Rick Moody - The Diviners

Dialectical examination of the subject known hereafter as the ‘ugly girl’ (UG) was performed on a certain day in May in an American suburb by trained dialectical experts from like socioeconomic demographics, according to participant-observer methodology. Speakers in this northeastern suburb, according to the trained dialectical experts, are undergoing a vowel shift, known as the ‘anomie-related vowel shift’ (ARVS), best reflected in the [a/ ä] transformation of nah, as formulated in reply to requests, e.g., Honey, will you please go and pick up some packages of chicken at the corner store? Nah. (See, for example, Stinson, et al., 1985.) The UG, according to the trained dialectical experts from the adjacent milieu, was unaffected by the ARVS, despite being identical in age, despite having attained, at the time of the study, the educational level of the eighth grade, along with the trained dialectical experts. A lack of participation in ARVS and in the linguistic engulfers noted by the dialectical experts, such as fuck/ fucked/ fucker/ fucking, in which the engulfer begins to muscle out other parts of speech (moreover, the like continuative marker, wherein a certain word is appended, without grammatical consideration, to a sentence wherever a pause is indicated), this lack of participation is evidence of marginalization and isolation within a linguistic community, by which reason the committee of trained dialectical experts determined that a meeting with the UG for purposes of study and exchange of sociolinguistic ideas was urgently needed. The UG, according to the committee, was described as diminutive and given to dress in the traditional garb of this community; viz., blue or black denim pants cut in such a way as to obscure the specific features of the lower half of her body, large hooded sweatshirt, in gray, into the marsupial pocket of which she continually thrust her hands. Face, open, gentle, but characterized by a certain sadness, according to at least one committee member (a characterization that, it should be admitted, is disputed by others, who themselves consider the UG simply ‘ugly’), with an unkempt hairstyle generally restricted in the community of the dialectical experts and referred to by them as ‘frizzy, corkscrewy,’ etc. Lips often downturned, which according to the dialectical experts could be a biological point of origin for the back vowels that have, in the case of the UG, skidded slightly forward until they are rather nearer to colliding with her grand mean, a shift that may be ordinary in topologies of distant southern locales and on audio recordings by gangster rappers but is not known locally and is therefore not considered appropriate by the experts in this study. The recording of the UG by the committee of experts (COE) took place on Fort Point Ave., a quiet thoroughfare, after disgorgement from a standard-issue American school bus, which was, despite its quaint exterior, a veritable stew of linguistic trends and fashions. Upon dismounting from the standard-issue American school bus, the COE approached the UG and, gauging her with a preliminary analysis of her fronting advancement, asked about her boots, the heavy black boots she was wearing. Her reply of ‘Get out of my way’ was not considered to have resolved the question of the boot, and its relation to Fashion Vowel Supremacy, or FVS. According to FVS and ARVS, certain vowels, especially ü,?207–156? and ÿ, are considered imperative markers of Linear Community Formation, and that the UG would neither respond using the word ‘boot’ nor would she comment on the ‘boots’ themselves, which subsequent researches have indicated were common military jump boots, was the first indication that considerable further study would be required. Proceeding down Fort Point Ave. toward Hillcrest Place, the UG was described as withdrawn and resistant, especially in view of tests being implemented by the COE, such as the test in which the UG is invited to sit and talk on the stone wall in front of the property owned by Dan G. and Audrey L. Harrison of Newton Centre, Massachusetts. The sentence adduced by the COE, of course, by way of invitation, was an attempt to draw out the sit/ set reversal, but there was no success in producing this reversal, nor in any other markers of AAVE (African American Vernacular English), such as the pin/ pen merger, etc. Did this lack of markers indicate a convergence of the COE and the philosophical and emotional and linguistic core of the UG? If so, why did the UG continue, throughout interaction with the COE, to present such an impervious exterior? When the COE asked the UG, ‘Don’t you like us?’ they were of course attempting a sneak attack with the like continuative marker, and it should be pointed out in this summary that the dearth of directly quoted dialogue does not rule out the fact of the duh continuative marker, as well as the related d’oh, or contemporary shame indicator. ‘No, I don’t like you all,’ the UG replied, avoiding the contraction y’all of Southern Vernacular English, which the COE claimed to have heard her employ on one or more occasions. In this instance, the reply ‘No, I don’t like you all’ was viewed by the COE as an example of noncompliance with the study. However, noncompliance toward figures of authority, especially in the ARVS and in the case of Narcissistic Adolescent Monosyllabism (NAM), as noted by Davidoff in the eh engulfer, indicates a kind of mobility retardation, most notably in the double positive yeah yeah. And yet often these kinds of noncompliance, according to the COE, are vital, engaged political strategies. Why then the surrounding and the beginning of excessive threat with respect to the UG, as though surrounding and threat on the part of the COE were legitimate types of academic inquiry? ‘Where is your neighborhood at?’ the COE demanded, mocking. ‘And who is your mammy?’ Thereafter giving evidence of knowledge of the wealth of terminologies in the racial-slur family, without asking, it should be pointed out, if these particular lexical units were either a) offensive, or b) simply disparaging. The slurs were, however, often deployed in the history of linguistic exchange between past panels of COE and past UGs. History is littered with misunderstandings. Persons may require terms like ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ in order to create kinds of solidarity that diminish the stress levels engendered by adversaries in adversarial conflicts. Of course, a change of venue for the inquiry was considered desirable by the COE, the new venue being, ideally, one understaffed by assistants or graduate students or nosy observers, a venue such as a forest or a vacant lot behind a chain store, which in this afternoon light would not have been well traveled, the better to get a clear picture of the resistance-elongated vowel, or REV, with the hope that isolation would result in the UG’s employing the antagonistic usage of adversarial slurs against whiteness, including neologisms and coinages used to describe any individual member of the COE, such as boneys, nits, gruelies. For this was the secret worry of the COE, namely that the UG, despite her melancholy and detached exterior, was from the true research and development wing of American language, knowing things that the COE did not and could never know. Was the UG from some special exotic other, some linguistic elsewhere? Whereas the COE itself was from the land of moribund linguists. If the UG would just be willing to collaborate on close personal rapport with the COE, then perhaps the differences between the two parties could somehow be smoothed over. This was the academic plan in terms of primary research, the plan favored by the COE. But let it be said here that the creation of a monolithic first-person plural on the part of the COE was an academic fiction. Because when one of these academics of national repute suggested the change of venue described above, then certain members of the COE, stressing academic differences, began to plead lateness of the hour. These sociolinguists began to have prior commitments to other quarterly publications, such as Lawn-Mowing Today and Review of Contemporary Newspaper Delivery. In any event, the COE dwindled, having completed the important harassment section of its study on this street, Hillcrest Place, and they therefore decamped to do their guitar practicing, leaving behind just the one member of the COE, the one with the worst skin, the one with the most unwashed hair, the one with the most harrowing situation at home, a situation much commented on by women of the neighborhood, with wringing of hands. The lone member of the COE ran wild in the streets, unencumbered by oversight. What to do with him? He was overweight and had hard-palate deformities, which of course affected his sociolinguistic picture. Here was the sole remaining member of the COE, bent on the disrobement portion of the study. Were it not for the sudden appearance of a second study subject, namely the older brother of the UG, no longer called the UG but now, instead, referred to by her pseudonym for the purposes of study, which was the pseudonym of ‘Annabel,’ the disrobement might have proceeded. But according to some secret code involving linguistic deviation and dereliction, ‘Annabel’ summoned this second subject, known simply as ‘brother.’ A tall, lanky figure, designed for the rescue of children, the so-called ‘brother’ happened upon the colloquy between the lone member of the COE and ‘Annabel,’ on Hillcrest Place. He was apparently in the process of returning from what was described as a ‘long walk.’ At first, the ‘brother’ thought nothing of it, thought nothing of the appearance before him of ‘Annabel,’ face composed in that perpetual frown of public school interactions, thought nothing of the overweight and unwashed COE, who indeed looked like an advertisement for rapists-in-training. The ‘brother,’ whose name was William, though he preferred the pseudonym ‘Tyrone,’ was aloof from all daily events on Hillcrest Place. He was, by all accounts, walking around on some astral plane, where his studies concerned the size of black holes and whether or not these emitted radiation, etc., home on vacation from graduate school, etc., and it is no doubt likely that he spoke a tone language, or a clicking language of the African plains, etc., or a Niger-Congo dialect, or Creolist dialect, or Gullah, and the COE member would not be able to understand him, nohow, and so now the COE member, who had previously managed to exercise such admirable academic restraint, was sorely afraid, for he recognized in himself the anxiety engendered by AAVE, especially as practiced by adult male speakers. It was a thing that excluded and belittled the COE member. He would henceforth go unrecognized because of AAVE, his immensity would go unrecognized. He would receive no funding from governmental agencies, which meant, it now became clear, that the COE member should get his ‘ass’ the ‘fuck’ off of their street, which meant that the COE would go skulking back up Hillcrest, to the chaos of his own home, after which the study was aborted, and the subject called ‘Annabel’ fell into a hug with ‘Tyrone,’ and thus came to a close another sampling of normative suburban behavior.