Is your language appropriate? - The Star

May 21, 2008 By VANCE CARSON

YOU are an employer who is awaiting a young man to come to your office for a job interview. There’s a knock on your door and a smartly dressed fellow in a suit presents himself. You immediately have a good impression of him and something tells you that you’ll be hiring him before the day has ended.

Then he speaks.

“All right brother, how’s it hanging, dude? Oh man, I’m sweating like a pig, it’s like a damn oven in here, and I’m bursting ? got a loo in this crib?”

End of interview! The young man may have dressed well and looked the part, but his sloppy utterance of informal English and his casual manner were entirely inappropriate to the situation.

Here’s another example of inappropriate English.

One of your closest friends comes to your house for tea and he brings his girlfriend with him to meet you. The young woman grins nervously and perches on the outer edge of a sofa cushion, hardly making an impact on its surface. She catches your attention by raising her hand, as if she were addressing a strict elderly schoolmaster, and proceeds to ask you a question.

“Excuse me, sir, I do not wish to be impertinent; however, may I be permitted to ingest a small disc of chocolate-coated shortbread and enjoy temporary refreshment with the hot beverage which you have so kindly offered?”

Instead of being charmed and enchanted by her ludicrously polite manner of speaking, I’m sure you would feel hurt by the young woman’s formal request for a cup of tea and a biscuit. You would certainly feel that her nervousness and formal English usage was the result of her belief that you were some miserly biscuit-clutching troll.

Therefore, when thinking about the practical usage of English, we must consider appropriacy, or the most suitable way to address those to whom we are speaking.

As linguistic anthropologist D.H. Hyme once stated: appropriacy is knowing “when to speak, when not, what to talk about with whom, when, where and in what manner”.

A rule of thumb you can use to know when a situation requires formal or informal English relates to the clothes you are wearing (aside from when you are speaking to someone on the phone or writing to on the Internet, when your clothing style is irrelevant).

If you are wearing smart clothes such as a suit or a nice dress, it is likely that you may be expected or required to speak in a more formal manner than usual. If you are wearing jeans and a T-shirt, then it is likely that you will be conversing in a more relaxed and informal way.

Aside from the level of formality in what we say, we should also consider the tone of what we say. I'm not referring to volume or how loud we say things; I'm referring to whether we are hostile and aggressive, polite and accommodating or mocking and sarcastic.

Our underlying feelings and motives for expressing our opinion can of course change the meaning of what we say, depending on intonation. Personally, I would not recommend that you employ sarcasm as a passport to making friends. Whether or not you speak in formal English, if you say something in a friendly tone, people will feel more at ease in your company.

In terms of appropriacy, there are five more aspects of English usage to consider. Specific language is used according to the situation, its purpose or its function. Therefore, we should think about Setting, Participants, Purpose, Topic and Channel.

Setting

At a job interview, we try to sound competent and confident. At a funeral, we would moderate our language to be softly spoken and respectful. If the wife of a deceased man addressed the assembled crowd of mourners in an excited, rambunctious and jovial manner, cracking jokes and laughing, she would be thought to be mad or perhaps guilty of murdering her late husband.

Participants

When talking to children, one would refrain from swearing or using overly complicated language. If addressing elderly people, we may feel the need to speak more loudly and repeat what we say. Talking to old people or children in the style of a foul-mouthed Los Angeles rapper may confuse your audience and may even award you with a visit from the police.

Purpose

An army sergeant would use sharp, clear and direct instructions in giving orders to his men, without regard to polite or friendly language. Smiling, joking and winking before he politely requests his brave soldiers to run towards enemy machine guns, a friendly sergeant may find his troops hesitating to make the ultimate sacrifice for king and country.

Topic

A doctor, university physicist or inventor would use technical jargon and scientific terminology to explain his latest discovery at a conference on cutting-edge technology.

The inventor may address his scientific peer group in either a formal or informal manner, but he would most certainly approach his research findings with a serious tone and instead of explaining things in “layman’s terms”, the boffin would more likely use jargon, or terms which would not make sense outside a particular field of study.

But if that scientist were to go to a restaurant, he would not ask the waitress to administer sodium chloride and acetic acid to his Gadus Morrhua and sliced tubers. He would more likely ask her to put some salt and vinegar on his cod and chips.

Channel

Hurriedly chatting to a friend on a mobile phone, with a poor signal and rapidly fading battery, may be made more to the point than an informal face-to-face conversation in a relaxed café environment.

Moreover, if we witness a towering inferno in which thousands of people may be burnt alive, we are hardly likely to pay much attention to the kind of English we use. Just as long as the directions we give the fire brigade are clear and understood by the emergency phone operator to whom we speak.

“I say, I hate to be tedious and bothersome but I regret to report that there is a rather obnoxious fire which seems to be cheekily blazing its way to the concrete summit of a large superstructure designed by one of Babel’s renegade architects. Could you dispatch a fire engine forthwith and with a degree of urgency?”

Wrong!

“Hey, how ya doin’? Could ya like send the boys from the brigade down here ASAP, there’s a flame-grilled building in town that sooooooo looks like the Olympic Torch. Maybe you guys should like get a move on, or something ?whatever.”

Wrong!

“Hello. I want to report a major fire at the central city tower, please send help immediately.”

Correct!

So, whether you are a telesales agent in KL who is confused by the negative reaction people in a slum in Britain have to your phone calls, which you conduct in polite and very formal English, or someone who can’t get a job because you use rude slang and street expressions at interviews, I ask you to consider appropriacy before your next disappointment.

Say what you mean and mean what you say. Know to whom to say something and know when, where, how and why you should say it.

Is your English appropriate?

Vance Carson is an EFL English teacher who has taught in Reid Kerr College, Scotland, and SMAPK Kajang.

Source: http://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2008/5/21/lifefocus/21195917&sec=lifefocus