The House of the English Language
The levels of English we choose to use affect how we communicate and how we're perceived--and have in recent history led to political success and high office.
I regard myself as being on the edge of creative. I’m no novelist, but I’ve written a few poems that I liked. Not a great musician, but I’ve sung and played in bands and made a CD with one. Not an artist, though there was that one terrifying sculpture I made portraying my rather terrifying grandmother. I liked it so much that I wouldn’t risk it exploding in a kiln, so over 45 years the clay deteriorated. It now lies buried in my old backyard in Knoxville.
But about 15 years ago, a foreign scientist at Oak Ridge National Labs asked me a question about an aspect of English that I hadn’t paid attention to, and as I struggled to explain it, I had to invent a system to understand it. In the book that ensued, I came up with a metaphor for English vocabulary: a house. The House of English became an idea that I have returned to time after time in many conversations over the years. It just works. In the next several posts, I’ll talk about how the house works and why the idea is so powerful.
The "House" of English
English has more words—some estimate over a million—than most languages. But how do people choose the words they use to communicate? What’s the difference between “I’m fine with that,” or “I agree to what you want” or “I accede to your request”? They all mean essentially the same thing, but we would use different words, and sometimes different grammar, in different situations.
To get an intuitive understanding of how the vast universe of English vocabulary works, let's imagine English vocabulary as a house--a three-story house with an attic and a basement. You enter the house on the ground floor (not the basement).
Just as people do different things in different parts of their houses—eating in the dining room or kitchen, studying in the upper rooms, relaxing in the living room--we use different “languages” (originating from actual different languages) in different areas of our lives.
On the ground floor (Level I in the diagram), you’ll find our home language. This is where the kitchen and living room are, where we relax, cook, and eat. The language that we use at Level I is not “special.” The words aren’t long. Everybody understands them: do, don’t, cook, burn, take off, put on, shirt, shoes, try, foot, finger. Many of these words are Anglo-Saxon or Norse; some are early French.
This might be a Level I conversation between a mother and child: Mom, can I stay over at Zari's house? She wants to work on homework with me. We have to hand in a take-home test tomorrow.
Level I vocabulary in adult language
The everyday spoken language of adults, even very highly educated people, is mostly at Level I. Even though most phrasal verbs can be expressed as more formal single verbs (for example, give up can be expressed as surrender), native speakers often prefer to use the phrasal verbs when they're talking. Describing a failed romance, we’ll say, She turned him down vs. She refused him. We’ll say The car broke down instead of The car malfunctioned.
These choices are unconscious. We don’t say to ourselves, “I will use break down instead of malfunction.” But we do it, and we notice when non-native speakers don’t do it--that is, when they speak in what sounds to us an artificially formal way.
Level II vocabulary
Level II is the second floor of this theoretical “house.” It’s where schoolchildren do their homework and study more advanced vocabulary words. Children begin acquiring Level II vocabulary in vocabulary-acquisition exercises in the later years of elementary school and middle school. Words like expansion, voyage, exploration, application, employment, tenacious, memorization are Level II words. Most of these words came into our language as French words, and they have close French cognates.
Unfortunately, some native speakers don’t become fully familiar with Level II words if they don’t read very much or if they lose interest in school and leave early. If they don’t learn the “fancy” words, they may have to take remedial courses at community colleges to help them bridge the gap before attempting college-level courses; they just don’t know the language of educated discourse and they have to learn it to succeed.
English language learners may have the opposite problem. They may know only Level II words, so they may use them when Level I would be more appropriate. Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese speakers, for example, arrive in English with a large vocabulary of French cognates in their own languages, and they are thrilled at how easy Level II vocabulary is to acquire. Once they learn about the existence of Level I, however, they find themselves at a big disadvantage if they want to sound really natural. He is very amorous of her doesn't have quite the same effect as He has fallen for her. Sometimes English learners who have learned most of their vocabulary from TOEFL preparation books find that Americans don’t understand them because they talk “like a book,” not like a human being.
Level III vocabulary
At Level III, the third story in this imaginary house, someone with a high education is writing a book of philosophy, science, or medical research. The key words for concepts of this kind come from Greek or directly from French or Latin. The words here typically have many syllables, and most importantly, not everyone knows them—words like mnemonic, cynosure, semiotic, sclerotic. This is the level of scientific and philosophical language. In upper-level college courses and graduate schools, students learn the Level III professional languages of science, politics, law, psychology, literary criticism, and other specialties.
The Attic and the Basement
The top and bottom of the “House of English” are like the attic and basement of a house. “Poetic” words are in the “Attic” of the “house.” Like old suitcases and trunks and outdated clothes, poetic words aren’t used very often, but we like to have them handy when necessary. Often, they are antique; they might have been used 500 years ago, but not many people use them now. Words like demure, quotidian, hempen, wrought, serpentine, or ethereal might be considered poetic words. They are not confined to any particular language of origin; some are Germanic, some are French, some Norse, some Greek, and some Latin. My book doesn’t include “Attic” words because I was concentrating on everyday English, not specialized English.
“Basement” words are words classified as vulgar, offensive, or profane. These words are mostly Anglo-Saxon words. Several have only four letters and are known as the “four-letter words.” Piss someone off isn’t horribly vulgar, but you might not use it talking to your boss. There are much more vulgar expressions that you can fill in for yourself.
Intra-language shifting between levels
Native speakers easily shift “up” from Level I to Level II when they want to sound more formal and impressive, and then down again if they want to speak very plainly or in a relaxed way. If educated people need to use professional jargon, they can shift up to the Greek-derived words, but when they go home from the office, or if they’re talking to their family members, they mostly speak at Level I, home words, like everyone else.
In this sense, native English speakers are “translating” among the different levels all the time. The more education you have, the more access you have to the different levels, which is why people with very little education sometimes simply lack the vocabulary to express their concerns. Or rather, they can do it, but it requires serious creativity. So native speakers translate within the house all the time, and they’re aware of the different needs of different audiences. Maybe they don’t always consciously choose words, but that doesn’t make the choice less real.