Language in a World Church

by Arthur Henry King

Last October at BYU a symposium on LDS intercultural communications and language concerns was sponsored by the Language Research Center. Many interests in the Church, both in America and elsewhere, were represented. We all knew something about the problems of language and languages in our international Church, and by getting together we were able to help one another to understand these problems further. One of the problems we discussed was the transference from American English to other dialects of English—not so much Canadian, because that is similar to American, but British, Australian, New Zealand, and South African. These four dialects are all different from one another, but they have a number of things in common, distinct from Canadian and American English.

Even little language differences sometimes mean a great deal: all such differences go back to differences of culture and outlook; they may sometimes be maintained passionately by one side or the other and occasionally lead to deep misunderstanding.

The real difficulties are not those that are noticed and known and can be allowed for, but those that are passed by. The fact that flat means a flat tire in American English and apartment in British English may be amusing, but will not normally lead to misunderstanding. The context will usually show that British English bonnet is the same as American English hood and that British English boot is the same as American English trunk; though, as trunk also means a large traveling receptacle and we sometimes have to put trunks into trunks, that one may be slightly confusing.

Far more important are apparently more casual differences. For example, the word quite. When an American woman said to her British hostess at the end of an evening party, “Thank you so much: it was quite interesting,” the British hostess froze in the sense that she had been insulted by a casual remark. She interpreted quite to mean “not as interesting as it should have been.” In the same way we may speak of someone, devastatingly, as “quite nice”: whereas if we say that someone is “quite beautiful,” we mean almost more than very. The trouble is that these shades of meaning aren’t always easy to formulate simply; there may be no general rule where something of this kind depends so much on the context, the tone, or the intonation. “It’s been quite a day” is enthusiastic both in British and American English; and yet it could be ironical.

Here is another example that has caused trouble between myself, an Englishman, and my Canadian wife: I say to her, “Shall we do X or Y?” And she may answer, “I don’t care.” The British English equivalent for this is “I don’t mind.” “I don’t mind” means “Do whichever you please; I’m easy;” whereas “I don’t care” must mean “Don’t bother me with your questions: I’m indifferent,” or “I’m fed up with you, and I’m not going to give you an answer.” My grandmother used to say “Don’t care was hanged.” To a Briton the phrase may be infuriating.

A great many differences don’t interfere with understanding at all, for example, differences of pronunciation; but they may cause irritation. I say laboratory with the stress on the second syllable; the normal American stress is on the first syllable. I say shedule, whereas all my American colleagues say skedule. Now these are matters about which no one should worry, because both pronunciations are equally correct; but it’s surprising how people mild as a rule may wax indignant over such little things. Some of my American friends find it trying that I say Quixote as quicksoat and not kihoati. (What do they say for “quixotic”?) I am using the normal British pronunciation, which Americans regard as uneducated. And the French say ki shot. Education is needed in these matters to produce tolerance.

There is a pamphlet by Professor Albert Marckwardt of Princeton University and Professor Randolph Quirk of University College, London, England, entitled “A Common Language.” It explains the differences between American and British English historically and shows that although American and British English were getting further and further apart until about 1870, since then (due to closer communication) they have been getting closer and closer together.

International varieties of English are no greater and no more confusing or irritating than differences inside countries. A farmer from the Yorkshire dales would have difficulty in understanding a farmer from Cornwall; there are no doubt similar difficulties between regions in the United States.

But even more important than dialect differences (and dialects are often beautiful, sometimes amusing, and nearly always very expressive and need to be preserved) are difficulties of understanding caused by the habits of cliques and groups. Cliques and groups distinguish themselves by using their own kind of slang or jargon. Professionals do it, for example, doctors and lawyers; so do businessmen. Perhaps the worst jargon of all is the bureaucratic one; in Britain there has been an effort in recent years to write official documents that have to be understood by the general public in language that the general public can understand.

Christ taught in simplicity while on earth; but we need to remember that that kind of simplicity is the product of a supreme genius. Only the greatest man who ever lived (who was also the Firstborn Son of God) could produce the utter simplicity of the parable of the Prodigal Son. Such simplicity is sometimes too much for some of us, and we proceed to try and explain the parable of the Prodigal Son in language more complicated than the language Christ himself used. And indeed, in a culture that uses jargon a great deal, we cease to be capable of understanding simple things. Our ancestors were in this matter better off than we: they may not have had much formal education, but they did read the scriptures, and this helped to make their speech straightforward, simple, and expressive. Joseph Smith’s formal education for reading, writing, and spelling was from the scriptures. Joseph Smith was, of course, himself a great genius and could appreciate the work of other geniuses and the highest genius because he had that advantage; otherwise he could not have got out of the scriptures the education that he did; but all of us can get something if we will but read the scriptures.

Surely, therefore, we in the Church need to try as far as possible to follow the pattern of the scriptures in simplicity, although this may need harder work than complexity does. In our little groups and cliques we get in the habit of being understood by others in the cliques, although we may speak in a slipshod, uncontrolled, or gobbledy-gook sort of way; but strictly speaking we should behave as well in our groups and cliques as we do in larger publics. (The parallel here is between the family and public behavior—our behavior in the family should be the best of all behavior.) The more simply we write, the more internationally understood we shall be, even in this complicated matter of English to English, which may be more misunderstood than English to French or German—more misunderstood because so much that we don’t realize is hidden there in the way of difference. But as we have seen above, English to English is a matter of not only British and American English but of all kinds of jargon, including the jargon of psychology, sociology, the physical sciences, and perhaps most of all (because it penetrates our newspapers and magazines more widely) the jargon of literary men. The jargon that we most notice at the moment in the Church is one that has been imported in trying to carry out within the Church something that has its good points but may confuse our actions with our intentions: the practices, insights, and views of behavioralism.

Behind the difficulty about simplicity and the use of jargon lies something deeper: the attitudes of the speakers. On the surface we get worried about words; that worry reflects underneath feelings of uneasiness or self-assertion or both—for example, feelings of patriotic, academic, and religious arrogance or condescension.

Patriotic arrogance may spring from remembering all the good things about our country and forgetting the bad things that other people from other countries may remember. Somebody once wrote a book called The Ugly American; it seemed wrongly to ignore the fact that all cultures and all nations produce ugly types of this kind. A true patriot does not pretend not to notice where his country goes wrong but is prepared to help humbly to bring his country back on to the right track again. We in the Church are in an exceptional position to be able to judge when our countries go wrong, because we have the unimpeachable standards of the gospel against which to measure what our countries do. Only if we apply these standards can we avoid the confusion between being of and in the world.

We need, too, to remember that it is not for us as Mormons to accept other people’s cultures; it is very doubtful if one can create a culture by picking the best of others. In the Church we are building our own culture, which flows from the gospel. And most so-called culture in the world is against the gospel, not for it. It behooves us, therefore, not to be sentimental about either other people’s culture or that of our own country, but to think of all in the light of the gospel.

Politics and government are comparatively superficial things. Habits of behavior between men and women and habits of eating are more fundamental. It is not difficult for a good Mormon to accept that the Constitution of the United States is an inspired document and to be concerned that its principles should be preserved, whether he is an American or comes from some other country. But there may be more difficulty in accepting the American (but not necessarily Mormon) habit of dating in countries that do not practice it. In many social groups and in other countries people believe that dating includes necking and petting (not without some justification). They may therefore reject dating. British youth looks on the habit of having social engagements with more than one person of the opposite sex as a kind of promiscuity. It becomes that much more difficult, therefore, to teach Church doctrine on this matter in Britain. It has to be presented from another angle.

When we know about these reactions, we can use the word dating with more care.

It is an American habit (not necessarily a Mormon one) to eat more sweet things than people do in most cultures. A liking for cookies is not one that could be understood very readily among people who do not go in for sweet things, or who think that children should not have too many sweet things. And some countries do not use baking as the Americans do. Cookie recipes may not be useful everywhere, and the word cookie will not cause the same response (for example in a family home evening song).

We are more prejudiced about our stomachs than we are about our organs of government. Of all things, it is difficult for people to realize that people in other cultures may not do what they do and may not prefer what they prefer.

There is an academic arrogance, usually unconscious (unconscious arrogance is the most dangerous sort), which may appear as condescension. Within the general academic arrogance there are the groupings of scientists and scholars talking among themselves, and often not realizing or bothering that the outside world does not understand this talk. Groups in the academic world often will not take the criticisms that people outside offer (which may be valid), because these criticisms are not put in the “right language”; which means that the language of these groups has become a wall instead of a path.

The gospel should break down all such divisions of language. And great men generally tend toward simplicity. I remember a lecture by Bertrand Russell to the Philosophical Society in Lund, Sweden, in 1934. It was beautifully lucid. It was a kind of dance of simple language, but something very subtle was conveyed by it. Afterwards the chairman of the society told me that he had been disappointed in the lecture; it was far too obvious, he said. I suggested to him that that simplicity had cost Bertrand Russell most of a lifetime. But the chairman didn’t understand.

There is religious arrogance. We Mormons can see it most clearly, of course, in the sects outside our Church. It may stop “educated” people from accepting our Church. The gospel is so simple, so matter-of-fact, so concrete that it cannot be swaddled in the bands of jargon that would make it acceptable! It is this attitude that, ignoring the basis of all Christian faith, thinks the story of finding the Book of Mormon absurd and therefore untenable. There is another attitude, of course, that feels that the story of the finding of the Book of Mormon must be true because the story is so absurd—only an idiot would have invented it, and Joseph Smith was no idiot. Then there is our own religious arrogance in our own Church. I have written some of it deliberately into the last few sentences—can you spot the arrogance? It is not that those sentences are not true, but, for readers outside the Church, they would not be courteous and therefore not effective.

Common to this patriotic, academic, and religious prejudice is language prejudice, the attitude that whatever English I speak, everyone who understands English ought to understand me. This is not true. At the same time, our brief examination has shown us that the differences between the English of classes and groups and cliques in our own country is at least as great as—if not greater than—the difference between American English and Canadian English on the one hand, and forms of British English on the other.

What I have tried to show, then, is that what may be wrong with language will not usually be the language itself but the attitude behind it. In matters of the gospel, if the language comes from the Spirit, we shall catch on to it; because he who speaks with the Spirit speaks with the right attitude, and the right attitude will find the right words. It will also find the hearers who will interpret the right words in the right way.

Without the Spirit there is no communication of fundamental value. It follows that in our efforts to find the right words for our own messages and in our efforts to listen to the messages of others, we must pray for the Spirit to guide and help us. If we do this, we have a much greater hope that our language will be that of the gospel: pure, fresh, and simple.

At the same time we must remember that we have to “study it out in our minds” and ask for the help of the Holy Ghost when we have done so. If we do our best, the Holy Spirit will help us; he will not help us if we are not prepared to do our best. This means that we must ourselves try to be in the right state of mind and be properly informed for what we have to say; then the right language will come.

Let me close with a text that I owe to your editor, Brother Brian Kelly: “I did liken all scriptures unto us that it might be for our profit and learning.” (1 Ne. 19:23.) The language of reasoning is not the language of the scriptures, which are written in the language of the whole man, in order that man might liken them unto himself, to feel, to see with the inner eye, to be made whole.

The scriptures are history, but like all history they must be a parable about ourselves, about us, now. The language of the image, the metaphor, the example, the parable, the story is the language of likening that we can liken unto ourselves. Words that give us sounds and pictures come home to us and touch us. The words of scripture, written under the Spirit, can touch us home: we can understand them with the Spirit. May we try our best to speak and write the truth with simplicity, for then the Spirit will be with us: “A certain man had two sons …”

Photos by Clarke Whitehead