ENC1101 Learning Unit 1
The Curious Crossings of Language And Life
Most of us think of language as a tool we use to help us function in the world. However, close consideration reveals that our relationship with language is a lot more complicated than we think. And a lot, weirder, too.
Consider a job interview, for example. Such a situation is highly stressful for a number of very obvious reasons, but one source of discomfort is especially revealing in regard to language and its connection to who we are or, perhaps, want to be.
When a job interviewee sits across from his or her potential boss or is surrounded by a hiring committee or even sits at home and speaks into a phone or computer interface for a phone interview, a strange thing happens; he or she becomes someone else. Suddenly words erupt from the interviewee’s lips that he or she rarely if ever speaks in casual conversation. Simple answers to questions become complex strings of formal prose as one seeks to sound “professional.” Lies about motivations, desires, hopes, and dreams intersect with half-truths and polite banter about nothing.
The entire meeting is to some extent a charade, of course, a shadow play; the interviewers have read about the potential employee and know all about his or her professional background in advance. The interviewee has read about the company and obviously wants the job. But something else is going on here that has nothing to do with the announced purpose of the meeting: a job interview is, in a sense, a test of one’s language programming. It is as much about the linguistic you, that enigmatic, spectral, secondary nervous system of syntax and diction that speaks, as it is about your corporeal presence in the room.
Yes, the job interview is a kind of Turing test for potential employers. Except this is a Turing test in reverse.
The Turing test was a screening experiment developed by Alan Turing in the 1950’s to test whether a machine was capable of demonstrating intelligent linguistic behavior. Variations of it have been depicted in science fiction movies like 1982’s Blade Runner and 2015’s Ex Machina as well as HBO’s new series West World ; in all of these cases an interviewer solicits answers from incredibly human-like robots to determine the degree to which they have personhood and should be granted the rights that go along with such status.
In the case of the reverse Turing test performed at a job interview, employers are seeking to gage the extent to which the interviewee has been properly programmed by his or her culture; they want to determine whether the potential employee has developed the language necessary to function in a professional environment, has learned how to verbally navigate through the professional world.
Job interviews are so uncomfortable precisely because, as much as one prepares for them, one is at the mercy of the situation on both an external and internal level. Externally because one obviously can’t control the room, the disposition o