The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 72, No. 2, Ed. 1 Friday, August 24, 1984 Page: 4 of 12
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Students must work for social change says Gillman
continued from page 1
tricky one; just when you think
you're finally controlling the
environment by using its lingo, it
turns out that language is using
you — maybe even abusing you.
Instead of being self-propelled,
you may find yourself being
propelled by all of this new
vocabulary.
All this warning may, you
object, sound like a woman
obsessed with words, who reads
complications into things where
there are none — somewhat like
the English professor you may
remember who sees sex in every
book he reads. But such an
obsession with the power of
language characterizes many of
our best literary and cultural
critics. So moving outward, for a
moment, from our present small
world at Rice to the larger one
"beyond the hedges," let's make a
classic appeal to authority and
consider George Orwell's essay on
language and world dictatorships,
written just after World War II.
"Politics and the English
Language" is Orwell's somewhat
wry and dispassionate plea on
behalf of what is for him a
passionate issue: that the world-
wide political chaos of his time is
connected with the decav of
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language, but improvement is
possible if we start at the "verbal
end." It has nothing to do with
cultivating "standard English" or a
"good prose style" or with correct
grammar or with avoiding
colloquialisms or what he calls
"Americanisms." Rather, Orwell
argues that we need to put meaning
back into language: get rid of all
the abstract phrases, the vague,
stale, and hackneyed terminology,
the pretentious scientific and
bureaucratic jargon that are the
most marked characteristics of
modern English prose. "As soon as
certain topics are raised," Orwell
says, "the concrete melts into the
abstract and ... prose consists less
and less of words chosen for' the
sake of their meaning, and more
and more of phrases tacked
together like sections of a pre-
fabricated henhouse."
How would the George Orwell,
who says, "the worst thing one can
do with words is to surrender to
them," react to our language here
at Rice? "Surrendering" hardly
seems to be an issue with words
like "Sammy's" or "Valhalla" or
the whimsical "MOB." But we use
other, apparently equally harmless
phrases that I think might have
raised Orwell's eyebrows. In
particular he was on guard against
systematically simplified forms of
language — such categorical
classifications that reduce human
multiplicity and variety into two
diametrically opposed groups as
T.R.G.'s and T.R.M.'s, S.E.'s and
Academs, gnomes and non-
gnomes, !nside-the-Hedges and
Bcyond-?he-Hedges. All of these
expressions, some joking and
others more serious, some
currently heard on campus, others
found mostly in print, relics of
bygone Rice Institute days, have in
common what Orwell identifies as
on of the principles of Newspeak in
the Appendix to Nineteen Eighty-
Four: "Newspeak was designed
not to extend but to diminish the
range of thought, and this purpose
was indirectly assisfxi by cutting
the choice of words down ..to a
minimum."
Of course no one but an avowed
theorist of conspiracy would
attribute such malign and unitary
purposefulness to what is, after all,
the students' slang at Rice.
However in the various colleges'
handbooks for new students, some
of the more archaic examples of
Ricespeak can be found, recorded
and preserved yet undercut by a
tone of discomfort in the
accompanying definitions. Most
often and most unequivocally
repudiated is the sexism of T.R.G.
— which stands for Typical Rice
Girl (or Guy). The Baker College
handbook succinctly defines
T.R.G. with two words:
"Derogatory. Meaningless." Jones
College goes even farther in
explicitly rejecting the sexism of
T.R.G.: "This designation (never
complimentary) implies unfair
representation: the girls are
snobbish and overstudious, while
the guys wear hornrimmed glasses
and wear calculators on their
belts." Thus are such stereotypes
destroyed, by students honest
enough not to falsify the fact that
sexist language is part of the
universities past and of our
culture's present, but courageous
enough to expose and reject those
implications. As Orwell says at the
end of Politics and the English
Language, "One cannot change
this all in a moment, but one can at
least change one's own habits, and
from time to time one can even, if
one jeers loudly enough, send some
worn-out and useless phrase . .
into the dustbin where it belongs."
Other lumps of Ricespeak
unfortunately have not yet been
jettisoned to the dustbin, but to
convince all of you sitting here that
that is where they belong is one of
my most important purposes in
addressing you today. The term
"gnomes" (pronounced guh-no'-
mees in a calculated mispronun-
ciation that appropriates the
word as Rice's own), used to
designate what one handbook
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boldly calls "The Help" on
campus, is reprehensible because it
is racist. To have a label at all for
the maintenance personnel on
campus is suspect, but one needs
only see a sampling of the
definitions in the colleges'
handbooks to feel genuine
outrage. The Graduate Student
Association guide to Rice defines
Gilman's address
-S. Buchanan
"gnomes" as the "employees of
Rice that invade the campus daily,
wearing assorted blue or brown
uniforms. They preform varied
tasks..." If the verbs "invade" and
"perform" are not alone sufficient
to suggest that this is a race of alien
creatures who are here to serve us,
the final sentences of the definition
are unmistakeable: "If you're lucky
you may meet one that speaks
English. They are as a rule very
nice people, if you take the trouble
to get to know them." The final
apology does not, in my reading,
mitigate at all the implied racism of
the flippant generalization that
these are all Spanish-speaking
people or of Hispanic origin.
Another college handbook
appropriates the rhetorical stance
of the superior anthropologist
commenting on a primitive
culture. "Clad in baby-blue-
polyester-double-knit..." gnomes
are "the assorted people who clean
up after you and hold pep rallies
under your window at seven in the
morning." The "gnome carts" in
which maintenance personnel
drive around campus are also
defined, almost as a kind of odd
tool or primitive artifact:
"Derivative of golf cart
technology, driven around campus
at lndy 500 speeds by
aforementioned tribe."
To say that such invidious
divisions hurt all of us is no mere
rhetorical flourish. For the habit of
simplifying language and of
reducing meanings tends to be
hard to break. In fact, the most
invidious af all, in my view, is one
that has the greatest currency on
campus, and that I hear most
frequently in common conver-
sation: the S.E I Academ opposition.
"Opposition" is, interestingly,
the coin termed by two of the
handbooks for the relationship
between S.E. — a student
majoring in engineering or science
— and Academ — one majoring in
the humanities or social sciences.
These are not at all simply two
equal choices of career or
specialization, but are rather two
mutually exclusive identities, one
of which is "better" or "higher"
than the other.
The point, of course, of all this is
to poke fun at the reigning campus
myths of the "hard-core" S.E.'s
with dollar signs in their eyes and
the "soft-core" Academs who take
life easy and drugs as well. But
partly because such mythology
also reigns far "beyond the
hedges," in the "Real World," it is
too powerfully entrenched to be
destroyed by college witticisms.
Concern with status and with
measuring status by salary is a fact
of life that confronts us all — an
inescapable part of the world that
we live in.
Yet we can improve things, as
Orwell says, if we start at the
"verbal end." Whenever you hear
any reference at all — whether
joking, dismissive, dead serious or
downright rude — to S.E.'s or
Academs, consider Orwell's
advice: "... the saner self... stands
aside, records the things that are
done and admits their necessity but
refuses to be deceived as to their
true nature." In this case the true
nature of S.E. vs Academ is a
coercive one — under the guise of
'career choice' you are being
coerced and your free choice
limited, reduced to exactly two.
Because only two categories or
options are expressed, the
distinction between S.E. and
Academ would, I think, have
struck Orwell as an example of the
"reduction of vocabulary"
see Gillman, page 5
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Havlak, Paul. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 72, No. 2, Ed. 1 Friday, August 24, 1984, newspaper, August 24, 1984; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245564/m1/4/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.