This last week I must have heard half a dozen people, who should know better, grumbling about the deterioration of the English language. They pick on a couple of pretty serious grammatical or spelling errors in the media...the BBC or the Guardian are their usual targets, and from that they haul out the conclusion that " fings definitely ain't wot they use to be".
Of course it's Tommy Rot. I know of no objective research on this topic. There is no benchmark. Without examining wot fings were like in the past, to claim they are getting worse is merely an assertion. Rather like Baldrick's mother asserting that her son was "a handsome stud of a man". Or Rambler claiming to be able to run faster, or drink more than he could thirty years ago!
Common sense tells us that there were just as many goofs in the media in the 40s 50s and 60s as there are today. And that must be right.
At this point to brighter and more contentious wheel out George Orwell's 1946 piece "Politics and the English Language".
In 1946 Orwell was grumbling....
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
What I find difficult in Orwell's piece is how he limits the English language to its written form. As if we humans can express thoughts only by writing the them down in purple prose. And woe betide if there's a split an infinitive or hung participle. What about the spoken language?
Today most communication is by electronic means. E-mails and text messages can deliver ideas quickly and accurately with abbreviations which, if memory serves, have even entered the Oxford English Dictionary.
And if anyone really thinks that written English has gone to hell in a hand-cart can I suggest they get their hands on Julian Barnes' Arthur and George.
Spot on. It all began with Cicero. Comparing the speech of public figures of the day with that of a century before he concluded that 'practically everyone . . . in those days spoke correctly. But the lapse of time has certainly had a deteriorating effect in this respect.' (Cited in 'The Unfolding of Language' by Guy Deutscher, which I highly recommend.)
Posted by: Barrie England | 25 May 2008 at 08:40 AM