Standards Debate

The striking thing for me about Johnson's Preface is the way he speaks directly to us - he imagines our response as future readers, and so had in mind that his work would be remembered - even if it would eventually be "derided" by us. I love the soberness in the way he makes this point - realising the limits of his work and that it will not "clear the world at once from folly, vanity and affectation".

This soberness makes the groveling snobbishness of Jonathan Swift seem all the more ridiculous. He suggests to the Earl of Oxford that a standardisation of English would be "Your own Work, as much as that of paying the Nation's Debts, or opening a Trade into the South Sea; and though not of such immediate Benefit as either of these, or any other of Your glorious Actions, yet perhaps, in future Ages, not less to Your Honour." I wonder how many politicians have the phrase "glorious actions" in their postbags today. This shows, however, how times have changed - it is difficult for us as modern readers to see far beyond Swift's sycophantic tone - but perhaps this was the convention in the Eighteenth Century. Swift constantly makes reference to the good and purity of the country - and this was probably a useful persuasive technique at the time of the expansion of the Empire. The same can be said of his referral to Scandinavians as "barbarous", or his comparisons of Britain to the Roman Empire. The concept of an Empire has all but been discredited, and the Scandinavian countries are, in many ways the most sophisticated in the world - so we may have to see through the fact that Swift was a product of his time.

Nevertheless, Johnson's Dictionary was not published long after Swift's proposal, yet a thoroughly more familiar tone is apparent, and the same can be said of the content: "The tropes of poetry will make hourly encroachments, and the metaphorical will become the current sense: pronunciation will be varied by levity or ignorance, and the pen must at length comply with the tongue".

I found the point about metaphor the most impressively prophetic, particularly as it appears again as a complaint on George Orwell's part, 200 years later: "there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves". He then gives a series of examples - but some of his examples don't seem over-familiar at all ("take up the cudgel for", "ride roughshod over"). Again, Johnson touches on why this might be - he highlights the importance of fashion in language, Metaphors can become overused, and in seemingly non-nonsensical ways (football commentators are especially good at this) - but they can only be misused so many times before they either drop out of fashion, or become a sort of everyday phrase. Of Orwell's examples, "play into the hands of.." is the clearest here - I think that having this phrase in everyday circulation enriches the language, whether or not we visualise the consequences each time we say it.

Another of Orwell's complaints is what he calls "pretentious diction". "Words like...objective, categorical, effective...are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements." "Effective" strikes a chord* here as we are constantly been told that our aim is to become "effective" teachers - which, Orwell may argue, ignores the variety of effects we may have and the variety of ways we may achieve those effects. Personally, I think that the word exists precisely for that purpose - we cannot be told to all become a certain type of teacher - we have to find a way that suits us, in the different situations we will find ourselves in - and the word "effective" conveniently allows that openness of interpretation. There are of course cases where language is used to pull the wool over our eyes, in the media especially (I read on the BBC Football website that Alex Ferguson joined a "chorus of disapproval" about the Wembley pitch - but seeing as there was only one other complaint referred to it was probably more of a duet) - but I think the key is not to blame the language, but for us as potential English teachers to educate pupils into recognising when this might be occurring.

Still, I can see why people might be concerned. The letters often found in the Daily Mail usually seem quite petty ("Forget murderers the real evil in this world stems from poor apostrophe usage") - but when the letters say something like "...and that's why my children are struggling at school" I think it becomes more serious. However much common sense tells me that language is constantly shifting, and that, for example written English may eventually resemble SMS language - if I took this view to a logical conlusion I might be tempted to teach English in an overly relaxed way. I think however, that learning language is a stage by stage process - and that pupils will never, for example, gain a good appreciation of literature unless they have been through the process of learning the basics correctly.

Finally, the small amount of standardisation that has taken place over the centuries has, I think, had a positive effect in that it has halted the isolation between the educated classes and the rest of society - as far as written language goes at least, and that perhaps if spoken language equally became less diverse, certain class differences that still exist may dissipate - but of course this diversity adds to the richness of the language just as much as metaphor and "pretentious diction".

I really like the links you make between the articles and the present day, talking about football pundits and text speak.