It's bad speech winning over free speech

It’s a bad speech issue

There are so many facets to the free speech debate but one thing I am convinced about is there is no limitation to the freedom of speech. What has really happened from viewing the quality of speech of many people with platforms especially in the political arena is expression had given up finesse for crudeness.

One could attribute this to lassitude in many areas, especially in reading, the reading of the classics, of philosophy, poetry, ideas, stories, and the forms of debate that mine the seams of the richness of language that challenge our thinking or excite our humour.

Weak forms from lazy

For instance, the kind of language and expression that the American president uses might appeal to the broad masses and make him an adept communicator, however, apart from the cachet of his powerful office that attracts all sorts of patronage, there is little to inspire from his speeches that elevates the quality of conversation.

The excessive use of comparatives and superlatives reveals a standard of mental indolence poorly served by lack of reading material that allows a broadening of the discussion, giving some flow to how words interact to persuade, even speechwriters will struggle to give those lips the kind of conviction that matches both personality and position.

Even the art of oratory, which is the skilful and effective public speaking is being lost, there are presently very few leaders of the world that could attend the United Nations and command the world stage with the quality of expression that would yield quotes surviving headlines of the next day. The pulpit shakers with their training in homiletics and hermeneutics barely make the standard of this is worth listening to again.

Do more reading

My argument is if people were well read, they would always find the form of expression to convey whatever thoughts they have elegantly without being misunderstood.

Giving thought to what you have to say before you speak needs a resource of usages and misuses studied before. Then we have the matter of a rich vocabulary, from books, novels, journals, and magazines rather than from cramming a dictionary, because context always matters in the use of words.

Then again, one does not need an elite education, just some curiosity and inquisitiveness, a willingness to learn and explore, because that opens the world of expression that unleashes freedom of expression.

I posit the issue has never really been an attack on freedom speech in the UK, people have just forgotten how to say nicely the bad things they are thinking. In the process, they have been caught out and to that, I’ll say, more fool you, or get smarter.

Let's delve into this

We delve deeper

Some parts of this blog started off as a comment on Facebook that I decided should not be left there but given a bit more context that might go into a series of discussions on language, expression, vocabulary, usages, culture, and influences. Other rather succinct views on this topic have been expressed as tweets on Twitter. God, forfend I suggest the other name.

The matter of the word ‘delve’ has been a burning topic for the past few days on social media, where someone of privilege and influence inadvertent revealed a bugbear about the use of a word in an email and attributed it to the use of Artificial Intelligence because by his assumption, it was an unfamiliar word and people do not write like that.

Now, I write this in the context mainly of my own upbringing rather than in the broader spectrum of how Nigerians have reacted to this as I 

The different cultures

I was so miffed, even annoyed; the bounding dunce, (and I use that charitably to suggest he is slow to see his own blind spots), in every other area except for his computing nous and venture capital clout, who is just over a year older than I am, was British-born but left for America at the age of 4, meaning my Britishness at that time was even more impactful as to appreciate the good use of the English language than him.

He was schooled in the American system, and what he has retained are vestiges of the English aversion not so much to pomposity, but that unfortunate inability to pigeonhole the unfamiliar into trenchant class structures that remain significant in Great Britain to today.

The education context

Imagine being so well-spoken and still having an accent, it upsets them no end, they cannot believe we had schools that did Eton College for a pittance abroad. (We had reading, writing, comprehension, and spelling classes at the primary schools that I attended in Nigeria, which had a large foreign contingent of pupils and staff.) You attend to every variant of the same question, “How do you speak (or write) better English?” You want to answer, that I had an exceptionally good primary education.

Obviously, using a rich vocabulary is seen as trying to be clever, writing mellifluously is considered beyond our capacity, it is damned with faint praise as flowery. We are just too well-read to use English in a perfunctory and unimaginative way.

The class issue

Every inner self-loathing was inadvertently embodied in that tweet about delve, so unawares. We need to begin to understand that how people express themselves reveals just as much as they intend to say as it is about who they are. We are already self-profiling to observers and to an audience by our conduct and conversation.

On the class matter, I had to tick a box in 2024 that asked about my social mobility status. Well, I was never working class and there are settings where sophistication is effortless that it is more than attainable for many, in speech, comportment, or just the basic sense of self. The world will never attain true egalitarianism, but we can make the world a better place if people use their privilege to lift others rather than knock them down.

In other situations, it is to allow one’s worldview to be open to new ideas, understanding that cultures differ, usages are myriad, and diversity suggests there is not just one perspective. Even in the quest for simplicity, what is simple varies and that is subject to too many variables that we cannot control that we make allowances and gain new opportunities from stretching the limits of our purview.

On the delve matter, there was a bigger issue at play, especially as Paul Graham and his family have returned to the UK since 2016, we have not begun to delve into the many layers involved. I can see through him as through plain glass. Yes, I also use AI in my writing, it is Akintayo Intelligence.

Tweeting beautifully without apologising for it

The simplicity of the tweet

On a tweet that composed a seminal thought and political discourse within the conservative landscape of the 280-character limit of a simple tweet, some responses sneered, “Too much grammar.”

I have been on Twitter since the 8^th of February 2009, which means in three days I would hit a decade of tweeting. One thing tweeting taught me was brevity, concision, and precision. At first glance, these words are literally synonyms depending on context, but when the definitions are reviewed, you get a sense that they have different qualities.

Brevity - concise and exact use of words in writing or speech. This would suggest knowing the platform is limited, I would find the best words to present my tweet, which sometimes would include a foray into sesquipedalianism. If I have a word that fits the bill, I use it.

Concision - is the cutting out of unnecessary words while conveying an idea. For anything I have to say in a tweet, I want the complete context to be conveyed, I never used tweet elongators when Twitter had a 140-character limit. It could have made the tweet difficult to read, but when understood, you needed no other tweet to explain the tweet.

Precision - the quality, condition, or fact of being exact and accurate. Once the tweet was composed, there was no ambiguity, it conveyed exactly what I wanted to say, with its difficult and long words, the context of exactly what I had in mind and no doubt about what I intended.

Without the rules, we would be fools

For that, some people appreciated the work that went into the tweet, maybe it even gave some the opportunity to extend their vocabulary. I was never one to economise on what broad range of words the English language offered to anyone who was interested, whilst resisting a decline into neologisms.

Then, some would sneer, “Too much grammar.”, as if grammar had become a synonym for obscurity, verbosity, complexity, difficulty, or pomposity.

Grammar, according to the Cambridge dictionary is (the study or use of) the rules about how words change their form and combine with other words to make sentences. Invariably, without the rules of grammar, you cannot make sentences, you just have a jumble of words that make no sense, except if it is a word puzzle.

Covering for inadequacies

I have come to the conclusion that the sneering is more a lack of comprehension of what has been written, the people, rather than tax themselves with broadening their knowledge or maybe attempting a better delivery of the tweet, as the way people convey their ideas can be a matter of style, they revile and castigate the writer with a heckle, with disdain, with contempt or some other device to belittle the person and by that give themselves a sense of superiority over the expressed ability of the writer.

I do have a writing style, some have suggested it could be flowery, my blogs flourish with that style, you can read anything I have written in the last 15 years of blogging and conclude, that is unmistakably Akin expressing himself.

It goes without saying that much as we nominally recognise Nigeria as an English-speaking country, English comprehension amongst many lags their ability to read, as such, Nigerians would find that they have to take ‘English as a foreign language’ examinations on applying to universities in the UK. You would expect them to pass those examinations, but over-confidence can easily catch you out.

They do not matter

In a series of tweets, I averred, “Basically, if you have difficulty reading or comprehending a sentence of English language and think you can cover your inadequacies with condemning the sentence as excessive grammar, the truth is your proficiency at English is rudimentary if not illiterate.” I will make no apology for that viewpoint or for the fact that my privileged education should pander to the lowest common denominator of communication.

If you cannot contribute to a discourse or broaden the ideas offered in a public space like Twitter, it is better to keep your counsel than display your ignorance. I believe everyone has a story and a mode of expression, Twitter can be a marketplace of opinions and great ideas, and anywhere I find that people are expressing themselves in an interesting or inspiring way, I like to acknowledge them rather than sneer at them.

What I do not understand, I seek clarification or explanation of, and that is why I decided to tweet about grammar and comprehension, because nothing was wrong with what was said, and everything was wrong with those who had nothing to add to the viewpoint than participate in the braying mob of anti-intellectuals shouting out – “Too much grammar.”

We should never be afraid to express ourselves in the richness of all that we have acquired, experienced or been influenced by, most pertinently, never let the sneers limit your communication.

Basically, if you have difficulty reading or comprehending a sentence of English language and think you can cover your inadequacies with condemning the sentence as excessive grammar, the truth is your proficiency at English is rudimentary if not illiterate.

— Akin Akíntáyọ̀ #FBPE (@forakin) February 4, 2019