will shape and focus your thoughts and actions. Theodore Dreiser said, Words
are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining
together great inaudible feelings and purposes. This may be true, and trying to capture
and force our thoughts into letters and words may be futile. Nevertheless, I would much
rather chase the formless shadows of my own emotions and search among of reefs of my
vocabulary to color my thoughts with even the lightest shades of ink; rather than allow
them to wander off, leaving me to follow the tedious and impersonal notions of those who
came (and spoke) before me.