Everyone is a Literary Critic

When I tell people that I am a PhD student in English Literature, they peer quizzically at me (sometimes they even leer) and ask, ‘what can you do with that?’

To be perfectly honest, I don’t really have much of an idea of what I can do with a PhD in English Literature beyond losing a sense of society at large in the academy as an academic. I dunno, I could be a critic, maybe work in publishing, or write more of this threateningly high/lowbrow mixed genre nonsense, even something novel-like. Perhaps with a Doctor before my name someone will mistake me for being intelligent and serious about words. Perhaps a tribal society lost to time in the jungles of Venezuela, but recently discovered, will mistake me for a God in my grasp of the particulars of language. They will call me the Reality Maker.

Who knows?

However, what has dawned on me recently is just how widespread literary criticism actually is in everyday society, particularly as it has materialized through the medium of text messaging. Everyone is a literary critic when they open up a message, read it and decipher its meaning, or tone, or underlying message. It’s one of the more amazing sights to watch a group of teenage girls (or boys, or young men, or young women, anyone really) sitting in a café, heads all bowed over a phone examining each word in a text message in the context of its broader meaning beyond the message itself. Something as straight forward as, ‘hey babez, i’ll be late tonight,’ is imbued with a meaning made transcendent by the mystery of why the messenger will be late and why in this particular message they used ‘z’ as an appendage to ‘babe.’ Why be so colloquial and oddly phonetic to deliver such a simple declaration?

I’ve watched groups of people debate about the meaning of text messages from the perspective of the personal biography of the messenger as a means to process its individual syntax—what does it say about the person?—and whether the simplicity (straight forward sort of person) or complexity (bit of a wordy bugger, but means well, or is avoiding something…) of its form are reflective of the messenger’s personality. Should these apparent aspects of their personality be taken into account if it transgresses into their writing? Does the message say something about the messenger that may add extra meaning to the message itself?

On the other hand, I have also had the peculiar pleasure of witnessing text message Formalists who deny the need to take account of the messenger when reading the message. They argue it is just blank communication with no history after the ‘send’ button has been hit; the message is governed by its own internal and immediate rules that obey the strange misspelled and grammatically awkward sphere of text messaging itself. What it is, is what it is.

With my background in literary studies I feel that there is probably money to be made in offering myself up to people to examine and breakdown their text messages. I could say to a teenage girl with boy troubles why her panicking about him cheating on her based on him saying he’ll be slightly late—made additionally cloudy by that mysterious ‘z’—is not something to worry about. It is obvious he is using the ‘z’ post-ironically, as a term of goofy endearment. Or, I could, with work, explain to her why this message actually entirely reconstitutes her reality, and that boy troubles are the least of her worries: she is become ‘babez.’

Thinking about it, I don’t know if I could deal with that much power. Back to the academy.