Pragmatic Idealism

by Madeleine Kando

If I had to choose one word in the English language to describe my oldest daughter’s personality, I would describe her as ‘pragmatic’. My husband likes to describe her as ‘Dutch’, as if she was a piece of cheese. She is after all, half Dutch, half Hungarian. Dutch on her father’s side, Hungarian on her mother’s side. 

But calling her ‘Dutch’ does not do justice to her OR Dutch cheese. There are hundreds of types of Dutch cheeses and many flavors of pragmatism. Calling someone ‘pragmatic’ is just as vague as describing someone’s personality as 'Dutch', but for lack of a better word I will stick to that description.



The word pragmatic comes from the Latin word ‘pragmaticus’ (being skilled in law or business) and the Greek root ‘pragma’, which means a thing done, a fact. I personally like the following definition of a pragmatist: ‘One who acts in response to particular situations rather than upon abstract ideals; one who is willing to ignore their ideals to accomplish goals.’


Well, in that sense, we are all pragmatists by default? The question is not whether you are willing to ignore your ideals in the face of reality, but how far you are willing to go.



It is often said that the American character is quintessentially pragmatic. American inventors like Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell epitomize Pragmatism and the Yankee spirit of tinkering. Pragmatism says: ‘Try something and see if it works’. America itself was an experiment. Pragmatism judges whether something is good by its consequences. Pragmatism says that there are no absolute truths. Nothing is sacred. Ideas are basically there to give actions their purpose. Not the other way around.



For example, is it pragmatic to steal a car so you won’t have to walk to work? Well, according to one of the founders of pragmatism, William James, pragmatism is what works for the majority of people. If everyone started to steal cars, it wouldn't be good for the people whose cars got stolen (or for the car thieves who go to jail), so in the long run, stealing a car to go to work is not pragmatic.



If pragmatism is so American, it is in danger of suffering a slow death. How come we have so many 'principled' politicians in government? The current grid-lock is a direct result of falsely-interpreted idealism on both sides of the isle. From the Republicans' obsession with anti-abortion to the unwillingness to compromise on the Democratic side. It's all very non-American, if you ask me.



Read more...

Accent Discrimination

By Madeleine Kando

I speak English as if it were my native language. My native language is Hungarian, but I was too young when I left, so I no longer speak it. It is buried beneath other languages that I had to learn on the way to adulthood. I am a language mutt, you might say. Were it not for my accent, which I am told is French, I could impersonate the most diehard native English speaker. 

The only language that I speak without an accent is French, because I learnt it before my speech apparatus settled itself in the comfortable language groove that native speakers always dig for themselves. But before I could learn my multiplication tables, my French had to be tucked away in the bottom of my backpack, when we moved from Paris to Amsterdam. I learnt Dutch quickly and perfectly, without anyone noticing that I was an imposter. Or so I thought.

The problem is, that you cannot hear your own voice the way other people hear it, unless you use a recording device. The fact that I couldn’t hear my own accent protected me from the harsh reality that when people heard me speak, they saw a French duck, but I thought of myself as a Dutch swan.

Kachru's Three Circles of English

English is the Lingua Franca of the world. Non-native speakers use English to communicate with each other, which allows an Eskimo to speak to a Pigmy, to a Dutchman or a Russian without having to learn all these languages. He only has to learn English and presto, he is able to attend a Pigmy conference on how to grow taller, a Dutch workshop on how to build dykes, or read a manual on how to install a samovar in his igloo.

Of the one and a half billion people in the world who speak English, only 380 million are native speakers. Not only are they in the minority, but most of them are ‘mono-lingual’. They only speak one language. Who can blame them? Why bother learn another language if everybody else speaks your language?

Accent Discrimination

English is the undisputed global ruler, but there is English and then there is English. Speaking English without an accent (called neutral English), immediately puts you in a privileged position on the chessboard of life. You could have five post-graduate degrees and an IQ of 180, but none of that matters when you are a person in the possession of an accent. There are jobs and even entire careers that I would not waste my time applying for, knowing that I have a foreign accent. Can you imagine the President of the United States delivering the State of the Union with a French accent? People would roll on the floor laughing.

Accent racism is a result of our basic desire to classify others, to group them in a certain hierarchy and to differentiate friend from foe.* It is a global phenomenon, but it is ironic that ‘neutral English’ should be the norm when two third of English speakers have an accent. It’s like asking the entire male population to wear a crew-cut because a minority of American men are subjected to this atrociously disfiguring custom when they enlist in the army.

Read more...