Preaching To The Subway Generation (Part II)

A prophet is never accepted in their home town, or at least that’s the biblical and conventional wisdom. I am a case in point. In my own home, replete with a coterie of daughters and a wife in cahoots with them [rather than me], my preaching is not rated. My younger colleague gets the vote ahead of me. It is because, as all my daughters agree, he is ‘easier to understand’.

Apparently I use ‘big’ words and “say things which we don’t understand”. I can’t even get a rave review in my own home let alone church! I am in possession of a vocabulary that is no longer understood. Language is changing and we need to learn how to speak to the Subway Generation.

A feature of the bite size Subway Generation appears to be a diminished vocabulary and the wholesale deletion from language of idioms.

Words have been added, but they tend to be words that pertain to technology [USB's, iPods, MySpace, pixel, blog etc] and a number of new expressions have been added from movies and cartoons [doh!, duh!, whatever, I'm like soooo over this, hello???, add your own].

My own unscientific pontifical research leads me to believe that although some new cool words have been added, there has been an overall net loss. Furthermore, idioms have disappeared from the new generation’s vocabularies.

I’m no man of letters, the son of a welder and raised in a thoroughly working class home with not a degree in sight. My journey into words began on the first day of theological college. I could barely understand what any of my lecturers were saying so I decamped to the town centre after close of lectures and bought myself a copy of the Oxford Dictionary. It was a constant companion on my desk for the next couple of years and more often than not there was a copy at wherever I had my being. I discovered the joy of being able to express myself more precisely using the vast array of beautiful words the English language provides.

Even still, I am no academic and rarely read fiction. I shun all attempts at getting me to watch a Shakespeare play and am rarely found within the precincts of a theatre or opera.

Sadly a growing desire to understand words is now my downfall. I cannot delete words from my vocabulary. Rather, when I talk to the Subway Generation I have to modify my speech patterns to avoid using words which could potentially not be understood. Using idioms is a virtual waste of time, and almost always met with blank stares.

This is a dumbed down generation, without a doubt. The new intelligences are to do with technology, and words have a utilitarian value as opposed to tools with which to create beauty.

Add to the mix here in Australia a cultural and sociological chip on the shoulder which leads to the hearer of a word they don’t understand to assume that the person speaking it is trying to appear important. When I hear a word I don’t understand I make a note of it on my PDA [you see I know the lingo], then I go to www.dictionary.com to find out what it is. If the word is a good one, I add it to my vocab.

I’ve found that in Australia the opposite response is engendered. At times I receive hostile comments after a sermon about the words I have used. They tend not be scripted words, instead words which pop into my head whilst I ad-lib.

It’s as if I need to make the kind of adjustments that I would if I were learning a new language in a foreign missions context. Whatever it takes I guess, I’d rather do the hard yards and be understood.

What have you found? Are you understood?