{"id":6931,"date":"2015-09-08T14:21:49","date_gmt":"2015-09-08T21:21:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=6931"},"modified":"2015-09-08T21:05:48","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T04:05:48","slug":"other-matters-our-poor-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2015\/09\/other-matters-our-poor-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Other Matters: Our Poor Language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/English_language_logo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/English_language_logo.jpg\" alt=\"English_language_logo\" width=\"500\" height=\"100\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6932\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/English_language_logo.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/English_language_logo-300x60.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nThe Valley Girl way of speaking began in California\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s San Fernando Valley in the 1970s. It has metastasized through the English-speaking world and spread to sectors populated by those who know better but use it anyway. For instance, this morning on National Public Radio\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Diane Rehm Show, the guests were three experienced Washington DC journalists whose stock-in-trade is the English language. Their answers to all but two or three questions began with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I mean,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122know.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>About every thirty seconds, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122know\u00e2\u20ac\u009d also popped up in meaningless parenthetical phrases, as in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The President, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122know, has a lot at stake in this Iran arms deal, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122know.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That nearly matches the record of the still-undefeated champion of empty assertions, an interview subject who responded to a question from the late NBC correspondent Edwin Newman: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122know, you never know, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122know.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>It was not the job of today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s guest host on the Rehm Show, Tamara Keith, to stem the flow of empty phraseology. I wish that it had been. We can do it ourselves. Surely, in a language with the riches of English, literate people can do better than start a sentence with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So&#8212;&#8212;.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Perhaps they need that split-second to gather their thoughts.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Like-OMG.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Like-OMG.jpg\" alt=\"Like OMG!\" width=\"200\" height=\"115\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6933\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Valley Girl way of speaking began in California\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s San Fernando Valley in the 1970s. It has metastasized through the English-speaking world and spread to sectors populated by those who know better but use it anyway. For instance, this morning on National Public Radio\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Diane Rehm Show, the guests were three experienced Washington DC journalists [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6931","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}