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heteroglossia of modernity, one commentator argued, resulted in a
slackness as opposed to a virility of speech, [which] threatens a degeneracy
of speech which will end by corrupting our literature to a more or less
extent (O Neill 1915:114). It was to be defeated by resort to the language,
but the language figured in a particular way:
How is the enemy s growing tyranny to be most effectively fought
today?& It is because I know that the power of the evil is so strong, and
186 Science and silence
the power of the good as yet so small, that I beg the place of honour in
the fight for our own great native force the illustrious, cardinal,
courtly and curial vernacular of England.
(Sampson 1925:109)
The language, alliteratively stressed as cardinal, courtly and curial , was
to be the saviour of the day, the bastion of tradition against the evil new
forces, the restorer of the appropriate cultural forms of history.
In a sense what we see here is precisely the re-appearance of linguistic
nationalism, a fact noted in a contemporary debate On the Terms Briton,
British, Britisher , published significantly in a pamphlet of the Society for
Pure English:
In both Europe and Asia legislators are at this time anxiously in search
of factors that determine nationality, and among the determinants it
would seem that language, which prescribes our categories and forms of
thought, shapes our ideals, preserves our trade, and carries all our
social relations and intercourse, had the most solid claims.
(Bradley 1928:11)
Language, described here to a certain extent in neo-Kantian terms, was the
determining factor of nationality. The nation, defined by Barker in a
phrase which steals from both Burke and Marx, is constituted by the
communism of the quick and the dead in a common citizenship . What
that communism itself consists of is the sharing of a language:
Just because a nation is a tradition of thought and sentiment, and
thought and sentiment have deep congruities with speech, there is the
closest of affinities between nation and language. Language is not mere
words. Each word is charged with associations that touch feelings and
evoke thoughts. You cannot share these feelings and thoughts unless
you can unlock their associations by having the key of language. You
cannot enter the heart and know the mind of a nation unless you know
its speech. Conversely, once you have learned that speech, you find that
with it and by it you imbibe a deep and pervasive spiritual force.
(Barker 1927:13)
Thus the teaching of English language and literature, and more
specifically the language, would form a new element of national unity,
linking together the mental life of all classes (Newbolt 1921:15). Indeed
for Sampson it was the only possible means to defuse class antagonism:
There is no class in the country that does not need a full education in
English. Possibly a common basis of education might do much to
mitigate the class antagonism that is dangerously keen at the moment
Science and silence 187
and shows no sign of losing its edge& . If we want that class antagonism
to be mitigated, we must abandon our system of class education and
find some form of education common to the schools of all classes. A
common school is, at present, quite impracticable. We are not nearly
ready to assimilate such a revolutionary change. But though a common
school is impracticable, a common basis of education is not. The one
common basis of the common culture is the common tongue.
(Sampson 1925:39)
This was published a year before the General Strike; it is tantamount to
saying that given that the revolutionary concept of the comprehensive
school is not possible, then the only answer is to fall back on the language
as a force of social unity. Indeed the Newbolt report saw the language, as
many had during an earlier moment of social crisis, as the means by which
patriotism and national pride could be inculcated. If the language was
placed at the centre of the educational curriculum, Newbolt argued,
The English people might learn as a whole to regard their own language,
first with respect and then with a genuine feeling of pride and affection.
More than any mere symbol it is actually part of England: to maltreat it
or deliberately to debase it would be seen to be an outrage; to be sensible
of its significance and splendour would be to step upon a higher level& .
Such a feeling for our own native language would be a bond of union
between classes, and would beget the right kind of national pride.
(Newbolt 1921:22)
The language was both the repository of the national tradition, and the
only way of ensuring its continuity. Its finest achievement was of course a
set of texts which, as we might expect, were deeply informed by the triple
net of language, nationality and religion. The Conservative Prime
Minister Baldwin articulated the point:
Fifty years ago all children went to church, and they often went
reluctantly, but I am convinced, looking back, that the hearing
sometimes almost unconsciously of the superb rhythm of the English
Prayer Book Sunday after Sunday, and the language of the English Bible
leaves its mark upon you for life. Though you may be unable to speak
with these tongues, yet they do make you immune from rubbish in a way
that nothing else does, and they enable you naturally and automatically
to sort out the best from the second best and the third best.
(Baldwin 1928:295)
Against the fact of heteroglossia (since there were some who could not use
the language of the Prayer Book and Bible) a form of monoglossia is
188 Science and silence
pitted. It is the language of authority, tradition, seamless history, and
national continuity. Thus there was, Newbolt stressed, a direct linguistic
descent of modern English from Anglo-Saxon (Newbolt 1921:224). And
Fowler, in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage defines Englishman ,
against Briton , in part according to a strict linguistic training:
How should an Englishman utter the words Great Britain with the glow of
emotion that for him goes with England? He talks the English language; he
has been taught English history as one continuous tale from Alfred to
George V; he has known in his youth how many Frenchmen are a match
for one Englishman.
(Fowler 1926:139)
Such discursive operations needed to be adopted, for otherwise the
dangers were great: Deny to working class children any common share in
the immaterial, and presently they will grow into the men who demand
with menaces a communism of the material (Sampson 1925: x). If not the
forces of centripetalisation, then those of disunity, difference and conflict.
If not a form of monoglossia, authoritative and assured, then
heteroglossia, divisive and stratified. Language, at once both immaterial
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