My friend laughed at something I said, and asked, “Who else would your self-portrait be of?” My discussion with Mary Hanna Wilson, an artist, and a Trivial Pursuit player, was about sketching. During the conversation, I committed the kind of verbal error that often irritates me. I told her that I had done a “self-portrait of myself.” She immediately latched onto the comment and nudged me off my self-built linguistic pedestal. And I thought of how many times I have seen programs — Ok, Judge shows — where someone testifies to having seen something “with my own eyes.” My immediate thought models my friend’s inquiry: “Who else’s eyes would you have used to see?” Or someone might say, “I heard it from his own mouth.” I can’t argue against this too much, as it might have been heard from someone else’s mouth, but why not use, “I heard him say it?”
So, we have our own eyes, his own mouth, and from June Jordan, the poet and essayist, a controversial young-adult novel called “His Own Where.” The 15-year-old protagonist is trying to find a place to call his own, one that he can share with his girlfriend. Published in 1971, the novel ignited some controversy for its use of Black English and unsparing sexual attitudes among young African Americans in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of New York City. The book was nominated for the National Book Award and made The New York Times list of “The Most Outstanding Books” of 1971.
When I was the manager of a small loan office in Madera California, I answered the phone and the caller asked for me by name. “This is he,” I replied. The caller was thrilled to hear my response, saying, “Oh, my: Your mother taught you well.” My generally careful use of language is the outgrowth of the demands of my abusive father, who demanded that his children speak “the language” correctly, always. No slang, no shortcuts, under penalty of a severe beating. When I entered college after quitting a ten-year job, I majored in English, and loved my creative writing classes. I was also an avid consumer of The New York Times, and a columnist who delivered “The Writer’s Art.” I savored every word that James J. Kilpatrick wrote, and it wasn’t until I read Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff’s book “The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle and The Awakening Of A Nation,” that I found that I had been enamored of a man who had been an ardent segregationist and had previously declared that “Negroes (were) inferior to whites.” I honed my language under the tutelage of a child abuser and a racist. And as Zach Braff said in the movie “Garden State,” there’s that. I guess I have that.
As I was crafting this gem, I heard another trigger: “It is what it is.” I don’t even try to figure out what this empty statement might mean, but when I watch my judge shows, the phrase “Res ipsa loquitur” will be tossed about. Legal people such as lawyers and judges, use it. It is Latin for “the thing speaks for itself.” Maybe that is what it is.
I know that language evolves; I’m reminded of that whenever I hear someone pronounce the verb “ask” as “ax.” My Chambers Dictionary of Etymology notes that “ax” is a Middle English variant of “axen.” Ax was “an accepted literary form of the verb until about 1600.” It is still used today in “dialectal speech.” But the usage still irritates me.
My own fingers were used to deliver these, my own words.
cjon3acd@att.net