4.4 Where Are You At?

WHERE ARE YOU AT?
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One of the things I've learned is that, in any endeavor, communication is a key ingredient. It applies to just about everything that involves another human being, from how to have a successful relationship to how to manage a multi-faceted corporation. It also applies to writing.

Writing is communication. You have to be able to communicate your ideas through words if you wish to be understood. And what is one of the greatest barriers to communication? It is the different perceptions we have about the words we use.

If you wrote a fictional story about someone living in the middle of a forest in a New England town, almost everyone living elsewhere would likely be confused. How can a forest be in the middle of a town? That's because a town in New England has a meaning almost entirely different from any other region. In most of New England, a town most closely approximates a township, which is a much larger political subdivision than the kind of town the rest of us are used to.

That difference may sound similar to slang, but it's not. Slang includes either made-up words, altered words or names, or odd spellings. All of these reflect the different inflections and dialect of a specific group of people.

Regional idioms, on the other hand, are real words that simply have different meanings based on the people speaking them, or the place where they are spoken, of course. A creek in the eastern United States might be a river in the west. A gully or ravine could be a draw. A gap in West Virginia's Appalachia could be a pass in the Sierra Nevadas of northern California, or a saddleback or hogback in the American or Canadian Rocky Mountains. Dressing in Louisiana (something you might put on a hamburger), has a very different meaning elsewhere in the United States.

Regional differences don't just apply to the United States. There are differences between words wherever the English language is spoken. You would put a boot on your foot in the United States, but place luggage in the boot (trunk) of your car in England. You would drive a truck in the United States, but a lorry in England. There, a raincoat is a mac, food is nosh, and standing in line is standing in a queue. There is a quote that sums up this difference perfectly:

We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
         —Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost, 1887.

It's not just differences in English between the United States and England. In northern Ireland, a policeman is a peeler. In Australia, a paddock is a small field, while in England it is an enclosure for farm livestock. A paddock in the United States is an area at a racetrack where gamblers and visitors can examine horses prior to a race. A footpath in most of New Zealand is a sidewalk, and a tog is a bathing suit. The list goes on—this is only scratching the surface of our interesting differences in the English language.

That words create a barrier to communication became evident to me when I first met my future wife. I have a Pennsylvania Dutch background (actually it's deutch), and she was from the deep south of Mississippi. I finally gave up trying to correct her use of smarsmallows for marshmallows, buggy for shopping cart, smashed potatoes instead of mashed potatoes, and mashing a button instead of pressing one. However, I've still been unable to find "once'dt" or "twice'dt" in the dictionary. Of course, she never understood how my legs got "reutchy" or why ruined cookies were "bedeutched".

And heaven forbid you ever need to ask for a soft drink. You need to know exactly what part of the country you're standing in to do so. In the western United States, it's a pop. In the Northeast, it's a soda. In the south, it's a Coke. That's right, a Coke means any soft drink. A typical southerner ordering a soft drink might read something like this ...

         Waitress: "What will you have to drink."
         Customer: "I'll have a Coke."
         Waitress: "What kind of Coke do you want?"
         Customer: "A Mountain Dew."

This is no joke. Ask any southerner you know, and they'll confirm this.

One day, my ability to communicate with my wife completely broke down. I was standing in the kitchen, and in her uniquely southern accent, she asked me to "turn on the aye." I stared at her for few moments trying to let the words circulate through my brain, hoping they would find a suitable connection. They never did. Several times I asked her to repeat it. We finally got to the point where she was saying, "the aye, the aye, turn on the aye!" All I could do was stare and say, "I have absolutely no idea what you're saying." She finally had to get up, walk over to the stove, and turn on a burner. She was trying to say "eye", but the mixture of her southern accent and a totally unique term she used for it caused a severe blockage in our ability to communicate.

We laugh about it now, but it nearly caused disastrous results under different circumstances. My wife's son moved with her from Mississippi to be with us. He met a nice northern girl, and they fell in love. One day, he invited her over for dinner. Anticipation ran high as we cooked the dinner meal, added an extra place setting, and then waited patiently for her to arrive. She never did. The nice southern boy called up the nice northern girl and they proceeded to get into an argument that went something like this ...

         "Where are you?" asked southern boy.
         "I'm home, where did you expect me to be?" responded northern girl.
         "Here," he shouted.
         "Why?" she shouted back. "You invited me for dinner."
         "Well we're all sitting around the dinner table and you're not here!"
         "It's not dinner-time you goofball, it's lunch-time!"
         "It's dinner."
         "It's lunch."
         "Oh, sorry," said southern boy.
         "Oh, me too," said northern girl.

In some areas of the South, speech refers to dinner as being the noon meal. Supper is the evening meal. In most other places, it's lunch followed by dinner. The results of this miscommunication could have been simply disastrous, all due to a simple lack of communication over the use of words, who is using them, and where they are being used. It's interesting to note that one of the most obstructive barriers to communication can be the language itself.

This should be a valuable lesson to all writers. It's okay to use regional or dialectical differences in speech patterns and dialog. But within narrative, writers should make sure that readers know what those subtle differences in our common language mean. We must be extremely careful which words we use. At best, they can entertain the reader. At worst, they can incite people to riot.

A perfect example of how a word can be both acceptable and deplorable at the same time is the term "Canuck". It is usually considered an affectionate or patriotic term referring to Canadians, but only if it is used by Canadians. If it is used by non-Canadians, particularly Americans, it is considered insulting.

This word, in fact, brought down a Presidential hopeful in the 1972 election for President of the United States. A letter was published in which then-Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine reportedly used the term "Canuck" in a letter. The letter turned out to be false, planted by Nixon aids, but Muskie ended up crying over the impact the letter may have had on French Canadians whom he considered friends. It effectively ended his campaign.

And yet, in Canada, there is a hockey team named the Vancouver Canucks. Johnny Canuck was a Canadian cartoon in the 1860's who resisted Uncle Sam. In fact, Canada released a 45-cent postage stamp in 1995 depicting Johnny Canuck. How can one word be considered both acceptable and insulting at the same time? The answer is never clear, but it relates to your audience and how they perceive a word.

An example of this is the word "Yankee." I have been called a Yankee my whole life. I'm not offended by it. Yet at one time, it was considered an insult by the British to call American colonists, particularly New Englanders, Yankees. They even made up an insulting song about them called "Yankee Doodle Dandy." But in a twist, American colonists loved the song so much that they adopted it to signify their defiance, which probably left the British scratching their heads.

The old adage that the pen is mightier than the sword is true. Words can be used to inform, entertain, and illuminate. They can also be used to deride, devalue, and denigrate. As a writer, you must understand how they have different meanings in different regions, and be wary of how you use them.


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REFERENCES

Bernstein, Carl; Woodward, Bob. "FBI Finds Nixon Aids Sabotaged Democrats", Washington Post, October 10, 1972.

Chicago Reader, "What's the Song Yankee Doodle All About", Straight Dope, Staff Report January 4, 2001. In: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/myankeedoodle.html , accessed 2007.

Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. NY: Harper. 1988. Chapter 3.