mot juste

Mot juste, we are told by the inimitable Hemingway, is more than just a French phrase thrown into our language to impress and influence. It is a standard, a lifestyle - it means exactly the right word; the one word in the entire language which is exactly suited to a particular desire; the one and only perfect word to describe whatever it is you happen to be describing. I am a big believer in mot juste, and I continue to be dedicated to hunting down the perfect word for every situation, which is not only a personal burden I am willing to carry, but a privilege as well.

Five years ago I began working with youth in our church. After a few months a young man began to attend who made fun of the way I speak (something which did not seem laughable to me.) He accused me of using "fancy words" to "impress" people. I took this rather hard, because it was nothing like what was happening. What was in actual fact occurring was that I was simply speaking the way I always do... I was speaking the way I read. Unfortunately, the young man had no idea what I was saying.

Let me digress for a moment and mention texting (the connection will become clear later.) A typical text message between two teenagers does not look like English. It barely looks like Swahili. It is full of unnecessary punctuation resembling sideways-facing faces, numbers substituting for letters, and invented slang which, as someone who grew up during the eighties, I can testify that we NEVER used.

I always thought this was merely an unfortunate trend, until I read a book about punctuation. Really. In this book the author made the cogent point that such behavior is not merely a matter of personal preference, it is actually rude. What it communicates is the following: "I know that words have proper spelling in our language, but that is a lot of work for my thumbs, and I'm quite busy, and so I'm going to invent characters which have no real meaning and let you work it out for yourself. You may have to say it out loud a few times before you get it. It's like a little puzzle I made just for you."

You see what this does? It takes the whole burden of comprehension and lays it upon the poor wretch who is wondering why he just received a message which looks as though it were accidentally typed out by someone's buttock while the phone was in their back pocket. The responsibility to communicate is not assumed by the person speaking, (which is where it belongs) rather it is foisted upon the person receiving the information. If somebody has something to say, it has historically been believed that he or she has a responsibility to make themselves clearly understood. Apparently, that's too much of a bother these days.

Back to my dilemma. I found the same thing happening in reverse when I was speaking intelligible English to my youth group. One reason they were so quiet while I spoke was they were trying to figure out what some of those funny words meant, or which language I'd borrowed them from. Once I realized what was happening, I faced a very serious problem.

Do I continue to work hard to craft my vocabulary in order to maintain high personal standards, and to impart those standards to others? Or do I continuously lower my style of communication down to the level of monosyllabic grunts and hand gestures which would be fundamentally comprehensible to Bobo the trained gibbon? What is a fellow to do in such a quandary? Should I say "twisty, flexible stick thing" when I really mean "withe?" Or should I say "a sort of name that gets stuck to someone like a title" when I am thinking of "appellation?"

According to the above theory, I should take responsibility to make my meaning clear for the listener; but here I run into a philosophical dilemma. In the first scenario, someone who can speak coherently refuses to match up to their own ability, preferring instead to take the quick and painless route, (for themselves) thus contributing to the already-appalling decline of grammar in our society. In the second case, a brave and lonesome, handsome speaker strives to raise the awareness and linguistic prowess of those within his sphere of influence. So who is right?

We can answer the question by remembering the entirely fictional history of a people who should have existed many thousands of years ago, whom we shall call the Nozirev. The Nozirev can easily be imagined as living somewhere between two countries you've never heard of north of the subcontinent. They had a beautiful, sophisticated, sparkling language called Nozi which was capable of both great subtlety and great specificity. It was rife with poetry to melt the heart and rhetoric to stir the soul. This people produced great orators and musicians and writers, and trade unions, subjugating nearby cultures using nothing more than their wit and their semi-annual pilgrimages to the Shrine of Perpetual Verbiage. All was well, until one enterprising man invented a way of capturing pigeons and training them to return to a previously appointed locale.

Before long, these pigeons were all the rage with the teenagers and young adults living in that land. They took to tying little parchment messages on the pigeons' feet and sending them to their friends. But because of the dear price of ink, and the smallness of the parchment, they had to contrive smaller words, abbreviated phrases, and slang. It is possible that this is where the # sign originated, although we will never know for certain.

Soon, all the teen Nozirev were speaking in Pigeon-Nozi, talking to one another in adumbrated phrases which were neither comprehensible to their elders, nor conducive to their rich literary heritage. Within one generation, the adults and the youth could not communicate, which was a great joy to the young people, but a great sorrow to the adults whose job was to preserve literature, teach children, and hire people to work in fast-food booths. Because of this dichotomy, their entire culture soon fell apart. Every trace of their existence disappeared so completely that today all information about them has to be completely invented.

You may not be able to comprehend what I'm saying here, but it sure makes me feel better to say it.