"She kind of moved to the West Coast..."

Stephen Kurutz has seen into my soul, kind of. This is particularly pertinent to generalist librarians, since each day brings hundreds of reference questions. There is no way to prepare, and with teenagers you don't want to be caught off guard. A basic knowledge of a subject gives you a gateway and an opening for further discussion. However, there's a benefit to vagueness and it allows you to start a search at the beginning, assuming no knowledge of a subject. Frequency illusion or not, I'm noticing this in my speech pattern every day and working to limit it to times of metaphor, not times when I am hedging my certainty on a subject.
 

The "Kind of, Sort Of" Era

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/opinion/sunday/the-kind-of-sort-of-era.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar&_r=0

I’VE sort of noticed something about the way we speak, and I wonder if you’ve sort of noticed it, too. Let me kind of explain. It’s about sort of, and its twin, kind of, and how these adverbial downtoners, as the British grammarian Sir Randolph Quirk calls them, have totally, completely, 100 percent taken over casual speech.

Kinda, sorta.

I’m not referring to their use to describe a class of something, such as a sort of mammal, but rather as hedge words, to lessen a statement’s force or meaning. For instance, here’s the University of Cambridge ecologist Peter Walsh speaking recently about Ebola: “What’s nasty about it is it sort of melts your blood vessels.”

And here’s Edward J. Snowden describing his background to Brian Williams of NBC: “I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word.”

And here’s the comedian Amy Poehler explaining how she and Tina Fey divvy up laugh lines: “It kind of figures itself out. We just have to kind of be democratic about it.”

It’s possible I’m experiencing what linguists call the frequency illusion — my brain is primed to recognize the phrases, so I’m hearing them all the time. Or maybe I’ve stumbled into another linguistic pitfall, the recency illusion, thinking that a word or phrase is recent when it has actually existed for a long time. In 1995, William Safire noted in The New York Times Magazine the widespread use of kinda-sorta in the courtroom of the O. J. Simpson trial. And as far back as 1909, the language stickler Ambrose Bierce complained that “Kind of followed by an adjective, as ‘kind of good,’ is almost too gross for censure.”

It may be too gross for censure, but “kind of” and “sort of” have shown staying power over the decades. If you put “sort of” into Google’s Ngram viewer, a database of millions of digitized books, you find steady usage levels through the 1980s and ’90s, and a small uptick starting in 2000. And that’s only written language, not informal speech. For anecdotal proof, listen to NPR for a few hours (though not conservative talk radio, where certainty is more the rule of law).

Gabriel Doyle, who has a Ph.D. in linguistics and writes the blog Motivated Grammar, told me that “sort of”’ is a “de-precision device.” As Dr. Doyle put it: “The speaker is saying, ‘Don’t think of this as being overly accurate.’ ”

In other words, people throw “sort of” into their speech because they’re unsure. Our language is reflecting modern life.

We sort of have stable jobs until our company outsources or downsizes. We can sort of count on Social Security in retirement. We’re sort of done fighting a war in Iraq. It’s my nonscientific theory that “sort of” is, in part, a linguistic manifestation of the indefiniteness we feel, a noncommittal expression for a time of rapid technological change and instability across our social structures.

During our phone conversation, Dr. Doyle peppered his sentences with a lot of “sort ofs,” as in: “My approach on these things is sort of, what are the sort of factors that encourage people to use this?” He was conscious of doing so, and said his “sort of” rate increased when presenting new ideas or speaking to large crowds — say, at a conference.

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“You don’t want to be overly confident in these high-stakes arenas,” he said.

In this sense, “sort of” addresses another modern concern, because not a week goes by that someone isn’t publicly embarrassed or shamed over ill-considered words they tweeted or were caught saying on video. Daily conversation has become a high-stakes arena, for celebrities as well as normal citizens.

The awareness that offhand utterances can live forever online and have serious consequences has made for overly cautious speech. So we hear the “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd say to a reporter that he “sort of laughed” after reading an article on Benghazi in a conservative newspaper. Or Joe Neumaier, a writer for The New York Daily News, who as a film critic is paid to offer sharp opinions about Hollywood, assert about Robin Williams that “you sort of don’t think of him as a sort of character actor.”

Using “sort of” to reduce the risk of making an error or causing offense is a tactic an editor friend calls “strategic softening.” (Note to Alec Baldwin: insert “sort of” in your next tirade and you won’t have to make a public apology.)

As much as it can create rhetorical wiggle room and be a tool for nuanced thinking about a complex world, the “fuzzy kinda-sorta,” as Mr. Safire called it back in 1995, can also make for wishy-washy and obsequious speech that lacks clarity, confidence and authority. Especially when used frequently and to qualify banal utterances and basic facts.

The other day I was listening to NPR and heard Nicolas Retsinas, a Harvard Business School professor, mention that his daughter had “kind of moved back to the East Coast” from Alaska.

I doubt Mr. Retsinas was aware of saying “kind of.” It’s become a verbal tic, a filler phrase. I’ve deployed both “sort of” and “kind of” myself, many times. In this very newspaper, I once described the view from a Detroit rooftop as possessing “a sort of grandeur.” Strunk and White would not approve.

Sometimes I think of epic declarative statements, and wonder how they might be rendered in today’s hedge-speak. “It was sort of the best of times, it was sort of the worst of times.” “I came, I saw, I kind of conquered.” “I sort of have a dream.”

Sound kind of weak? Definitely.

Steven Kurutz is a reporter for the Home section of The New York Times.

English as a second language

Before I left, Ms. Mishkin and Mr. Calleja asked me about English language instruction in Japanese schools. We're spending about 30 hours this week on school visits. Since I don't understand Japanese, there's only so much I can learn from classes conducted in Japanese. (Although, you pay more attention to contextual clues like body language and the responses of the class when you can't just half-listen from the back of the room and get the gist of what's going on.) So far, I've been very impressed with the first two English teachers whose classes I watched. Schools officially begin English instruction in 7th grade, but schools are able to offer English once a week in the elementary grades if they want. The school I visited offered English on a rotation with art and music classes. In the past 10 years, the Japanese ministry of education changed from a rote grammar translation method to more active methods. (The teachers backed up what you observed in the past, Mr. Calleja. Due to this method, students had vastly disparate reading and speaking abilities.) Now, sometimes immersion methods are used, but it's at the discretion of the school. At Iraha Elementary School, one teacher teaches all subjects except the 'special' once a week classes. (The teacher attends these classes with her students; it's not prep time!) In the grade 3 class I observed, the English teacher spoke no Japanese but the classroom teacher sometimes translated when the students were having trouble understanding. The class was playing a fruit, animal, and sport identification game on the day I attended. The students sat in a circle, divided into two teams. About 30 laminated cards with English words and pictures lay in a pile on the floor in front of them. The teacher said, for example, "I'm thinking of a fruit" to prepare them. Then she'd say, "I'm thinking of a strawberry." The students then dove into the pile, hoping to be the first to find the correct picture. This was complete controlled chaos! The person who matched the picture to the item requested got to pin it to the board under her team's name.

At the junior high level, the best class that I observed all day was also the English class. The junior high has at least one master teacher! He doesn't speak any Japanese in the classroom, and he makes the students participate and practice their speaking. When I entered, there were 4 signs on the board. They read, "Q: Who is s/he?" "A: S/he is..." "Q:What does s/he do?" "A: S/he is a..." He'd hold up a picture and another teacher would point to the appropriate sign as he asked them to identify the person as they practiced their vocabulary words. By including people like Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Beyonce (they responded Cameron Diaz-haha), and Rosa Parks, he also got a little culture and history into the lesson as well. When he held up a photo of George W. Bush, students struggled with his job name. Several shouted "King" and, my favorite, one said "princess," which I guess vocab-wise is close, but it's got an entirely different meaning. This led to an impromtu Q and A session when the teacher asked if I could help. I got asked, "Where do you live?" (Disney is an excellent landmark for this culture!), "Do you like Japanese food?" (most of what I've tried) and "Do you like Chris?" (I then found out that Chris was the teacher's name---I do like Chris.) :) among other questions. Sometimes, the female teacher translated my responses, but most often she pantomimed. Then the class played a "relay race." The student in front (all of the desks in all of the schools were in straight lines!) was given a new card with a famous person and all in the row had to practice the 4 questions from the board by asking one of the questions or responding appropriately. Everytime someone got the English right, he passed the card to the person behind him, repeating questions and answers until the end of the line.

During the class, I was marvelling over Chris's mastery of English. It turns out that he's a Hawaiin native, here on the JET teacher exchange program. His time is split between 5 schools, and he spends two weeks at a time in each. The quieter female teacher I mentioned is actually the students main English teacher. (I briefly saw another JET teacher in the high school. She also had them working in groups and speaking, and was willing to change up her class when a group of English speakers came in willing to talk to her students. I was thinking that JET must have a great training program, but they actually don't train much at all, except Japanese language skills. I'm wondering if the reason that the other teachers and I were so impressed is because these are the "modern Western" ways we're trying to model in our own classrooms.)

Onto high school, which is slightly out of context without a longer post about the day at the school. In short, it is a poorer high-school and has low-to-middle-achieving students. We were given only one period to explore on our own, but one of the two classes we were scheduled to watch was English. This meant that 15 of us, plus the guide, the translator, and the principal, were crammed in the back of a classroom wtih 40 students and one teacher. This isn't an ideal set-up, so we were already a little on edge, especially because the students were completing a worksheet. When the teacher spoke, he read the worksheet aloud, then they practiced the problems. During this time, we started to talk to the students. We were under the impression that he really didn't like that because he called the class back to order and said firmly, "This is my class." A few people got pretty upset. I think he actually meant, "This is my class-class, back to order" because he began calling students to write their answers on the board. He spoke in a mix of Japanese and English, and seemed inflexible in what he wanted to get done during the period. He came to our administrator and teacher meeting in the afternoon, and it appears that we misjudged him. He's actually a very nice man, and he got us copies of the English exam students have to take before university. (Language teachers, it will be at school next Friday.) He apologized that he could not change the schedule more, but said that we had observed a difficult class for the most advanced students. It was an English grammar course, not a speaking course. They were behind in their studies, and he needed to get through some material before the standardized test of English language ability that's part of the university entrance process. Still, I think it's sad that his students were unable to practice their English. Those who did speak to us while we were roaming the aisles spoke only a few words at a time and didn't seem more comfortable speaking than the 7th graders or the elementary students. Perhaps they were shy, or perhaps speaking had to be tossed aside in favor of reading ability for this test.

At the university level, courses refine grammar study and also read (what they defined as) American Literature. This includes A Christmas Carol, Pygmalion, and Tuesdays with Morrie. They practice conversational English in class. Still, the Japanese never admit that they are fluent in English. Even when they can emulate American colloquialisms perfectly, they say, "a little" or "maybe I can help" when you ask if they speak English. The Japanese don't seem eager to practice their English speaking skills, nor do they seem particularly interested in learning English, even people who work in the tourist profession.

Take this post and run with it! Language instruction at young grades, teachers from foreign countries, immersion methods, teaching to the tests---the floor is yours!