�Somebody Scream!�

Greg Kelebonye | Thursday March 12, 2015 09:52

Now, why one earth would anybody want you to scream when you are thoroughly enjoying that last rendition of your favourite musical piece?

I first heard the exhortation to ‘Screeeaamm!’ While watching a beautiful gospel programme – a Pentecostal recording of a worship session.

Pentecostals are a teary lot, and praise and worship time is the best to shed a tear or two while you count all those blessings –although I have a suspicion some take advantage of the time to truly open the faucet for pent up emotions.   But tears are tears. Joyful tears, or sad tears. And you cannot really tell the difference as everyone’s face contorts in pretty much the same way when they are shedding tears - be it out of  joy or sadness.

So, it will be quite a chore to segregate the bloke who is crying in church because his lady screamed expletives at him in the morning, or the heartbroken damsel who just received a cruel text-message from her fiancé; from the silver-haired grandfather who is praising God for the many blessings in his life. Screaming, in the strictest meaning of the word, is something that comes naturally when we are terrified or in pain. One dictionary defines it thus:

1. Give a long, loud, piercing cry or cries expressing extreme emotion or pain e.g: They could hear him screaming in pain (as adjective screaming); A harassed mum with a screaming child.

2. Cry something in a high-pitched, frenzied way e.g. I ran to the house screaming for help

3. It can be used with direct speech as in “Get out!” He screamed or with object as in “he screamed abuse down the phone”.

4. Scream can also mean to urgently and vociferously call attention to one’s views or feelings, especially ones of anger or distress: e.g. his supporters scream that he is being done an injustice.

5. The word can be used figuratively such as in ‘the creative side of me is screaming out for attention’. None of these seem to fit into the exhortation “Can I hear somebody scream!” When the entity is a group of joyous people! Asking people in such settings to ‘scream’ is therefore simply absurd.

Such absurdity has become contagious malaise, spreading from the discotheque stage to the pulpit, and it is creeping into virtually every space that utilises language.   It is something we should discourage. Instead of teaching our children to ‘scream for joy!’ let us teach them to ‘shout for joy!’.  They will know to scream when the situation calls for it.