BABY TALK IN U.S.

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25092, 25 January 1947, Page 9

BABY TALK IN U.S.

NATIONAL TRAIT OF PEOPLE CLAIM BY ENGLISH SCHOLAR (From Our Own Correspondent.) NSW YORK, January 14. To a capital struggling hopelessly against double talk came the disheartening intelligence that Americans are guilty of no less than six major forms of hypocorism. Hypocorism, writes Anthony Leviero, from Washington, to the “New York Times,” is semantic for baby talk.

The insidious growth of what you might call language butchery or sugar talk (depending on your age and romantic condition) was exposed before scholars of the Modem Language Association of America by Dr. Allen Walker Read, of the department of English, Columbia University, New York. The scholars, here for a five- «?? s j ion ’ were told that “momsie" ° a ° ur p s ” were far more seriously afflicted with hypocorism than “sonny” and “daughtie.”

Dr. Read backed up everything he said with citations and baby-talk samples dating back to 1531 in England and 1788 in the United States. As consolation for a comparatively young country, Dr. Read quoted a British authority to the effect that Britons babied the King’s English far more than we did.

Six Forms of Baby Talk Here are the six forms of baby talk discussed by Dr. Read: ( P B»by talk which adults teach their children.

(2) Baby talk which grown-ups use in conversation with their dogs and other pets. (3) The cloying words with which one lover talks to another.

(4) Hypocorism in advertising. (5) Baby talk of adults used in a wheedling spirit. (6) Baby talk used for sarcastic or satirical effect.

Dr. Read said he was no advocate of bsby talk: that it was not dignified. He added, however, that hypocorism should be acknowledged as a rhetorical device which cropped up in certain social situations. After all, almost everybody, including George Bernard Shaw and the late Alexander Woollcott, had used the buttery language.

It will be noted from Dr. Read’s outline that children comprise the only population group not guilty of baby talk, unless it is instilled in them. He made it clear -th?t the child would learn the purest English if it were delivered to him straight. Noah Webster Quoted

Noah Webster, earliest American authority on the subject, was quoted thus by Dr. Read:

“The silly language called baby talk, in which most persons are imitated in infancy, often breaks out in discourse at the age of 40, and makes a man appear very ridiculous. A boy of six years of age may be taught to, speak as correctly as Cicero did before the Roman Senate.”

As an example of Form No. 2, Dr. Read quoted from Shaw's Androcles and The Lion where Androcles says “didum get an awful thorn in urn's tootsums wootsums?”

For the lovers’ baby talk. Dr. Read mentioned among others the sweet nothings of Jonathan Swift to his Stella. He noted that Swift was addicted to “whisper dispers” at the very time, in 1712, when he was writing his “Proposal for Correcting, Improving. and Ascertaining the English Tongue.” Under Form No. 4, Dr. Read quoted samples from printed and radio advertising. including "Kewty Baby Shoppe.” cereals kndWn as “Lishus’’ and “Bekus Puddy," and underwear called “woofics.” The Presidential campaign of 1840 provided the sample under No. 6 when opponents presented William Henry Harrison in campaign literature as X n^ r ®^--' p ‘ nned 30me Dr. Read mentioned Sinclair Lewis, Thornton Wilder. Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Booth Tarkington, and D. H. Lawrence as baby-talk writers. “I do not wish to be understood as advocating the use of baby talk.” he stated. “It is hardly in keeping with human dignity, and it may. in most cases, represent a neurotic and pathological adjustment of the individual to his surroundings. . “I would, however, maintain that hypocorism should be acknowledged as a rhetorical device available to speakers of English for use in certain social situations."