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Desuetude: Vocabulary, The New SAT & Algerian Post-ColonialismBy Sakina B. Fakhri
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There is something lofty in the beauty of fiction--something that hovers just above the world because it cannot live within it; its subject, not perceptible by the visible senses, interacts with the world in tingles; its presence is felt like a nearby thing, upon the skin. There is also the unassailable, banal reality of the contexts that surround such fiction--the creation of it, the appreciation of it, and the death of it--that revolve at the whims of societies. This ostensibly lofty ideal, like a giant Gulliver arrived from the seas, is tied up in the machinery of corporate interests, publishing contracts, and the economic valuation of art.
Yes, Emily Dickinson may have hidden her poems in a box in the attic to be found after her death; but I fear, today, not that Emily Dickinson will not publish her poems, but that she will not write them. We are confronted with a new version of Virginia Woolf's age-old problem of "Shakespeare's sister," the elusive literary genius who might have been (had she not been a woman). We face a new obstacle to literary greatness--something along the lines of "Shakespeare's vocabulary-deprived younger sibling."
I will hazard to posit that the recent changes to the SAT will have a great deal to do with this impending privation of the literary palette. The College Board has announced that, as of spring 2016, the legendary vocabulary portion of the Critical Reading section will be the eradicator of the erudite--words like "pulchritude" and "byzantine," already pushed to the fringes of society, will be smoothly cleared away from a test that is, at least in part, society's most mercenary reflection.
Very real issues have been cited in support of the change: the test's oft-debated economic and racial bias, scores of studies and surveys collected over decades attesting to this fairly self-evident concern. (Well, naturally. The test is biased in favor of the people who wrote it and those just like them; the degree to which this is the case is a matter of analysis and debate, but the inherent truth of the assertion is not the topic of this article. The inherent injustice of it, I hope, is nothing short of self-evident.)
The stripping of the vocabulary section of the SAT addresses a problem that is only peripherally reflected in the area upon which it is being focused: the range of the English vocabulary and the extent to which it is appropriate to expect a student to know it. The new test displaces an emphasis on complex and little-known words--those which add texture and color to a language--in favor of words that are admittedly overused; in fact, it emphasizes these because they are overused. The basis of their argument is that the current exam--with its emphasis on purportedly unencountered words (so-called "SAT Words" that can be found in prep books, not in everyday reading)--favors students who seek expensive resources to aid in their memorization.
The problem with this argument is that it rests upon a very dangerous assumption: that, when it comes to "complex" vocabulary words, people will not know them unless they study them. This is, in fact, a problem--it should not be the basis of a solution. After all, esoteric vocabulary need not be confined to the elite and the publicly successful, and it has not always been.
Take one instance of the Arabic language and its interactions across class lines: Following the French occupation of Algeria in 1962, a strong Arabic vocabulary was retained, according to some theorists, by a primarily domestically-educated female population who had been denied admittance to French-speaking colonialist educational establishments. This valuable native Arabic vocabulary was not taught in colonialist-driven schools--that was the domain of the French language--nor was it passed down through high-priced boutique tutoring agencies. It was transmitted orally, inside the home, from people who had heard the words used before, to people who would then use them. It gave rise to writers in Arabic like Assia Djebar and Ahlam Mosteghanemi, women who contributed vastly to the mythology of a new post-colonial Algeria. It was in this private, so-called "lofty" place of fiction, that versions of national identity were propounded.
Certainly, in America, the situation is markedly different; a dominating foreign source has not impinged itself upon us, denying us swaths of our own language and replacing it with their own. But it has happened in all the little ways--a social pretension associated with use of "SAT Words" in everyday conversation; the expunging of densely convoluted vocabulary (the expunging of precision!) from the short-form journalistic blurb; the constant hints of elitism insinuated behind the love of the English language. Everywhere--including, now, by the heavy hand of the College Board--it is implied that dogged insistence on a profound vocabulary will hold you back. You will not be published; you will not be understood; you will be treated as some sort of iconoclast even in the only industry whose sole purported purpose is to defend and disseminate the worthy works of the English language.
It is possible that it was not always so. English prose did not begin with the most exalted of artistic functions. It was derived from verse primarily for didactic, educational, or legal purposes. The use of English prose for art developed from the use of written sentences for sparse, realistic legal descriptions. Read Robinson Crusoe, one of the earliest pioneers of the English novel, and you will find that many passages consist entirely of lists: of materials Crusoe carried, of things he saw, and of the places he visited. You will find very little introspection, metaphor, or description of feeling. Then, through Bram Stoker's Dracula and a slew of Daniel Defoe novels in the 15th and 16th centuries, this medium evolved into a conduit to personal consciousness--things that could never be stated and perhaps shouldn't be--in public fora. Thereby, we have novels such as Dickens' Bleak House that commented on the Industrial Revolution without being in it; Virginia Woolf's The Waves, a perfect synthesis of poetic and prose expression.
As a writer, it devastates me to think that the art of prose, which has thus far enjoyed so many developments, has devolved into a vehicle for the listing of things ("15 Movies from the 1970s that..."). As an educator, it confounds me that a standardized testing service would confirm tacit acceptance of this by feeding back to the public only the meager vocabulary that it churns out.
It might be argued that the justification of standardized testing does not extend beyond its ostensible function: measure of learning as an access to institututions of greater learning. But the SAT in America does implicitly affect a flow of information to a rather wide audience (nearly every high school student intent on pursuing a four-year university); in fact, no one whom this information does not reach is allowed to proceed through conventional educational/career channels. Until recently, it has been the most universal rite of passage applicable to success in a range of professions. Parallels to the movie Pleasantville--the lack of valuation of color--and to Orwell's iconic novel 1984 come to mind: The dictionary is pared down only to what is directly applicable, as deemed by an authoritative force controlling the rungs.
Among the ruins of buildings and the memories of individuals, what remains of literate societies are their written records; it is important that we do have the words to articulate precisely what we mean, for we will not be forever standing beside our writings to explain them.
Yes, Emily Dickinson may have hidden her poems in a box in the attic to be found after her death; but I fear, today, not that Emily Dickinson will not publish her poems, but that she will not write them. We are confronted with a new version of Virginia Woolf's age-old problem of "Shakespeare's sister," the elusive literary genius who might have been (had she not been a woman). We face a new obstacle to literary greatness--something along the lines of "Shakespeare's vocabulary-deprived younger sibling."
I will hazard to posit that the recent changes to the SAT will have a great deal to do with this impending privation of the literary palette. The College Board has announced that, as of spring 2016, the legendary vocabulary portion of the Critical Reading section will be the eradicator of the erudite--words like "pulchritude" and "byzantine," already pushed to the fringes of society, will be smoothly cleared away from a test that is, at least in part, society's most mercenary reflection.
Very real issues have been cited in support of the change: the test's oft-debated economic and racial bias, scores of studies and surveys collected over decades attesting to this fairly self-evident concern. (Well, naturally. The test is biased in favor of the people who wrote it and those just like them; the degree to which this is the case is a matter of analysis and debate, but the inherent truth of the assertion is not the topic of this article. The inherent injustice of it, I hope, is nothing short of self-evident.)
The stripping of the vocabulary section of the SAT addresses a problem that is only peripherally reflected in the area upon which it is being focused: the range of the English vocabulary and the extent to which it is appropriate to expect a student to know it. The new test displaces an emphasis on complex and little-known words--those which add texture and color to a language--in favor of words that are admittedly overused; in fact, it emphasizes these because they are overused. The basis of their argument is that the current exam--with its emphasis on purportedly unencountered words (so-called "SAT Words" that can be found in prep books, not in everyday reading)--favors students who seek expensive resources to aid in their memorization.
The problem with this argument is that it rests upon a very dangerous assumption: that, when it comes to "complex" vocabulary words, people will not know them unless they study them. This is, in fact, a problem--it should not be the basis of a solution. After all, esoteric vocabulary need not be confined to the elite and the publicly successful, and it has not always been.
Take one instance of the Arabic language and its interactions across class lines: Following the French occupation of Algeria in 1962, a strong Arabic vocabulary was retained, according to some theorists, by a primarily domestically-educated female population who had been denied admittance to French-speaking colonialist educational establishments. This valuable native Arabic vocabulary was not taught in colonialist-driven schools--that was the domain of the French language--nor was it passed down through high-priced boutique tutoring agencies. It was transmitted orally, inside the home, from people who had heard the words used before, to people who would then use them. It gave rise to writers in Arabic like Assia Djebar and Ahlam Mosteghanemi, women who contributed vastly to the mythology of a new post-colonial Algeria. It was in this private, so-called "lofty" place of fiction, that versions of national identity were propounded.
Certainly, in America, the situation is markedly different; a dominating foreign source has not impinged itself upon us, denying us swaths of our own language and replacing it with their own. But it has happened in all the little ways--a social pretension associated with use of "SAT Words" in everyday conversation; the expunging of densely convoluted vocabulary (the expunging of precision!) from the short-form journalistic blurb; the constant hints of elitism insinuated behind the love of the English language. Everywhere--including, now, by the heavy hand of the College Board--it is implied that dogged insistence on a profound vocabulary will hold you back. You will not be published; you will not be understood; you will be treated as some sort of iconoclast even in the only industry whose sole purported purpose is to defend and disseminate the worthy works of the English language.
It is possible that it was not always so. English prose did not begin with the most exalted of artistic functions. It was derived from verse primarily for didactic, educational, or legal purposes. The use of English prose for art developed from the use of written sentences for sparse, realistic legal descriptions. Read Robinson Crusoe, one of the earliest pioneers of the English novel, and you will find that many passages consist entirely of lists: of materials Crusoe carried, of things he saw, and of the places he visited. You will find very little introspection, metaphor, or description of feeling. Then, through Bram Stoker's Dracula and a slew of Daniel Defoe novels in the 15th and 16th centuries, this medium evolved into a conduit to personal consciousness--things that could never be stated and perhaps shouldn't be--in public fora. Thereby, we have novels such as Dickens' Bleak House that commented on the Industrial Revolution without being in it; Virginia Woolf's The Waves, a perfect synthesis of poetic and prose expression.
As a writer, it devastates me to think that the art of prose, which has thus far enjoyed so many developments, has devolved into a vehicle for the listing of things ("15 Movies from the 1970s that..."). As an educator, it confounds me that a standardized testing service would confirm tacit acceptance of this by feeding back to the public only the meager vocabulary that it churns out.
It might be argued that the justification of standardized testing does not extend beyond its ostensible function: measure of learning as an access to institututions of greater learning. But the SAT in America does implicitly affect a flow of information to a rather wide audience (nearly every high school student intent on pursuing a four-year university); in fact, no one whom this information does not reach is allowed to proceed through conventional educational/career channels. Until recently, it has been the most universal rite of passage applicable to success in a range of professions. Parallels to the movie Pleasantville--the lack of valuation of color--and to Orwell's iconic novel 1984 come to mind: The dictionary is pared down only to what is directly applicable, as deemed by an authoritative force controlling the rungs.
Among the ruins of buildings and the memories of individuals, what remains of literate societies are their written records; it is important that we do have the words to articulate precisely what we mean, for we will not be forever standing beside our writings to explain them.