Writing Right with Dmitri: Dodgy Sources and Temporal Provincialism

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Writing Right with Dmitri: Dodgy Sources and Temporal Provincialism

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Is your experience like mine? When I was a kid, my teachers stressed that it was a good idea to find the latest information. That assumed that a new book was more likely to be accurate, and contain up-to-date research, than an old, out-of-print one. Since I'm talking about the 50s and 60s here, that was a fair observation: lots of people were working hard to research and improve our knowledge of things.

This is still likely to be true if you're talking about natural sciences or technology. After all, how much use is a 1960s volume on computer technology, other than as a curiosity? However, I'm beginning to realise that you should be very wary when you try to research historical subjects. Newer does not mean better. Here's why.

  1. Things get lost in the shuffle. A lot of mistakes creep into research because people get their information from secondary sources. They also copy bibliographies. I've seen a misspelled name get into the system, be copied from researcher to researcher, and get enshrined in online databanks. Since I started out doing palaeography (manuscript studies), I recognise 'scribal error' when I see it.
  2. The internet makes researchers lazy. They use copy-and-paste a lot. They don't do their own work. And they don't chase down those sources. You don't believe me? Look in Google Books for historical books written since 2000. Go checking where they got their information from. You'll see what I mean. They're just passing it around. That's not research: it's what makes all those 'news portals' so unreliable.
  3. They're temporally provincial.

Modern researchers have blinders on. They think people in 'The Past' were just like them, only in less fashionable clothing. Here's an example: go look up the argument about the origin of the word 'okay'. Or, as most of them call it, 'OK'. The majority of these sources will high-handedly insist that the last word on the subject is that 'OK' came about as the result of a Boston newspaper joke in 1839.

Really? Since the word came from the US, and most people at that time were either functionally illiterate or did not subscribe to Boston newspapers, that explanation doesn't even begin to make sense. The more likely explanation is that the Choctaw/Chickasaw word – which means exactly the same, and is used in the same way – was adopted by the hordes of settlers in the new territories, who lived cheek by jowl with these Choctaw and Chickasaw speakers. The Boston newspaper joke is just what happened when the East Coast elite finally heard this uncouth expression.

So why would internet researchers be so convinced by the newspaper explanation? For one reason, because they themselves belong to a text-based society. They get their news online or from a television that runs textfeed across the bottom of the screen. They send text messages (badly spelled) constantly. And yes, they get their new idioms, slang, and other language innovations directly from print. If they don't say it on Twitter, it's 'so last year'. Right?

But this was not always so. Early 19th-century North Americans weren't dumb. Well, okay, but they weren't any dumber than their descendants. In fact, some of them were pretty smart cookies. I'd like to see a Harvard graduate practice law as adroitly as, say, Andrew Jackson or Abraham Lincoln. Both of whom had read far fewer books in their time than are available to any casual shopper who wanders into the average mall bookstore. Yet, somehow, they managed. This is not to say that books aren't valuable. It is to say that people who don't have books do things differently. They get their information, and their new expressions, orally rather than in print.

Another reason the internet generation won't believe we got a totally useful, perhaps indispensable expression from an American Indian language is that to them, it's counterintuitive. After all, they don't know any Indian words. That they know of1. Besides, how would people pick up words from such an obscure and unfashionable source? How did they run into Indians, anyway?

They forget about the Trail of Tears. They do this because a) it's convenient to do so, and b) it isn't important because they weren't born then. But before most of the original people were forcibly removed from their homes on this side of the Mississippi, they and the European settlers lived side-by-side. They traded, talked, and intermarried (more often than most people realise). Tribal people taught settlers about the geography, meteorology, and natural history of the region. From American Indians, settlers learned what was safe to eat, what plants were medicinal, what rivers safe to ford (and when), and when and what to sow and reap. It wasn't all fighting, all the time: sometimes, people got along. And traded words, among other things.

Now, what is interesting is that, the further back you go in source hunting, the closer you get to an official realisation of all the facts I've just mentioned. Why? Because they hadn't forgotten yet. And the writers-down of this information had live informants: they asked the old people. Nobody on the internet asks old people anything. No old person – say, over 35 – could possibly have anything interesting to say.

Do you have questions about what slavery was like? Who are you going to believe, Hollywood? How about, instead of watching Twelve Years a Slave, you go and read the book? Solomon Northup was there. He knows what he's talking about. And you might be surprised. You want more information about those times? Read the WPA slave narratives, a massive collection of oral histories from the 1930s. (Be prepared to get lost in there.) Those people were there. Their voices have authority. There's nothing copy-and-paste about them.

So you see what I'm on about? Careful with the internet: don't get me wrong, it's a great tool. But be careful to avoid the trap of 'garbage in, garbage out'. You can find worlds in these pixels, but pay attention to the credentials. Make sure they have bona fides. Who you gonna believe, them as was there, or people whose articles have titles like

33 Shocking Facts That Will Change How You Picture US History (You Won't Believe Number 14)

Well?

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

25.04.16 Front Page

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