LESLEY Riddoch is not alone in her bemusement at the way “Johnson plays to the English crowd but alienates Scots with every word” (October 7).
The readiness with which inhabitants of the de-industrialised regions of England entrust their life chances to the same class of patricians which de-industrialised them a generation ago is entirely bizarre.
Many factors are at work here, but one of most important is contained in the headline’s phrase “with every word”. Politicians’ weapons are not swords and pistols but are, instead, language and words. In their linguistic arsenal, Johnson and the Conservatives have a super-weapon which they use all the time and which devastates the opposition – their control of the standard language, known variously as the Queen’s English/Oxford English/Public School English.
Since the 16th century this variety of English has become accepted across the whole of England as the norm or standard. It has progressively demoted regional and lower-class forms of speech to varying degrees of worthlessness and conferred massive social advantages upon the norm-bearers (speakers of Public School English).
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It’s not what they say, it’s the way that they say it.
A college lecturer in Birmingham, some years ago, gave an identical lecture on two successive evenings, the first in Public School English and the second in the local vernacular (“Brummie”). The first audience congratulated him warmly at the end the lecture on the excellence of his ideas. The second audience began walking out after five minutes, disgusted by the lecturer’s intellectual inadequacy.
Surveys of subjective attitudes to different varieties of English in England routinely attribute to speakers of Public School English higher levels of knowledge, gravitas, intelligence, even trustworthyness than to speakers of other varieties.
Conservative Central Office has always understood this. Conservative MPs in Westminster – to a man or woman – rigidly conform to the norms of Public School English, the Labour MPs usually don’t and pay the price in lost credibility.
Outside England – in Ireland, Wales and Scotland – things don’t work in quite this way.
In these countries Public School English elicits different subjective responses, usually involving mistrust and alienation and, in the case of Boris Johnson and his associates, mockery.
How has such a deep cultural difference within the “United Kingdom” come about?
There are no simple answers. Cultural change is complex and can be very slow, with some parts of culture taking centuries to change. An overview of the political map of 21st century Britain shows masses of Conservative blue in the SE and Middle England with Labour red further north and quite different colours in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Turning the clock back 900 years, the areas coloured blue are precisely those parts of England which were the most effectively subjugated by the Norman invaders after 1066. Norman domination, exerted via castles and cathedrals, succeeded here most spectacularly. In the north of England it encountered resistance which had to be “harried” into submission. In Wales it took much longer. In Scotland, the Normans made much less headway, and over the sea in Ireland they failed completely.
What has all this got to do with Johnson’s use of English?
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The language of government and the ruling class in Norman England was not English, but French. Using the language of the invaders was a great way of keeping the English-speaking natives in their place and of keeping power in the hands of the Norman ruling caste.
After Joan of Arc helped “boot the English out of France” in the 15th century, the old Norman aristocracy had finally to go native and give up their Norman French.
However, they were loath to surrender a linguistic weapon which had helped them dominate the country so well for so long. So they founded the Public Schools in which a new “posh” variety of English could be elaborated to set the kingdom’s leaders apart from the vulgar herd and give them a new linguistic weapon to keep people in their place.
This may help us understand how Johnson manages to “play to the English crowd” and “alienate Scots with every word”.
Anthony Lodge
Carnbee, Anstruther
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