Some four years ago, in one of my Channel Vision columns in this newspaper, I criticised the pitiful standards of English in SABC television news bulletins. As examples I included these pearlers: “The petrol price has gone up with 60c since the beginning of the year. If it will reach the R3 mark at the end of the year”; “One of eight people accused are being charged”; “The persons found in the possessive of the drugs can be full prosecuted” and a reference to someone’s assets being “four-feeted” and “confisticated [confiscated]”.
I commented that it was clear the SABC no longer comprehended the scope of its influence on language. Somewhere along the line the corporation had abandoned its responsibilities in this regard.
An extract from this column has been reprinted in a book entitled English in Perspective, recently published by Oxford University Press. With what comment I offer here I intend no overall review of the book, merely a response to the particularly ludicrous dismissal of what I wrote by the book’s two authors: Felicity Horne and Glenda Heinemann, both lecturers in the English department at Unisa.
They describe my “tone” as being “highly critical”; my “attitude” is written off as “judgemental” and my “stance” is described as “prescriptive”. The authors dilate on this: “the prescriptive view of language is based on the assumption that one of the varieties of language is inherently ‘better’ or more valuable than others”. Soon after this gem of academic low-pressure meditation comes the obligatory spray of politically correct jargon. The authors condemn the upholding of “standards”, and round off by dismissing the imposition of “value judgements” as being a way of applying “status” to language.
After a kick-off of such paralysing inanity it seems hard to believe Horne and Heinemann could get any worse, be even slightly more fatuous. But these two don’t give up easily. Spreading wide their politically correct raincoats they proceed to summarise the “prescriptive approach” to language as being “associated with a rigid, authoritarian attitude”. They go on to specify a “descriptive” approach to language that “is concerned with describing actual language usage without making judgements about what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘good’ or ‘bad'”. This, they say, “is associated with a more flexible, open-minded outlook”.
A first question arises: what on earth does Oxford University Press think it is doing in publishing these sophomoric rubbings? Is it adding its considerable weight to recommendations that in South Africa those wishing to learn and communicate in English should be encouraged to aspire to nothing more taxing than some pidgin form of the language, some shapeless patois; that they should accept as an exemplar the grammatical dystopia of SABC newsrooms; that criticising bad spelling and grammar is somehow elitist; that “standards” are a product of “value judgements”?
What must be asked of the authors is why they believe that the “standards” to which they no doubt had to conform in their own educations should be deemed out of reach to younger South Africans. Do they presume that the younger generation is not inherently capable of attaining the same exacting “standards”? Given the demographic actualities of South Africa such a proposition can be seen as being akin to a pernicious form of discrimination: the asphyxiating condescension that people of human categories other to one’s own cannot be expected to aspire to the “standards” one reserves for oneself? Snobbism is first cousin to racism.
What escapes the authors of this book is painfully clear: the application of elementary method to any intellectual activity in effect imposes discipline (another bogey word to the politically correct brigade) for, in fact, it is discipline that more than anything else amplifies creative freedom. You need the discipline of a piano technique to have the freedom to play music. To obey the Horne/Heinemann codes as to the “descriptive” approach to language is the equivalent of teaching piano playing by telling the pupil to bash at the keyboard with clenched fists in the wild hope that a recognisable tune might emerge. Don’t bother with all that prescriptive fingerwork, those judgemental time-signatures, those status-seeking harmonies. Be “flexible and open-minded”. When you’re feeling passionate use your elbows as well. In tender moments don’t hit so hard.
Nor does the imposition of the basic rules of language inhibit the composition of literary forms that break those rules. However, Horne and Heinemann actually suggest that once all more formal language usage is abandoned it becomes easier to write poetry in slang language and to spell — doubtless in a more flexible way. What these two authors propose is the bizarre notion that linguistic matrix be abandoned in favour of some morass of slovenly expression. This is a counterfeit liberty. In other words, why be “rigid and authoritarian” and keep to the left when driving? It’s far more descriptive and flexible to drive where you feel like it.
On its cover the book claims its authors “wrestle with the complexities arising from language use …” What it forgets to mention is all the accompanying mud.
Archive: Previous columns by Robert Kirby