About That Axel...

This post actually has almost nothing to do with skating.

It's about a pronoun.

And axels. It's about axels, too.

When my club did its spring show, they brought in an outside choreographer who chose soloists for the show by reviewing video submissions in which the skaters gave an introduction of who they are and showed some of their skating. One young girl earned herself a spot in the show by quipping, "Now about that axel..." in her video introduction. This phrase stuck out to the choreographer and inspired him to give her a little piece in the show where they explained to the audience a little bit about what the axel means to figure skaters and included a double and triple axel demo from our top skaters.

I've never talked about any interests outside of skating on this blog, but I am a language geek. I speak a couple of languages and I enjoy thinking about language structure and word connotation and all sorts of other language related issues. I listen to this podcast called Lexicon Valley that recently did an episode on demonstrative pronouns, you know, like this, that, these and those. Now everybody knows how these words are used to refer back to topics and things previously mentioned, but this podcast explored a different use of pronouns---using them to refer to things that you have not immediately been talking about, such as "About that axel!"

You can listen to it here if such a topic appeals to you, but the gist of it is that this use of pronoun is used to refer to a common understanding that the audience and the speaker share. Its intent is to cause a familiar emotional reaction to the thing and it forms a bond between the speaker and the listeners. The podcast centered around how a particular politician made frequent use of this type of pronoun, which has the effect of strengthening the positive reaction of people who agree with the common understanding that's put forth, and enhancing the negative reaction of people who disagree. Anyway, it can be a powerful rhetorical tool, and I didn't think much of it after I listened to the podcast.

But now I can't not notice it. I realized that I write and talk about "that axel" all the time! I am doing this exact thing with language and have never thought about why! Obviously, I've made previous posts about axels, so I could be referring back to those, but in the case of the auditioning girl in her video, no previous mention of an axel had been made, but the way she used that phrase, "about that axel"... inspired an entire piece in the show. She had tapped into that angst that all skaters have known just by the use of that one pronoun and it resonated with the choreographer who knew exactly what she was talking about. She did that with just one word! Isn't language fascinating??

Oh yah! And skating is fascinating, too. I'll get back to rambling on about that axel in my next post ;)