20131102.1307

As my wonderful wife and I were talking today, our conversation ran to the idea of job titles--that is, how to call what it is that we and other people do.  Hers is "linguist," and our experiences tell us that describing herself as one triggers a particular response in people, one that indicates that they recognize being a linguist as having a "thing to do."  They recognize linguist as a career or profession, one that has a particular degree of cachet and authority, even if they are note entirely sure what it is that a linguist does.  My own identification as a medievalist does the same; people are aware that it is a "thing to do," although they may be confused as to the details of what I do--or whether what I do is worth doing.*

The broader context in which she and I exist is not quite so kind, however.  We are both scholars, but she argued--and I was not unconvinced--that scholar does not carry the same authority that linguist or medievalist connotes.  Part is likely due to the necessary wordiness of using scholar; there are many sorts of scholars, so delineating the type is needful.  Scholar of medieval British literature and culture is not less accurate than medievalist--the opposite is true--but, because the information is spread out over more words, it loses some impact, as force does when it is spread over a larger area.  That part is then an issue of concision; too often, shorter is necessarily better, and there is no good short way to call a scholar in the humanities.

Part, too, is possibly in the perception of pretense.  Scholar and student are largely synonymous, but student appears far more frequently than scholar in print, and it is heard far more frequently in speech.  It is therefore more normal than scholar, which makes of scholar an oddity, an affectation used by those who are too studious (and there is something wrong that people can be described thus) to seem like they are somehow better than the majority who simply wish to get through their required curricula and on to the real stuff.  That pretentious use diminishes the value of the word for those who would use it without pretense, those who have, in fact, devoted themselves to study.  Scholar is stripped of its authority.

While the case can easily be made that we ought not to concern ourselves so much with labels, the fact is that we use such labels to orient ourselves and each other in relation to one another and to the world in which we exist.  All words are labels, in fact, convenient, abstract noises we use to describe approximations of our incomplete observations and faulty imaginings to one another.  It is with such things that my wife and I concern ourselves in our professions--our callings, rather, for we do not set aside The Work when "the working day" is done.  And it is with such things that many or most are concerned in their day-to-day living; more attention to them is therefore warranted.

*Whether it is of any value that I study the literatures and cultures of Britain from approximately 450 to 1485, looking at them so that I can see what of them is transmitted forward even to now, is an entirely different question from that of how to label people who identify themselves as doing so.  I, of course, think it is--but then, I would.