My interest stems largely from experience teaching English as a second language. Try to explain the logic in the difference between 'look up' and 'look down on' to someone learning the language.
So after jumping on Congressman Paul Ryan for his misplaced article, I feel it's only right to turn that kind attention on my own choice of words.
I decided to call this blog How We Argue. I think the title has a nice ring to it, but I am guilty of the use of an unclear pronoun. The we in my title is troublesome.
We as in 'you and I'?
We as in 'a group I belong to'?
We as in 'a group I belong to, but you don't'?
We as in 'a group I belong to and a different group who argues with my group'?
Oh, I could keep going. My use of an undefined pronoun leaves a lot for readers to decipher. Here on a public blog, that's not a very wise choice. I don't know the profile of all my readers, and while one reader may read the 'we' as inclusive, others may read 'we' as exclusive. This could change the meaning of my blog from one reader to the next in ways I hadn't anticipated. It's sloppy.
So, who is this 'we' I'm referring to?
In the composition classroom, a defensive student presented with this question typically comes up with a variation on the following answer: I'm going to leave that up to the reader. It is the reader's job to decide if they are with me or against me.
That sounds nice, doesn't it? It acknowledges writing as a social activity, and puts agency into the hands of the reader.
If it were my intention to give a reader that responsibility, then I could stop right here. Readers could decide whether they are with me or against me.
But I do not think that is a productive purpose for my writing. That describes the work of partisan pundits, a group who may be included in the 'we,' but I don't want to join a group exclusively composed of such people.
No, I don't want this blog to be an exercise in drawing lines in the sand. And leaving the 'we' undefined would move the effort in that direction.
In composition class, if my students use undefined pronouns such as 'you,' 'they,' or 'we,' I try to get them to describe the who behind those words. All to often, the words are lazy shorthand for a subject too complicated or uncomfortable for students to wrestle with. The 'they' often refers to a shadowy group of people who control everything, as in, "They knew the financial crisis was coming, and they choose to do nothing about it." Or maybe the 'they' refers to a miraculously homogeneous group of people different from the author, as in, "They have trouble succeeding in school because they lack support at home." There's a lot of unexplored complexity hiding behind those theys.
An undefined 'we' often hides similar complexities. So again, what does my 'we' refer to?
If my aim here is to examine public discourse in America, then I think I'm talking about the Constitutional 'we,' as in "We the people..." That seems vague, I know, but I'm going to pull another overused quote to tighten the focus a bit.
At the end of his famous Gettysburg Address, Lincoln describes the US government as "of the people, by the people, for the people" (What a graceful use of parallel structure).
I count myself among the people in that quote, but I don't think everyone in America can say the same thing. A lot of people seem to be ignoring the "by the people" part of the quote. Many people don't vote. Many people don't work to understand public issues that affect them personally. Many people don't try to understand the views of people with whom they disagree. All important parts of participating in the public discourse of a democracy. My aim as a teacher and writer is to encourage more people to actively assert themselves as members of Lincoln's people.
I think the best way for people to do so is to become thoughtfully engaged.
So that is the 'we' I'm aiming at.
Do you count yourself among us?
1 comment:
I am part of your we. I am giddy for the day you rant with gusto about parallel structure.
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