procrastination is a fairy godmother; enjoy her gifts

yes, it has been ages. yes, i forgot you. no, i am not at all concerned by this. mostly because i doubt you, my Nonexistent Readers, are either.

regardless, i was reading the Aeneid a month ago, and there was an assignment for one of those 'reader response' journals, and i think i made quite a point during one of the 'entries'. i will therefore offer it as good tidings, and come up with something more recent in a few weeks.
end of term exams are nigh, and i haven't yet figured out if i shall be dining on dashed dreams after they've finished with me.

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Aeneas Needs To Chill Out

Aeneas is continuously referenced as pious and righteous and all manner of bleeding kittens from his rectum, but there is a scene wherein even he winds up losing his seemingly endless supply of control – the slaughter of all those Italians before he finally fells Turnus. Is that a What The Hell Hero moment, or is it justifiable in the face of everything that’s just happened in the last few books?

Everyone can understand the feeling of losing control when under duress, and by this point, Aeneas was definitely cracking. Virgil notes that Aeneas’ anger was “excited by the treachery of Turnus, / whose chariot and horses have been carried / far off, and having often pleaded with / Jove and the altars of the shattered treaty” (book XII, lines 666-669). Then, the typically pious soldier goes berserk and starts slaying Turnus’ men. Virgil doesn’t seem to have a problem with the brutal warfare that Aeneas wages – and it’s not like he’d been a gentle person before, either – and one could suggest that the Italians and Etruscans brought Aeneas’ Mars-assisted wrath on themselves when they broke the treaty. I feel like seeking bloody therapy for his anger issues is against Aeneas’ own promises to the people he intends to live among. Killing everyone’s relatives isn’t going to endear you to the locals, which could cause him trouble down the line, whenever Fate decides to stop backing him. Not that he should have avoided bloodshed if anyone was actively attacking him, but Aeneas should have just gone after Turnus and Juturna. If his devotion to that death he sought to give had remained single-minded, I feel like this whole affair would have been done with so much sooner.

oh hey, i totally forgot about this blog

The Fumes Of Sighs Sink Ships. original; prompt assignment; pg; 1073 words [written in like, 8 hours]
prompt: create tension or even contradiction between physical behaviour and dialogue.

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The flock disperses, and you’re wresting free a notebook from your backpack when she’s suddenly glowing in front of you, dropping her book on your desk.

“Hi!” Her eyes are bright, her smile is downright luminescent, and she’s doing that tapping thing with her neon varnished nails like she’s nervous. Instead of responding, you cleverly gape at her, but you don’t seem to lose face; she’s not paying attention.

“So, you’re real good with this literary s…theory…stuff, right? Since I made sure to beat out the competition for your services, think you’d be willing to partner with me - help a buddy out?” her expression is cute, that head tilt furthering the effect of her lopsided smile, and you are a dirty disgusting sap.

“Oh, uh-yeah, uh…I’m all about enriching other people…and…Shakespeare.” You have no idea what you’re saying, but maybe if you smile the whole time, she’ll just go along with it.

“Fantastic,” she declares, and when an unsuspecting fellow classmate gets up to sharpen his pencil, she drags his desk over beside yours and plops herself down. Chin on hand and wide-eyed, she turns her ‘I am a fascinated pupil’ look on you.

“All right: Romeo and Juliet. Tell me about it…what’s the tragedy?” You are aiming for an authoritative-yet-friendly tone, and you think you mostly succeed, because she’s rolling her eyes but still smiling at you.

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me?” She leans sideways, not breaking eye contact as her face gets closer, and then bats her eyelashes. You think you understand the joke.

Cautiously – because God, how embarrassing would being wrong be – you incline your head like you plan to impart something profound. Constructing something witty instead, you let your mouth hang open and try to remember to breathe through your nose; “What, have you never learnt by doing?”

She snorts, “Often.” Her chin takes flight from its perch on her palm, and she turns to squint at the potentially legible scribbles on the chalkboard.

You suspect there has been some miscalculation, on your part.

“So, why didn’t they just run away?” she randomly bursts, before enough awkward silence has passed for you to come up with something to break it.

As you have spent the last few moments silently self-berating for reasons you don’t quite understand, you have completely lost the thread. “…Who?”

This time, her smile slow burns like acid. “Romeo? Juliet? The people in the play? ”

You have long suspected that you live in a Woody Allen film. Therefore, you are privy to the reason why he only makes movies, and never TV shows; the sheer amount of social incompetence involved in such a concept is too exhausting for any actor to maintain on a weekly basis. “Uh…why should they have to?”

She fixes her ‘see me unimpressed’ look on you, but you warm to your subject; this terrain is well-traveled. “Well, I mean…if you had gotten a boyfriend – a husband – would you expect to need to flee the country and your family just to live? No, you would not. And that’s the point; the feud between families was so bad that they couldn’t even associate with the same people. It was ridiculous and pointless.”

She snorts again, but Shakespeare seems to warrant less derision than you apparently did. “Worst. Breakup. Ever.”

“Well Romeo and Juliet died at the end, yeah, but they technically didn’t break up –”

“No not them. Although they weren’t technically really together, so I guess they never broke up either.” Her eyes have closed, and the heel of her palm is now supporting her cheekbone.

Your eyes shift to the bulletin board on the right of their own accord. “Uh, did you read the book? Because they got married.”

“Did you?” She shot back, eyes still closed. “Because their entire relationship was shorter than Kevin Federline and Britney Spears’ marriage.”

You are proud to not really know who she’s talking about, but her tone – and the fact that the professor will think she’s sleeping and mark the both of you down for it – has begun to grate. “Well since you know so much about it, why did you need my help?”

“I was sleeping during the lecture; I have no idea what we’re supposed to be doing. You’re the one who answers like, every question.” With each sentence, she looks and sounds progressively more like she’s falling back asleep. Her hair is a bit knotty where she’d tangled her fingers near the beginning of class, and she seems strangely duller than you remember her being just five minutes ago.

You still kind of want to help her out. “We’re supposed to analyze the varying…ah… opinions, I guess, of the characters on marriage and love.”

She lifts her head to stare at you with bleary eyes. “What opinions? Juliet tricks Romeo into marrying her because he wants to do her.” She does that snorting thing again. “He would have been better off staying with that Rose Lee chick, even if she didn’t put out, or whatever.”

That’s…an unusual interpretation. “Well no, he…I mean he liked Rosaline, but Juliet caught his eye because…um,” you have no idea what drew him to Juliet. Something about how she’d been shining bright – which is a weird way to say she was beautiful; it’s not like she would have been glowing neon or anything. “Ok, marriage is a long way to go for sex.”

“Well, you know; the things guys’ll do to get laid,” she says, flippant. At least she looks awake again. “Wait, is that why it’s a tragedy? Because everyone in those families was an idiot?”

You stare at her. She, finger-combing those snarls out of her hair, raises her brows, waiting. “...Yes! See, there you go! Impulsiveness with infatuation or with quarreling is much frowned upon by Shakespeare. Well done.”

She looks you up and down; only the one eyebrow still arched now, but doesn’t say anything. She just picks up her book and her bag, yawns, and meanders off. Around you, the classroom is a flurry of movement; the other students are packing away their books and laughing their way out the door. The class had ended at an unusually convenient time, allowing you to wrap up – sort of – your long, strange trip of a conversation before coming to a close.

this is a post of mildly-intellectual delirium.

i have a fantastic relationship with myself. there rarely is any cognitive dissonance in my mind or soul, and my body and brain generally harmonize beautifully.

i think that's how many people start out, as children. all aspects of them understand when they are hungry and when they are tired and when they need to run around, and when they need someone soft to hold them, and neither mind nor brain have any compunction with this. all is well.

then slowly, often only subconsciously, one's brain realizes that one's body does not always come through when needed. that clever mental organ registers obstacles in a path, and charts routes around them, but the feet plod along, too large or too ill-coordinated to change course at the right moment, or to configure the correct trajectory adjustments, and the body stumbles. bangs its knee into a coffee table that the brain swears was just a little left of where those confounded feet were supposed to be. and if the mind is healthy enough, the brain figures out how to adapt to this realization about the body's limitations, to regulate the responses of the body and tune the reflexes in accordance with the way the brain processes stimuli. the soul copes, and all aspects melodize in sync once again, dissonance resolved.

then other people come onto the scene.

for some reason, many children come to believe that the views of society trump all other data/stimuli. in terms of sexuality, in terms of propriety, in terms of acceptable 'white' lies, in terms of acceptable 'blackballing' discrimination, etc. so if the body wants sex with men, or the soul is repulsed by an unwanted acquaintance, etc, society informs the brain that these needs and desires must be repressed, and whichever particular collective reality of 'the times' be maintained.

i never showed up for that lesson in civilization-building.

when confronted with constraints on my behavior, handed down to my brain from an entity outside myself, i would analyze each order. for every entreaty that was, once stripped bare of marketing, discovered to be bare also of logical structure, i tallied up another disobedience. in short, my rationally motivated mind realized that, if my body is not infallable, neither can my brain be. to all internal sectors, a message is conveyed - regulate how much the brain relies on input from other persons when formulating a decision. and that was all i needed to do. inner harmony stabilized, and checks & balances in place, i could get on with my life sans the identity crises that so commonly plague teenagers.

so i did.

i am the seagull... no, that's not it. i'm an actress!

this is not a long post, but the quote is gargantuan, because the person who wrote the original is nearly as loquacious as i am.

****

once again Jacob, i love you, and your strangely philosophical recaps of a fucking tv show.

"Everything that rises must converge, and all that. Tending to one's own garden; being at peace. No, it sounds like settling when you say it that way. Living is not about complacency. But there comes a point when you realize some very important shit. I don't know all the things, I probably know very few of the things, but the things I know, which number exactly four, are as follows:

1) Nobody is watching you on secret cameras, so stop worrying about it. You'd be surprised how much pointless shame you can shed every day just by looking at the fucked-up thing you did and thinking about how fucked up it was for a few minutes. Then, drink a glass of water and get the fuck over yourself.

2) Your reputation is everything, but it's also totally recoverable. People are more worried about their shit than they will ever be about yours, and are looking for any opportunity to cut you a decent break, just so they don't have to think about you anymore. Your reputation is made up entirely of acts and behaviors, as perceived by other people (only the ones whose opinions are relevant). Do a thing enough times, and that's the person you are. Everything that happens to you from the direction of other people is entirely a reaction to this person. If you don't like those reactions, do a new thing instead, and after just a few times you will magically become a new person. Monitor the new responses.

3) Generally, we only look closely at the situation when it has become untenable. That's rough, because when the situation is untenable is precisely the point at which your best bet is to accept it as it is, and think about ways to change it. Instead, when things are bad is when we're most likely to wig out and act like idiots. You can't change what is until you're willing to look at what is, the ingredients and causes, and the ingredients it contains for the next thing. It changes every second, so you might as well be in charge of that and utilize your vast opportunities to choose the next what is.

4) Every minute that goes by, one of your futures dies. That's scary and it's sad, but it also means clarity. That sense of purpose S was talking about last week. Getting older means splitting less of your hope and energy into those million possible futures, and keeping more of it for yourself -- right now -- to keep moving forward toward what you really do want. And that's what Lily means. It's not about giving in, it's about giving up the maybes, one by one, until you become whole.*

*(This part will never actually happen, but you have to keep pretending it's going to, for your entire life. That's what Blair's Voltaire quote means: Hoe your own garden, for the rest of your life, because it is art, and it is very simple, and it is very hard to pull off correctly.)"

[TWoP recap of a Gossip Girl (yes you read that right) episode]

the thing about never being whole is what really gets me, because i interpret it like this:
being whole is about the essence of a person. the every reaction to any scenario. we are those little artsy coffee/tea mugs from Portugal; from the moment we are thrown into a specified shape, that is how we define ourselves. putting a handle on it, sticking it in the kiln and painting it, swirling little white spiral designs on the side, firing it up again, drinking out of it, etc - that's all a reaction to a mug. a cup. which really is still just clay, even if we never think of it as such.

i could go into Aristotle vs Plato, and the object vs the idea, but metaphysics is less important to my point than sociology. we label people. we set them aflame with the belief that they are how we perceive them, when really the perception only comes in after someone has moved, has acted, has shed light on a behavior and given our eyes something to work with in the first place.

i guess my point is this: to Live, instead of merely Existing, one must take charge of one's own movement. one cannot control how one comes out of the kiln anymore than one can control how light hits another's retinas, but one can manipulate the way shapes appear. failing that, one can affect the interpretation of an object, by confronting a person with differing images. one day you're a scrawny chessgeek with 42 posters of Jean-Luc Picard on your ceiling, and the next, there are three pairs of panties hanging from your bedpost and a Nobel Peace Prize on your wall. are you any more or less you than the day before?

sane, well-adjusted people do not concern themselves with the innermost thoughts and feelings of everyone around them. they are refractions of their parents and their friends, and will only ever focus on you when you give them a reason to. so show them someone you like.

when they intend to unname

i am enraptured by the near-universal abhorrence of hipsters.

The problem with hipsters seems to me{sic} the way in which they reduce the particularity of anything you might be curious about or invested in into the same dreary common denominator of how “cool” it is perceived to be....One must start with the premise that the hipster is defined by a lack of authenticity, by a sense of lateness to the scene, or by the fact that his arrival fashions the scene—transforms people who are doing their thing into a self-conscious scene, something others can scrutinize and exploit. The hipster is that person who shows up and seems to ruin things—then you can begin to ask why this person exists, whether he is inevitable, whether he can be stopped, and what it will take.

["The Death of the Hipster"; Rob Horning]

simply put, hipsters are the grandchildren conceived by postmodernist bitchfest orgies.

Hipsterdom is the first "counterculture" to be born under the advertising industry's microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.

An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it.

["Hipster: The Dead End Of Western Civilization"; Douglas Haddow]

as with all grandchildren who've been immersed in a culture vastly opposed to the oft-touted world from their ancestors hail, the hipster movement possibly began as a way for those attracted to the lifestyle to immerse themselves in the glories of the past they've only known vicariously. somewhere down the line though, the presumably honest attempt to embrace the riches of experiences past turned into a race to collect the most pop culture references. hence the constant condescending sneer of hipsters: they can rattle off the names of more 1970s musicians than any classic rock aficionado, even if they know nothing about band members, lyrics, or guitar tabs, and that dearth of pointless, contextually nullified information is what gives them power. or something.

He’s the one / Who likes all our pretty songs / And he likes to sing along / And he likes to shoot his gun / But he knows not what it means

["In Bloom"; Nirvana]

it certainly gives them something to say anytime someone asks a member of the tribe a question. if the answer neither makes sense nor has any tangential relation to the topic at hand, the technicalities don't phase a hipster; true Art is not dreamt of in philosophy, but an awkwardly-cropped rendering of Sofia Coppola dressed as a pack of Parliaments in converses, printed out from the internet and pinned or pasted onto a dingy pair of cutoff jeans stolen from a hobo in NYC.

That there exists somewhere in the past an item, ostensibly useless to humanity now, that could become a necessary accessory, is only a matter of creativity and originality...looking even farther into the past to find something that could be a mark of hipness in the present.

["Hipsters desperately seek new anachronism to claim as own"; The Enduring Vision (satire site)]

but let it never be said that hipsters aren't aware of their own tragedy.

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the "hipster" – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society....We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

["Hipster: The Dead End Of Western Civilization"; Douglas Haddow]

whatever, hipsters; i maintain that there is always something unique and interesting waiting to be discovered and appreciated. there may only be five original stories ever, but the eyes that observe and are moved by them have yet to find a doppelganger. i've sifted through your last, lost generation and remain bored; i demand my beatniks back.

otherwise, i'll see you at the bottom.

the youth is starting to change / are you [Being and Nothingness]

one of my favorite episodes of television, ever, is Firefly's "Objects In Space", written by the inimitably fantastic Joss Whedon. i have always adored finding philosophy in the everyday and the mundane (and, really, isn't that the point?); "OIS" is a study in Existentialism, which is a school of thought i'd salivated over long before i had ever discovered Whedon's peculiar space-western drama, so really this episode seems tailored to my adoration.

what i love most about "OIS" and masterpieces like it is that one can immerse oneself in it every year (every month, even, if one possessed a sieve-like memory) and come away from the experience with something new to ponder. The episode's surface premise is about a girl (called River); this is the story of how she finally folded into the family that found itself extending membership to her. this is the story of how she folded into the sense of self that started to surround her. this is the story of how she began building herself, more than simply a body, an object: this is the story of how people make themselves.

Jubal Early: So is it still a room when it's empty? Does the room... the thing... have purpose? Or do we.... what's the word?

the truly masterful aspect of the episode is that, with simple sidenote questions like that, the climax of the plot is basically an epic battle of philosophical wits between two highly intuitive characters, River the psychic with a fractured sense of self, and Jubal Early the bounty hunter who views all things as props on which he can potentially rest his goals. lurking beneath the plot, "OIS" explores how these two perceive the impact of functionality; whether or not an object's purpose emulates its essence, or if the two concepts are intertwined, but separate.

Jubal is driven by utilitarianism. The meaning of things is defined for him by the use they're put to. He can't see how River's claim on the room - its identity through her - can exist when she's not using it - the meaning of the space flows from its purpose.

[TWoP forum commenter Sandman]

beneath even that? the aforementioned coming-of-age story. existentialists insist that everything is absurd. meaning is always symbolic, always imparted. we are all just objects, making up aspects of ourselves to better relate to one another in the space we share. and yet, when no one else shares our space, when the room is empty, to whom do we relate? who are we when without an audience? is that even a valid question, or are we always performing, even for ourselves?

River experiences the Being, the Sein, of the object; she conceives of it in a way that brings awareness of the worldhood of the world. Early, however, seems to be approaching the world in a more utilitarian way, in that he understands objects to have an essence in the work that they do, in the way that they are used. What is interesting, however, is that Heidegger specifically says that the essence of a thing is discovered in its usage: a tree only becomes itself when it is transformed into lumber and built into a house, for example.

[TWoP forum commenter myspoonistoobig]

so who are people? when we are alone, are we the same as when we are surrounded by others, by their expectations? or does the definition of who a person is rely on actions, not perceptions; when i type this sentence, i am a Writer, and a Philosopher, but once i turn off my computer and go to sleep, do i cease to be either of those things?

some people embody this concept. they compartmentalize their own characteristics; work stays at the office, and family stays at home. they transform themselves, but are they different people or simply different aspects of the same creature? does it matter?

regardless of an individual's answer to those questions, "OIS" can stand in as a template for finding oneself. perhaps the point is not that River was right, or that the young are the most in-tune with the universe. this was her episode, after all; if she didn't win this time, then she would have remained a stunted child. what one takes away from "OIS", what i always take away, is that whomever 'wins', or is best prepared for life as an object, is the person who controls what characteristics one exudes. if i aim to be the object that is the Writer, then i embody that, and relate to other objects whilst demonstrating the functionality of a Writer. of a Philosopher. of any other definition i wish to have attributed to me. if i am an object to be used, than i determine for myself how and why i am wielded.




(the word Early was looking for is 'imbue' by the way).

occasionally, there is productivity

strange, to be writing here again. i have been awash in a molten lavafall of academia. as proof, i offer a snippet of the loops my summer's been circling round me.

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Whose Language Is It Anyway?

Long considered the ‘melting pot’ of the world, the United States is known for an interest in merging cultures and equalizing ethnicities – except where it doesn’t. Bigotry and ethnocentrism go hand in hand with the freedom peels America prides itself on, and nowhere is this dichotomy more evident than in the way native-born Americans seem to preoccupy themselves with their language. Often a complaint against an immigrant is over nothing more than a snide remark about the thickness of an accent, or the quality of stuttered English spoken by someone who has not long been in the practice of its use. Is this frustration racist, or simply fostered by a perverted sense of pragmatism; were English the official language of America, would the shared speech bring different peoples together, or simply make it easier for them to insult one another?

Upon initially delving into research for this topic, I expected to encounter many a demand for national uniformity, versus tales of discrimination and violated rights. In a few instances, I was right; author Ronald Schmidt, Sr. notes in his rather enlightening book Language Policy and Identity Politics in the United States, that there exists a lobbying group called ‘U.S. English,’ which has three goals: to make an official language amendment, to veto laws concerning the placement of multiple languages on voting ballots, and to constrain funding for bilingual education so that the programs are only short-term (31). This group, so explains columnist Guy Wright, fears that “this English-speaking nation [will be] turned into a poly-lingual babel” ( qtd, in Schmidt 31). James Crawford, author of several works on bilingualism and politics, scoffed at this suggestion. In an article called “What’s Behind Official English?” he points out that “98 percent of U.S. residents over the age of four speak English “well” or “very well,” according to the 1980 census…Under these circumstances, who would assert that “English is under attack” and needs “legal protection” from the ravages of bilingualism?” (171).

When I went in search of arguments for the other side, my first glance turned up mostly questions. According to Schmidt, “the most prominent and emotionally heated linguistic access issue has been that of providing ballots and other election materials in languages other than English” (19). The question concerning non-English-speakers is, in the event that an official language be set in place, how would that affect their civil rights? “Is knowledge of English a precondition for the exercise of these rights? Do the more general civil rights prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of national origin include language?” (Schmidt 19).

Yet more concerns of anti-English-only lobbyists are over the power that the government would be allowed in pursuit of “enforc[ing] this section by appropriate legislation” (“English-Only A Mistake” 139). Asked in a September 1988 editorial published on the subject:”Can legislature forbid he use of bilingual or multilingual signs…? What about hospital emergency rooms? What happens to someone who disobeys the law?” (140). These activists also claim that the amendment “will codify racial and cultural bias” (“Vote No” 141) by “sending a message that [America] doesn’t like people who don’t speak English” (“English-Only A Mistake” 140). However, even the ardent dissenters admit that “the legislature is unlikely to pass any draconian laws and, if it did, the laws would be vetoed” (140).

As if in answer to these concerns, a 1983 speech by then-Senator Walter Huddleston dismisses the importance of other languages in comparison to English – in the United States, anyway – by stating “so widely held is the assumption that English is already our national language that the notion of stating this in our national charter may seem like restating the obvious” (114). Huddleston furthers that the desire for an official language stems not from a sense of classism, but via a need to maintain our cohesiveness as a nation, and that ‘melting pot’ philosophy that has allowed the United States to merge together countless cultures and ethnicities into one American whole (114-115). His position is echoed by editorials on the subject of official language proposals throughout the years; from [SOMETHING] to earnest insistence that an officiated language will “work to the vast benefit of immigrants and others in our society whose prospects for livelihood too often are crippled by deficiency in the language that propels this country’s economic life and its major activities otherwise” (“Proposal 63” 136).

Even if the United States citizens all unanimously voted for an official language, the issue is further complicated by an extreme divide over which provisions should be included in such an amendment. An assimilationist perspective is one which believes any language that is not English, while entirely within a person’s rights to use, has no place in a public forum if English is the language of government and society (Schmidt, 149-161). One would seek to ensure that English was used in every aspect of public life, including the workplace with the secretary of state’s office or a polling locale as an aspect of that public arena. All other languages, an assimilationist would say, should be relegated to the personal aspects of our lives, and broken out only when at gatherings with family members or friends.

A pluralist, on the other hand, wants equal rights for all languages, believing that the First Amendment rights include the freedom to express oneself in whichever language one should happen to choose, and in any locale (Schmidt 147). Pluralists do not insist upon any loyalty to a person’s ethnolinguistic roots, but they view “requiring them to leave behind the social bases of their personal identity is destructive of their fundamental human and political rights” (Schmidt 146).

Proposals to institute English as the official language of America have been around for debate in Congress since April 1981 (Schmidt 28). In his revision of the Encyclopedia of Constitutional Encyclopedia of Constitutional Amendments, Proposed Amendments, and Amending Issues, 1789-2002, John R. Vile makes note of the first Bill’s divergences in the Senate vs. the House. “The Senate version of this amendment was fairly general, whereas the House version prohibited the use of languages other than English except as a means of teaching language proficiency” (174). Though some form of the Bill is continually reintroduced into Congress, the progression of English-only statutes has been all but halted on the federal level. Along the state level, however, English-as-official-language acts have been put in place by twenty-two states in the decade since the first introduction of the idea in Congress in 1981.

It seems clear to me that the nation would benefit from the stable sense of efficiency that an official language would provide. Instead of spending excesses of money and materials, and millions of minutes and efficacy translating every document or set of instructions, our resources could be better spent on building up multilingual education programs that help to transition non-English-speakers to an American way of life – one that includes participating in our unique dialect. What is called bigotry by those too afraid to offend other cultures to recognize pragmatism is simply the progression of a nation’s growth. As early as 1923, the United States was obsessed with making its own mark on the world, and with its own vernacular. Washington J. McCormick wrote “America has lost so much in literature by not thinking its own thoughts and speaking them boldly... It was only when Cooper, Irving, Mark Twain, Whitman, and O. Henry dropped the Order of the Garter and began to write American that their wings of immortality sprouted” (41). The first generations of immigrants acclimated themselves heartily to life as Americans, and the transition continues for every individual who becomes a citizen.

Works Cited

Crawford, James. “What’s Behind Official English?” Language Loyalties: A Source Book on the Official English
Controversy. Ed. James Crawford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 171-177. Print.

“English-Only a Mistake: Amendment Sends Wrong Message to Tourists.” Language Loyalties: A Source Book on the
Official English Controversy. Ed. James Crawford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 139-140. Print.

Huddleston, Walter. “The Misdirected Policy of Bilingualism.” Language Loyalties: A Source Book on the Official
English Controversy. Ed. James Crawford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 114-118. Print.

McCormick, Washington J. “’American’ as the Official Language of the United States.” Language Loyalties: A Source
Book on the Official English Controversy. Ed. James Crawford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 40.
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