By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi Although many Nigerians, including Professor Wole Soyinka, use “academicians” an...
By Farooq A. Kperogi,
Ph.D.
Although many
Nigerians, including Professor Wole Soyinka, use “academicians” and “academics”
interchangeably, they are in error. Find out why in today’s Q and A. Also find
the difference between a “house” and a “home,” between the expressions “it’s
me” and “it’s I,” and other usage questions.
Question:
What is the difference
between an “academic” and an “academician”? I see both words used
interchangeably in Nigerian English.
Answer:
Let me answer you this
way: you will probably never have a reason to use the word “academician” if you
speak or write Standard English. Most people who use “academician” are either
non-native English speakers or uneducated native English speakers.
So what is the
difference between an “academician” and an “academic”? Well, an “academic” is
someone who teaches or conducts research in a higher education institution,
typically in a university. In British and Nigerian English, academics are also
called “lecturers.” In American English, they are called “professors.”
An
“academician,” on the other hand, is a person who works with or is honored with
membership into an academy, that is, an institution devoted to the study and
advancement of a specialized area of learning such as the arts, sciences,
literature, medicine, music, engineering, etc. Examples of academies are the
Nigerian Academy of Letters, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Academy of
Music, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters,
History and Antiquities, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine, etc.
Not all academics are
academicians and not all academicians are academics. In other words, you can
teach in a university, polytechnic, college of education, etc. and never be
made a member of an academy, and you can become a member of an academy without
ever being a teacher or a researcher at a higher educational institution. I
know a number of academicians who don’t teach or conduct research at a higher
ed. institution. Note that while most academicians are also academics, most
academics are never academicians.
A little note on
pragmatics is in order here. Although many dictionaries have entries that say
“academician” and “academic” can be synonymous, this isn’t really the case in
actual usage, at least among educated native English speakers. It is considered
illiterate usage in British and American English to call higher education
teachers and researchers “academicians”; they are properly called “academics.”
Many dictionaries merely capture the entire range of a word’s usage without
discriminating socially prestigious usage from uneducated or archaic usage.
That is why I was
disappointed when Professor Wole Soyinka used “academician” as if it meant
“academic” in a 1971 newspaper article. In the article, he wrote: “What I would
have expected of an academician was the advocation [sic, “advocation” is an
archaic variant of “advocacy”] of a social system whereby the life of a decent
[living] was guaranteed and the benevolent patronage of the privileged groups was
eradicated for all time.
“Dr Isong’s cry if any
should be directed against a social system which binds both him and his
dependants in a vice of mutual degradation and limits his freedom of action and
development by denying him equality in his association with all the potential
inherent in every class of society” (quoted in James Gibbs and Bernith Lindfors
(1993), Research on Wole Soyinka, pp. 243-244).
Dr. A. J. Isong,
whom Soyinka called an “academician,” wasn’t a member of an academy; he was an
“academic,” that is, a lecturer, at the University of Ibadan. I think it helps
to point out that “academic” is derived from “academia” (pronounced aki/deemia)
or “academe” (pronounced aki/deem), which means a place of (higher) learning
such as a university or, as the Online Etymology Dictionary puts it, “the world
of universities and scholarship.” “Academician,” on the other hand, is derived
from “academy” (pronounced as “aka-demi”), which is an institution dedicated to
the pursuit of advancement in a narrowly defined field of knowledge.
Henry Watson Fowler,
the famous English lexicographer who wrote A Dictionary of Modern
English Usage and co-wrote the Concise Oxford Dictionary,
pointed out that although Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Lowell used “academe” as a
poetic variant of “academy,” it is a mistake do so in conventional usage.
In sum, don’t call
anybody an “academician” if the person doesn’t work in an academy. It’s
actually rare to come across an academician. That’s why I said earlier that you
will probably never have a reason to use the word—if you want to use it
correctly, that is.
Question:
I am a regular reader
of your columns in the Daily Trust on Sunday. My question to you
is do "house" and "home” mean the same thing or are they
different?
Answer:
A “house” is merely a
building where someone lives while a “home” is a house we have an emotional
attachment to. It is the sense of comfort and emotional connection we feel
toward a house that makes it a home. You build a house and make it a home by
occupying it and filling it with memories. So a house is the building, the
structure, the concrete, etc. while a home is a combination of the building and
the emotions, memories, sense of belonging, and comfort that we bring to the
house.
While this distinction
is generally true, it is worth noting that American English speakers,
especially real estate agents, often use “home” in ways that are similar to the
traditional meaning of a “house.” They say things like "homes for
sale," "buy a home." Well, traditional grammarians would say you
can't buy a home; you can only buy a house and make it a home.
Question:
Is the expression “the
both of us” standard? Or it is Nigerian English?
Answer:
It’s neither
nonstandard nor uniquely Nigerian English. Several grammarians say the
expression first emerged in American English as a deviation from the
conventional “both of us,” but I have never heard any American in my social
circles use the expression; most of them simply say “both of us.” The definite article
“the” in the expression strikes me as pointless.
Nevertheless British
music sensation Adele in her recent wildly popular, record-breaking song titled
“Hello” said “the both of us.” This means either that “the both of us” has
crossed over to the UK or Adele’s English has become Americanized. The latter
seems more likely since Adele, who now lives in the US, sounds really American in
accent and diction in the song.
Question:
When someone asks you
“who is it?” which of these responses is correct? “It is I.” “It is me.”
Answer:
From a pragmatic point
of view, both responses are grammatically acceptable. In formal grammar,
however, “it is I” would be considered the only grammatically correct response.
The responder is the subject of the sentence, and “I” is a subjective pronoun—just
like “we,” “he,” “she,” “they,” etc. are subjective pronouns. Subjective
pronouns initiate action in a sentence. To understand why “It is I” is
considered the only grammatically acceptable response, recast the sentence. For
instance, you would say, “I am the one,” not “Me is the one.”
It is worth noting,
though, that almost no one says “It is I” in conversational English anywhere in
the English-speaking world. The conventional usage is “It is me.” You may find
“It is I” only in formal, written contexts. Many grammarians say “It is I” is
on its way out of the English language, and I agree.
Question:
Kindly say something
about the use of “her,” “she,” and “it” in talking about a country or a group.
My assumption is expressions like "Nigeria and her allies" and
"NUJ protects her members" are old fashioned, and now better put as
"Nigeria and its allies" and "NUJ protects its members"
respectively. But a friend thinks the latter are incorrect expressions. Please
comment.
Answer:
I wrote about this some time ago. Yes, the use
of feminine pronouns such as “she” or “her” to refer to a country or to an
organization or to a ship is outdated. The pronoun “it” is now preferred to
“she” or “her” when reference is made to countries or organizations. You will never
find contemporary native English speakers say “Britain and her citizens” or
“America and her interests”; they’d replace “her” with “it.”
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