Minister announces bold initiative | The Power of Language

Owing to the current
Economic climate
There is a dearth of words.

We are left with no choice. We must
Make challenging efficiency savings
To reduce our expenditure of vocabulary
To sustainable levels.

In order to help us
To achieve our targets
The verb to say is withdrawn from circulation.
Its meaning can be adequately conveyed
Through the use of to be like
Or to go.

Adverbs are a luxury. It is unfortunate
That because of the credit crunch
We can no longer afford them.
Adjectives already perform many of their tasks.
The new arrangements merely regularise
Existing good practice.

Negative forms act as a brake
On economic recovery. A carefully managed programme
Of quantitative easing
Will introduce additional affirmatives
Which used in pairs will stimulate growth.

Language is an asset. And like all assets
It must deliver value. One hundred thousand words
Are far more than any modern society requires.
A twenty-five per cent reduction
Over the next five financial years
Will place our language on a sustainable footing
Fit for the twenty-first century.

The Minister of State for Doing Your Bit
Was like, “Everyone must do their bit
And speak proper.”

Yeah, right.

via Minister announces bold initiative | The Power of Language.

Nurturing the polymaths…

My Power of Language post last week, Precision Tools, referred to the recent James MacTaggart Lecture given in Edinburgh by Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google. The lecture is, I understand, a keynote of the television industry’s year and Schmidt is the first non-TV professional to deliver it. His most uncomfortable message, though, came not from Schmidt the outsider to TV, but from Schmidt the foreigner to the UK.

“Over the past century,” he said, “the UK has stopped nurturing its polymaths.”

Ouch.

First a definition or two. The OED defines polymath as “A person of great or varied learning; a person acquainted with many fields of study; an accomplished scholar” and polymathy as “Great or varied learning; acquaintance with many branches of knowledge”.

Next a word of explanation. I’m writing this post to contribute to an online discussion amongst RSA Fellows, in response to the question “What can the RSA do about it?”; but I’m interested in any and all answers to the wider question, “What can we do about it?”.

Precision tools | The Power of Language

I have a new hero.

His name is Lindsay Johns. He is a writer and broadcaster and a mentor to young people in Peckham, and I first encountered him on Radio 4 two weeks ago.

Why is he a hero? Because, in his own words (in the Evening Standard of 16 August), in his mentoring work with young people in Peckham he has “zero tolerance towards inchoate street slang”.

It is quite a stand to be taking in today’s culturally tolerant society. It is a long-overdue rebuke to the well-meaning but destructive philosophy that the rest of society should be embracing street patois, complete with all its incoherence and intellectual limitations (implied and actual). It is a direct challenge to those who believe that the evolution of language is something to be observed and recorded, rather than influenced or even resisted.

It is a quiet but authoritative reproach to those who think that accuracy in language doesn’t matter – to the self-publisher who releases an e-book riddled with typos, sloppy grammar, punctuation errors and muddled homophones; to the politician whose diction is a contrived series of glo’l stops and dropped aitches; even (God help us) to the occasional English teacher who has decided that it is cool or “relevant” to allow text-speak in essays.

And Mr Johns gets results. Amazing results. Read more…

Fiction improves our social understanding

Last Thursday morning, Radio 4′s Today programme hosted an interview with Professor Keith Oatley, a cognitive psychologist and author of the book Such Stuff as Dreams.

His thesis is that reading fiction is good for you.

Well, I, inveterate bookworm of this parish, could have told you that – though I couldn’t have offered any hard evidence. I’m sure there are members of book clubs all over the world who would say the same thing. The Greeks thought it was the case, but again, without proof.

Professor Oatley, on the other hand, has come up with something more empirical. His study established a direct link between the amount of fiction a person reads, and their degree of empathy with and understanding of others (as measured by accepted psychological tests). The link was so strong that it seems to have surprised even him.

It’s worth listening to the interview (it’s on the BBC iPlayer, so will probably disappear in a few days’ time – though as of 24th July it’s still available). He compares fiction to a flight simulator – it is a way of encountering a wider range of situations and people, of living a richer and more interesting life than one might have the opportunity to experience directly. And it has a positive, demonstrable effect on the way people cope with the world.

Aside from its obvious intrinsic interest, there are three things that struck me about this idea.

Portrait of the artist as a young introvert (from The Power of Language)

Sixty-seven years ago this month, an RAF Mosquito on patrol over the Thames was ordered to intercept an incoming V1 flying bomb.  It never returned.

Its pilot, Fred Kemp, left behind a wife and three young children. Its navigator, James Farrar, left arguably a more enduring legacy – an extraordinary collection of poetry and prose, characterised (in the words of a review in theSpectator) by “an inner clarity and quality, an authority of imaginative expression far beyond his actual experience”.

Unlike his near-contemporary Keith Douglas, four years his senior and killed in Normandy the month before him, Farrar never achieved recognition in his lifetime.  His mother sent his manuscripts to his lifelong literary hero, Henry Williamson, who published an anthology in 1950 under the title The Unreturning Spring (republished in 1986, edited by Christopher Palmer, as Spring Returning).

As a writer, Farrar’s extraordinary strength and maturity is in description.  (Be warned:  if you are one of those who spurn the adjective or the adverb, look away now:  there is nothing for you in this post, nor in Farrar’s writing.)  His imagery is of the sort that demands to be read deeply and thoughtfully.  (I posted about this kind of thing a few months back.  Yes, I feel strongly about it.)  Here he is at sixteen, watching a Battle of Britain dogfight:

Read more…

The trouble with jargon… and with plain language (via The Power of Language)

Next month, the Plain Writing Act of 2010 comes into force in the USA.  Its purpose is “to improve the effectiveness and accountability of Federal agencies to the public by promoting clear Government communication that the public can understand and use.” It sounds a bit like the Plain English Campaign with teeth.  Not a bad idea – not least if it forces Government officials to think, really think, about how ordinary people react to information. A … Read More

via The Power of Language

“All Englishes are equal”

I had the pleasure, some months ago, of meeting some of the English Project’s Trustees at an event in the run-up to English Language Day.  We got talking about the Project’s scope and aims – admirable but ambitious – and the fact that it observes and records, rather than taking sides in, the various debates about the language.

So far so good.  But I confess that I cocked an eyebrow when one of the Trustees told me:  “Our position is that all Englishes are equal.”

All Englishes are equal.  Discuss.

The Project has, I entirely accept, good reasons not to take sides.  But one of its roles is to provide a platform where these discussions can take place.  So, having dwelt upon this rather astonishing statement for some six months or so, I am ready to discuss.