Bring back the adverb!

The concept of style is going out of style.

In the street the other day I heard a young woman on her phone complaining about the behaviour of a friend or lover, saying “That’s manners! It’s fucking manners!” – meaning that the behaviour was unacceptable to her. I found myself annoyed that she didn’t qualify the word (”Madam: would it not be more meaningful to say, ‘That’s fucking bad manners’?”). What annoyed me was that a word which previously meant something like a person’s style of behaviour (literally, the manner in which a person behaved) meant only bad behaviour to her.

Then I realised that the word “style” is often used to mean something more like “accurate conformity to norms of dress”: another, similar word’s meaning has been made more specific, less to do with adverbs, ways-in-which, and more to do with quantities. Someone once told me, in reference to my hair, that he’d “seen more style on a piece of shit.” Style becomes something that we aquire in greater or lesser quantities. And we attach a value-judgement to it: “style” is inherently good, “manners” means something bad.

And when I’m asked how I am, it’s tempting to say that I’m “good,” to give the contemporary North American response, rather than say that “I’m well,” according to the linguistic tradition in which I grew up.

But… I think “I’m well” is much better, because it means “I am, in a good way.” It feels like it’s describing a process, the process of my being, rather than a static thing; and I love the idea that being is a process – that we’re processes, or expressions of a process, rather than static things. In fact, I love the idea that there’s no such thing as a static thing, that the idea that anything is static and unchanging is a myth.

“I’m well” also carries another meaning, something close to “I am, in a competent manner.” It has almost Buddhist overtones of skilful being, which serve as a reminder that we can learn how to be, that we can improve our way of being itself.

I’m not sure whether there should be a rule that all replies to the question, “how are you?” should be adverbial: “I am, confusedly” sounds at least as clunky as “I’m good”; but perhaps “I’m good” is only the latest victory in a process of aggressive de-adverbisation of language. Perhaps it works well for globalised capitalism if people think in terms of objects that are either good or bad, rather than in terms of dynamic processes of being.

I’m rambling(ly). But anyway, bring back the way-in-which. Bring back the adverb.

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