We have very few good literary works that were produced without some Western intervention.
The asperity of expostulations lodged with this paper's editorial ombudsman belies the ostensible remonstrance against difficult or pompous language, and evinces a more perturbing program of silence by lexicographicide.
Whilst its true that readers took issue with the deployment of exasperating ‘vocabularies', the over-arching disposition of the critique tended towards systematic extermination of the English word stock under the pretext of simplifying communication.
The expression ‘vocabularies' is by itself a gargantuan giveaway, and harks back to the days when teachers of composition would arm pupils with quires filled with lists of more advanced or difficult words for enriching their compositions, demonstrating masterful grasp of expression, and impressing examiners.
A vocabulary, then, came to be defined as a difficult word whose use is associated with pomposity and showboating.
As such, vocabularies were the Sunday best of expression; a spectacular performance neither intended nor expected to represent or become a sustainable modus vivendi.
Understood thus, there is no plausible rationale for the acerbity with which my (or indeed any other person's) style has been excoriated, however idiosyncratic it may appear.
To a significant extent, then, the furious disenchantment with the odd uncommon word or turn of phrase has less to do with commitment to clarity in communication, and more with a deep yearning to render challenging ideas inert or superfluous by whittling away the vocabulary, or word stock, or lexicon, of a language.
Prof Taban Lo Liyong's Lexicographicide’s delicious absurdity is a fundamental ingredient of its prognostic potency.
The persona reports on the contents of the personal diary of a recently murdered friend; a child prodigy who became a talented writer before being stifled by editorial gatekeepers.
In the throes of his occupational ennui, the addled writer is impelled by incipient megalomania to draw up a radically repressive manifesto, to be implemented upon assuming office as a dictator of an totally aliendated island nation.
Perhaps in retaliation for the draconian chastisement inflicted on him by diverse editors, he designs a scheme to systematically decimate his language's entire 50,000-word lexicon at the rate of 500 words annually.
It is clear that his objective is to reduce a people into silent terror, now that the editorial brahmin effectively muted him.
The siren song of silence by lexicographicide is intoxicating and titillating, and the quest for intellectual respite can abet the proclivity to purge all words that challenge our cognition. Generally, people struggle with various facets of the word stock of different tongues.
If, for this reason, objections to the use of any expression requiring us to pause, inquire, refer and reflect lie as a matter of course, very few, if any words, would survive, and our species' defining endowment would be neutralised.
As I pointed out last week, it is quite telling that none of my critics claimed that my writing employed non-existent or privately contrived words. Indeed, the exposition of their primary grievance may be reduced to the inconvenience of looking up words, meaning that it is admitted that, in all cases, the dictionary sufficed to illuminate their reading.
On the other hand, my learned colleagues constantly innovate absurd neologisms with impunity. It has been fascinating to witness the emergence of ‘injunct’ to the status of a formal verb that can be used in petitions, motions and other documentation before our grand political and legal institutions.
The nascent vernacular suggests that to injunct is intended to denote restraining by means of an injunction, which is a decree from a court of law requiring a subject to do or to desist from, actions set out in a claim.
‘Injunction’ is the noun form of ‘enjoin’, which is to formally command, admonish, direct, order or require. Just as join gives rise to joint or junction, enjoin does produce injunction.
There is a rational, if lexicographicidal basis for the emergence of ‘injunct’. In civil procedure, both parties and issues are said to be joined to or in an action respectively. The joining of a party implies that the claim in a particular cause has arisen against them.
On the other hand, to ‘join issue' typically takes the form of a denial, or traverse, of a statement of fact or law, effectively raising an issue that must be settled by adjudication. For a mysterious reason, lawyers feel more comfortable terming the joining of (a) part(y/ies) as enjoining, in applications to enjoin this and that entity as a co-respondent, interested party and whatnot.
So here is the muddle. The literature explicitly describes the joining of issue and of parties as joinder, not enjoining. A party enjoined is the subject of an injunction. The distinction is hardly pedantic, yet, as they say, here we are.
It does seem that, pending the ultimate extermination of a lexicon, a lexicographicidal strategy requires the laissez-faire vandalism of language through systematic and aggressive culling, alteration and substitution of words to severely undermine meaning and sabotage effective communication.
The offenders perpetrate these horrific transgressions in broad daylight untrammelled, and I am not one of them.
The writer is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya
