Tongue Surgery
BY ELIZABETH KIM
The technical term for it is frenotomy.
By “it” I mean the surgical incision
made along the frenulum, the vertical strip
of flesh that tethers the tongue to the floor
of the mouth. There is no subject attributed
to the verb “made” in the previous sentence,
making it unclear who exactly made the incision.
The object, the frenulum, is acted upon
while the agent of the action remains absent.
Such syntactical construction lends
the sentence a clinical, detached objectivity.
In anatomy, a frenulum is a ligament
or membrane that restrains the motion of an organ.
Etymologically, frenulum is diminutive of fraenum:
Latin for “bridle,” to restrain or hold back.
In entomology, a frenulum is the bristle
that connects the front and hind wings of insects
like butterflies or moths. The term contains
two different zoomorphic metaphors:
tongue as reined horse and tongue as tethered wings.
A metaphor makes a comparison between two
seemingly unlike things in order to convey
figurative meanings about a literal subject.
Everything is in the language we use.
Another name for frenotomy is tongue surgery.
It is performed on tongues deemed short
and potentially unable to pronounce English words
properly, therefore warranting surgical modification.
“Short” and “proper” are imprecise and relative
measurements of length and fluency, respectively.
Implied are comparisons to other tongues
that are longer and able to speak English without
an accent. Such tongues do not require a frenotomy.
Though, to be clear, no tongue requires such a procedure;
a frenotomy is a purely voluntary one. That is,
one can choose whether or not to sever one’s frenulum.
One is a formal pronoun that serves as a stand-in
for any person. Sometimes, one takes the place of I or you.
Pronouns are necessarily empty in order to contain.
The medical term for the condition that is a short frenulum
is ankyloglossia, or informally, “tongue-tie.” Idiomatic usage
of the adjective tongue-tied may either refer to one’s difficulty
or inability to speak fluently due to nervousness, shyness,
embarrassment, or shock, or to one’s refusal to speak,
not the literal binding of one’s tongue into a knot.
Ankyloglossia is considered to be a congenital anomaly,
a “defect” or “deformity” that can impair one’s speaking ability,
such as trouble with sibilant and coronal consonants.
For instance, someone with ankyloglossia might mispronounce
“rice” as “lice.” The words defect and deformity in the earlier sentence
have been placed in quotation marks to indicate that they are words
used by those who consider ankyloglossia to be an anatomical flaw
or abnormality, though the sentence does not specify who
might consider it as such. Rhetoric has a way of dispersing
beyond its speaking agents as if language were unbridled
from the body.