Recently, I said to my Korean teacher (in
Korean), as part of an exercise on sentence endings and vocabulary, I do my homework. I said it wrong.
And then she turned bright red with
embarrassment.
And then I turned bright red with embarrassment.
When I said I do my homework, I didn’t merely say it wrong, I said it bad,
like a bad person would. Specifically, I
said it the way a conceited person would.
I said
I (the honorable I) do my homework
instead of
I (the humble I) do my homework.
In Korean, sentence suffixes and other
endings to words and phrases convey different levels of politeness and
formality, and I had confused the suffixes I was supposed to be using. For example, some sentence endings are
‘plain’ and can be used with children, while others are polite or formal, and
should be used with or refer to people you have just met, or adults of your
social rank. I used the ‘honorific’ form
of the verb ‘to do’ when I referred to myself, which is unacceptable.
I said, 죽체 세요.
I should have said, 죽체 해요.
I actually said it many times and, as
teachers putting students through the paces of rote exercises do, my teacher
more and more sternly asked me, are you sure
죽체 세요 ? After the third try, I was pretty
unsure, and, as students miserably lost on what should be a predictable and
short set of rote exercises do, I asked for mercy. She responded to this surrender in a way that
surprised me – she is supremely patient and kind as a teacher. You
would honor yourself?! she asked almost incredulously. It is the only occasion she has shown any
kind of disapproval in our many lessons together (even though I am hardly a
model student). And I realized, as I
kept saying sukje sehyo, sukje sehyo,
I was not just being wrong, but offensive.
As I kept referring to myself using language reserved for people I
respect, the words I was misusing were becoming a matter not of inaccuracy, but
rudeness. She was flustered, and also,
in a way I think was nearly inescapable even though we were merely practicing
grammar, offended. Looking back, I get
the sense that hearing, in any context, a person refer to themselves using an
honorific form in Korean might hurt the feelings or sensibilities of a Korean
listener.
This kind of compound error in language, where
the rules of conjugation and grammar intersect with politeness, I thought, in the immediate
aftermath, is one particular to some languages – those whose verb conjugations
have to do not only with concepts such as first-person plural or third-person
singular, but also with concepts such as age, family relationship, or
profession. (This is only a provisional
insight, as I am a novice at Korean language and still very much an outsider to
Korean culture.) But then later, talking
to a colleague about my problems doing my Korean homework, we came up with this
scenario: if a Catholic schoolboy says ain’t
to a Nun, will he get rapped on the knuckles after she gasps at the
impropriety?
Isn’t ain’t
also taboo in the U.S.? Does it offend
in the way a mis-placed honorific marker does in Korean culture? What about asking a teacher ‘sup? or huh? How would that play in
a suburban public school? Have you ever
heard an American adult say something to a child such as Miss Amber, is that the way we ask to go to the bathroom? in a way
that performs a kind of overwrought formality?
I can recall many instances in which, somehow, misuse of American
English was a matter of propriety, not proper use.
In these American contexts, there were no
verb stems, pronunciation rules, or regular suffixes that we all learn in order
to identify and maintain social strata and signal deference or intimacy. Cause for celebration of our democratic
culture and its complementary language, perhaps. But absent real knowledge that can be
definitively acquired – such as I need to use this ending when I talk to my Principal and this ending when I am at home, and this ending when I go to the bank – just about any of us could wield
language’s conventions as weapons if we were embedded in particular social
positions (like adult, teacher, or job-interviewer). I could always claim that your use of
language somehow differs from what’s appropriate, what’s polite, or what’s
correct. I could then claim that your language
betrayed you: that your knowledge or performance was somehow not up to the
standards of the event, test, interview or application where you were talking
or writing.
And if a person were to object to your
language use, you could never quite marshal a defense – we don’t have, in the
U.S., a nationalized language, or a language whose grammar is enmeshed with
protocols the way Korean is. So you
couldn’t say, for example, you’re wrong
to link my words to a lack of respect, just look at this textbook that
literally everyone who speaks English uses.
I could cite conventions and so could you, but if I were in the right
position, my citations would signal more power or knowledge than yours. So the seeming
fluidity and freedom in English – the lack of official markers of social rank
and deference -- is, paradoxically, ripe for abuses. I suppose I’m talking about grammar police
here, but I’m really thinking about people who hold on to language as a marker
of class, power, or cultural capital: a self-deputized language national guard. It’s the woman in the suit and the man with
the title who decide what’s polite and appropriate in a conversation, not a
dictionary or national academy of letters.
What rudeness, though -- what impropriety!
-- it is for Americans to insist upon a rigorously ‘correct’ language. English itself and some of our most
democratic ideals should make language in the U.S. so promisingly part and
parcel of social modes that reduce inequalities.
We could all of us American English
speakers learn from my excellent Korean teacher’s grace and patience. In a situation in which her confused student
actually said something irrefutably offensive, she offered mild criticism and
correction, and plenty of cross-cultural understanding. Andrew,
she said, here is the grammar, and here is the culture, do you see how they
work together?
I think we American English speakers
should ask the same thing of ourselves when confronted with language that seems
a little ‘off’ or ‘unconventional’ or even ‘wrong.’ Do you see their
grammar? Do you see their culture? Do you see how they work together?
