A Review in E-Prime

I learned about E-prime several years ago, while drinking PBR on the front steps of a friend’s apartment.  We smoked cigarettes against a spring dusk sky.  We ashed into empty PBR cans abandoned previous nights, similarly spent.

My friend, we’ll call him M. described a language that disregarded all forms of the verb “to be” including the words: is, am, are, was were, been and being.

“What’s the point?”  My friend (we’ll call him K.)  asked, with some aggression.

Initially, the creators intended the language as a scientific and technological tool.  Its use encourages precision and responsibility.

“For example,” M. offered, “Instead of ‘Elisha is a waitress’, we would say, ‘Elisha waits tables for money.’”

My personal investment in the conversation quadrupled.  In certain environments, equating myself with my position causes me some embarrassment.

M. continued.  “Or instead of ‘John is stupid,’ we would say, ‘John struggles to understand math equations’.  E-Prime forces you to speak more specifically.  It’s pretty cool.  Er.  I mean, it seems cool to me.”

K continued to look aggressive.  “Sure, but there are some things that just are,”  he said.

“Like what?”

“Like that tree.  That is a tree.”  He pointed at a tree.  We all looked at the tree and nodded.

“That looks like a tree to you,” M. corrected with Yoda-like patience.

“That’s stupid.  It’s a f#@ing tree,” K. said with unLuke-like attitude.

“E-Prime seems stupid to you and you perceive a tree over there.”

K. flicked his cigarette to the ground and smashed it beneath his sneaker.  “Give me a break,” he said.

In an effort to promote this blog to a greater audience, I sent out a mass email to old friends, acquaintances and relatives, asking them to please check it out.  One friend responded with admonishment.  In response to my many declarations, “I am a feminist.  I am a soon to be mother.  I am a (fill in the blank), he wrote:

I have a hard time swallowing shit from anyone who identifies themselves as an ‘ism.’ Their one unforgivable sin is to apply some other trite classification of -ism to Me.  “Simply because you choose to live in a mold, does not mean I fit into one as easily as you.”

As I contemplated my friend’s expressed solicitude over my identifications, my thoughts returned to that E-prime lecture, long ago.

In 1933 Alfred Korzybski proposed in his book, Science and Sanity to eradicate the “is of Identity” from the English language.  Under this umbrella falls statements like “I am a writer,” “Janet is a gossip,” and “Peter is a jerk.”  The objective equation accomplished by these sentences implies permanence, fact and finality.  Such implications, without doubt, impede actual truth.

In 1949, Dr. David Bourland Jr. took things further.  He proposed the abolition of all forms of the words “is” and “to be”.  He coined this language E-Prime.

A decade before Korzybski, George Santayana, poet and philosopher lamented:

The little word is has its tragedies.  It names and identifies different things with the greatest innocence; and yet no two are ever identical, and if therein lies the charm of wedding them and calling them one, therein lies the danger.  Whenever I use the word is, except in sheer tautology, I deeply misuse it; and when I discover my error, the world seems to fall asunder…

The tragedy  lies inside the evils perpetrated by over-generalization and assumption.  E-Prime forces the speaker and writer to communicate subjectively, to elaborate, and to take responsibility for their perceptions and comments.

Often, in an argument, my argue-ee will confront me with exasperation:  “You’re only arguing semantics!”

But, as someone who writes, language composes the limits of my universe.  I use words as tools and language as canvas.  Of course I argue semantics.  I argue semantics daily, whenever I bring my pen to paper.

“What’s the point?” asks my friend, K.

The point:  Language matters to us all.

In anthropology, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (also known as the linguistic relativity hypothesis) holds that an adjustment in language can alter our perception and understanding of the universe as a whole.  Generally, we believe that language reflects reality.  Language exists as a tool to aid us in expressing our perceptions of reality.  The SWH concurs, but adds that language (as an abstract reality, all its own) can not only influence but distort our perception of that reality.

While on a school trip to Arizona, I learned that the Zuni language lacks in inflectional future tense.  Our Zuni teacher proceeded to describe how this lacking only augmented the all encompassing present moment.  Surely, his people possessed a calm, a presence, a groundedness, we as English speaking, ambitious university students lacked.

Wendell Johnson writes, “The worlds we manage to get inside our heads
are mostly worlds of words.”

Still, my friend K. returns to me, with his angry expression and his desire to call a tree a tree.  I am a woman, after all.  Right?

In his argument against E-Prime, Emory Menefee suggest (with, I imagine, some winking) a language called Choice-Prime.  The extreme nature of E-Prime holds unrealistic standards.  The language can feel frustrating when trying to abide by its rules (as I’ve discovered in the process of this E-Prime friendly-ish post).

Sometimes a PBR can is just a PBR can.

Sometimes semantics are really only semantics.  To quote a bible verse, “…our sufficiency is from God, who made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit.  For the letter kills, but the Spirit giveth life.”  (2 Corinthians 3:5-6)  In his essay E-Prime:  The Spirit and the Letter, Ralph Kenyon Jr. suggest we distinguish between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law when discussing E-Prime.  Understanding the language’s underlying concept offers far more benefit than mastering some semantic gymnastics.

So, dear K., let that tree be a tree.  No need to waste any more time brainstorming synonyms for the unspeakable.  I am a woman, but I am not the equivalent of a woman.  I choose to identify myself as a feminist because the word possesses potency and a sprawling history I want to include me.

If certain identifications stress me out, no need to worry, E-Prime allows me an escape.  To lose oneself in an identity is to lose oneself in a linguistic error.  I am a soon-to-be mom.  What does that mean?  In reality, what does that imply? I will soon give birth to a child.  Besides that, not much.  What is the point? To push beyond these generalities to the honest and personal specifics.  To own my perceptions as my perceptions and not pawn them off (or labor beneath them) as objective truths.

To be more truthful, always.  That’s the point.

Yes.  That is very much the point I am trying to make.