The Atrophy of the Hyperbole

A Srinivas Rao                                                         

12-11-2019

I must state that this post is to examine whether this group is still breathing or as some millennial might state have migrated to more "happening” pastures. I thought I might post something that is not an obituary or memoriam and usher in the light through the self-wrapped drapery. I thought i might remark about the atrophy of language in our times.

I am I must admit quite alarmed by the overuse of words like Amazing, Cool, Absolutely, Humongous, Awesome, and other such words that underwhelm the language skills of some of us though this is not strictly with the millennial generation is more alarming by generations twice removed too. I can almost wince at how my teachers at school, who would box my ears with such careless usage. I was often accused of being pretentious if not pedantic in my use of words depending on which teacher admonished me for attracting their attention deliberately at times. I am sure most of them might swoon if not spin in their graves (for most of them were convent Christians) if they heard modern English usage among the great unwashed in WhatsApp English. I know I am inviting opprobrium by sounding elitist in an inverted way. It is as though these words are meant to exaggerate the idea, event, object, accomplishment or person in a manner that flatters but eventually means nothing; a language characterising nihilism. It is not even that this is an evolving usage of the language that adapts and flexes according to occasion. Some of these words don't even fit into context of the usage and yet are thrown liberally in the face of people to demonstrate belonging to some "in-group" that is possibly a fictional if not an imagined community of the "cool" id not callow and callous too.  

Consider the usage of awesome, a most annoying word now that was supposed to mean the quality of inspiring awe, quite like what Moses felt when beholding the burning bush or that of the Prophet when crushed by Gabriel uttered the word "iqra", or even what Arjuna might have felt when beholding the Vishwaroopa. But we can’t watch a spectacle in a mall and call it awesome! That renders pedestrian the whole idea of awe. It is not that the thesaurus provides less synonyms for the word but then wisdom is discrimination in usage. Words have shades of meaning, and resonate when used appropriately. Akin to awesome is the usage of the word amazing. That which never ceases to cause wonder. Adbhuta in the vernacular (I curl my lip when I find some using the term “vernac’ by the same ‘crowd' to indicate those who might have poor English language skills). This is like heaping insult to injury for being one who is so linguistically challenged that notwithstanding an absence of self-awareness compounds it with elitist disdain. There is a vacuity in linguistic imagination in casually using Amazing as equivalent of “nice”. “There is this amazing place you must visit…or that’s an amazing outfit on that amazing girl. Can you imagine the lyrics of the hymn “Amazing Grace” and substitute it for nice grace! How come we are so linguistically impoverished with the dictionary and thesaurus on our fingertips but with gutterspeak on WhatsApp?

Another word is the use of absolutely for all the wrong reasons. Any common assertion can’t be absolute. The absolute in real terms means the ultimate truth. It is the final graveyard of philosophers quibbling on the nature of reality if not truth. It is Brahman, it is "I am that I am" of Yehowah, it is the Mahashunya, the great void of the Buddhist defined in the obverse. Are you going to the party tonight, Absolutely!!! I can see Socrates throwing his cup of hemlock at the person crying he doesn't want to die, forget unexamined life but unexamined language? I remember a quaint but interesting question by a student who asked that if the Jains don't have a concept of absolute in their philosophic categories does it influence the nature of their art?! Wow! That’s a brilliant question. While the teacher sputtered and looked for easy answers the Jains did produce some outstanding small scale metal works that used negative space (just a simple empty cut out of a Keval Jnani in ‘Kayotsarga’ pose) as an obverse of the absolute. That is absolutely amazing!!! Fortunately the usage of the word humongous has declined. Rarely have I seen people use it in the right sense. In most cases it is used as synonymous with amazing or tremendous though its real use pertains to enormous magnitude or of a monstrous size. The first time I heard it a decade or so ago I felt small for not being a part of my little lexicon, it was only upon looking it up I realized my folly.

Alternatively the usage of words like traction, bandwidth, etc have only betrayed that our usage of language is more cabalistic and not individualistic though the proponents of this American slang betray their need to belong to some imagined community of callow but cool membership. Individualism in language must weigh its words not necessarily against gravity but in terms of discovering one’s own idiom. That is not a usage of language like “distressed jeans” deliberately warped to reflect an absent individualism. I recollect an insightful though debatable point made by Fr Valson Thampu the ex-Principal of St Stephen’s that wearing distressed jeans mocks poverty as an inversion, thereby banning them at school (I generally disagree with him on many other things but this).

In India we have had a considerably sophisticated theory of language that puts many a literary theorist to shame today. Apart from the notion that the word nd its meaning are inextricably intertwined in an eternal embrace; it also maintains that words have three levels of meaning. The first is the denotative or "abidha", the second is that it is metaphorical "lakshana", and third that it is suggestive "vyanjana". meaning emerges when there is resonance across levels that is the nature of language and the apposite usage of words. Even with speech the Indian idea is that unuttered speech rests in equilibrium in the recesses of the heart and is "paraa' then it stirs and gives rise to an urge that is noticeable "pashyanti", then it gives a middling thought that becomes choate, and finally explodes as speech "vaikhari". 

I know that some would comment that I am lamenting the loss of not nuance but indicating that I belong to a generation on the lip of senility in making much ado of convention. I believe that I am lamenting the contamination of the commonplace with hyperbole and insisting that the world is so drearily unremarkable that unless highlighted by hyperbole and exaggeration it might slip through our fingers to reveal our own bankruptcy if not absence of the emperor’s robes. But this is reducing the figurative in language to a hypobole if there were a word like that. Else lets invent fun words as synonyms for groovy without excavating an older usage and bedeck them in distressed jeans.