LANGUAGE IN USE: CALLING CHICKENS

It is a truism that language is in a state of flux: new words are constantly coined, and others die, disappear, or quietly fade away. While writing a recent post about Webster’s New World Dictionary, I reread Charlton Lair’s essay “Language and the Dictionary” (1901–1984) and was reminded of a small but telling curiosity he notes about language. The entire article is a gem, not only for what it says about English, but for its view of language in general as a means of communication—not only among humans, but also between humans and animals.

Let me quote Professor Lair:

“…farm animals are not much called in well-hedged England, where they cannot stray widely, but when such animals were turned loose in the pastures of the New World, calling became a useful farm practice having relatively regional distributions. Chickens are called in Pennsylvania by shouting Bee!, but not in Virginia, where Coo-chee! and Coo-Chickie! are common, nor in New England, where Biddie and Widdie predominate, with Coop in highly restricted areas in parts of Rhode Island and eastern Long Island.”

Today, chickens no longer roam farmyards but live in industrial settings, with neither the freedom nor the need to respond to a human call. Along with the practice, the calls themselves have largely disappeared—a small but telling reminder that when ways of life change, the bits of language that served them often vanish as well.