It is not just a simple question of standing up for one’s own opinion, of having a liberal leaning or a conservative one, of caving in to peer pressure and group mentality. It’s not as simple as that. The usual conceptions, easy delineations, well accepted categorizations are as helpful as they are damaging in our understanding.
It sounds rude and arrogant to talk about creole English to somebody who has no idea what it is. And I don’t even understand creole at all myself. I only know their existence. I am happy they exist since it somehow makes me feel that I belong to it, the big pool of non-native English speakers. How to stand up for something one doesn’t know much about? It almost feels like picking a fight deliberately to stand up for something one knows very little and to fight against somebody who’s completely ignorant of the topic. The whole thing sounds ridiculous.
Some people really know how to express oneself in a non-offensive ways, how to make impertinent ideas entertaining, how to tell a story that’s not too cliche to bore the audience while not too provocative to shock people out of comforts. Salman Rushdie for example. However most people don’t have such skills, which can only be developed through years of exchanging ideas and discussing nuances. Most people don’t have a chance to do that no matter how many books they read. Some would say only very few in academic environment are able to pull it off. Probably that’s true in the contemporary society. However it doesn’t have to be this way. Remember Socrates?
Haoyan Do 