"I'M NOT A LINGUIST!"

"I’M NOT A LINGUIST!"

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© March 27, 2011

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DILBERT, a comic strip, in today's Sunday (March 27, 2011) edition touches a sore point I've had with engineers.  For more than ten years, during the 1970's and into the 1980's, I was an adjunct professor at several colleges and universities, teaching courses in "management theory and thought," "organizational development," "social theory," and "conflict management."

My students were mainly in high tech industries with the majority scientists and engineers, many with master and doctor's degrees in their respective disciplines such as engineering, physics, chemistry and mathematics.  I mention this because few of them could write well.  When I say write well, I mean able to express a complete thought in a sentence construction that communicated the essence of what they were attempting to say.

In graduate school, you need to get at least a "B" in order to acquire credit for the course.  Some of these students wrote so poorly that I had to work with them outside of class to acquire the necessary grade level. 

One Ph.D. (biochemistry) didn't think he needed such assistance, and he got a "C," to which he went to the Florida Institute of Technology to register his complaint.  FIT backed down and gave him a "B."  I ended my association with the institution after that.

When I came to Honeywell, Inc., Avionics Division, and created Technical Education, I was revisited with this same attitude towards writing.  Now, all those enrolled in the program had backgrounds in engineering, yet many couldn’t write a simple declarative sentence.  Nor did many know, or care to know the difference between a gerund and a participle.  I found it amazing that they could write technical proposals for major programs, and be blindly arrogant about the need for writing skills. 

When I was in my undergraduate years, you had to write research papers, and be able to express yourself in words.  If you didn't pass these so-called "core courses," you didn't graduate.  I don't know what has happened since then, but writing skills, and the so-called "liberal arts" curriculum, the curriculum that is fundamental to understanding this increasingly complex world, was of little or no interest to them. 

It is my position if you cannot write well you cannot think well because we think in words.  Words are as fundamental to the grammar of thinking as mathematics is the grammar of science.  Alas, if you know science, and you want to convey the importance of that science to others, then you have to think in words and persuade others with that skill.

Only today in the Sunday edition of the newspaper it is mentioned that historical data rather than scientific study has been the basis of eastern Japan’s thinking prior to the most recent earthquake and subsequent tsunami. 

My wonder is if these scientists had had the capability, indeed, the inclination to project the science to change masters and politicians in receptive language could the disaster have been avoided.  I am not privy to this information, just wondering.

My sixteen-year-old grandson has a flair for science and mathematics, but abhors English and writing, and finds them totally boring.  This is not a case of arrogance.  It is simply a case of how the subject is presented along with the failure of showing how it relates to the wider scheme of things in a person's life, economic welfare and social-political well being. 

In the DILBERT strip today, a non-engineer asks Wally to review a proposal for engineering issues.  Wally dismisses the requester with “I'm an engineer, not a linguist,” and thus the reason for the caption to this piece.

The problem, as I see it, is no longer an engineer's predilection to scoff at the language with which the person communicates, but to dismiss it entirely in the land of tweets, texting and non-communicating communications. 

The reason why I'm sharing this with you is not only because of the reference to DILBERT but to something else that I've discovered.  Novels written by those who seem to knock out one every three to six months have somehow forgotten that thoughts are communicated in words, as these American novels are becoming progressively worse.  The content of these novels has been reduced to technocratic formulas of somnolence.  I say this because I challenge most readers to tell me what they have read a week after they have read the book.

For some time now, novels written by people from Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland have intrigued me, and I’ve wondered why.  I've decided that language is still important to them, not as in-the-groove kind of expression masquerading as entertainment, but as a vehicle for carrying an idea or theme from the word to the fruition of the thought, flowering images of meaning and retention.


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