For those who have been meditating in a cave and may not have heard the news, a few days ago a crazed gunman killed 33 people, including himself, at Virginia Tech.
No, this is not going to be a post asking why someone who has been declared mentally ill by a court of law had a “clean record” when he went to buy a Glock. Plenty of other people will be carrying on about that. It’s also not going to be a post about the fact that we go (understandably) into national hysterics when 33 people get killed in an outrageous, random act of violence, but have become resigned, almost immune, to reading every day about at least that many people getting killed in Iraq (170 today, campers), as if that is not also utterly outrageous.
No, my post is about language.
In the last couple of days I’ve observed an interesting American linguistic phenomenon. Occasionally someone, in casual conversation this week, will be talking about some everyday annoyance, perhaps from a co-worker or delinquent student, and say something like “I coulda shot him.” This, which normally would be completely ignored as a normal part of American idiomatic speech, is followed by a brief, awkward silence, and then a sheepish “I guess that’s not a great thing to be saying this week.”
Apparently, though, it’s OK to say it the rest of the time. Hell, I do it too – all the time. Practically all Americans do. It’s one of the characteristics of American speech: mild annoyance expressed with homicidal or suicidal language. Think about it:
“Your father’s gonna shoot ya when he finds out you dented the car.”
“If I find out my roommate drank all my beer I’m gonna kill him.”
“I told my boss he could drop dead, I quit.”
“These kids never listen – I coulda shot ‘em.”
“If you try to take your sister’s cookie you’re gonna pull back a bloody stump.”
“When she said that to him I just coulda died.”
“When that kid gets home I’m gonna strangle him.”
“Another ticket! I swear I’m just gonna shoot myself”
“That exam was murder – there was blood on the floor after that one.”
We use murderous language to express positive emotions as well as mildly negative ones. To wit:
Humor: That joke just slays me.
Mild annoyance: This person’s procrastination just kills me.
Positive reactions: That new song of yours is killer.
Encouragement: Give it your best shot.
We speak glibly, and metaphorically, about beating the crap out of someone, punching someone’s lights out, tearing someone’s head off, hurling ourselves over a cliff. Sports teams don’t just win and lose; they annihilate, obliterate, and destroy their opponents. We laugh hysterically while the Three Stooges hit each other with hammers and the South Park brats Kill Kenny again. An alien using some kind of intergalactic translator would think that our normal activities were something along the lines of the Roadrunner-Wiley Coyote cartoons.
When in history did this start being part of everyday American language? Is it from British English? My observation is that colloquial British English is more interested in colorfully pointing out other people’s stupidity than in metaphorically snuffing them. (Irish too, for that matter – as in “feckineejits.”) You can’t blame it on us Boomers - it certainly began even before my parent’s generation, because “your father’s gonna shoot ya” was certainly one of their collective favorites, along with such top ten hits as “I’ll give you something to cry about.” (That one was usually delivered after a spanking on the butt, before spankings were a criminal offense in certain New England cities. Now, you can’t spank the kid on the butt, but it’s fine to tell him you’re gonna kill him if he touches that goddam stove one more time.) No, us Boomers only adopted the murderous language, and then spiced it up with a whole bunch of newly acceptable ways to use the impolite word for “intercourse” as all the possible parts of speech (as in I’m gonna f---ing kill him.”)
In fact, “I’m gonna kill him” (with or without the “f” word) usually means “If I get up the courage I’m going to apologetically express my unhappiness about his actions.” “Your father’s gonna shoot ya” usually means that “Dad’s going to rant for awhile, and then later, when he’s forgotten about it, he’s going to tell you he’s glad you didn’t get hurt and buy you an ice cream.” You can see how we form some sort of aural callus around the language of extermination.
The weird part is that when someone actually does die, he or she has passed away, gone to the other side, shuttled off this mortal coil, been taken back home to God, etc. We say “the late Mister Jones” rather than “Mister Jones, who is Dead.” (this is why we laugh hysterically when Monty Python’s John Cleese says “This…is a Late Parrot.”) Does anyone else think it’s odd that our cultural refusal to talk about or deal with death exists side by side with an almost constant stream of metaphorical language having to do with dishing death out?
I’m not sure what this says about us as a culture, but it can’t be good. I think Jung would call it the Shadow. Meep Meep.
