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Disintegration of language
5 January, 2002

There is a franchise in the United States whose popularity is growing at an alarming rate. Started in the southwest, this low-class, low-taste chain has steadily spread north and east. When one opened recently in Issaquah, Washington, graduate students at the University in Seattle began eagerly asking each other if they had visited this place yet.

This is an uninspiring indicator of the diminishing of local culture, and of how corporate "culture" is colonising the minds and conversations of people everywhere. But what's worse is that this chain has very recently opened in Canada, and people are flocking out to it. What is this chain? It is the Wal-Mart of doughnut shops. It is Krispy Kreme.

Many things about Krispy Kreme are bad signs; mostly that it is a multinational corporate business filling the niche formerly occupied by local shops, then filled by a Canadian chain (Tim Horton's). I seriously doubt that anyone involved with Krispy Kreme--corporate executives, employees, or patrons--cares about the local culture affected by this chain or about the smaller businesses being bankrupted by one juggernaut monolith of a company which is siphoning money out of Canada. But this is nothing new.

What is new about Krispy Kreme is what alarms me the most. It is its name. The name is embarrassing to read, to write, and to speak. It is spelled in that cute, increasingly ubiquitous consumer-speak which dumbs down the average person more every year. But the worst part is the words. If one pauses and thinks about the name, one must raise an eyebrow. I know little about cuisine, but how often is cream supposed to be crispy? Yuck.

In George Orwell's dystopic novel, 1984 (which resembles our society more everyday), the government eliminates words from the language in order to control the thinking of its people. All documents containing undesirable words are dropped in an incinerator via "memory holes". One word removed is the word "bad", and soon no one can think of the word to use it about the government.

Whether or not there is sinister intent behind it, this phenomenon is happening in our world. More and more spelling errors, vocabulary errors, and grammatical errors are appearing in our daily experience. Of course, how important is it for a plumbing or food business to correctly spell "light" or "night", or to use "your" instead of "you're", or "its" instead of "it's"? In the grand scheme of our culture, that is a minor issue, because their business is commerce, not language, right? It is not as if these people are educating anyone.

But they are. Gradually, the average reading and writing ability in our culture is slipping. Errors are not limited only to apostrophes, contractions, and cute spelling shortcuts. Incorrect word choices are becoming increasingly common. Of course, language has always been simply a matter of popular consensus, in which the meaning of a word is that which everyone agrees on. It is not so any longer. Movies, television shows, and advertising are determining language, and these are controlled by people who will do anything, including deceive and swindle, to get our money. To look at the effects of this dis-educating process, watch CNN. That is both the result and ongoing process of information control. The best way to be deceived is to be convinced that you are not.

Recently I visited engrish.com, and laughed about the result of poor translations of Japanese into English which are occurring in Japan. I subsequently noticed it happening here in translation from Correct English into Consumer English. Then it was not so funny.

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