LBJ School News Brief

It ain't just immigrants who don't know English

Austin American-Statesman, April 19, 2006

Edwin Dorn, Professor, LBJ School of Public Affairs

One of the big complaints about illegal immigrants is that they don't assimilate into American culture. They don't master our national language, and their children are channeled into bilingual education classes where they languish until they drop out of school, inadequately trained in any language.

This might be a legitimate concern, but it goes beyond immigrants. From what I hear on American radio and television, us natives ain't doin' such a great job of learnin' English, neither.

One frequent error is the misuse of the personal pronouns "I" and "me." How often, while watching television, have you heard a jealous soap opera ingénue say to the show's femme fatale, "Heather, you're trying to come between Brad and I." I wish Heather would answer, "Why, Brittany, that is totally incorrect. You should say, 'Brad and me.' "

Whenever my 14-year-old daughter says, "Me and Bethany want to go to the mall", I know that she's been watching too much TV.

A subtler but equally annoying pronoun problem is the careless use of "who" and "that." Broadcast news reporters talk will about a politician that was convicted of bribery, rather than about a politician who was convicted. Now, for some of us, the important thing is that the bum does hard time. Still, how can we not be offended when a human being, even a corrupt politician, is referred to as a "that" Ñ or worse, when an animal is referred to as a "who"?

Alas, one morning I heard a reporter on National Public Radio talk about a cow who had contracted mad cow disease. I felt sorry for the cow, but I felt even worse for NPR.

Advertisers are some of the worst abusers of English. In real-estate ads, for example, a house that is unique isn't good enough; the house has to be very unique, even totally unique. It's enough to make me want to throw a dictionary at my TV set.

The nighttime dramas diverge widely from one another in their treatment of our national language. Shows featuring lawyers tend to use good grammar, and I have never heard a doctor on "Grey's Anatomy" say anything that was glaringly wrong. What about the shows featuring cops and criminals? Fuggedaboudit.

I am not suggesting that bad grammar be bleeped off the airwaves. Sometimes it is needed for dramatic effect, much like profanity and nudity. But why can't we be warned in advance, so that we can protect our children from it? This is one useful step the Federal Communications Commission could take. It could devise a new rating system Ñ say, a "U" rating, which means, "Warning: the following production contains ungrammatical language, including subject-verb disagreements."

This wouldn't add much to the FCC's workload: any commissioner who got an "A" in high school English should be competent to do it. And it would be a lot easier on the commissioners than having to watch Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction a dozen times in order to determine whether one of her (bleeps) had been exposed.

One last thing: if we're going to invade and occupy another country, the least we can do is learn to pronounce its name correctly. There is no such place as EYE-rack! The country's name is Ear-ROCK. There is no such place as EYE-ran, either.

It is possible, of course, that more illegal immigrants will make our grammar and pronunciation even worse. But if mastery of English were a criterion for staying in this country, then a whole lot of us would have to go back to where we came from.

Dorn is a professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin.

19 April 2006

Comments to: lbjweb@uts.cc.utexas.edu

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