Controversial issues in English
The Queen’s English Society
Institute of Education, London;18 October 1997
The aims of the QES are ‘to promote anduphold the use of good English, and toencourage the enjoyment of the language... to defend the precision, subtlety andmarvellous richness of our languageagainst debasement, ambiguity and otherforms of misuse’. The morning ofthis seminar was devoted to Englishteaching in schools, with speakersfrom the Office for Standards in Education,Imperial College of STM andthe National Association of Teachersof English, and a sixth-form school teacher; and with fervent pleas for thereturn of phonics for teaching readingand of formal teaching of Englishgrammar. Over lunch, dispute on thesematters reigned more passionately andpowerfully than at any conference yourreporter has yet attended.
In the afternoon, issues over the Englishlanguage ranged more widely. SusanElkin, an educational journalist, spoke ofEnglish in the media. Claiming that moreprinted periodials, for which Britain has a‘voracious appetite’, appear here than inother nations, she held that the standardof English usage in these publications inBritain has improved through recentdecades. Journalists such as herself, shetold us, have a respect for the language, seeing themselves as custodians withresponsiblity to ‘use this splendidly elastic,rich hoard of words to the best of ourability, imaginatively and interestingly’,nurturing the source of the languagewhile harvesting the crop. The responsibilityfor what finally appears in periodicals,though, falls on the sub-editors who ‘shorten, check, amend, adjust and makesubstitutions in’ the pieces of writingpassed to them. Elkin acknowledged thatmany editors are highly educated and linguisticallyknowledgeable, but she deeplyresented major change to her workwithout consultation, particularly theimposition of house style and politicalcorrectness – some of us still preferthe grammatically correct singular thirdperson pronoun to the clumsily inappropriateungendered plural!
Elkin thought a good grounding in thebasics of grammar essential for thewriting of clear, useful English, andregarded degrees in ‘Media Studies’, nowbeing undertaken in increasing numbers,as inadequate preparation for a journalisticcareer: better ‘get a proper degree’ ina language. ‘It will be an uphill struggle tomaintain the standard of English achievedin our magazines for much longer. Sloppystandards of education do not augur well.’
John Honey, recently of the Universityof Japan, spoke on ‘The enemies ofStandard English’: these being, in his eyes,the concept of linguistic equality betweenvarious languages and dialects, and oppositionto the formal teaching of Englishgrammar. He savagely inveighed againstthe published results of research inlinguistics over the last thirty years, callingthem repeatedly ‘orthdox ideology, simplistic,sleaze, swindle, the treason of theintellectuals, falsification, fraud’.
Hamish Norbrook from the BBCWorld Service Department consideredthe international use of English in thenext century. While English is by far themost widely spoken language in the
world, he saw its speakers as falling intothree distinct groups: those whose firstlanguage is English (populations of theUK, North America, Australasia – some307 million); those who have used Englishsince an early age as their second language;and those who are learning English,anywhere in the world – a fast expandinggroup, as English is moving from a foreignto the second language in many countries. He took for example Africa, where attitudesto English have changed: thepolitical connotations have been succeededby seeing English as giving accessto the economic and technological future.Many aid programmes concentrate onteaching the new information technology,and with it the English language.As language teaching is costly, however,not all African countries have equalaccess to it. National or regional varietiesof English become codified, with theirown particular accents. In Africa,ELTeachers are Dutch and Norwegian.ELT, the teaching of English to non-English speakers, is a fast-growingdiscipline, with major centres in India andMalaysia.
Norbrook told us that we can no longerregard the English language as belongingto the British, our language – alternativeversions are not only American English,long recognized, but also many newnational variations: not now BritishEnglish, but a coming Global English,with locally varied forms. While Englishis at present the language of 80% ofInternet sites, which might appear toaugur further world domination byEnglish, automatic translation may infuture enable countries to establish theirown language sites.
This was the first conference held bythe QES. In his concluding remarks theChairman, Michael Plumbe, hoped thatthey might hold annual conferences infuture, and pledged to continue the campaignfor the return of formal teaching ofEnglish in schools ... and perhaps for theestablishment of an English languageauthority ...?
Hazel Bell
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