Michael: Whether you prefer to use talent or capacity, I think that one of
those is the issue (in terms of persons' working vocabularies). Otherwise,
you would have to defend the thesis that people could have/use expanded
vocabularies but choose not to do so. To what benefit? We ain't all the
same.
Geoff C
From: Michael Brady <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: The Kitsch Test
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:04:32 -0400
On Oct 17, 2008, at 11:08 AM, William Conger wrote:
Most people have passive vocabulary of just several thousand words.
Most people have a speaking vocabulary of just 600 words. I guess they
have no talent for language.
I believe it less a matter of having a "talent" for language. I suspect
they don't think it's important. They can do just fine, thank you, with
their set of 600 words (I heard it 1,000-2,000 words for a college grad)
of speaking vocabulary and a reading familiarity with 5,000. (And
Shakespeare came in with a writing vocabulary of 20,000 or so.)
I remember an eye-opener when I taught an adult drawing class at a museum.
One student showed a drawing of her living room, a pretty competent
rendering for a novice. On the mantle was an old ship's clock in a wooden
case. She drew the arched curve, the feet, the candlesticks next to it,
the brackets for the mantle itself, etc. On the face of the clock, she
wrote the numbers 1 to 12 just as if she were balancing her checkbook. The
numbers did not have any shape to them (i.e., she didn't see them as
typeface characters): numbers were notations of mathematical concepts, not
visual shapes. (This was before the advent of home computers and the magic
of fonts for all, which familiarizes the idea of the shape of letters.)
How is this anecdote germane? The student did not see the shapes of the
numbers because their shapes weren't important to her; similarly, others
don't regard a large vocabulary as important, and so don't internalize
many words; and by like measure, many people don't think it's important to
show a high degree of accuracy in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. They
can get the job of communicating done suitably well without the finery, so
why go to the effort?
I'm sympathetic to your exhortation about not using "talent," but I think
it misses the mark. The etymological source of "talent" is, as evident in
the parable of the servant and the talents, a weight of gold or money. Its
meaning of "skill or ability" is a figurative borrowing, and like "rich,"
it can signify anything to anybody and is often used indiscriminately or
profligately. Very much as "design" is used to mean hair styling or
applying plastic elongations to fingernails or pricking your skin to put
ineradicable colorants into it.
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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
