Workshop III. LANGUAGE REGISTERS

It was Heraclitus who said, "Nothing is permanent but change". Neither is language. What reefs might be await­ing the English language? What kind of rescue operation might be launched to save it?

 

THE STATE OF ENGLISH

By Anthony Burgess, the "Sunday Times"

Can our language be protected? It depends on what you mean by the language. Unlike Iroquois and Cherokee, English has leapt out of the confines of its origin, and there is nobody to tell us where true English is to be found. The various forms of Ameri­can, Australian, South African are as prominent as what is known as Queen's English. In Britain itself the three national forms of English and the innumerable dialects demand our attention be­cause they are in daily use, but to most people "good English" means the language of television newsreaders, of up-market com­mercials, and of the more serious political announcements. In other words, Standard English with "RP", or Received Pronun­ciation.

Historically this is just one dialect out of many. But a con­sensus has elevated it to a language, which we think everybody ought to learn. There is, of course, no possible way of making anyone learn it. Our schools and colleges can, in fact, do little. Children speak the language appropriate to a larger cultural area than a mere classroom. Language cannot be enforced. It goes its own way, or the way of its speakers. It is a construct created by human beings for their own use. There was in the 18th century a belief that language could be legislated for, that academics could lay down the law. Jonathan Swift objected to the word "mob", a presumed truncated form of mobile vulgus, but "mob" came to stay. The great Doctor Samuel Johnson believed that he had fixed for all time both spelling and pronunciation with his incredible Dictionary (to some extent that was true), but he left out of account those changes in human life and knowledge that demand new words, and the more or less passive phonetic changes which produced new pronunciation.

With his novel, Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell inflicted on an imaginary totalitarian future a form of English known as "Newspeak", notable for the steady diminution of its vocabu­lary, the aim being to create a language in which dissident thought could be impossible. "Newspeak" is more of an amusing toy than a device for securing political orthodoxy. It does not work. If you say "Emmanuel Goldstein is double plus ungood" you can say the same thing about Big Brother. If you are scared of saying this, that has nothing to do with a limitation of language.

In fact, it is very rarely language itself that is at issue when we invoke standards of correctness. Errors in language are often an aspect of the outer social shell, which encloses language. If we want to do any teaching at all, we had better pay attention to what is known as registers. An American professor of nuclear physics will say, "Now we zero in on the real nitty gritty". This is the wrong register. A year or so ago the speaker of the House of Commons (not the present one) quietly told a member to f*** off. He was not heard except by the microphones, but it was still the wrong register. To call the Queen Mother "the Queen Mum" to her face is to employ the wrong register.

Choice of the right register is dictated by the need not to give offence. Pronunciation can give offence, too, but we have no sure grounds for legislating for it. A Birmingham accent in Fort- num & Mason may be inappropriate, meaning that it may give offence. Any local accent, once it strays out of the confines of its regional origin, is likely to give offence, unless it carries a Celtic flag. We can do little about this, except foster the common-sense attitude to language, which makes it a sociable rather than an aggressive medium of exchange. MPs who hurl coal-mining ac­cents at the front bench when indulging in a partisan diatribe are doing nobody any good. We need Standard English with RP.

I say we need it, but there is so little solidity in language that we cannot be sure of the forms, the meanings or the sounds we utter. Most people will have noticed that the final stop conso­nants in substandard speech are disappearing. I mean, for in­stance, p, t, and k. We are hearing a glottal stop instead. By about 2020 the sound will be signalled in print but will belong to the dead past.

We may weep for this, but we cannot prevent linguistic change from happening. We weep because we believe that English is a beautiful language. There are too many popular books with titles like The Peerless Gift of Our Native Tongue. This is nonsense. English is no better than Esquimo. What it incontestably has is a great literature. This certainly needs protection.

 

Notes:

1. RP - Received Pronunciation, the name used by students of language for the type of pronun­ciation of British English which is regarded as standard. It is used by middle class and upper class people from all over the UK, es­pecially in the south of England, and it is the form of pronunciation shown in British dic­tionaries. It is sometimes called "BBC En­glish" as it is the accent used by most people on radio and television;

2. Nineteen Eighty-Four - a novel by George Orwell about a politi­cal system in which ordinary people have no power, and are completely controlled by the government. It has had a great influence on the way people think about and write about politics and political systems like that de­scribed in the book is sometimes called Orwellian;

3. newspeak - language whose meanings are slightly changed to make people believe things that are not quite true;

4. Big Brother - a character in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Big Brother is the leader of the state, and although no one has ever met him there are pictures of him every­where with the message "Big Brother is watching you". People now use the expres­sion "Big Brother" to describe any govern­ment or organization that has complete pow­er, allows no freedom, and carefully watches what people are doing;

5. Celt - a member of an ancient people who lived in Britain before the arrival of the Romans and whose culture and languages are still found in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland;

6. glottal stop — a speech sound made by completely clos­ing and opening the glottis, which in English may take the place of [t] between vowel so­unds or may be used before a vowel sound

Explain the following cultural phenomena:

1. What is the difference between the two terms the ACCENT and DIALECT? What are COAL-MINING accents?

2. Who are/were the following people: JONATHAN SWIFT, Dr. SAMUEL JOHNSON, GEORGE ORWELL, QUEEN MOTHER, BIG BROTHER, SPEAKER in the HOUSE of COMMONS?

3. What do Iroquois, Cherokee and Esquimo have in common?

4. What is the idea of "a local accent carrying a Celtic flag"?

5. Who has the right to sit on the FRONT BENCH in the House of Commons?

6. What kind of place is FORTNUM & MASON?

General comprehension questions:

1. Does the author answer the question that opens the article? What is his answer?

2. What does the author have to say concerning the state of English?

3. What is the author's attitude to changes that the English lan­guage undergoes?

4. In what way has the role and place of the English language in the world changed?

5. What problems do people communicating in English most frequently confront?

6. What are registers? Why are most mistakes made by foreign­ers register errors? Do native speakers make register mis­takes?

7. Do you think your native language needs protection? How can a language be protected?

Exercise 26

Translate the following sentences into Russian paying special attention to the underlined structures.

1. George Orwell inflicted on an imaginary totalitarian future a form of English known as "Newspeak", the aim being to create a language in which dissident thought could be im­possible.

2. Any local accent, once it strays out of the confines of its regional origin, is likely to give offence, unless it carries a Celtic flag.

3. English is no better than Esquimo.

Exercise 27

a) Look back at Exercise 26 sentence 1. Find the Absolute Par­ticiple Construction (APC) and translate it into Russian. Why is it called Participle? Revise the forms of Participle I and II.

Participle	Active	Passive
Simple Participle I	doing	being done
Perfect Participle I	having done	having been done
Participle II	—	done

b) Translate the following sentences into Russian. Note the dif­ference in translating the APC.

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