'The struggle for cultured speech', revolutionary or bourgeois?

[Comrade #138672]

'The Struggle for Cultured Speech' http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/women/life/23_05_16.htm

Here Trotsky writes about the struggle for so-called "cultured speech" and against "bad language". I am not sure what to think of this. On the one hand, it is good to struggle against abusive language, since it is oppressive and is rooted in the slave owner's mentality. I definitely agree with this.

On the other hand, when Trotsky writes the following:
The fight against bad language is also a part of a struggle for the purity, clearness, and beauty of Russian speech. I get the idea that his view of the struggle for cultured speech smells a bit like bourgeois idealism. At least the obsession with "purity" is.

Your thoughts?

[Brutus]

Fuck that. Not swearing doesn't aid us at all, so swear away.

[Jimmie Higgins]

“Gonna cuss an' swear an' hear the poetry of folks talkin'.” - steinbeck

The autobiography of Malcolm X, for balance on this issue, has a line in it where Malcolm says something like people cuss when the don't have words to express what they mean.

Both quotes are basically about cultural respect for regular people - Steinbeck and a whole view on the issue in America think that making common language "poetry" dignifies and brings respect counter to the usual view of elietes towards "low class" signifyers (of course the boomers fucked that all up with their Levis-wearing CEOs paying top dollar to go see working class-born british rock bands sing US-style blues songs about sex and poverty... can't we have anything low and dirty that they don't turn into a high-class botique commodity!?).

The other is a view is about commanding respect when you are part of a group that gets none. In this case it definately fits into the whole middle-class orientation of the NOI. The Panthers were able to still command respect with ample motherfuckers and motherfucking pigs thrown in.:lol:

Still I think there's a risk of the whole "poetry of the common people" elitism or patronization that comes with associating certain slang for something more like a dialect or patois. But that's more of a risk in terms of sort of creating a charature of working or oppressed people and it really only applies if someone is a writer or some other cultural producer. So I say in real life, in the US, people should just talk how they talk. (I guess a little common curtesty or understanding is useful: if you're trying to organize a walk-out of elementary school teachers, probably best not to swear.) It's embarassing when old white Maoists try and talk like they are a Panther in the 60s and it's harmful for radicals to create an atmosphere of cultural elitism or homogenity.

As for the Trotsky old-man rant, well I don't know enough about Russian language and history and context to say if there's any specific circumstances there - but in some languages there could be issues that come up that don't really have parallels elsewhere. In the US, I could see a form of this coming up (and it has come up frequently in movements) about oppressive-speech. We ban many of those words here. But he really lost me on the "couple of weeks" thing... I mean are there not ideomatic expressions in Russian? Come on, phrases in English are all illogical in that sense!:lol:

Language changes and it has been a historical tendency of the bourgoise to try and manage that - to organize a "national" language out of regions of various languages and patois. I think for workers after a revolution, there would be no need to manage or control language - but to let new idiums and expressions and slang and whatnot to emerge from a new free society where there wouldn't be different access to education and culture and there would be no elitist assumptions connected to some words or dialects.

[Comrade Jacob]

Let's abstain from swearing this will get us to socialism!!!

[Sinister Intents]

I don't care how people speak at all. If you're going to cuss that's your perogative and that's fine by me. Fuck this cultured speak, it sounds bourgeois to me.

[Fourth Internationalist]

I don't care how people speak at all. If you're going to cuss that's your perogative and that's fine by me. Fuck this cultured speak, it sounds bourgeois to me.

I guess the shoe factory workers of the Paris Commune that Trotsky talks about in the first sentence are bourgeois in your opinion as well. Also, from what I know, you do care how people speak, especially regarding words such as "retarded" which are personally offensive to you.

[Sinister Intents]

I guess the shoe factory workers of the Paris Commune that Trotsky talks about in the first sentence are bourgeois in your opinion as well. Also, from what I know, you do care how people speak, especially regarding words such as "retarded" which are personally offensive to you.

I should've been a lot more clear... I'm constantly inadequate in how I post :unsure: I fuck up way too much and don't think things through fully though I try... I do care if people say such things as retard, or the N word, the C word, et cetera. Thanks for making me feel inadequate...
I was more talking about how people speak and not words they say originally

[Thirsty Crow]

On the other hand, when Trotsky writes the following: I get the idea that his view of the struggle for cultured speech smells a bit like bourgeois idealism. At least the obsession with "purity" is.

Purity and cleaness of Russian speech are bourgeois notions inherently.

Fuck him and fuck cultured speech. Now I write like I talk, and no sorry I don't accept that loads of swear words and words from Serbian language dilute the purity and cleaness of Croatian speech. Oh yeah, anyone here arguing for the purity and cleaness of Croatian speech would be rightly suspected for being a bona fide ethnic nationalist.

But let's extend some benefit of doubt to Trotsky and say he was most probably only a fool.



I was more talking about how people speak and not words they say originally
No, don't buy into that stupid argument that "cultured speech" only relates to discriminatory language. It does not. It's not that you're wrong or in any way failing to carry a message across, it's that some Trots have a necrophiliac fetish which makes em foam at the mouth any time something even resembling a criticism is uttered in case of Leon.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Purity and cleaness of Russian speech are bourgeois notions inherently.

Fuck him and fuck cultured speech. Now I write like I talk, and no sorry I don't accept that loads of swear words and words from Serbian language dilute the purity and cleaness of Croatian speech. Oh yeah, anyone here arguing for the purity and cleaness of Croatian speech would be rightly suspected for being a bona fide ethnic nationalist.

But let's extend some benefit of doubt to Trotsky and say he was most probably only a fool.


No, don't buy into that stupid argument that "cultured speech" only relates to discriminatory language. It does not. It's not that you're wrong or in any way failing to carry a message across, it's that some Trots have a necrophiliac fetish which makes em foam at the mouth any time something even resembling a criticism is uttered in case of Leon.

No, Trotsky was perfectly capable of writing atrociously stupid articles. But I don't think this article is one of them. Which is not to say that it is good - obviously there is not only a difference between abusive language and swearing, there is a difference based on who the abuse is pointed at. At the same time, I don't think the article can be charitably read as bourgeois-nationalist.

You find the term "purity" irritating - fair enough, given the phenomenon of linguistic purism. But I find it difficult to believe that Trotsky wanted to decry the use of foreign words in Russian, when so much of Bolshevik terminology was an adaptation of foreign words (byuro, byuletin, komissariat - all of these are hardly Russian!). I think it is clear that by "purity", he meant the absence of "provincial expressions", and those "contrary to the spirit of the language". "Purity" in that sense is a good thing - if a provincial term from one area is adopted as official, it will not be immediately recognised in other areas (as, indeed, happened in Croatian quite a few times); words that are formed contrary to the spirit of the language are difficult and awkward to use (this is the case for all of the words that the HDZ pseudolinguists invented in imitation of the fascist-era basilect, with its heavily Russian-influenced word formation).

Clarity, I think, is an eminently sensible criterion, particularly when it comes to official business.

Beauty is a subjective mess - here Trotsky dropped the ball.

[Thirsty Crow]

I think it is clear that by "purity", he meant the absence of "provincial expressions", and those "contrary to the spirit of the language".
I think you should be able to tell by know that any argument about expressions "contrary to the spirit of the language" are in the best of all possible cases arguments for preserving a specific syntactical or lexical trait of the...mother tongue. At best.

In Serbocroatian the political undertones of such arguments are most readily seen in the case of verb infinitive vs. syntactical "da" (as in "...probati" "...da probam"). In short anyone arguing for a linguistic definite pure choice here is most probably a nationalist.

But purity here most of all refers to swear words:


Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity—one’s own and that of other people. This is particularly the case with swearing in Russia. I should like to hear from our philologists, our linguists and experts in folklore, whether they know of such loose, sticky, and low terms of abuse in any other language than Russian.I could counter Trotsky here with some fine choice idioms from Serbocroatian involving god and mary the virgin or perhaps a saint of one's own choosing.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think you should be able to tell by know that any argument about expressions "contrary to the spirit of the language" are in the best of all possible cases arguments for preserving a specific syntactical or lexical trait of the...mother tongue. At best.

In Serbocroatian the political undertones of such arguments are most readily seen in the case of verb infinitive vs. syntactical "da" (as in "...probati" "...da probam"). In short anyone arguing for a linguistic definite pure choice here is most probably a nationalist.

The thing is, both forms are used in Croatia - and both are in line with the specific lexical traits of BCMS. Words like "krilovnik", on the other hand, are neither used, nor are they in line with how words are usually formed in BCMS. Other words might be used, in a regional context, but are not in line with how words are generally formed and used in the language at the state level - e.g. words that use the suffix "-ina" ("lampadina") - these are also not appropriate for the official language, because only a small subset of speakers will be able to understand them and use them without pause or awkwardness.


But purity here most of all refers to swear words:

[...]

I could counter Trotsky here with some fine choice idioms from Serbocroatian involving god and mary the virgin or perhaps a saint of one's own choosing.

That almost feels like cheating, given that many of these idioms are probably common to all Slavic languages; but that's neither here nor there. On the question of swear words, as I said, I think Trotsky was generalising far too much. It is one thing to be abusive - which can be done without using swear words - to one's immediate comrade, and another to tell a bureaucrat or member of the party to fuck off. Of course, it is always useful to analyse the specific words used and the things they presuppose - e.g. to note how patriarchal the common idiom "I fuck your mother" is (really? was it good for her, then?), the homophobia in a lot of these words and idioms etc.

[Thirsty Crow]

The thing is, both forms are used in Croatia - and both are in line with the specific lexical traits of BCMS.
They are not, at least to my knowledge.
I was flunked for this shit in primary school and not that the teacher was a hardcore nationalist. Though, I could care less for newer developments so I might be wrong.



It is one thing to be abusive - which can be done without using swear words - to one's immediate comrade, and another to tell a bureaucrat or member of the party to fuck off. Of course, it is always useful to analyse the specific words used and the things they presuppose - e.g. to note how patriarchal the common idiom "I fuck your mother" is (really? was it good for her, then?), the homophobia in a lot of these words and idioms etc. That's another thing. This is incidentally why I try to fuck anyone's father in speech when I swear. I like to think of myself as a pretty notorious father fucker by now.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

They are not, at least to my knowledge.
I was flunked for this shit in primary school and not that the teacher was a hardcore nationalist. Though, I could care less for newer developments so I might be wrong.

It used to depend on the region - Split was pretty firmly in the "syntactical da" camp as I recall it. And it had to be beaten out of us in elementary school - the teachers might not have been hardcore nationalists but their employers were. Now the "syntactical da" is mostly used by the older generations, but it is still pretty much in line with BCMS grammar.

[Thirsty Crow]

It used to depend on the region - Split was pretty firmly in the "syntactical da" camp as I recall it. And it had to be beaten out of us in elementary school - the teachers might not have been hardcore nationalists but their employers were. Now the "syntactical da" is mostly used by the older generations, but it is still pretty much in line with BCMS grammar.
They never did beat this shit out of me apart from official exams :D

EDIT: but surprisingly the most epic swear expression I've ever heard comes from Italian. I really need to do this in serbocroat: Jebemti bosog isusa u dolini čavala

:D

The approximate translation would be "fuck your barefooted Jesus in a nail valley"