1 When
1 I
2 speak to
3 you, I wish
5 to be understood.
8 If I change my language for you
13 am I being thoughtful -- or phony and insincere?
My recent viewing of the film Sorry to Bother You -- in which a black telemarketer is helped to succeed by using a "white" voice -- has led me to think more about times that I, often unconsciously, switch my language for different listeners.
I grew up on a farm and learned early that farmer lingo was not welcomed in my chatter with town friends, and later, as a mathematics professor, I saved my academic and my mathematical vocabularies for "suitable" occasions and did not use them with my farm family or small-town friends. Indeed, much of my life I have completely avoided math vocabulary in almost all social situations. Mostly, I have thought of this "code-switching" as politeness, though I can see that it also conceals parts of myself.
This thinking about "different languages" has led me to look back to a posting from 2013 that involves a fine poem by June Jordan, "Problems of Translation: Problems of Language" that considers measurements on maps. What does three inches mean?
This link leads to more information
about poems structured by the Fibonacci numbers.
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