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01 November 2007
Last night, my professor used "language" as a verb. I'm giving up on the human race.
You're giving up? Just when you've got the most evidence that despite something idiotic like using language as a verb you can still become a professor?
This is hardly original. Some linguists do indeed tend to think of language as a verb, an activity, not "a thing" that pre-exists independent of the speech act.
No, no it's not. God is not a verb, faith is not a verb and happiness is not a verb. The idea that 'X is a verb' is a valid way of saying 'X is in some way dynamic or active' is just nonsense. Hate, hate, hate.
The words rise up, begin speaking themselves.
Revolution, they say. Relevance. Luminescence.
Tongues are speaking in tongues today. Lips
kissing out syllables like candy, like chocolate-
covered epiphanies.
Keyboards unman themselves, crab and clack.
Faster and faster the words leap up, dance to
the rhythm of the rebirth, the issuing forth.
Vocabularies to capillaries as art to arteries.
The heart unable to contain the mad rush of language.
The Author deconstructs, cold and alone,
while English professors and lit mag editors
play cowboy. Desperately wrangling the runaways.
Linguists lasso stragglers, brand them, herd them
into pens. But the verbs will not be passive.
To everyone’s horror,
they begin deputizing nouns.
I have people who I work with, educated people, who make simple mistakes in speaking Basic Grammar. It is quite grating, and up until now, I thought I was being too stuck up about it. Thanks for letting me know I wasn't. (This thread is the bestest!)
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