I’d never seen anything more beautiful. When I laid eyes on Apple’s newly released iPad prototype last week I imagine I felt that same surge of pure bliss parents often describe upon seeing their newborn child for the first time.
The Graphic staff grew apprehensive that due to their editor in chief’s sudden infatuation with cyber-stalking this new gadget the paper wasn’t going to be published as scheduled for the first time in 73 years. Hyperbole aside the Graphic did come out and I in a feeble attempt to wean myself off this consumerist trap stumbled upon an online video of a Mad TV sketch parodying the iPad as a feminist hygiene product. Disgusted and dismayed at the awoken connotation I retired my obsession for this otherwise perfect piece of technology.
The point of my melodramatic narrative? Words matter.
Sometime in our middle school curriculums between diagramming sentences and scrawling large cursive letters onto dotted lines we learned about diction— what it was why it mattered and how to use it. Now like so many aspects of our core education that are mercilessly mocked on “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” the art of word choice has gradually slipped into obscurity.
A few months ago I made the decision to apply to graduate school leaving me in the unfortunate situation of having to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). Given my unmitigated immersion in the world of diction courtesy of my professional pursuits as well as my ineptitude with any sort of numerical value I anticipated a sizable disparity between my verbal and quantitative scores. As it happened there was certainly a substantial variance but the call to identify words such as “sententious” and “chicanery” rendered me entirely incapable of conveying any sort of competence in the English language.
After one month of (literally) studying a dictionary for at least an hour per day I retook the GRE and vindicated my score. As the real world approaches with a disconcerting alacrity though I can’t help but notice many students facing the same problem I did.Partly because I’m sensitive to verbal execution due to my professional pursuits and partly because I’m somewhat of a busybody I overheard the interaction between one of my fellow students and a potential employer who was visiting campus for Career Week. When asked whether the student had previously interned with the company a response of “um yeah like” and “really”— note: as a purposefully descriptive adjective— flowed like a stream of consciousness. I shook my head in sympathy at what was sure to be a lost opportunity.
Careful compositions of words are what comprised the speeches and resolutions that instigated the Boston Tea Party the Emancipation Proclamation and even (in my opinion) President Obama’s election— essentially the events that shaped the history of our nation.Especially as we begin to disperse into the various areas of our vocational callings we must challenge ourselves to higher level of awareness regarding diction and its implications to realistically contribute to the furtherance of change and progress in America— and the world.
After all a future Apple CEO could be at Pepperdine right now. If so I would encourage him or her to more strategically consider word choice so as to avoid the bitter effects of “iPad”-standard product naming.