I. The Language of Power: A Brief Theoretical Background
Several years ago, in preparation for the Klingenstein Summer Institute, I shadowed an eleventh grade student (let's call him Tommie) at a well-regarded independent school in the South. By the end of the day, I felt a bit less content about the way I had been performing my job as an English teacher. Ideally, most English departments in the country teach students to be flexible with language and to use it in many ways. Every student deserves to leave high school with the ability to analyze and create reports, responses to literature, narratives, and persuasive essays. We teach these forms of writing because experience has demonstrated that students will find opportunities to interpret them or use them again during their college careers and beyond. Ironically, we seem to put less emphasis (if any at all) on a form of reading and writing that affects every student after high school: the reading and writing of power.
Fifty years ago, George Orwell warned us about the pernicious uses of language in his essay "Politics and the English Language." When he wrote that "[Our English language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts" (391), he challenged all English teachers. Reading and writing is not simply an exercise; reading and writing has a direct connection to the way we behave in our day-to-day lives. To take Orwell seriously means to teach beyond the texts laid out in our course descriptions. If we truly want to shape students' writing, according to Orwell, we have to shape the quality of their thinking and perhaps even the quality of their lives.
Several decades later, David Shenk, a noted cultural commentator, extended and revised Orwell's premise in Data Smog , his scintillating book about the negative effects of technology:
Society, as we all know from experience, is becoming inexorably more crass. We are witnessing the new reign of trash TV, hate radio, shock jocks, tort litigation, publicity stunts, excessively violent and sarcastic rhetoric. Films are ever more sexually explicit and violent. Advertising is noisier, more invasive, and frequently skirting the bounds of taste… Profanity is up, and common decency is down. A family-hour CBS sitcom character brags that, in order to keep the romance in his marriage, he "grabs her ass!" Such lines are not driven by loose morals, as crusader Bill Bennet has charged, but by the desire to capture audience in a glutted media market. (Shenk 103)
Here we have two erudite thinkers, both challenging English teachers, whether directly or indirectly. Orwell, in his way, holds English teachers personally responsible for the ills of the world; Shenk implies that the future will be pretty bleak if we don't find a way to plug the ears of our students. I'm not sure who is more correct, and I don't think it matters. Ultimately, both writers underscore the fact that our students are perpetually bombarded and potentially corrupted by the language pumping through society.
I see this as a genuine opportunity.
For if power flows toward us through language, attempting to shape how we see the world, how we vote for our leaders, and how we spend our money, then language, if used properly, can also provide a means to power. While students should leave a high school English program with the ability to discuss literature in a sophisticated way, and the ability to write a provocative thesis statement, they should also have the tools to recognize and debunk language that implicitly seeks to assert, gain, or acquire power. Likewise, students must know how to assert their own power (responsibly of course) by employing the written word in the proper fashion.
II. A Student's Eye View: What We're Missing about What They're Missing
When I look back over my notes from my day with Tommie at his top-tier independent school, I am made incontrovertibly aware of the importance of teaching the reading and writing of power. During my day with Tommie, I encountered the stress of having to juggle a multitude of different teacher expectations (quizzes, tests, projects, homework); whenever Tommie and I were not dealing with the expectations of teachers, we had to navigate the public relations web of teenage social events, relationships, and gossip. Inevitably, what I learned in math spilled over into what I learned about the three girls Tommie was thinking about asking to the prom, and this concoction mixed in with the list of homework assignments I had copied down and the myriad facts and perspectives that various teachers tried so hard to convey.
Later that night, although I was exhausted, I could not sleep. We had done so much, but I could pinpoint no tangible accomplishment. More troubling to me, as an English teacher, was the fact that so much had been said, so many messages had been sent, but no time had been set aside for student reflection. I was able to make sense of the day only because I had compiled thirty pages of notes and typed them up in a concise summary. In doing so, I learned the difference between a teacher who speaks just to pass the time and a teacher who speaks because she truly wants to help a student understand a discipline. I learned about the various ways certain students use their eyes to exclude other students. I learned that teenage slang is actually a highly expressive language, wherein serious messages are relayed.
But Tommie would never have the time to reflect on all that had been said. After I left, he went to lacrosse practice, followed by homework, followed by a nightly IM ritual, followed by bedtime … and the next day he would be swept back into the blender of high school life, having drawn no conclusions, having made no meaning out of the raw experiences of his high school life.
English teachers across the country make their living by helping students make sense of difficult texts. After spending a single six-hour day with/as a student, I realized that we have to do more. We have to help students make sense of the texts of their lives. The most important (and subversive) activity we can teach to students, therefore, is the act of listening closely to the language they hear and the language they use. They must learn to take language seriously whether it is presented in a classroom or a locker room. And we (teachers) must not limit our study of language to the elements of plot and character, the nuances of grammar, and the memorization of vocabulary words. We cannot allow our students to walk out of our classrooms on a daily basis without the realization that they have to read the world in the same way that they read The Great Gatsby . If their analytical skills do not extend beyond the complexities of Hamlet or the unpacking of an extended metaphor, they will never grasp the complicated and uses of language in society.
III. Teaching Students to See Power: A Text and Suggestions
In my Satire class, one of the best conversations we have, year in and year out, emerges from a careful scrutiny of Gulliver's language at the start of the second part of Gulliver's Travels . While reading Part I, we come to know Gulliver as a slightly gullible, highly objective observer. He seems to have no interest in manipulating the impressions of his reader. At the start of Part II, though, his language is suddenly different. He adopts an official tone studded with words that only a sailing specialist would understand. After reading about how Gulliver and his crew "hauled off upon the Lanyard of the Whipstaff, and helped the Man at the Helm" (80) students generally come to class in a huff. They want to know "why Gulliver doesn't sound like himself."
I quickly make use of their frustration by asking them to consider the possible motivations behind such language. Inevitably, they come up with two interpretations: Gulliver is in a situation that he cannot control; therefore, he uses a bold and formal language to give off the illusion of power. Or, after an embarrassing end to Part I (where Gulliver is impeached in Lilliput), and an embarrassing start to Part II (where Gulliver is again stranded on an island), Gulliver uses formal language to assert a false sense of intelligence and power.
So begins our conversation about the ways in which power can be buried in language. After we discuss the introduction to the second part of Gulliver's Travels , I ask students to come up with other instances where they feel that formal language has been used to establish the power of a speaker over a listener or a reader. They immediately mention political speeches, historical movements, and the law, since, in their minds, the language of legal experts is notoriously complicated. This past year, I even had one savvy student mention the mutual fund scandal where fund managers misled their shareholders with foggy reports about their funds.
I push the conversation a bit by distributing passages from Orwell's "Politics and the English Language." Students get a charge out of the passage where Orwell attacks euphemisms:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification . Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers . (399)
From this point, I notice that a switch has been flicked on in the minds of many of my students. They rarely allow a cliché to fly around the room without questioning what it really means. They come to class with questions about political reports they hear on the radio, commercials they see on television, and messages they see in certain films or television programs. Insights from authors like Nathanael West, Don DeLillo, and Kurt Vonnegut, combined with the penetrating films of directors like Stanley Kubrick ( Dr. Strangelove ) and Mike Nichols ( The Graduate ) help to keep the conversation afloat for the remainder of the semester.
Although I make it a point to never push a political agenda on my students, I like to think that my Satire course will make them aware of the fact that political agendas (some of which are patently dangerous) exist in many of the texts they will come into contact with outside of a school setting.
IV. Teaching Students to Write Power: A Text and Suggestions
In my American Literature of Diversity class, my main goal is quite different from the goal I set for my Satire class. Instead of trying to teach students to spot language that contains ulterior motives, I try to teach them how to use language to acquire a base of power. I begin by choosing texts that model this activity. Not surprisingly, texts written by or about minorities (the core content of the course) present us with a constant array of passages that speak directly to the notion of language and power.
I generally begin this course with an examination of Native American culture, and I begin the Native American unit by showing some clips from John Wayne's classic film, The Searchers . Most students have heard of John Wayne, and many of them are proud to announce that their fathers or grandfathers frequently watch his movies. During the first scene I show from The Searchers , students quickly recognize the "Cowboys and Indians" dichotomy established in the film. The Indians, of course, are portrayed as shadowy, violent, and unpredictable savages. Whenever they are mentioned, the women and children shudder. Whenever they are depicted, they are unfriendly and vicious. One of the most telling scenes in the film involves a white girl who has been taken into captivity by the Native Americans. When John Wayne finally catches up to her she has evidently contracted some kind of grave mental illness. She cannot hold a normal conversation with him, and she is deemed to be a lost cause. Apparently, she has seen such horrors and undergone such painful experiences while living with the Indians that she cannot regain her sanity.
Shortly after we watch and discuss the John Wayne clips, we begin Black Elk Speaks , an oral history from a Native American medicine man. Black Elk's book begins with a humble statement: "My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and it if were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it; for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when they bend him like a heavy snow" (1)? This voice is humble and kind, and it expresses an extreme sensitivity towards its audience–in short, the Indian presence in Black Elk Speaks is nothing like the Indian presence in The Searchers .
As students read about the hardships of Black Elk's tribe (constantly on the run, constantly hungry, constantly depleted by brutal deaths inflicted by White settlers), the image of Native Americans suggested in The Searchers begins to crumble. As students read on and come across alternative versions of historical events (i.e., the "Butchering at Wounded Knee"), they also realize that the history books they read may not always be entirely accurate.
At this point in the course, some students become quite cynical. They begin to feel that they cannot trust the media or the standard histories they encounter–when I sense a cynical tide rising, I am always quick to point out that Black Elk Speaks is a subjective account. Black Elk is bringing his own biases to the telling of his tale, and he certainly did not understand the need for modernization that was sweeping the nation when his people were removed from their lands. I also remind students that the text of the book, much like the message in a game of "telephone", passed from Black Elk, to a translator, to John Neihardt's daughter (who transcribes it), to John Neihardt (who ultimately shapes the narrative in his own poetic way). After this information is revealed, the conversation usually grinds to a halt. Students are rightfully confused, and someone will ask a question such as, "If we can't trust images in the media, and we can't trust first-hand accounts, then whom can we trust?"
Students who demand an answer at this point are likely to be frustrated, and technically, they have missed the point. The truth is never simple and should never be entrusted to one article, one book, one film, one writer, or one teacher. If I can encourage students to scrupulously examine the images and the conventional wisdom that bombards them on a daily basis–in the exact same way that they would scrupulously examine a metaphor in a poem or a character in a short story–then I feel like I have done my job.
Ultimately, then, Black Elk Speaks is important for the kinds of things that all English teachers love (its symbolism, its gripping narrative, and its cultural details), but it is also important because it shows that the simple act of speech can be so subversive and unsettling. As Vine Deloria, Jr., writes in the introduction to the University of Nebraska Press edition of the text:
The most important aspect of the book… is not its effect on the non-Indian populace who wished to learn something of the beliefs of the Plains Indians but upon the contemporary generation of young Indians who have been aggressively searching for roots of their own in the structure of universal reality… They look to it for spiritual guidance, for sociological identity, for political insight, and for affirmation of the continuing substance of Indian tribal life, now being badly eroded by the same electronic media which are dissolving other American communities. (xiii)
This book, therefore, teaches students an important lesson about language. Although Black Elk appeared to be a great healer among his people, he made his most powerful and far-reaching contribution to his tribe when he told his story.
I drive home the insights derived from this text by putting my students in charge of someone else's story. I send them out to collect oral histories from the community. Since the course deals with diversity in America, they have to speak to someone who has come to America from another country or who has tried to remain true to a cultural practice that is unique to a different part of the world. Inevitably, students grow close to the people they interview, and they want to tell their stories as clearly as possible. They want to do a good job because the assignment has become personal. Someone's life history is not a thing to play with, especially when that person will serve as the final reviewer of the assignment.
Finally, we publish these stories on the school Intranet. This adds a few new wrinkles to the discussion about power. Some people don't want their story to be told in a forum where many people will see it. Some people cannot tell their story. For example, a Columbian student that I worked with several years ago interviewed his aunt. She had been kidnapped in Columbia, and she told a very distinctive story. The student could not publish the story because he was worried that the kidnappers might see it and then try to kidnap him. Other people want to carefully control the details in their story when they find out it will be published, and of course, this leads to an interesting conversation about public relations and the manipulation of public images.
V. The Conversations of a Lifetime
One of my oldest friends works in a financial institution. We frequently get together to talk about the "good old days" when we ate lunch together everyday in the school cafeteria and talked about our lives as they evolved. Even though we are very different, we remain close because of the foundation of those lunch table conversations. They meant something, and they mattered, in the same way all conversations in high school should mean something and matter.
When my friend tells me about his job, he usually complains that he is not allowed to be himself. Although he is naturally gregarious and loves to "throw the bull," he spends his days juggling financial jargon that doesn't mean a thing. "It's all smoke and mirrors," he tells me, "nothing like the kinds of conversations you must have at work."
He's absolutely right. My job is special because I get to have conversations for a living. Whether I'm writing a comment on a student's paper, urging her to revise her thesis, or pulling a student aside to tell him how much I enjoyed his performance in the school play, I have a hidden incentive every time I communicate–something I say might really mean something; something I say might help students make sense of their lives.
Bibliography
Elk, Black and Neihardt, John. Black Elk Speaks. Nebraska: Nebraska University, 1979. Press.
Orwell, George. "Politics and the English Language." In The Norton Sampler, edited by Thomas Cooley. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002.
Shenk, David. Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels . New York: Penguin Books, 2003.