Now that Michael Gove has left the DfE his name seems more than ever inextricably linked with the word "reform(s)." I suspect astute news management here: by constant repetition of the phrase "Gove reforms" when referring to the unprecedentedly disruptive and reactive changes brought about in his time as Secretary of State, Gove and his henchmen have inveigled into the public consciousness a link between what he did and the largely positive connotations of the word "reform."
I have written here, here, here and here (for example) of some of the casually destructive things Michael Gove did to education whilst in office and this is not another post bemoaning the changes he brought about. Rather I would like to focus on the word "reform" itself, to pose the question as to why so many commentators see fit to talk and write about Gove's education reforms.
The etymology of the word reform is simple- from the Latin reformare, the prefix re- meaning back and the verb formare meaning to form or shape. So in purely etymological terms the word reform would seem to imply a process of putting things back to the way they were. Not so inappropriate then, for Michael Gove's attempts to reestablish a half-remembered version of 50s schooling.
Except that words acquire most of their meaning through a combination of usage and connotation (a concept I have explored here for instance). To take usage first, consider some of the other contemporary uses of the word reform: we have Obama's healthcare reforms; repeated calls from Cameron and others for EU reform; and vague talk of political reform, usually in countries sufficiently far away that reform becomes a less threatening concept. Because actually the connotations the word reform has acquired in current usage are all to do with change, and moving forward not backwards.
The other key feature of the usage of the word reform is that it has long been defined in opposition to two other words: reaction and revolution. From the Protestant Reformation to the Reformist Movement reformers have long been defined as being the opposite of reactionaries. Reform is emphatically not about turning the clock back any more, whatever its etymology might be. These sorts of usages are also notable in their virtually socialist connotations: the process of reform has always been about defeating the reactionary forces of an oppressive higher power. Maybe not so appropriate for what Gove sought to achieve then.
Similarly, reform is now clearly established as the opposite of revolution. Revolutionaries seek to overturn (etymologically as well as by usage) whilst reformers work from the ground up, bringing in more organic, gentler changes. Indeed revolutionaries have often seen reform as inimical to their aims. Dario Fo put it well when he said, "They want a revolution, and we'll give them reforms- lots of reforms; we'll drown them in reforms."
This sort oppositional definition of words is actually how we come to refine their meanings. What is reform? Well, it isn't reaction and it isn't revolution, so it's something in between. And as a result, since reform is by definition (or by usage anyway) not an extremist position, the connotations it has come to acquire are almost universally positive. Reform has connotations of gentleness, of looking to the future, of responding to the needs of the weak and oppressed, of high-minded idealism.
And yet we allow the word to be linked to what Michael Gove did to the English education system in his time as Secretary of State!
I propose a different word. For a start, the prefix has to be de- (from the Latin for "down from," "away from," or "out of" and implying reversal or negation.) So deform maybe? Hence Gove's deformations of England's education system. Not quite, I don't think. Deformation is far too slow and organic a process. We need something more dramatic to describe what he did.
Disruption is another good word. Etymologically it seems to mean "breaking apart," which seems appropriate. However again, connotations are key, and the problem is that disruption has strong connotations of temporariness. After a disruption normal service is resumed. Pretty quickly, so long as Network Rail isn't involved. So no, disruption simply isn't the word, because the damage Gove did will take decades to undo, even suppose anyone tries.
We need another word. I know, not reform, or disrupt, but destroy. Yes, that's it. That seems a much better description of what happened. So not Gove's reforms, but Gove's destruction.
Yup. Happy with that. Carry on.
Showing posts with label Words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Words. Show all posts
Friday, 8 August 2014
Monday, 28 July 2014
The roots of radicalisation and the limits of extremism
There has been a great deal written and said about radicalisation and extremism within western (particularly Muslim) youth over recent times, to the point where one might think that there is little useful to add to the debate. However there is one angle that does not seem to me to have much considered and that is, coincidentally, relevant to this blog: the etymology and connotations of the two words most commonly used to describe the phenomenon.
The words 'radicalisation' and 'extremism' seem inextricably bound together nowadays in any discussion of the issue of homegrown terrorism, yet etymologically they are poles apart. Radicalisation is about the very centre of things whilst extremism about the farthest limits. In Latin radix/radicalis means root, whilst exter/exterior/extremus means outer, foreign or strange.
So how is it that these words have come, in recent times, to garner such a similar range of connotations? The notion of radicalisation (of discovering, rediscovering or exploring the very roots of things) seems now inevitably to imply extremism (pushing to, and beyond, the farthest limits of things), and both seem now to connote violence, intolerance and a single-minded rejection of conventional Western values.
The word 'radical' acquired some time ago the political connotations that gave rise to phrases such as radical reform, radical feminism and now radical Islam. It implies going to the very root of things in order to bring about fundamental change, because in a sense, what radicals of any persuasion want to do is to reach into the very centre of whatever ideological system most concerns them. Truly radical feminists would surely rather transform the thinking of their entire society than to split off from the mainstream into some strange, cliquey anti-male wimmin's collective.
And yet the term has come to seem often to imply the latter approach. I can't help feeling that it is the Establishment- those who are threatened by any form of fundamental change- whose influence has led to this distortion of the meaning of the word 'radical.' It suits those who benefit from a given social structure not to have its roots questioned or remade. So social pressure from the majority has come to wrench the word 'radical' in this context well away from its core meaning. Mainstream society, it seems, wants to keep radicals of any persuasion far removed from the roots of the tree in which they have made their home, and so they push them to the margins- to the extremes.
This has always been true of course, and it is difficult to decide whether the word 'radical' has actually changed in meaning over the years, or whether it is simply the case that yesterday's radicals become in hindsight today's reformers. Take three socio-political groups: the Radicals (as in 19th Century progressive Liberals); radical feminists; and radical Islamists. Most people would see these groups as going from pretty much mainstream to totally extremist, but is this because the meaning of the word has changed or because society has now become more accepting of the fundamental changes sought by the earlier groups?
In the context of "the radicalisation of Muslim youth" there is, I believe, another factor at play. It seems clear that there is an impulse in young men towards violent collective action and the pursuit of adventure, thrills and danger. In the 80s and 90s inner city riots fulfilled that need; in the 70s and 80s it was football hooliganism; and in the 50s and 60s there were the battles between mods and rockers on England's seafronts. Before that of course no such need existed because there was actual War, providing more than enough violence and danger.
Yet in none of these cases were the young men involved seen as extremists. Their actions were often extreme: at least as extreme as those of the 'radicalised' muslim youth who cause such moral panic today. Rioters, football hooligans, mods and rockers posed a much bigger threat to the safety and security of mainstream society than do hijab-wearing women or idealistic and misguided young men who head off to fight Assad's forces in Syria. Yet they were allowed their place somewhere near the heart of British society. No doubt it helped that mods and football hooligans for instance went in for the iconography of Englishness in a big way. And the near-insanity of the Tommies in the trenches, marching steadily into machine-gun fire and sacrificing their lives in pursuit of an ill-defined and virtually incomprehensible goal was officially sanctioned of course. Their motivation might have been disturbingly similar to that of today's suicide bombers but they were not extremists- far from it.
Even in the case of the inner city riots of the 80s and 90s, whilst the actions of the rioters might have been loudly deplored in the right-wing press it came fairly quickly to be understood that they represented an upswell of dissatisfaction and anger with the status quo that needed to be addressed. In the language that this post is discussing they were seen by society as a whole as disturbingly radical, but not extremist. They spoke to society about itself, embodying an unhealthiness at its roots that society recognised (eventually) it had to address.
What worries me today is that the constant linking of the words 'radical' and 'extremist' is in danger of preventing that process from happening this time round. We are in danger of believing that today's radical Muslim youth are not exploring and seeking to change the roots of the tree in which the rest of us live, but some other tree entirely, over at the extremes- beyond the outer limits of what is normal and decent and bloody British for god's sake.
And that is something we do at our peril. Because if there is a sickness at the roots it is radicals that society needs to expose it.
The words 'radicalisation' and 'extremism' seem inextricably bound together nowadays in any discussion of the issue of homegrown terrorism, yet etymologically they are poles apart. Radicalisation is about the very centre of things whilst extremism about the farthest limits. In Latin radix/radicalis means root, whilst exter/exterior/extremus means outer, foreign or strange.
So how is it that these words have come, in recent times, to garner such a similar range of connotations? The notion of radicalisation (of discovering, rediscovering or exploring the very roots of things) seems now inevitably to imply extremism (pushing to, and beyond, the farthest limits of things), and both seem now to connote violence, intolerance and a single-minded rejection of conventional Western values.
The word 'radical' acquired some time ago the political connotations that gave rise to phrases such as radical reform, radical feminism and now radical Islam. It implies going to the very root of things in order to bring about fundamental change, because in a sense, what radicals of any persuasion want to do is to reach into the very centre of whatever ideological system most concerns them. Truly radical feminists would surely rather transform the thinking of their entire society than to split off from the mainstream into some strange, cliquey anti-male wimmin's collective.
And yet the term has come to seem often to imply the latter approach. I can't help feeling that it is the Establishment- those who are threatened by any form of fundamental change- whose influence has led to this distortion of the meaning of the word 'radical.' It suits those who benefit from a given social structure not to have its roots questioned or remade. So social pressure from the majority has come to wrench the word 'radical' in this context well away from its core meaning. Mainstream society, it seems, wants to keep radicals of any persuasion far removed from the roots of the tree in which they have made their home, and so they push them to the margins- to the extremes.
This has always been true of course, and it is difficult to decide whether the word 'radical' has actually changed in meaning over the years, or whether it is simply the case that yesterday's radicals become in hindsight today's reformers. Take three socio-political groups: the Radicals (as in 19th Century progressive Liberals); radical feminists; and radical Islamists. Most people would see these groups as going from pretty much mainstream to totally extremist, but is this because the meaning of the word has changed or because society has now become more accepting of the fundamental changes sought by the earlier groups?
In the context of "the radicalisation of Muslim youth" there is, I believe, another factor at play. It seems clear that there is an impulse in young men towards violent collective action and the pursuit of adventure, thrills and danger. In the 80s and 90s inner city riots fulfilled that need; in the 70s and 80s it was football hooliganism; and in the 50s and 60s there were the battles between mods and rockers on England's seafronts. Before that of course no such need existed because there was actual War, providing more than enough violence and danger.
Yet in none of these cases were the young men involved seen as extremists. Their actions were often extreme: at least as extreme as those of the 'radicalised' muslim youth who cause such moral panic today. Rioters, football hooligans, mods and rockers posed a much bigger threat to the safety and security of mainstream society than do hijab-wearing women or idealistic and misguided young men who head off to fight Assad's forces in Syria. Yet they were allowed their place somewhere near the heart of British society. No doubt it helped that mods and football hooligans for instance went in for the iconography of Englishness in a big way. And the near-insanity of the Tommies in the trenches, marching steadily into machine-gun fire and sacrificing their lives in pursuit of an ill-defined and virtually incomprehensible goal was officially sanctioned of course. Their motivation might have been disturbingly similar to that of today's suicide bombers but they were not extremists- far from it.
Even in the case of the inner city riots of the 80s and 90s, whilst the actions of the rioters might have been loudly deplored in the right-wing press it came fairly quickly to be understood that they represented an upswell of dissatisfaction and anger with the status quo that needed to be addressed. In the language that this post is discussing they were seen by society as a whole as disturbingly radical, but not extremist. They spoke to society about itself, embodying an unhealthiness at its roots that society recognised (eventually) it had to address.
What worries me today is that the constant linking of the words 'radical' and 'extremist' is in danger of preventing that process from happening this time round. We are in danger of believing that today's radical Muslim youth are not exploring and seeking to change the roots of the tree in which the rest of us live, but some other tree entirely, over at the extremes- beyond the outer limits of what is normal and decent and bloody British for god's sake.
And that is something we do at our peril. Because if there is a sickness at the roots it is radicals that society needs to expose it.
Saturday, 12 April 2014
The grammar of social intercourse on the web
Facebook notification: Fred Bloggs likes your comment.
What does that mean exactly? It occurs to me that, whilst human societies have had countless centuries to develop and disseminate subtle modes of social interaction in the face-to-face world we are having to put together similar codes for interaction ludicrously quickly when it comes to the internet. Take the general area of the notification that starts this post- namely the expression of agreement and affirmation.
In the face-to-face world there exists a whole range of means, verbal and non-verbal, to let the other person know that you agree with them- that you are on their side. At a base level there are the simple nods and mumbled "yeah"s and "mhmm"s that really signify little more than "I am not actually asleep yet." Then there are the slightly more enthusiastic smiles or "Yeah, yeah"s and "quite"s or the never-completely-sincere-sounding "Ooh I know." For the young there are the the more emphatic "innit doe"s and "you know it"s or even "that's what I'm saying blud," accompanied perhaps by a high-five or other congratulatory physical contact. For the older participants there is a similar lexicon of supportive (though often essentially meaningless) comments, such as "absolutely," or "I couldn't agree more." In some communities even the middle-aged can accompany these with physical contact, usually centred around handshakes, though we repressed Britons usually have to make do with vigorous nodding and enthusiastic smiles.
If the social context is veering more towards intimacy than debate there is a similar range of supportive actions and comments, often so highly charged that a tentative touch of the hand across a table carries a wealth of meaning and potential. In these contexts in particular the signifiers are so subtly differentiated that they can become a minefield for the unwary or socially inept. So it is not just a question of whether one smiles at a particular point in the conversation, but what sort of smile that is. Get it right and the relationship can move forward incrementally; get it wrong and you risk looking insincere, pushy, creepy or downright manic (or is that just me?)
And on the internet what do we have? A "like" button, often illustrated with a thumbs-up icon.
The thumbs-up icon is actually interesting in itself. In face-to-face contexts the thumbs-up is very rarely used, and then in very specific circumstances. It implies an invocation to stick at it in the face of difficult challenges. It is the non-verbal equivalent of the French "bon courage." Think- when was the last time you gave anyone a thumbs-up in the context of an actual conversation? Because it is also typically a sign given at a distance, when someone is leaving for instance and the time for words is over.
The word "like" itself is pretty inoffensive and all-purpose, but the problem is that it has to carry such a vast range of meanings. To take a variant of the post above for instance: when a woman reads "Fred Bloggs likes your photo" there is an enormous amount of guesswork involved as to the implications of that statement. It could mean:
What does that mean exactly? It occurs to me that, whilst human societies have had countless centuries to develop and disseminate subtle modes of social interaction in the face-to-face world we are having to put together similar codes for interaction ludicrously quickly when it comes to the internet. Take the general area of the notification that starts this post- namely the expression of agreement and affirmation.
In the face-to-face world there exists a whole range of means, verbal and non-verbal, to let the other person know that you agree with them- that you are on their side. At a base level there are the simple nods and mumbled "yeah"s and "mhmm"s that really signify little more than "I am not actually asleep yet." Then there are the slightly more enthusiastic smiles or "Yeah, yeah"s and "quite"s or the never-completely-sincere-sounding "Ooh I know." For the young there are the the more emphatic "innit doe"s and "you know it"s or even "that's what I'm saying blud," accompanied perhaps by a high-five or other congratulatory physical contact. For the older participants there is a similar lexicon of supportive (though often essentially meaningless) comments, such as "absolutely," or "I couldn't agree more." In some communities even the middle-aged can accompany these with physical contact, usually centred around handshakes, though we repressed Britons usually have to make do with vigorous nodding and enthusiastic smiles.
If the social context is veering more towards intimacy than debate there is a similar range of supportive actions and comments, often so highly charged that a tentative touch of the hand across a table carries a wealth of meaning and potential. In these contexts in particular the signifiers are so subtly differentiated that they can become a minefield for the unwary or socially inept. So it is not just a question of whether one smiles at a particular point in the conversation, but what sort of smile that is. Get it right and the relationship can move forward incrementally; get it wrong and you risk looking insincere, pushy, creepy or downright manic (or is that just me?)
And on the internet what do we have? A "like" button, often illustrated with a thumbs-up icon.
The thumbs-up icon is actually interesting in itself. In face-to-face contexts the thumbs-up is very rarely used, and then in very specific circumstances. It implies an invocation to stick at it in the face of difficult challenges. It is the non-verbal equivalent of the French "bon courage." Think- when was the last time you gave anyone a thumbs-up in the context of an actual conversation? Because it is also typically a sign given at a distance, when someone is leaving for instance and the time for words is over.
The word "like" itself is pretty inoffensive and all-purpose, but the problem is that it has to carry such a vast range of meanings. To take a variant of the post above for instance: when a woman reads "Fred Bloggs likes your photo" there is an enormous amount of guesswork involved as to the implications of that statement. It could mean:
- Fred appreciates the humour/beauty/photographic skill on display in the photo.
- Fred has been reminded of your existence by the photo and wants to say hi.
- Fred thinks you look very good in the photo, and wants to give you some supportive positive feedback.
- Fred fancies you and is using an inoffensive "like" of your photo as a way in to deepening your relationship.
- Fred is in fact a deeply creepy stalker who you would be well-advised to block from your facebook posts.
And how are you supposed to know which is which?
Or to take a similarly potentially awkward situation. Imagine the following: you have posted a sarcastically tongue-in-cheek comment about some issue which divides public opinion, in which you purport to put forward a point of view in order to satirise those who hold such views: "I really think the coalition government should be doing more to clamp down on the benefits that go to scroungers pretending to be disabled." Fred Bloggs (whom you barely know) 'likes' your post. Does this mean that he shares your political viewpoints and satirical humour, or that he is a closet Tory who thinks that he has found a political soulmate?
Mostly of course we have other clues as to what the 'like' means in any particular context, but we can never be completely sure. Did Fred click 'like' as a thoughtlessly automatic reaction whilst scrolling through hundreds of status updates, or is this a considered, thoughtful, even coded message of a deeper reaction to your post? Who knows?
The point is that I think we need somehow to develop a greater range of communication fillers and signifiers of social responses for use on the internet. Quite what I am not sure, and I think it would be hard to replicate the vast range of such signifiers we have in face-to-face contexts (particularly given the inherently multicultural nature of the internet), but we need something.
Click the button below to like this post if you agree.
Tuesday, 1 October 2013
Radicalisation and the fifth column that threatens to destroy the USA from within
We have heard a lot about radicalisation (according to Wikipedia "a process by which an individual or group comes to adopt increasingly extreme political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject or undermine the status quo") over recent weeks, particularly given the tabloids' strange, misogynist fixation with the "White Widow". Radicalisation is usually discussed in terms of muslims listening to "hate preachers" or accessing "terrorist material" on the internet. Radicalisation within the USA is not something that I have seen much discussion of, but I can reveal that in fact it is something that has been going on for decades, with vast amounts of money spent in a huge media campaign that has radicalised significant numbers of US citizens to a terrifying degree.
This radicalisation has not been without its consequences. It has led to countless suicide gun attacks, pernicious campaigns to undermine the rule of law, and most recently to determined efforts to destroy America's economic system and to reverse decisions made through the proper democratic process.
So who is behind this process of radicalisation? Hollywood commercial cinema, that's who. Virtually since its inception Hollywood commercial cinema has presented an image of American masculinity that has inexorably led to large numbers of Americans adopting "increasingly extreme political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject or undermine the status quo."
Absurd, you say? With American commercial cinema about the most patriotically gung-ho of any media organisation in the world? Well, just look dispassionately at the evidence.
One of the dominant narratives of Hollywood blockbusters since the early days has been that of a lone hero fighting to uphold his individual version of "truth, justice and the American way" and/or protect his friends and/or family from the legion of dangers that threaten to overwhelm them. Whether he be the lone, white-Stetsoned cowboy in a lawless Western town, the maverick cop in a corrupt and inept police force, even the heroic rogue soldier who disobeys orders in pursuit of the greater good the underlying story is the same: truth, justice and the American way (in the movies at least) are protected by an individual's decisive actions, often in contravention of the stultifying, or even actively maleficent dead hand of the State.
The rule of Law in Hollywood blockbusters is almost always something to be distrusted, and even actively opposed. Lawyers are almost universally crooked, devious and obstructive. They use their legal casuistry to frustrate the true hero in his pursuit of true justice, which almost never derives from the courtroom or the legislative chamber. Large scale collective action of any sort is profoundly distrusted, symbolised in films such as Star Wars by the vast, faceless drone armies, or dismissed as irrelevant, as soft liberal hippies wave banners while the true hero takes on the bad guys through direct and bloody action.
The irony of course is how immensely far removed this image of Amercanism is from the actual lives of most Americans. Despite this powerful image of individual freedom and independence from State control, Americans appear to be as placid and easily manipulated as any citizenry on Earth. There has been no tradition of mass protest in most people's lifetime, high proportions of the populace are happy (proud, even) to display that symbol of the state, the US flag, and American children even salute that flag daily in a ceremony that, if it took place in North Korea, would be seen as state brainwashing on an unimaginable scale.
So here we have a paradox: a dominant media narrative pushing a radical (and frequently extremely violent) form of individual freedom in the context of a society that has accepted state control to an unprecedented degree. And these things cannot peacefully coexist. The essence of the Harry Callaghan/John McLane/Hans Solo character is that he decides which laws to obey and which to ignore. He distrusts anyone in a position of authority, and reserves the right to take violent and bloody action against anyone he deems to be frustrating his desire to implement his vision of "truth, justice and the American way." So whilst he may salute the flag, he does not believe in any of the institutions established in the name of that flag. So just how different is such a character from the many rogue gunmen who have taken arms (as they see it) against the faceless hordes who have sought to frustrate and deny them at every turn? What is there, in truth to separate a Hollywood blockbuster thriller hero from a high-school shooter?
The thing that Hollywood heros most particularly do not believe in is government. Government (in the movies) is fundamentally corrupt, out of touch, faceless and irrelevant to the real lives and concerns of the citizenry. What matters that it is democratically elected? Politicians are all on the take, and the sole aim of government seems (in the movies) to be to frustrate the right-thinking hero in his individualistic fight for freedom and justice (and the American way, indeed.)
And so, following this narrative, what does one do if the democratically elected government seeks to implement a law (Obama's healthcare reform) which has effectively been democratically endorsed through the presidential elections, but with which you do not personally agree? Well, it seems there is only one course open to the right-thinking all-American hero (like Ted Cruz) radicalised by decades of Hollywood brainwashing. Having attempted to paralyse the functions of government by talking non-stop for 21 hours, you then seek to bring the nation economically to its knees by denying its access to continuing funding.
If this sort of anti-democratic destructiveness was happening in any other country anguished media analysts would be looking for explanations for the extraordinary radicalisation of a portion of the nation's populace that has led to the election of, and apparent continued support for, people like Ted Cruz. Where did this radicalisation originate, they would be asking. Who is to blame? But this is America, and as I say, we have our explanation already.
Hollywood.
This radicalisation has not been without its consequences. It has led to countless suicide gun attacks, pernicious campaigns to undermine the rule of law, and most recently to determined efforts to destroy America's economic system and to reverse decisions made through the proper democratic process.
So who is behind this process of radicalisation? Hollywood commercial cinema, that's who. Virtually since its inception Hollywood commercial cinema has presented an image of American masculinity that has inexorably led to large numbers of Americans adopting "increasingly extreme political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject or undermine the status quo."
Absurd, you say? With American commercial cinema about the most patriotically gung-ho of any media organisation in the world? Well, just look dispassionately at the evidence.
One of the dominant narratives of Hollywood blockbusters since the early days has been that of a lone hero fighting to uphold his individual version of "truth, justice and the American way" and/or protect his friends and/or family from the legion of dangers that threaten to overwhelm them. Whether he be the lone, white-Stetsoned cowboy in a lawless Western town, the maverick cop in a corrupt and inept police force, even the heroic rogue soldier who disobeys orders in pursuit of the greater good the underlying story is the same: truth, justice and the American way (in the movies at least) are protected by an individual's decisive actions, often in contravention of the stultifying, or even actively maleficent dead hand of the State.
The rule of Law in Hollywood blockbusters is almost always something to be distrusted, and even actively opposed. Lawyers are almost universally crooked, devious and obstructive. They use their legal casuistry to frustrate the true hero in his pursuit of true justice, which almost never derives from the courtroom or the legislative chamber. Large scale collective action of any sort is profoundly distrusted, symbolised in films such as Star Wars by the vast, faceless drone armies, or dismissed as irrelevant, as soft liberal hippies wave banners while the true hero takes on the bad guys through direct and bloody action.
The irony of course is how immensely far removed this image of Amercanism is from the actual lives of most Americans. Despite this powerful image of individual freedom and independence from State control, Americans appear to be as placid and easily manipulated as any citizenry on Earth. There has been no tradition of mass protest in most people's lifetime, high proportions of the populace are happy (proud, even) to display that symbol of the state, the US flag, and American children even salute that flag daily in a ceremony that, if it took place in North Korea, would be seen as state brainwashing on an unimaginable scale.
So here we have a paradox: a dominant media narrative pushing a radical (and frequently extremely violent) form of individual freedom in the context of a society that has accepted state control to an unprecedented degree. And these things cannot peacefully coexist. The essence of the Harry Callaghan/John McLane/Hans Solo character is that he decides which laws to obey and which to ignore. He distrusts anyone in a position of authority, and reserves the right to take violent and bloody action against anyone he deems to be frustrating his desire to implement his vision of "truth, justice and the American way." So whilst he may salute the flag, he does not believe in any of the institutions established in the name of that flag. So just how different is such a character from the many rogue gunmen who have taken arms (as they see it) against the faceless hordes who have sought to frustrate and deny them at every turn? What is there, in truth to separate a Hollywood blockbuster thriller hero from a high-school shooter?
The thing that Hollywood heros most particularly do not believe in is government. Government (in the movies) is fundamentally corrupt, out of touch, faceless and irrelevant to the real lives and concerns of the citizenry. What matters that it is democratically elected? Politicians are all on the take, and the sole aim of government seems (in the movies) to be to frustrate the right-thinking hero in his individualistic fight for freedom and justice (and the American way, indeed.)
And so, following this narrative, what does one do if the democratically elected government seeks to implement a law (Obama's healthcare reform) which has effectively been democratically endorsed through the presidential elections, but with which you do not personally agree? Well, it seems there is only one course open to the right-thinking all-American hero (like Ted Cruz) radicalised by decades of Hollywood brainwashing. Having attempted to paralyse the functions of government by talking non-stop for 21 hours, you then seek to bring the nation economically to its knees by denying its access to continuing funding.
If this sort of anti-democratic destructiveness was happening in any other country anguished media analysts would be looking for explanations for the extraordinary radicalisation of a portion of the nation's populace that has led to the election of, and apparent continued support for, people like Ted Cruz. Where did this radicalisation originate, they would be asking. Who is to blame? But this is America, and as I say, we have our explanation already.
Hollywood.
Thursday, 12 September 2013
The language of war
One of the abiding mysteries of the ongoing Syrian chemical weapons issue is why it is that the US and UK governments apparently got so exercised over the deaths of a few hundred victims of an apparent chemical gas attack in Damascus that Cameron and Obama were prepared to risk (and in Cameron's case suffer) political humiliation by threatening military intervention. What made those few hundred deaths so different from the estimated 100,000 that preceded them?
I cannot pretend to have an answer to that question but it is interesting to look at the issue at the level of language (it is what this blog is supposed to be about after all). The most obvious phenomenon of course is the use of extreme language to describe the attacks: "horror", "moral obscenity", "outrage" etc. but that sort of thing is hardly surprising, and much of this language was used post hoc in an attempt to whip up international outrage to justify intervention.
What I think is more interesting is the language that we have all quite naturally come to use to differentiate chemical or biological weapons from the nice friendly high explosive kind. The former are, for instance, described as "weapons of mass destruction," despite the fact that their main attraction to unscrupulous dictators is that they actually cause very little destruction indeed, simply removing the inconvenient people from a landscape that is otherwise left untouched. Explosive weapons, by contrast, are universally defined as "conventional," and therefore presumably uncontentious and socially acceptable, if perhaps a tad passé for the really hip military commander.
What is more, while the use of chemical weapons is usually described as "indiscriminate", the use of conventional weapons (particularly when carried by the maybe-not-that-conventional-really drones) is generally "clinical," "focussed," or even "surgical." This carries through to the nouns used. The use of chemical weapons is almost invariably described as an "attack", whilst the use of explosives (when carried by drones, cruise missiles or laser-targeted bombs) is usually a "strike."
On the face of it, these two words look similar, but in fact the difference between them is profound. As I have argued in a number of earlier posts about poetry (here or here for instance) it is the connotations of words that give them their power and the connotations of "attack" and "strike" are quite different. "Attack" has a fairly straightforward set of connotations in both its verb and its noun form. An attack can be violent, unprovoked, vicious, frenzied or bitter. However you look at it, the word has connotations of an animalistic loss of control and the suspension of careful judgment and even of morality.
"Strike" is much more nuanced. For a start, its verb form is now seen as archaic and is rarely used to mean anything close to "attack" (when did you last strike someone?) Oddly, it does seem to have survived in the almost unconnected sense of "striking a pose." In its noun form it has a slightly wider range of meanings than "attack", with some straying well away from the sense of violence. One could argue that a labour strike is almost the antithesis of violence as it involves the suspension of physical activity.
It is also interesting to look at what adjectives can pair with the noun form of "strike." A strike can be preemptive and decisive, as well as the previously mentioned attributes, "clinical," "surgical" and "focussed." What is clear is that the attributes of "strike" and "attack" cannot be interchanged easily. An attack cannot be clinical any more than a strike can be frenzied, or even vicious. The word "strike," it seems, carries with it connotations of careful, analytical precision that are a world away from the connotations of the word "attack."
So there you go. Chemical weapons evoke "horror" and "moral outrage" because their use involves an "attack." Explosive weapons on the other hand are "conventional" and therefore by implication morally acceptable, and their use takes the form not of an "attack" but of a much more rational and carefully thought through "strike."
I am sure that was of enormous comfort to the untold thousands killed by explosive weapons, not just in Syria but in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Yemen and wherever else.
I cannot pretend to have an answer to that question but it is interesting to look at the issue at the level of language (it is what this blog is supposed to be about after all). The most obvious phenomenon of course is the use of extreme language to describe the attacks: "horror", "moral obscenity", "outrage" etc. but that sort of thing is hardly surprising, and much of this language was used post hoc in an attempt to whip up international outrage to justify intervention.
What I think is more interesting is the language that we have all quite naturally come to use to differentiate chemical or biological weapons from the nice friendly high explosive kind. The former are, for instance, described as "weapons of mass destruction," despite the fact that their main attraction to unscrupulous dictators is that they actually cause very little destruction indeed, simply removing the inconvenient people from a landscape that is otherwise left untouched. Explosive weapons, by contrast, are universally defined as "conventional," and therefore presumably uncontentious and socially acceptable, if perhaps a tad passé for the really hip military commander.
What is more, while the use of chemical weapons is usually described as "indiscriminate", the use of conventional weapons (particularly when carried by the maybe-not-that-conventional-really drones) is generally "clinical," "focussed," or even "surgical." This carries through to the nouns used. The use of chemical weapons is almost invariably described as an "attack", whilst the use of explosives (when carried by drones, cruise missiles or laser-targeted bombs) is usually a "strike."
On the face of it, these two words look similar, but in fact the difference between them is profound. As I have argued in a number of earlier posts about poetry (here or here for instance) it is the connotations of words that give them their power and the connotations of "attack" and "strike" are quite different. "Attack" has a fairly straightforward set of connotations in both its verb and its noun form. An attack can be violent, unprovoked, vicious, frenzied or bitter. However you look at it, the word has connotations of an animalistic loss of control and the suspension of careful judgment and even of morality.
"Strike" is much more nuanced. For a start, its verb form is now seen as archaic and is rarely used to mean anything close to "attack" (when did you last strike someone?) Oddly, it does seem to have survived in the almost unconnected sense of "striking a pose." In its noun form it has a slightly wider range of meanings than "attack", with some straying well away from the sense of violence. One could argue that a labour strike is almost the antithesis of violence as it involves the suspension of physical activity.
It is also interesting to look at what adjectives can pair with the noun form of "strike." A strike can be preemptive and decisive, as well as the previously mentioned attributes, "clinical," "surgical" and "focussed." What is clear is that the attributes of "strike" and "attack" cannot be interchanged easily. An attack cannot be clinical any more than a strike can be frenzied, or even vicious. The word "strike," it seems, carries with it connotations of careful, analytical precision that are a world away from the connotations of the word "attack."
So there you go. Chemical weapons evoke "horror" and "moral outrage" because their use involves an "attack." Explosive weapons on the other hand are "conventional" and therefore by implication morally acceptable, and their use takes the form not of an "attack" but of a much more rational and carefully thought through "strike."
I am sure that was of enormous comfort to the untold thousands killed by explosive weapons, not just in Syria but in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Yemen and wherever else.
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Symbolism outside literature
I am conscious of going off-piste a little here, but in a previous post I have stated that imagery is central to how we use language and perhaps it is actually more central to how we perceive the world than I previously thought. The last few weeks have furnished me with two examples of where imagery seems to leap at me unbidden, where no language was involved.
The first was intentional. I saw Threshold to the Kingdom by Mark Wallinger at Tate Britain. I don't normally like arty video installations but this was strangely compelling and beautiful. Filmed from a static viewpoint and in ultra slow motion it shows a stream of people coming through the "International Arrivals" gate at Heathrow, over Allegri’s Miserere Mei, Deus. Because of the static viewpoint and slow motion you are compelled to look closely at and consider every element of the scene. Some elements are static and unchanging, like the shimmering reflective gates, the bold lettering above them and the strangely impassive man seated at the desk beside them. The changing elements are of course the passengers and while (nearly) all share common features- the way all stare beyond the camera and progress with flowing rhythm down the screen and out of shot to bottom right- each has individuality and these individualities seem suffused with meaning too. One waves shyly at someone unseen. Another yawns, covering his mouth and casting his eyes downwards. On one occasion a woman dressed in black steps into shot to embrace two others, also in black, and all three stand motionless in the centre of the shot. On another someone starts running, though the ultra slow motion makes her progress still painfully slow. On another occasion a man crosses the stream, holding a cup of coffee. Although only one other is passing at the time it is impossible not to feel tension as a collision seems inevitable and the man with the coffee seems transgressive, his direction of travel all wrong. On several occasions the piece is edited with dissolves, so that passengers slowly fade away whilst still walking. The piece ends with a man with an almost empty baggage trolley who stops centre screen. He consults a scrap of paper, looking concerned and hesitant. Finally he proceeds, but to the left instead of the bottom right.
I challenge anyone to sit through this piece and not see symbolism in it. Some will see the kingdom as the kingdom of Heaven, with a constant slow stream of the dead entering its pearly gates. Others will think of issues around immigration and how welcoming or otherwise our kingdom must appear to others. Others will see a depiction of our lives and the way places such as airports define and segment them. Still others might see the lurking menace of international terrorism- the film as the surveillance footage that catches the last sighting of a suicide bomber. What they see is not the point, and most viewers will not be consciously aware of thinking in such symbolic terms at all, but I am convinced they will.
In the second example the symbolism was certainly not intentional and maybe my wife and I were the only ones to see it. The wreck of the Costa Concordia was a tragedy, but for us it was also powerfully symbolic of the financial crises that have engulfed the world in recent times. Let me explain. Like all modern cruise liners, the Costa Concordia is an impossibly lavish and unreal-looking construction, vastly out of scale with normal human life. Its scale, lavishness and extravagance are very reminiscent to me of the great banks that now dominate our financial system. It was led by a man who seems to have made bombast, arrogance and hubris an art form. He claimed that the rock which sunk the boat was not on his charts and so totally unexpected. However surely anyone with any common sense who has seen the map of the ship's travel and the photos of the coastline of the island would have expected such rocks to be there, whether they were on the charts or not. Cruise liners such as this (like the financial system) are governed by hugely complex and powerful electronic systems and it seems that human common sense had no part to play.
When the ship (like the banks) hit the rocks the captain told the passengers nothing, clearly believing that he was best placed to handle a situation that he (equally clearly) did not understand. Shortly after the wreck we were repeatedly told that he had acted with great skill to bring the ship back to the coast, preventing more loss of life. Presumably we were supposed to be impressed. However when the ship (like the banks) started actually sinking the first response of the captain was to make sure his place in the lifeboat was secure, leaving others to drown. Whilst others were abandoned on the stricken vessel he was being interviewed by Italian TV, his beautiful hair hardly out of place.
Was it just us who saw in all this a powerful symbol for what has happened in the financial and banking sector since 2008? Is it only us who see in Francesco (Love Boat) Schettino a symbol for all those Fred (the Shred) Goodwins out there?
The first was intentional. I saw Threshold to the Kingdom by Mark Wallinger at Tate Britain. I don't normally like arty video installations but this was strangely compelling and beautiful. Filmed from a static viewpoint and in ultra slow motion it shows a stream of people coming through the "International Arrivals" gate at Heathrow, over Allegri’s Miserere Mei, Deus. Because of the static viewpoint and slow motion you are compelled to look closely at and consider every element of the scene. Some elements are static and unchanging, like the shimmering reflective gates, the bold lettering above them and the strangely impassive man seated at the desk beside them. The changing elements are of course the passengers and while (nearly) all share common features- the way all stare beyond the camera and progress with flowing rhythm down the screen and out of shot to bottom right- each has individuality and these individualities seem suffused with meaning too. One waves shyly at someone unseen. Another yawns, covering his mouth and casting his eyes downwards. On one occasion a woman dressed in black steps into shot to embrace two others, also in black, and all three stand motionless in the centre of the shot. On another someone starts running, though the ultra slow motion makes her progress still painfully slow. On another occasion a man crosses the stream, holding a cup of coffee. Although only one other is passing at the time it is impossible not to feel tension as a collision seems inevitable and the man with the coffee seems transgressive, his direction of travel all wrong. On several occasions the piece is edited with dissolves, so that passengers slowly fade away whilst still walking. The piece ends with a man with an almost empty baggage trolley who stops centre screen. He consults a scrap of paper, looking concerned and hesitant. Finally he proceeds, but to the left instead of the bottom right.
I challenge anyone to sit through this piece and not see symbolism in it. Some will see the kingdom as the kingdom of Heaven, with a constant slow stream of the dead entering its pearly gates. Others will think of issues around immigration and how welcoming or otherwise our kingdom must appear to others. Others will see a depiction of our lives and the way places such as airports define and segment them. Still others might see the lurking menace of international terrorism- the film as the surveillance footage that catches the last sighting of a suicide bomber. What they see is not the point, and most viewers will not be consciously aware of thinking in such symbolic terms at all, but I am convinced they will.
In the second example the symbolism was certainly not intentional and maybe my wife and I were the only ones to see it. The wreck of the Costa Concordia was a tragedy, but for us it was also powerfully symbolic of the financial crises that have engulfed the world in recent times. Let me explain. Like all modern cruise liners, the Costa Concordia is an impossibly lavish and unreal-looking construction, vastly out of scale with normal human life. Its scale, lavishness and extravagance are very reminiscent to me of the great banks that now dominate our financial system. It was led by a man who seems to have made bombast, arrogance and hubris an art form. He claimed that the rock which sunk the boat was not on his charts and so totally unexpected. However surely anyone with any common sense who has seen the map of the ship's travel and the photos of the coastline of the island would have expected such rocks to be there, whether they were on the charts or not. Cruise liners such as this (like the financial system) are governed by hugely complex and powerful electronic systems and it seems that human common sense had no part to play.
When the ship (like the banks) hit the rocks the captain told the passengers nothing, clearly believing that he was best placed to handle a situation that he (equally clearly) did not understand. Shortly after the wreck we were repeatedly told that he had acted with great skill to bring the ship back to the coast, preventing more loss of life. Presumably we were supposed to be impressed. However when the ship (like the banks) started actually sinking the first response of the captain was to make sure his place in the lifeboat was secure, leaving others to drown. Whilst others were abandoned on the stricken vessel he was being interviewed by Italian TV, his beautiful hair hardly out of place.
Was it just us who saw in all this a powerful symbol for what has happened in the financial and banking sector since 2008? Is it only us who see in Francesco (Love Boat) Schettino a symbol for all those Fred (the Shred) Goodwins out there?
Monday, 2 January 2012
Serendipity in imagery- or how symbols can acquire new resonances
As I have argued in a a previous post the human brain seems particularly inclined to think in terms of imagery- to recognise the grounds of comparison in terms of connotations and allusions between an idea, concept, feeling or thing and the image, or 'vehicle', with which it is presented. Symbols are the purest expression of this tendency, where artists create a vehicle that is rich in connotations and invite the reader to think about grounds of connection with some feeling or some object or person in the real world. Of course over time the field of connotations on which an individual reader calls can change substantially, meaning that symbols can acquire resonances that were unforseen by their orginal creator.
Blake's the Sick Rose is a well known example of such symbolism, and no doubt readers over the years have felt in it uncanny resonances with particular relationships or emotions they have experienced. What Blake would have been unlikely to be able to foresee was how apposite some readers felt it to be as a symbol for AIDs. Tennyson's the Eagle can be read as a simple descriptive poem or as a symbol of autocratic, despotic power. Again it is unlikely that the poet could have foreseen the grounds of connection with Adolf Hitler, sitting alone in his Adlerhorst, plotting to unleash the thunderbolts of his Blitzkrieg on a war-torn Europe.
In both of these poems the new grounds that modern readers see, though unsuspected at the time by the poets, chime well with the presumed original intentions of the authors. What fascinates me is where symbols an author creates take on entirely new resonances that their creators would find surprising, even perverse. If a reader sees in a symbol uncanny resonances with concepts or situations that are divorced entirely from their original context, is there any problem with them doing so? I will present two examples and let you judge.
George Orwell's Animal Farm is an acute and moving satire on the way the idealism of the Russian Revolution descended into the brutal repression of Stalinism. A turning point in the plot is when the windmill that the animals have created with enormous, backbreaking effort has been destroyed in a storm. In the story this is clearly a symbol for the failed industrial policies of the Soviet Five Year Plans, and Napoleon's identification of Snowball as the culprit a reference to Stalin's scapegoating of Trotsky and others.
However for me in autumn 2001 this symbol acquired terrible new resonance. On the 11th September a great tower in the real world came crashing down. As in the novel "a cry of despair broke from every animal's throat. A terrible sight had met their eyes. The windmill was in ruins." What was particularly chilling was the way that almost immediately afterwards the actions of George Bush and the neocons, ably assisted by Tony Blair, so exactly paralleled Napoleon's actions in the novel:
"Napoleon paced to and fro in silence, occasionally snuffing at the ground. His tail had grown rigid and twitched sharply from side to side, a sign in him of intense mental activity. Suddenly he halted as though his mind were made up.
'Comrades,' he said quietly, 'do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL!' he suddenly roared in a voice of thunder. 'Snowball has done this thing! In sheer malignity, thinking to set back our plans and avenge himself for his ignominious expulsion, this traitor has crept here under cover of night and destroyed our work of nearly a year. Comrades, here and now I pronounce the death sentence upon Snowball. 'Animal Hero, Second Class,' and half a bushel of apples to any animal who brings him to justice. A full bushel to anyone who captures him alive!'"
Substitute Saddam Hussein for Snowball and there you have it.
The second example is perhaps even further from the author's intention but I find it fascinating. Dickens' Great Expectations is a perennial favourite, recently reimagined as a BBC drama. This adaptation had some excellent features, though it misrepresented the original in some aspects. A key point in the televised version is that Pip might have brought Magwitch the file because he was frightened, but the bringing of the pie was an act of pure goodness that Magwitch never forgot and chose later to reward. Pleasing as this notion might be it is not there in the text. Pip brings the pie because Magwitch tells him "'You get me a file.' He tilted me again. 'And you get me wittles.' He tilted me again. 'You bring 'em both to me.' He tilted me again. 'Or I'll have your heart and liver out.'"
It is in the character of Magwitch and his treatment by Pip that on my last reading of the novel I began to see a symbol that surprised me with its serendipitous relevance. In the original Magwitch is clearly symbolic of the brutalising effects of Victorian England's penal system and Pip's contempt and disgust for him symbolic of the way polite society sought to sweep any awareness of that world under the carpet. Yet I began to see their relationship as a fascinating symbol of the relationship between the rich West and the colonies of the Third World.
Before you immediately stop reading, just think about this summary of the plot, considering Pip as symbolic of the rich West (us) and Magwitch of the Third World:
Pip (the rich West) comes across Magwitch (the Third World) in a dark and baffling whirlwind of fear and excitement. He provides Magwitch with some leftover food and a file (beads, charity and weapons). Later, in the company of men with guns, he comes across Magwitch in a deadly struggle with another convict (another Third World country). The men make no attempt to understand the nature or causes of the struggle but intervene with force to bring about a sort of peace.
Over the years, Pip benefits massively from wealth that originates from Magwitch (the exploited peoples of the Third World). He fails to recognise the origins of his new-found prosperity but sees it as no more than his due, because of his connection to Miss Havisham (the raddled remnants of a grand aristocratic past). In due course, Magwitch, who has "lived rough that you should live smooth; I worked hard that you should be above work." decides he wants to visit Pip (the rich West) to whose benefit he has been breaking his back for years. Here the mood changes and Pip responds with alarm and disgust to the appearance of his benefactor. Pip finds himself "shrinking from him with the strongest repugnance" and experiences "a half-formed terror that it might not be safe to be shut up there with him in the dead of the wild solitary night" (the fear and prejudice directed towards the ex-colonial immigrants by people in the West).
There is great pressure to have Magwitch (the immigrants from the old colonies) removed from polite society. There is then a final scene in which the inexplicable conflict between Magwitch and Compeyson flares up again, in a murky, muddy landscape where nothing can be clearly seen (take your pick- the Iran-Iraq war, the Middle East conflicts, any one of a number of brutal sub-Saharan wars).
To make matters worse, a vast amount of money simply disappears into the dark waters of the Thames (the banking crisis).
This reinterpretation of the text is not intended to be taken entirely seriously. If it was I would be far more guilty than any BBC screenplay writer of distorting the original. However it does demonstrate for me the strange protean power of symbols in literature- that we can see in a text connections and symbolic resonances with events, feelings and situations that the author would never have imagined.
Blake's the Sick Rose is a well known example of such symbolism, and no doubt readers over the years have felt in it uncanny resonances with particular relationships or emotions they have experienced. What Blake would have been unlikely to be able to foresee was how apposite some readers felt it to be as a symbol for AIDs. Tennyson's the Eagle can be read as a simple descriptive poem or as a symbol of autocratic, despotic power. Again it is unlikely that the poet could have foreseen the grounds of connection with Adolf Hitler, sitting alone in his Adlerhorst, plotting to unleash the thunderbolts of his Blitzkrieg on a war-torn Europe.
In both of these poems the new grounds that modern readers see, though unsuspected at the time by the poets, chime well with the presumed original intentions of the authors. What fascinates me is where symbols an author creates take on entirely new resonances that their creators would find surprising, even perverse. If a reader sees in a symbol uncanny resonances with concepts or situations that are divorced entirely from their original context, is there any problem with them doing so? I will present two examples and let you judge.
George Orwell's Animal Farm is an acute and moving satire on the way the idealism of the Russian Revolution descended into the brutal repression of Stalinism. A turning point in the plot is when the windmill that the animals have created with enormous, backbreaking effort has been destroyed in a storm. In the story this is clearly a symbol for the failed industrial policies of the Soviet Five Year Plans, and Napoleon's identification of Snowball as the culprit a reference to Stalin's scapegoating of Trotsky and others.
However for me in autumn 2001 this symbol acquired terrible new resonance. On the 11th September a great tower in the real world came crashing down. As in the novel "a cry of despair broke from every animal's throat. A terrible sight had met their eyes. The windmill was in ruins." What was particularly chilling was the way that almost immediately afterwards the actions of George Bush and the neocons, ably assisted by Tony Blair, so exactly paralleled Napoleon's actions in the novel:
"Napoleon paced to and fro in silence, occasionally snuffing at the ground. His tail had grown rigid and twitched sharply from side to side, a sign in him of intense mental activity. Suddenly he halted as though his mind were made up.
'Comrades,' he said quietly, 'do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL!' he suddenly roared in a voice of thunder. 'Snowball has done this thing! In sheer malignity, thinking to set back our plans and avenge himself for his ignominious expulsion, this traitor has crept here under cover of night and destroyed our work of nearly a year. Comrades, here and now I pronounce the death sentence upon Snowball. 'Animal Hero, Second Class,' and half a bushel of apples to any animal who brings him to justice. A full bushel to anyone who captures him alive!'"
Substitute Saddam Hussein for Snowball and there you have it.
The second example is perhaps even further from the author's intention but I find it fascinating. Dickens' Great Expectations is a perennial favourite, recently reimagined as a BBC drama. This adaptation had some excellent features, though it misrepresented the original in some aspects. A key point in the televised version is that Pip might have brought Magwitch the file because he was frightened, but the bringing of the pie was an act of pure goodness that Magwitch never forgot and chose later to reward. Pleasing as this notion might be it is not there in the text. Pip brings the pie because Magwitch tells him "'You get me a file.' He tilted me again. 'And you get me wittles.' He tilted me again. 'You bring 'em both to me.' He tilted me again. 'Or I'll have your heart and liver out.'"
It is in the character of Magwitch and his treatment by Pip that on my last reading of the novel I began to see a symbol that surprised me with its serendipitous relevance. In the original Magwitch is clearly symbolic of the brutalising effects of Victorian England's penal system and Pip's contempt and disgust for him symbolic of the way polite society sought to sweep any awareness of that world under the carpet. Yet I began to see their relationship as a fascinating symbol of the relationship between the rich West and the colonies of the Third World.
Before you immediately stop reading, just think about this summary of the plot, considering Pip as symbolic of the rich West (us) and Magwitch of the Third World:
Pip (the rich West) comes across Magwitch (the Third World) in a dark and baffling whirlwind of fear and excitement. He provides Magwitch with some leftover food and a file (beads, charity and weapons). Later, in the company of men with guns, he comes across Magwitch in a deadly struggle with another convict (another Third World country). The men make no attempt to understand the nature or causes of the struggle but intervene with force to bring about a sort of peace.
Over the years, Pip benefits massively from wealth that originates from Magwitch (the exploited peoples of the Third World). He fails to recognise the origins of his new-found prosperity but sees it as no more than his due, because of his connection to Miss Havisham (the raddled remnants of a grand aristocratic past). In due course, Magwitch, who has "lived rough that you should live smooth; I worked hard that you should be above work." decides he wants to visit Pip (the rich West) to whose benefit he has been breaking his back for years. Here the mood changes and Pip responds with alarm and disgust to the appearance of his benefactor. Pip finds himself "shrinking from him with the strongest repugnance" and experiences "a half-formed terror that it might not be safe to be shut up there with him in the dead of the wild solitary night" (the fear and prejudice directed towards the ex-colonial immigrants by people in the West).
There is great pressure to have Magwitch (the immigrants from the old colonies) removed from polite society. There is then a final scene in which the inexplicable conflict between Magwitch and Compeyson flares up again, in a murky, muddy landscape where nothing can be clearly seen (take your pick- the Iran-Iraq war, the Middle East conflicts, any one of a number of brutal sub-Saharan wars).
To make matters worse, a vast amount of money simply disappears into the dark waters of the Thames (the banking crisis).
This reinterpretation of the text is not intended to be taken entirely seriously. If it was I would be far more guilty than any BBC screenplay writer of distorting the original. However it does demonstrate for me the strange protean power of symbols in literature- that we can see in a text connections and symbolic resonances with events, feelings and situations that the author would never have imagined.
Friday, 23 December 2011
Learning to read
When asked what the study of English Literature is all about I generally answer that it involves learning to read. This is possibly not the best answer to recruit potential A level students but it is, I believe, completely true. Most people's initial reaction to this statement is that they had learned to read by the time they were five years old, so what am I on about. However reading is in fact a very dynamic and continually developing skill. Reading a text is not a mechanical process like scanning a document into a computer's memory but involves a complex interaction between the reader and the text, involving memory, imagination, analytical skill and empathy. There are texts that I have read dozens of time but would still be happy to read again- not out of nostalgia but because I know that there is more I could get out of reading them and thinking about them.
I find it useful to illustrate the process of reading with a diagram, as follows:
This diagram is useful because it illustrates some of the potential pitfalls facing students of literature. A common error (particularly common when I was at school) is to move C too far towards B and away from A. This is where the reader works at the text but without engaging with it or thinking about it: they do not put anything of themselves into the reading. A student might be able to recount the plot of a novel flawlessly, even quote at length from a poem, but they have not engaged with it. If a child has learned a great poem off by heart and can recite it, but has absolutely no idea what it means, is it in any meaningful way a great poem for them?
At the opposite extreme the reading can move all the way over to A, almost losing its connection with B. This is where a student becomes intensely emotionally involved in an idea of what the text is about, which is based on a partial or superficial reading of it. Involvement in the text is a good thing and activities that encourage this involvement, like getting students to write Lady Macbeth's diary, were an excellent counter to the sort of sterile regurgitation encouraged by the first error. The problem is where this approach encourages students to develop their own version of the text with little or no reference to the original, so that we find in Lady Macbeth's diary that she had been conducting an illicit affair with King Duncan.
Each of these errors does at least involve the reader making some effort to develop a reading of the text. The worst error for me, and one that modern exam-pressured English Literature teaching seems very prone to, is where that process disappears altogether and the "reader" simply adopts wholesale a reading of the text from their teacher, a commercial study guide, Wikipedia or some impressive sounding but fundamentally vapid essay downloaded form the internet.
All of the above will of course present a reading of the text, and one would hope that all are informed by thought and by good knowledge of the text. They are all potentially of great value to the student if, and only if, they use them to develop their own reading further. If they listen to what the teacher has to say, read the resource, think about it and crucially go back to the text to test out their changed reading then all well and good. If on the other hand they simply adopt this other reading (let's make it a new balloon called "D" in the diagram) then we have a disaster. There is no connection between the reader A and the new reading D, and if there was a strong connection between the text B and the new reading D then the reader knows nothing of it.
Yet this is precisely what generations of students are being encouraged to do. When studying poetry they are given the impression that the most important aspect of the poem is the annotations the teacher has put up on the board for them to copy down. If a student misses a lesson then so long as they have copied down the annotations they'll be fine. When it comes to revision, many students spend more time revising the explanatory notes about a poem than rereading it for themselves. How through these activities are they developing their own reading of the texts they study?
Of course I understand that students need help and guidance to develop their reading of difficult texts. There is nothing wrong with teachers annotating texts with a class and obviously they want and need to give students input into shades of meaning they might miss, or literary techniques they might not be aware of. However central to the whole process should be the students' development of their own reading of the texts.
Fortunately there is one simple way that this can be improved: students need to spend more time actually reading the texts for themselves. Whenever it comes to revision time and students (or more likely their parents) ask me what is the best thing they can do to revise for a literature exam I always ask them how often they have actually read the text. If the answer is less than three (and it so often is) then I tell them that their first priority should be to read the text again. And then possibly another time. If I, as an English graduate and a teacher for over twenty years, do not believe I can develop a full reading of any complex text in less than three readings, then why should they?
I find it useful to illustrate the process of reading with a diagram, as follows:
In this case, the reader is me. Note that my reading of this text will not be identical to yours, or to any other reader's. I bring my own imagination, previous experiences, thought processes, prejudices and assumptions to the process and they will be unique to me. Note also that on first coming across the text my reading would have been quite limited, maybe even distorted. The process of studying literature is about developing area C of the diagram- through thinking about the text, rereading the text, considering other people's readings of the text, rereading the text, thinking about it some more, rereading it... You get the picture.
This diagram is useful because it illustrates some of the potential pitfalls facing students of literature. A common error (particularly common when I was at school) is to move C too far towards B and away from A. This is where the reader works at the text but without engaging with it or thinking about it: they do not put anything of themselves into the reading. A student might be able to recount the plot of a novel flawlessly, even quote at length from a poem, but they have not engaged with it. If a child has learned a great poem off by heart and can recite it, but has absolutely no idea what it means, is it in any meaningful way a great poem for them?
At the opposite extreme the reading can move all the way over to A, almost losing its connection with B. This is where a student becomes intensely emotionally involved in an idea of what the text is about, which is based on a partial or superficial reading of it. Involvement in the text is a good thing and activities that encourage this involvement, like getting students to write Lady Macbeth's diary, were an excellent counter to the sort of sterile regurgitation encouraged by the first error. The problem is where this approach encourages students to develop their own version of the text with little or no reference to the original, so that we find in Lady Macbeth's diary that she had been conducting an illicit affair with King Duncan.
Each of these errors does at least involve the reader making some effort to develop a reading of the text. The worst error for me, and one that modern exam-pressured English Literature teaching seems very prone to, is where that process disappears altogether and the "reader" simply adopts wholesale a reading of the text from their teacher, a commercial study guide, Wikipedia or some impressive sounding but fundamentally vapid essay downloaded form the internet.
All of the above will of course present a reading of the text, and one would hope that all are informed by thought and by good knowledge of the text. They are all potentially of great value to the student if, and only if, they use them to develop their own reading further. If they listen to what the teacher has to say, read the resource, think about it and crucially go back to the text to test out their changed reading then all well and good. If on the other hand they simply adopt this other reading (let's make it a new balloon called "D" in the diagram) then we have a disaster. There is no connection between the reader A and the new reading D, and if there was a strong connection between the text B and the new reading D then the reader knows nothing of it.
Yet this is precisely what generations of students are being encouraged to do. When studying poetry they are given the impression that the most important aspect of the poem is the annotations the teacher has put up on the board for them to copy down. If a student misses a lesson then so long as they have copied down the annotations they'll be fine. When it comes to revision, many students spend more time revising the explanatory notes about a poem than rereading it for themselves. How through these activities are they developing their own reading of the texts they study?
Of course I understand that students need help and guidance to develop their reading of difficult texts. There is nothing wrong with teachers annotating texts with a class and obviously they want and need to give students input into shades of meaning they might miss, or literary techniques they might not be aware of. However central to the whole process should be the students' development of their own reading of the texts.
Fortunately there is one simple way that this can be improved: students need to spend more time actually reading the texts for themselves. Whenever it comes to revision time and students (or more likely their parents) ask me what is the best thing they can do to revise for a literature exam I always ask them how often they have actually read the text. If the answer is less than three (and it so often is) then I tell them that their first priority should be to read the text again. And then possibly another time. If I, as an English graduate and a teacher for over twenty years, do not believe I can develop a full reading of any complex text in less than three readings, then why should they?
Sunday, 11 December 2011
Rhyme
Of all the features of poetry that students learn how to spot, with little understanding as to why, rhyme tops the list. Across the country students spend fruitless hours (well, minutes anyway) working out the rhyme scheme of poems. Having dutifully written out ABBA CDDC EFGEFG (a Petrarchan sonnet, in case you're wondering) they then stop and wonder why they just did that. When asked to write a paragraph about rhyme, many struggle to get beyond that old favourite "it helps the poem to flow."
Of course in studying sonnets there are useful things that the rhyme scheme can point you to- the division between the octave and the sestet for instance, or in Shakespearean sonnets the separation of the final couplet. However even these observations can seem mechanistic and unpoetic. Surely the study of poetry should not be reduced to this sort of arithmetic calculation.
In fact I believe that the power of rhyme in great poetry is best understood in exactly the same way as I have sought to explain the power of alliteration and assonance- through an understanding of connotations. The effect of rhyme is much the same as the effect of alliteration and assonance. When the ear detects that two or more words rhyme the brain subconsciously focuses a little more attention on the words, and links them together. Therefore a great poet can use rhyme to strengthen the power of individual words, to link connected words to bring out their connotations more strongly, or to force unexpected links into our minds.
With such a wealth of great rhyming poetry to take examples from I have decided to focus on just one, My Last Duchess, by Robert Browning. Because of the enjambment and the way the rhythm of the poem follows the fluency of the Duke's speech it is not immediately obvious that this poem rhymes, which makes it an ideal subject for this sort of analysis.
The use of rhyme that first strikes the attention is in line 11
"And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus."
Here it is a simple case of rhyme for emphasis. The word "durst" is the first hint of real menace in the urbane Duke's narrative, and the rhyme gives it even more force. The menace is carried forward by the link to "first", which helps us hear the Duke's suppressed anger and implicit threat to the listener.
A similar effect is used in line 16
"‘Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,’ or ‘Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:’"
Here it is the Duke's emphasis we hear. Since these are the Fra Pandolf's words, quoted by the Duke, we hear not only the painter's emphasis on the words with connotations to do with his art, but the Dukes contemptuous satirising of that emphasis too.
Perhaps the clearest example of this technique of mutual reinforcement is in line 27, where the similar connotations of "mule" and "fool" compensate for the slightly forced rhyme
" The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace"
However the most interesting use of rhyme in this poem, and what helps give it its menacing power, is the way it reveals the connotations the Duke (rather than the reader) sees in words. In the central section, as the Duke comes as close as he ever does to letting the mask of his urbanity slip he says
"She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling?"
To most readers the words "thanked" and "ranked", "named" and "blamed" have utterly different connotations and would not naturally be linked. Yet to the Duke all four words clearly have powerful connotations of prestige, authority, droit de Seigneur and his unalienable right to do whatever the hell he wants because he is the DUKE. Thanking is nothing to do with simple gratitude- it is a tribute owing to his rank. A name is not a simple signifier, it is central to concepts of rightness, appropriateness and correct conduct.
Perhaps the strongest example of this use of rhyme to reveal the Duke's twisted priorities is in the initially unremarkable couplet at line 25
"Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,"
Of course in studying sonnets there are useful things that the rhyme scheme can point you to- the division between the octave and the sestet for instance, or in Shakespearean sonnets the separation of the final couplet. However even these observations can seem mechanistic and unpoetic. Surely the study of poetry should not be reduced to this sort of arithmetic calculation.
In fact I believe that the power of rhyme in great poetry is best understood in exactly the same way as I have sought to explain the power of alliteration and assonance- through an understanding of connotations. The effect of rhyme is much the same as the effect of alliteration and assonance. When the ear detects that two or more words rhyme the brain subconsciously focuses a little more attention on the words, and links them together. Therefore a great poet can use rhyme to strengthen the power of individual words, to link connected words to bring out their connotations more strongly, or to force unexpected links into our minds.
With such a wealth of great rhyming poetry to take examples from I have decided to focus on just one, My Last Duchess, by Robert Browning. Because of the enjambment and the way the rhythm of the poem follows the fluency of the Duke's speech it is not immediately obvious that this poem rhymes, which makes it an ideal subject for this sort of analysis.
The use of rhyme that first strikes the attention is in line 11
"And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus."
Here it is a simple case of rhyme for emphasis. The word "durst" is the first hint of real menace in the urbane Duke's narrative, and the rhyme gives it even more force. The menace is carried forward by the link to "first", which helps us hear the Duke's suppressed anger and implicit threat to the listener.
A similar effect is used in line 16
"‘Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,’ or ‘Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:’"
Here it is the Duke's emphasis we hear. Since these are the Fra Pandolf's words, quoted by the Duke, we hear not only the painter's emphasis on the words with connotations to do with his art, but the Dukes contemptuous satirising of that emphasis too.
Perhaps the clearest example of this technique of mutual reinforcement is in line 27, where the similar connotations of "mule" and "fool" compensate for the slightly forced rhyme
" The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace"
However the most interesting use of rhyme in this poem, and what helps give it its menacing power, is the way it reveals the connotations the Duke (rather than the reader) sees in words. In the central section, as the Duke comes as close as he ever does to letting the mask of his urbanity slip he says
"She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling?"
The dropping of the daylight in the West,"
For most of us, the subconscious linkage that the rhyme draws between the brooch and the beauty of the sunset would point out the insignificance of the former against the magnificence of the latter- compare "her breast" with "the West". However clearly for the Duke it is the other way round. The magnificence of the sunset is utterly unimportant as compared to the brooch HE gave her. The problem for him is that, unaccountably, the Duchess does not see it that way.
Connotations (and cut-up poems)
As I have said in other posts, I believe that understanding the idea of the connotations of words is central to understanding (and being able to write about) literature. Connotations are what give not only imagery but also alliteration, assonance and rhythm their power.
One way I have attempted to give students a clearer understanding of connotations is through an exercise I have called "cut-up poems." First, read Back in the Playground Blues, by Adrian Mitchell. Now read this little poem I made:
Playground in Summer
On the dusty ground
A small black chicken
Playing with a beetle.
With my back to the fence
In the lunchtime sun
I heard mother and father
Talking.
Clearly, though my poem is not particularly good it has a very different atmosphere to Mitchell's. Having established this I ask students to find the link between the poems. It generally takes a while to work out that the second poem is formed exclusively of words taken from the first. The question then is, if all of the words in the second poem come from the first, how come the atmosphere in the second poem is so different? Initially usually someone suggests that I have only taken the nicest and least scary words from the first poem, but this is clearly not true. So how does it work?
The answer is of course to do with connotations and the range of connotations a single word can have. Take the word "sun", indeed the phrase "lunchtime sun", that occurs in both poems. The phrase has a very diverse set of connotations: think of High Noon or Gunfight at the OK Corral, or any of those other Westerns where the showdown on the main street always takes place under the pitiless noonday sun. Think of the burning, killing sun of the Sahara, from films like Ice Cold in Alex. On the other hand think of lazy summer picnic lunches, or sunbathing beside the pool with a lunchtime cocktail, or those endless sunny lunchtimes of childhood holidays.
Quite simply, the poet of Back in the Playground Blues has triggered the first set of these connotations, by associating the phrase with the image of the beetle on its back, facing death. The "poet" of Playground in Summer has triggered the second set by associating the phrase with sitting against a sun-warmed fence and hearing the low murmur of your parents' voices.
So that's how connotations work. Simple really, and I think once students "get it" they find focusing on connotations a powerful way in to all poetry.
One way I have attempted to give students a clearer understanding of connotations is through an exercise I have called "cut-up poems." First, read Back in the Playground Blues, by Adrian Mitchell. Now read this little poem I made:
Playground in Summer
On the dusty ground
A small black chicken
Playing with a beetle.
With my back to the fence
In the lunchtime sun
I heard mother and father
Talking.
Clearly, though my poem is not particularly good it has a very different atmosphere to Mitchell's. Having established this I ask students to find the link between the poems. It generally takes a while to work out that the second poem is formed exclusively of words taken from the first. The question then is, if all of the words in the second poem come from the first, how come the atmosphere in the second poem is so different? Initially usually someone suggests that I have only taken the nicest and least scary words from the first poem, but this is clearly not true. So how does it work?
The answer is of course to do with connotations and the range of connotations a single word can have. Take the word "sun", indeed the phrase "lunchtime sun", that occurs in both poems. The phrase has a very diverse set of connotations: think of High Noon or Gunfight at the OK Corral, or any of those other Westerns where the showdown on the main street always takes place under the pitiless noonday sun. Think of the burning, killing sun of the Sahara, from films like Ice Cold in Alex. On the other hand think of lazy summer picnic lunches, or sunbathing beside the pool with a lunchtime cocktail, or those endless sunny lunchtimes of childhood holidays.
Quite simply, the poet of Back in the Playground Blues has triggered the first set of these connotations, by associating the phrase with the image of the beetle on its back, facing death. The "poet" of Playground in Summer has triggered the second set by associating the phrase with sitting against a sun-warmed fence and hearing the low murmur of your parents' voices.
So that's how connotations work. Simple really, and I think once students "get it" they find focusing on connotations a powerful way in to all poetry.
Saturday, 10 December 2011
The evolution of language
It seems almost a truism that languages evolve. Taking English as an example anyone can see that this is the case: look at the development of English from Beowulf to the present day through Chaucer, Shakespeare and the rest. The concept does not even seem controversial, partly because evolution is almost universally seen as a positive process (largely I presume because humans, for some reason, see themselves as the pinnacle of evolution). However many people (not all Daily Mail or Telegraph readers) appear to accept the concept of language evolving whilst bemoaning any "decline" from the "correct" use of English, particularly by teenagers.
The metaphor of evolution for the process of development of language is actually a very interesting one. Evolution in the natural world is driven by two forces- random mutation and natural selection by survival of the fittest. Note that the mutations are random and the selection natural- neither is controlled or designed. In fact, both concepts apply very neatly to language development.
Mutations in language come about either through imports from other languages, or from neologisms (new coinages, often produced to name new discoveries or processes) or from simple errors. Of these only one source, neologism, is by design. Natural selection is the process by which new words or new usages enter the language: their formal entrance often being marked by an entry in such an august publication as the Oxford English Dictionary. We sometimes like to think that this demonstrates an element of design or control- that such dictionaries represent some over-arching authority that defines what is and what is not "correct" in our language. However in fact such dictionaries are simply a means of making a post hoc recognition that changes in language have already occurred. The actual selection, just as in natural evolution, is driven by survival of the fittest. Anyone can come up with a neologism, but it doesn't enter the language until it has become common currency: until enough people have decided to use it often enough for it to be accepted as a new word.
Over time, many people have felt this process to be worryingly random and chaotic. How can the beauty of our native language be subjected to such mauling in the court of uninformed public discourse? So attempts have been made in some languages to replace such natural evolution with a properly designed and systematic controlled approach. Classical Latin was one such, with its systematic definitions of conjugations and cases, declensions and moods. French attempted for a while to follow suit. The “immortels” of l’Académie Française laid down rigid rules on what was and was not “correcte” in order to root out anything “impur” from the language. So "self-service" was replaced by the clumsy (and to me equally unFrench) "libre service" and "le weekend" by "la fin de semaine."
Of course, what happened to Classical Latin is well known: it died. In its unchanged purity it simply fell out of use, whilst "Vulgar Latin" evolved into a whole range of languages from Romansch to Romanian. It will be interesting to see whether French goes the same way: certainly there are increasingly two different languages in use by French speakers, so that the same speaker can say “bonjour messieurs dames” when entering a cafe, then “salut les mecs” as he sits down at a table of friends. Both mean the same- more or less "Hello everyone"- despite having no words in common. The first is in formal, l’Académie Française approved French; the latter is not.
English has never taken this approach, much as Telegraph and Mail leader writers might wish it did, and this is the fundamental source of its vitality. Each of the forms of random mutation mentioned above has contributed to the development of English. To take just two examples of mistake-as-mutation, the word "adder" comes from the old English word "nadder". However over time "a nadder" appears to have been increasingly misheard as "an adder", hence the word "adder". Similarly, the phrase "apple-pie order" seems to have dervied from mishearing of one of two French phrases- "cap-à-pie" (head to foot) or "nappe plié" (folded linen). I was disappointed to discover in researching this essay though another example of what I thought was a similar mutation probably was not. I had always believed that Charing Cross got its name because it used to contain a cross built to Edward I's "chère reine" Eleanor. In fact according to Wikipedia, that fount of all wisdom, it is named after the Old English word "cierring" which refers to the bend in the river. Ah well.
So to what extent do modern usages contribute to the evolution of English and to what extent to its decline? For a start, the concept of "decline" in language is based on an odd desire to ascribe moral value to what is actually simply habit and tradition. The form of English we speak now is no more or less correct or elevated or worthwhile than the form Chaucer spoke or the form our grandchildren will speak. Nevertheless there are some random mutations that enrich or strengthen a species and others that do not. Here are my subjective judgments on just a few of the small changes detectable in modern spoken English:
The other fascinating neologism is "lol" as a spoken word. What is fascinating is that, although it was created as an acronym for "laugh out loud" for online chat it has now settled down (in its spoken form) as an indication that the preceding remark was funny, but not funny enough to laugh out loud at. Brilliant!
The metaphor of evolution for the process of development of language is actually a very interesting one. Evolution in the natural world is driven by two forces- random mutation and natural selection by survival of the fittest. Note that the mutations are random and the selection natural- neither is controlled or designed. In fact, both concepts apply very neatly to language development.
Mutations in language come about either through imports from other languages, or from neologisms (new coinages, often produced to name new discoveries or processes) or from simple errors. Of these only one source, neologism, is by design. Natural selection is the process by which new words or new usages enter the language: their formal entrance often being marked by an entry in such an august publication as the Oxford English Dictionary. We sometimes like to think that this demonstrates an element of design or control- that such dictionaries represent some over-arching authority that defines what is and what is not "correct" in our language. However in fact such dictionaries are simply a means of making a post hoc recognition that changes in language have already occurred. The actual selection, just as in natural evolution, is driven by survival of the fittest. Anyone can come up with a neologism, but it doesn't enter the language until it has become common currency: until enough people have decided to use it often enough for it to be accepted as a new word.
Over time, many people have felt this process to be worryingly random and chaotic. How can the beauty of our native language be subjected to such mauling in the court of uninformed public discourse? So attempts have been made in some languages to replace such natural evolution with a properly designed and systematic controlled approach. Classical Latin was one such, with its systematic definitions of conjugations and cases, declensions and moods. French attempted for a while to follow suit. The “immortels” of l’Académie Française laid down rigid rules on what was and was not “correcte” in order to root out anything “impur” from the language. So "self-service" was replaced by the clumsy (and to me equally unFrench) "libre service" and "le weekend" by "la fin de semaine."
Of course, what happened to Classical Latin is well known: it died. In its unchanged purity it simply fell out of use, whilst "Vulgar Latin" evolved into a whole range of languages from Romansch to Romanian. It will be interesting to see whether French goes the same way: certainly there are increasingly two different languages in use by French speakers, so that the same speaker can say “bonjour messieurs dames” when entering a cafe, then “salut les mecs” as he sits down at a table of friends. Both mean the same- more or less "Hello everyone"- despite having no words in common. The first is in formal, l’Académie Française approved French; the latter is not.
So to what extent do modern usages contribute to the evolution of English and to what extent to its decline? For a start, the concept of "decline" in language is based on an odd desire to ascribe moral value to what is actually simply habit and tradition. The form of English we speak now is no more or less correct or elevated or worthwhile than the form Chaucer spoke or the form our grandchildren will speak. Nevertheless there are some random mutations that enrich or strengthen a species and others that do not. Here are my subjective judgments on just a few of the small changes detectable in modern spoken English:
- Use of "I was like ..." for "I said ...". I cannot see this surviving. There are hundreds of synonyms for "I said" and this is neither particularly expressive nor easy to say.
- Use of "I done" for "I have done". This is one of those examples that shows that informal English is NOT lazier nor less grammatical than Standard English. Standard English has only one simple past tense for "to do"- did, where informal English has two- did and done. However they are not interchangeable. Did is the past of "to do" as a modal verb. The sentence "I done my homework- did you?" is correct. "I did my homework- done you?" is not.
- Multiple variations in the conjugation of to be- "We was", "I ain't", "You is", "They be". Somehow this has to be sorted out, now that regional variations that developed over time have crashed into each other. Each individual variation had its own logic (from the Devonian I be, you be, he be etc. to the Alabaman I is, you is etc. but now we hear them all) My prediction (for the little it's worth) is that in 50 years we will have I am and you/he/she/we/they is for the present and I/you/he/she/we/they was for the past.
- The use of "disinterested" to mean "uninterested". This is fascinating as it appears to reflect the loss of a concept in contemporary society. The idea of a disinterested engagement with a topic or issue has come to seem part of some patrician, even patronising, outmoded set of attitudes. With so many claims on our attention and so much more emphasis on self-gratification perhaps the original meaning of "disinterested" is being lost because people cannot conceive of such a selfless attitude. It is the underlying attitude that is of concern; the loss of the distinction in the words is just a symptom.
- Use of "less" for "fewer" (as in "10 items or less"). Surely the distinction between less and fewer has to survive! "Less" is for a continuous quantity that is not numerically quantifiable. Du'uh!
The other fascinating neologism is "lol" as a spoken word. What is fascinating is that, although it was created as an acronym for "laugh out loud" for online chat it has now settled down (in its spoken form) as an indication that the preceding remark was funny, but not funny enough to laugh out loud at. Brilliant!
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Imagery
Imagery is at the heart of all human language: whether we are writing a poem or describing something to a friend our language is suffused with metaphor and loaded with symbolism (did you see what I did there?) Of course in spoken language much of that imagery is "dead" (itself a metaphor of course). As you plough through traffic this morning the idea might strike you that the road is not a farmer's field and that the idea in your head has not physically hit anything.
It seems as though the part of our brain that manages language is hard-wired (another metaphor) to use imagery. To digress a little, it seems the same is not so powerfully true of the areas of our brain that process vision and sound directly, as can be seen by comparing the prevalence of imagery in the visual arts and music as opposed to literature. Visual imagery does exist of course: architects are fond of visual metaphors, particularly since the apartment-block-as-ocean-liners of the Art Deco era and religious art has always contained visual symbols. The pre-Raphaelites were fond of imagery, but perhaps that was because they were so immersed in poetry. One of the purest examples of visual imagery in art is Man Ray's le Violon d'Ingres and it is striking because it is so unusual. However the visual form that uses imagery to by far the greatest extent is cartoons- think of Tom and Jerry- and this I think emphasises its slightly transgressive effect. Similarly imagery exists in music- Vaghan William's The Lark Ascending or Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf are examples- but these are often just evocations of the real world through sounds that echo real sounds. In popular discourse we do actually use imagery in sound, but chiefly for humorous effect. Think of the ironic "ta-da" trumpet fanfare we use to comment on a friend's achievement or the conclusion of a bad joke, or the rasping "uh-uh" (taken from Family Fortunes) we use for an even worse joke.
To return to the main theme of this entry though, in literature imagery is often key, and in great literature at least very much alive. However that does not make it easy to analyse and write about. Students are generally good at spotting metaphors and similes (or have had them pointed out to them) but beyond saying that "the poet uses a lot of imagery" or "this image is really strong/powerful/meaningful" they often struggle to make anything of them.
For me it helps to understand better what imagery actually is and how it works. An image consists of three parts: the tenor (or what is being described); the vehicle (or what the reader is being asked to imagine); and the grounds (or what connects the two) as in the following diagram.
This diagram describes the fundamental structure of imagery of all types, though the balance can shift depending on the type. So in similes the focus is very much on the tenor. We are made aware of the fact that imagery is being deployed (through "like" or "as") and the vehicle exists simply to give a fuller description of the tenor. In metaphor the balance is more even. Tenor and vehicle exist concurrently and we are invited rather than instructed to consider them together. In symbols the emphasis is on the vehicle and the tenor is (or tenors are) sometimes not even stated: we have to work out what it is/they are for ourselves. So in the quote from the philosophical Glaswegian that heads this blog, the vehicle in the image is the train and the passengers on it- some with tickets and some without. I was being invited to compare that with the condition of society and our respective places in it.
Fundamental to the power of imagery of all sorts is the almost miraculous power of connotations in our language. I have touched on this in a previous post and may expand on it later. Words can have a huge range of connotations (or ideas, thoughts and feelings we associate with them) and imagery can untap that power and make us see (and more important, feel) connections between ideas and thoughts. Often the grounds are obvious, though in great poetry they always make us in some way look afresh at the relationship between tenor and vehicle. In Tennyson's the Eagle the vehicle of a thunderbolt falling is used for the dive of the eagle. The grounds that spring immediately to mind are around the speed and direction of movement, but tenor and vehicle also share connotations of power and majesty (think Jove's thunderbolts) and a certain ruthless and destructive potency. In other images the grounds are less apparent, but all the more powerful for that. Owen's Mental Cases contains the horrific line "Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh." You have to work at the grounds a bit, but think about the image. The strengthening line of deep red at the horizon is visually horribly reminiscent of the blood oozing from a reopened wound. Also, whilst for us the tenor (dawn) and vehicle (a reopened wound) might not share much more in the way of grounds, Owen is writing about soldiers traumatised by war. For them dawn signalled another day of fighting, pain, fear, bloodshed and death. The grounds are rich and deep after all.
Another Owen poem, Exposure takes a different and less usual approach, where tenor and vehicle deliberately have very little in common and it is the act of forcing a connection between them that gives the image its power. In the last stanza Owen describes the burying party looking at the faces of the soldiers they are about to bury. The line "All their eyes are ice" forces us to consider the grounds of comparison between eyes, with their connotations of life, beauty, character, being a window to the soul and ice with its connotations of hardness, coldness and lifelessness. Of course, to the burying party the dead soldiers' eyes have simply become ice; their bodies indistinguishable in any important way from the mud in which they lie frozen. That is the point that this image forces onto us.
Poets' use of imagery can go beyond this too, particularly when they work with symbols rather than just metaphors and similes, enabling them to unleash the full power of the connotations of the words and phrases they use. To demonstrate the range and subtlety of that power consider the following two images, which use the same vehicle: waves softly breaking on the sea shore. Before looking at the poems think of the connotations of that image.
Now see how Keats (in Bright Star) and Arnold (in Dover Beach) have used the image. For Keats the tenor is an idea of purification and religiosity, which he applies to his love for the subject of the poem:
"And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores"
The grounds here concern ideas of cleansing, but also the repetitive patience of both priests and waves and the way both stand aside from and seem unsullied by the messy human world.
For Arnold the image of the waves on the shore evokes very different, indeed almost opposite, ideas:
"The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world"
Here, the grounds concern the sadness of the sound of the waves and of the poets feelings about the world, the sense of something withdrawing and feelings of loneliness and abandonment.
These uses of the same image are utterly different, yet both illustrate another aspect of imagery- the way it can operate at a level below our conscious perception. What is striking is that both poets associate the sea in their image with religion. This is not a "grounds" we would readily identify nowadays. However water has always had deep symbolic power that has put it often at the heart of religious worship (think of holy water, baptism, ritual bathing etc.) and I think the sense of power and depth is still there as we read the poems.
Reading Bright Star also reminds me how much their choice of vehicle can reveal about the poet's attitude to and feelings about the tenor. Compare Keat's image for his loved one, as a bright star with Marvell's in To His Coy Mistress as an amorous bird of prey:
"And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power."
The grounds in both images are clear, but very different. Keats' image is about purity, beauty, the idea of guiding and providing a focal point and (poor Keats) unattainability. Marvell's on the other hand is about physicality, impatience with the slow passing of time, the desire and ability to take what you want and an insatiable and almost violent appetite. Tellingly, Keats in his poem is a sleepless Eremite (or hermit) worshipping the star, whereas Marvell is another bird of prey, sporting with its mate.
It seems as though the part of our brain that manages language is hard-wired (another metaphor) to use imagery. To digress a little, it seems the same is not so powerfully true of the areas of our brain that process vision and sound directly, as can be seen by comparing the prevalence of imagery in the visual arts and music as opposed to literature. Visual imagery does exist of course: architects are fond of visual metaphors, particularly since the apartment-block-as-ocean-liners of the Art Deco era and religious art has always contained visual symbols. The pre-Raphaelites were fond of imagery, but perhaps that was because they were so immersed in poetry. One of the purest examples of visual imagery in art is Man Ray's le Violon d'Ingres and it is striking because it is so unusual. However the visual form that uses imagery to by far the greatest extent is cartoons- think of Tom and Jerry- and this I think emphasises its slightly transgressive effect. Similarly imagery exists in music- Vaghan William's The Lark Ascending or Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf are examples- but these are often just evocations of the real world through sounds that echo real sounds. In popular discourse we do actually use imagery in sound, but chiefly for humorous effect. Think of the ironic "ta-da" trumpet fanfare we use to comment on a friend's achievement or the conclusion of a bad joke, or the rasping "uh-uh" (taken from Family Fortunes) we use for an even worse joke.
To return to the main theme of this entry though, in literature imagery is often key, and in great literature at least very much alive. However that does not make it easy to analyse and write about. Students are generally good at spotting metaphors and similes (or have had them pointed out to them) but beyond saying that "the poet uses a lot of imagery" or "this image is really strong/powerful/meaningful" they often struggle to make anything of them.
For me it helps to understand better what imagery actually is and how it works. An image consists of three parts: the tenor (or what is being described); the vehicle (or what the reader is being asked to imagine); and the grounds (or what connects the two) as in the following diagram.
To take an example from above "As you plough through traffic this morning..."
Of course this is pretty much a dead metaphor and you may not be explicitly aware of the grounds, but they are there and I would argue they give that phrase a little extra strength.
This diagram describes the fundamental structure of imagery of all types, though the balance can shift depending on the type. So in similes the focus is very much on the tenor. We are made aware of the fact that imagery is being deployed (through "like" or "as") and the vehicle exists simply to give a fuller description of the tenor. In metaphor the balance is more even. Tenor and vehicle exist concurrently and we are invited rather than instructed to consider them together. In symbols the emphasis is on the vehicle and the tenor is (or tenors are) sometimes not even stated: we have to work out what it is/they are for ourselves. So in the quote from the philosophical Glaswegian that heads this blog, the vehicle in the image is the train and the passengers on it- some with tickets and some without. I was being invited to compare that with the condition of society and our respective places in it.
Fundamental to the power of imagery of all sorts is the almost miraculous power of connotations in our language. I have touched on this in a previous post and may expand on it later. Words can have a huge range of connotations (or ideas, thoughts and feelings we associate with them) and imagery can untap that power and make us see (and more important, feel) connections between ideas and thoughts. Often the grounds are obvious, though in great poetry they always make us in some way look afresh at the relationship between tenor and vehicle. In Tennyson's the Eagle the vehicle of a thunderbolt falling is used for the dive of the eagle. The grounds that spring immediately to mind are around the speed and direction of movement, but tenor and vehicle also share connotations of power and majesty (think Jove's thunderbolts) and a certain ruthless and destructive potency. In other images the grounds are less apparent, but all the more powerful for that. Owen's Mental Cases contains the horrific line "Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh." You have to work at the grounds a bit, but think about the image. The strengthening line of deep red at the horizon is visually horribly reminiscent of the blood oozing from a reopened wound. Also, whilst for us the tenor (dawn) and vehicle (a reopened wound) might not share much more in the way of grounds, Owen is writing about soldiers traumatised by war. For them dawn signalled another day of fighting, pain, fear, bloodshed and death. The grounds are rich and deep after all.
Another Owen poem, Exposure takes a different and less usual approach, where tenor and vehicle deliberately have very little in common and it is the act of forcing a connection between them that gives the image its power. In the last stanza Owen describes the burying party looking at the faces of the soldiers they are about to bury. The line "All their eyes are ice" forces us to consider the grounds of comparison between eyes, with their connotations of life, beauty, character, being a window to the soul and ice with its connotations of hardness, coldness and lifelessness. Of course, to the burying party the dead soldiers' eyes have simply become ice; their bodies indistinguishable in any important way from the mud in which they lie frozen. That is the point that this image forces onto us.
Poets' use of imagery can go beyond this too, particularly when they work with symbols rather than just metaphors and similes, enabling them to unleash the full power of the connotations of the words and phrases they use. To demonstrate the range and subtlety of that power consider the following two images, which use the same vehicle: waves softly breaking on the sea shore. Before looking at the poems think of the connotations of that image.
Now see how Keats (in Bright Star) and Arnold (in Dover Beach) have used the image. For Keats the tenor is an idea of purification and religiosity, which he applies to his love for the subject of the poem:
"And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores"
The grounds here concern ideas of cleansing, but also the repetitive patience of both priests and waves and the way both stand aside from and seem unsullied by the messy human world.
For Arnold the image of the waves on the shore evokes very different, indeed almost opposite, ideas:
"The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world"
Here, the grounds concern the sadness of the sound of the waves and of the poets feelings about the world, the sense of something withdrawing and feelings of loneliness and abandonment.
These uses of the same image are utterly different, yet both illustrate another aspect of imagery- the way it can operate at a level below our conscious perception. What is striking is that both poets associate the sea in their image with religion. This is not a "grounds" we would readily identify nowadays. However water has always had deep symbolic power that has put it often at the heart of religious worship (think of holy water, baptism, ritual bathing etc.) and I think the sense of power and depth is still there as we read the poems.
Reading Bright Star also reminds me how much their choice of vehicle can reveal about the poet's attitude to and feelings about the tenor. Compare Keat's image for his loved one, as a bright star with Marvell's in To His Coy Mistress as an amorous bird of prey:
"And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power."
The grounds in both images are clear, but very different. Keats' image is about purity, beauty, the idea of guiding and providing a focal point and (poor Keats) unattainability. Marvell's on the other hand is about physicality, impatience with the slow passing of time, the desire and ability to take what you want and an insatiable and almost violent appetite. Tellingly, Keats in his poem is a sleepless Eremite (or hermit) worshipping the star, whereas Marvell is another bird of prey, sporting with its mate.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Alliteration and assonance
Students learn early, and often very successfully, how to spot alliteration (repetition of the same or similar initial consonant sounds) and assonance (repetition of the same or similar vowel sounds) and when analysing poetry the keener ones often spend considerable time doing just that. So, having spotted these phenomena what to say about them? Ah, there’s the rub. Some resort to that old standby “the alliteration/assonance helps the poem to flow”. Others, sensing (rightly) that that really says nothing, set about assigning meaning to the sounds themselves: “the repeated sibilant ‘s’ sounds create an atmosphere of menace.” Unfortunately of course the sounds themselves have no intrinsic meaning, and you would be as likely to find (possibly even in the same essay) “the repeated ‘s’ sounds create a soft and soothing atmosphere”(it is actually striking how often, in seeking to explain the effect of alliteration students unconsciously resort to alliteration themselves).
So what is there to say about these phenomena? More to the point, why do poets use them in the first place? To answer the second question first I am sure that poets are not always directly conscious at the time of writing of using techniques such as alliteration and assonance, or many other ‘poetic’techniques: good poets just know when their poetry ‘sounds right’ and these techniques are what gives their writing its power. They just work.
So why and how do alliteration and assonance work? Quite simply, as we listen to language our ear and unconscious brain seem attuned to patterns of sound. Where sounds are repeated, forming patterns, we unconsciously notice those words more and, crucially, notice the links between them more. When Keats describes the personified Autumn sitting in the grain store, “Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;” the repetition of the short “i” sounds, intertwined with the repetition of the “w” sounds does a number of things. First the pattern of sound makes the line liltingly beautiful, and we notice it more as a result. Second, we hear slightly more strongly the words “lifted”, “winnowing” and “wind” and think slightly more about the links between them. Third, since the three words have a lot in common we form a slightly stronger idea of the way the soft, light chaff on a threshing floor is like the soft, light hair of a young woman, gently lifted by the gentle breeze of an autumn afternoon.
In working this way alliteration and assonance tap into the enormous power that is contained in the connotations of words. All words have connotations (the ideas , feelings and images we associate with them) and sometimes a vast range of them. Think of all the connotations of the word “heart”-better still, experience them in these two sentences: “Her heart sang with joy at the sight of his face” and “The heart was still twitching as he sank his teeth into its glistening surface.” What alliteration and assonance do, like other techniques that link words together, is to guide us to which of the many connotations of each word come to the surface as we read the lines. In the line from Autumn we are aware of the gentle, soothing connotations of the word “wind” but of course the word has a very different set of connotations too. Take this line from Hopkins’ Wreck of the Deutschland describing a storm:“the wind;/ Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivellèd snow/Spins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.” Here, as in the Keats line, an intertwined pattern of alliteration (the “w” sounds) and assonance (the long “i” sounds) picks out and links “wind”, “wiry” and “white-fiery”. Depending on your pronunciation this is more or less strongly linked with “whirlwind”, leading on to the assonance of the short “i” sounds that links “Spins” and “widow-making” that anyway links back with the “w” sound again. Here, the emphasis and linking bring to the surface a wholly different set of connotations of the word “wind”to those Keats used. Such is the power of poetry.
Of course Gerard Manley Hopkins is a supreme master of language, glorying in the power and beauty of alliteration, assonance and the connected phenomenon consonance (repetition of the same or similar consonant sound at any place in a word). He was acutely aware of the connotations of words, and coined the term “inscape”, partly at least, to describe the inner landscape of words that these connotations produce. At his best, he uses bewilderingly beautiful patterns of sound, that coax out every detail of his words’ inscape, such as in the beautifully sensuous description in Wreck of the Deutschland of eating a sloe by letting it burst in the mouth (like the grape in Keats’ Ode on Melancholy): “How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe/ Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,/Gush!—flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,/Brim, in a flash, full!”.
I would like to end this entry by focusing on another master of this area of poetic technique- and admirer of Keats- Wilfrid Owen. His poem Exposure contains what is possibly the most quoted example of alliteration in English literature: “Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.” This is of course an immensely powerful line. Most students get the onomatopoeic quality of the hard sibilant “s” sounds, but there is more. Look at the way the alliteration (and consonance) links the words “Sudden”, “successive”, “streak”and “silence”. In some ways surely this linkage is counter-intuitive. Does not “silence”have a totally different set of connotations from the other words? Well initially, perhaps yes, but that is the power of Owen at his best. To the soldier in the trenches, silence is far from benign. To him, silence does have connotations of menace, and even of extreme, sudden and potentially fatal action. Apart from anything else, the bombardment that preceded any major offensive would often end suddenly just before the soldiers went over the top- the blast of the whistle cutting through the unaccustomed silence was a haunting aural image to many.
At his best Owen, like Hopkins, uses the complex beauty and interlinking of meaning that alliteration, assonance, consonance, internal rhyme and in his case half-rhyme can bring to immerse us in the complexity of ideas, feelings and images that a full exploration of the connotations of words can bring. I will not analyse the following stanza. Read it yourself, aloud and with an ear and a mind open to the complex interplay of sounds and ideas. It is the central stanza of Exposure. In it the soldiers, who are close to death in the icy front line trenches of the winter war and drifting in and out of consciousness, dream themselves back in England in Spring:
“Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces -
We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,
Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses,
- Is it that we are dying?"
So what is there to say about these phenomena? More to the point, why do poets use them in the first place? To answer the second question first I am sure that poets are not always directly conscious at the time of writing of using techniques such as alliteration and assonance, or many other ‘poetic’techniques: good poets just know when their poetry ‘sounds right’ and these techniques are what gives their writing its power. They just work.
So why and how do alliteration and assonance work? Quite simply, as we listen to language our ear and unconscious brain seem attuned to patterns of sound. Where sounds are repeated, forming patterns, we unconsciously notice those words more and, crucially, notice the links between them more. When Keats describes the personified Autumn sitting in the grain store, “Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;” the repetition of the short “i” sounds, intertwined with the repetition of the “w” sounds does a number of things. First the pattern of sound makes the line liltingly beautiful, and we notice it more as a result. Second, we hear slightly more strongly the words “lifted”, “winnowing” and “wind” and think slightly more about the links between them. Third, since the three words have a lot in common we form a slightly stronger idea of the way the soft, light chaff on a threshing floor is like the soft, light hair of a young woman, gently lifted by the gentle breeze of an autumn afternoon.
In working this way alliteration and assonance tap into the enormous power that is contained in the connotations of words. All words have connotations (the ideas , feelings and images we associate with them) and sometimes a vast range of them. Think of all the connotations of the word “heart”-better still, experience them in these two sentences: “Her heart sang with joy at the sight of his face” and “The heart was still twitching as he sank his teeth into its glistening surface.” What alliteration and assonance do, like other techniques that link words together, is to guide us to which of the many connotations of each word come to the surface as we read the lines. In the line from Autumn we are aware of the gentle, soothing connotations of the word “wind” but of course the word has a very different set of connotations too. Take this line from Hopkins’ Wreck of the Deutschland describing a storm:“the wind;/ Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivellèd snow/Spins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.” Here, as in the Keats line, an intertwined pattern of alliteration (the “w” sounds) and assonance (the long “i” sounds) picks out and links “wind”, “wiry” and “white-fiery”. Depending on your pronunciation this is more or less strongly linked with “whirlwind”, leading on to the assonance of the short “i” sounds that links “Spins” and “widow-making” that anyway links back with the “w” sound again. Here, the emphasis and linking bring to the surface a wholly different set of connotations of the word “wind”to those Keats used. Such is the power of poetry.
Of course Gerard Manley Hopkins is a supreme master of language, glorying in the power and beauty of alliteration, assonance and the connected phenomenon consonance (repetition of the same or similar consonant sound at any place in a word). He was acutely aware of the connotations of words, and coined the term “inscape”, partly at least, to describe the inner landscape of words that these connotations produce. At his best, he uses bewilderingly beautiful patterns of sound, that coax out every detail of his words’ inscape, such as in the beautifully sensuous description in Wreck of the Deutschland of eating a sloe by letting it burst in the mouth (like the grape in Keats’ Ode on Melancholy): “How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe/ Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,/Gush!—flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,/Brim, in a flash, full!”.
I would like to end this entry by focusing on another master of this area of poetic technique- and admirer of Keats- Wilfrid Owen. His poem Exposure contains what is possibly the most quoted example of alliteration in English literature: “Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.” This is of course an immensely powerful line. Most students get the onomatopoeic quality of the hard sibilant “s” sounds, but there is more. Look at the way the alliteration (and consonance) links the words “Sudden”, “successive”, “streak”and “silence”. In some ways surely this linkage is counter-intuitive. Does not “silence”have a totally different set of connotations from the other words? Well initially, perhaps yes, but that is the power of Owen at his best. To the soldier in the trenches, silence is far from benign. To him, silence does have connotations of menace, and even of extreme, sudden and potentially fatal action. Apart from anything else, the bombardment that preceded any major offensive would often end suddenly just before the soldiers went over the top- the blast of the whistle cutting through the unaccustomed silence was a haunting aural image to many.
At his best Owen, like Hopkins, uses the complex beauty and interlinking of meaning that alliteration, assonance, consonance, internal rhyme and in his case half-rhyme can bring to immerse us in the complexity of ideas, feelings and images that a full exploration of the connotations of words can bring. I will not analyse the following stanza. Read it yourself, aloud and with an ear and a mind open to the complex interplay of sounds and ideas. It is the central stanza of Exposure. In it the soldiers, who are close to death in the icy front line trenches of the winter war and drifting in and out of consciousness, dream themselves back in England in Spring:
“Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces -
We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,
Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses,
- Is it that we are dying?"
Monday, 5 December 2011
Rhythm
Generations of students have struggled with the analysis of rhythm in poetry. They are aware of it and can sense its effect, but can they think of anything meaningful to write about it? Not usually, no. I don't know how many times I have heard students (and teachers come to that) say "the rhythm really helps the poem to flow", as if that actually told anyone anything useful.
In fact I believe there are quite simple but effective ways students can understand and analyse rhythm if they first understand more about the structure of language. English is a stress-timed language. This means that, unlike in a syllable-timed language such as French, syllables are pronounced differently depending on whether they are stressed or unstressed (this is called vowel reduction) and the interval between the stressed syllables is roughly regular, however many (or few) unstressed syllables there are in between. You can hear this fairly clearly when you compare two simple sentences:
"Jóhn hít mé" and "Jónathan hít mé". The accents above the vowels indicate the stressed syllables and you can clearly hear that they are reasonably evenly spaced in both sentences. However in the second, the two unstressed syllables that complete Jonathan's name have to be crammed into the time between the stressed "o" and the stressed "i", so we (completely unconsciously) say them faster. You can also clearly hear that those two syllables are not pronounced as written. The "a" is reduced to "ə" or schwa- the phoneticians' name for the unstressed English vowel sound- so Jonathan is actually pronounced Jonəthən.
Before getting on to the analysis of rhythm in poetry it is worth pointing out the role of this feature of English in creating errors in spelling. Take one of the most commonly misspelt words: "definite." The problem is that pronunciation gives no clue to the spelling of the final syllable. The word is actually pronounced defənət, so it is not surprising that so many spell the last syllable "-ate", presumably unconsciously echoing aurally very similar words like "detonate" (where the final syllable is stressed, and therefore not reduced). The odd thing is that the misspellers actually DO know which vowel is in the third syllable- I have yet to hear anyone mispronounce "definition" as "defination". The problem is that when writing they forget the clear structural connection between the words and hence the spelling of the third syllable. This is, I believe, another illustration of the fact that the more subconscious functions of our brains are actually far more reliable and capable of processing complex structures and interactions than the "higher order", more conscious functions. Speech is clearly a more instinctive and "lower order" function than writing, yet here as elsewhere the part of our brain that processes speech is more accurately able to process the complexities of language than the part that processes writing.
So what has all this got to do with analysing rhythm in poetry? Well, in a general sense, the regular pattern of stressed syllables is what creates the rhythm in all spoken English, and it is through playing (whether consciously or unconsciously) with that rhythm that poets create many of their effects. I have always believed that great poetry can only be truly appreciated when read aloud and we become subliminally aware of the beautiful rhythmic structures of its sound.
All of the above paragraph is of course utterly useless to the average student analysing rhythm in poetry (though it does not stop plenty of them putting in an equally pretentious paragraph into an essay on Keats to cover up their inability to say anything specific). Thankfully though, understanding the stress-timed nature of English can enable us to make very specific and meaningful points about rhythm in poetry. Take the central line in one of the most powerful poems ever written, Dulce et Decorum Est:
"Gas! Gas! Quick boys! An ecstasy of fumbling. Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time."
I have often read essays that confidently stated that the rhythm speeds up on this line, after the slow "trudging" rhythm of the previous lines. Well, yes and no. Listen carefully to which are the stressed syllables:
"Gás! Gás! Quíck, boys! An écstasy of fúmbling, Fítting the clúmsy hélmets júst in tíme"
The line actually starts with three stressed syllables, with no unstressed syllables between. Automatically this slows the rhythm. However between the stressed syllables "Quick" and "ecst..." there are two unstressed syllables, and between "ecst..." and "fumb..." there are three, all having to be packed into the same period as that between "Gas!" and "Gas!" at the start of the line. So the rhythm actually slows almost to a standstill with the dropping of the shells, only then immediately to accelerate as the weary soldiers try to react. The line also demonstrates another of the subtle effects poets can use with rhythm, namely the internal rhyme between "fumbling" and "clumsy". This serves further to stress the stressed syllables of those words, which slightly reduces the stressed syllable in "Fitting" in between. It is almost as though you have to fit all of "-ling. Fitting the " (four syllables) in between the two stresses.
As in many areas, perhaps the greatest master of rhythm in poetry is Shakespeare. Take Macbeth’s justly famous "Tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy. English blank verse at Shakespeare's time was forced into a rhythmic pattern (the iambic pentameter) taken from Classical Latin. In less skilled hands this becomes a straight-jacket that forces the reader into the dreadful sing-song of "The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled". However Shakespeare has the confidence and skill to let the stress-timed rhythms of English shine through. He uses a similar technique to Owen's to slow up the rhythm (though typically of Shakespeare goes that little bit further) with the four stressed syllables of “Oút, oút, bríef cándle…” in contrast to the almost doggerel-like alternation of stressed and unstressed in“this pétty páce from dáy to dáy.”
However, effectively as he uses rhythm to reinforce meaning the real artistry of Shakespeare is the way he plays with the rhythms of speech, creating beautiful syncopated music. The base rhythm of blank verse, the iambic pentameter, consists of five “bars” of an unstressed and a stressed syllable. It is vocalised with the classic “de dum, de dum, de dum, de dum, de dum.” This is the base rhythm of Shakespeare’s verse too- unsurprisingly as it is the rhythm of a lot of our natural speech. However, especially in his later plays, sometimes he disrupts it with almost strident syncopation. One example is the audacious line from the end of King Lear (act 5 scene 3, line 365) where he reverses the order of stressed and unstressed, forcing this syncopated rhythm on us through the extraordinary device of repeating one word five times: “Néver, néver, néver, néver, néver.” However perhaps my favourite example is from the Macbeth soliloquy, and another audacious piece of repetition. The line is so familiar that we barely notice its radical rhythmic brilliance:
Tomórrow and tomórrow and tomórrow”
On paper it’s an iambic pentameter, and if you (unnaturally) stress the “and”s then that is how it sounds too. Yet read well, the line has three stresses, not five. Read well, the three unstressed syllables between the stressed “..mó..” syllables (“..rrow and to..”) have to be rushed through, so you get to the end of the line quicker than the normal line length would allow you to. So what happens then? Without being conscious of doing so, you pause to let the normal iambic pentameter line length catch up. So time rushes on, through tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and then it stops. That’s what I mean by brilliance.
In fact I believe there are quite simple but effective ways students can understand and analyse rhythm if they first understand more about the structure of language. English is a stress-timed language. This means that, unlike in a syllable-timed language such as French, syllables are pronounced differently depending on whether they are stressed or unstressed (this is called vowel reduction) and the interval between the stressed syllables is roughly regular, however many (or few) unstressed syllables there are in between. You can hear this fairly clearly when you compare two simple sentences:
"Jóhn hít mé" and "Jónathan hít mé". The accents above the vowels indicate the stressed syllables and you can clearly hear that they are reasonably evenly spaced in both sentences. However in the second, the two unstressed syllables that complete Jonathan's name have to be crammed into the time between the stressed "o" and the stressed "i", so we (completely unconsciously) say them faster. You can also clearly hear that those two syllables are not pronounced as written. The "a" is reduced to "ə" or schwa- the phoneticians' name for the unstressed English vowel sound- so Jonathan is actually pronounced Jonəthən.
Before getting on to the analysis of rhythm in poetry it is worth pointing out the role of this feature of English in creating errors in spelling. Take one of the most commonly misspelt words: "definite." The problem is that pronunciation gives no clue to the spelling of the final syllable. The word is actually pronounced defənət, so it is not surprising that so many spell the last syllable "-ate", presumably unconsciously echoing aurally very similar words like "detonate" (where the final syllable is stressed, and therefore not reduced). The odd thing is that the misspellers actually DO know which vowel is in the third syllable- I have yet to hear anyone mispronounce "definition" as "defination". The problem is that when writing they forget the clear structural connection between the words and hence the spelling of the third syllable. This is, I believe, another illustration of the fact that the more subconscious functions of our brains are actually far more reliable and capable of processing complex structures and interactions than the "higher order", more conscious functions. Speech is clearly a more instinctive and "lower order" function than writing, yet here as elsewhere the part of our brain that processes speech is more accurately able to process the complexities of language than the part that processes writing.
So what has all this got to do with analysing rhythm in poetry? Well, in a general sense, the regular pattern of stressed syllables is what creates the rhythm in all spoken English, and it is through playing (whether consciously or unconsciously) with that rhythm that poets create many of their effects. I have always believed that great poetry can only be truly appreciated when read aloud and we become subliminally aware of the beautiful rhythmic structures of its sound.
All of the above paragraph is of course utterly useless to the average student analysing rhythm in poetry (though it does not stop plenty of them putting in an equally pretentious paragraph into an essay on Keats to cover up their inability to say anything specific). Thankfully though, understanding the stress-timed nature of English can enable us to make very specific and meaningful points about rhythm in poetry. Take the central line in one of the most powerful poems ever written, Dulce et Decorum Est:
"Gas! Gas! Quick boys! An ecstasy of fumbling. Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time."
I have often read essays that confidently stated that the rhythm speeds up on this line, after the slow "trudging" rhythm of the previous lines. Well, yes and no. Listen carefully to which are the stressed syllables:
"Gás! Gás! Quíck, boys! An écstasy of fúmbling, Fítting the clúmsy hélmets júst in tíme"
The line actually starts with three stressed syllables, with no unstressed syllables between. Automatically this slows the rhythm. However between the stressed syllables "Quick" and "ecst..." there are two unstressed syllables, and between "ecst..." and "fumb..." there are three, all having to be packed into the same period as that between "Gas!" and "Gas!" at the start of the line. So the rhythm actually slows almost to a standstill with the dropping of the shells, only then immediately to accelerate as the weary soldiers try to react. The line also demonstrates another of the subtle effects poets can use with rhythm, namely the internal rhyme between "fumbling" and "clumsy". This serves further to stress the stressed syllables of those words, which slightly reduces the stressed syllable in "Fitting" in between. It is almost as though you have to fit all of "-ling. Fitting the " (four syllables) in between the two stresses.
As in many areas, perhaps the greatest master of rhythm in poetry is Shakespeare. Take Macbeth’s justly famous "Tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy. English blank verse at Shakespeare's time was forced into a rhythmic pattern (the iambic pentameter) taken from Classical Latin. In less skilled hands this becomes a straight-jacket that forces the reader into the dreadful sing-song of "The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled". However Shakespeare has the confidence and skill to let the stress-timed rhythms of English shine through. He uses a similar technique to Owen's to slow up the rhythm (though typically of Shakespeare goes that little bit further) with the four stressed syllables of “Oút, oút, bríef cándle…” in contrast to the almost doggerel-like alternation of stressed and unstressed in“this pétty páce from dáy to dáy.”
However, effectively as he uses rhythm to reinforce meaning the real artistry of Shakespeare is the way he plays with the rhythms of speech, creating beautiful syncopated music. The base rhythm of blank verse, the iambic pentameter, consists of five “bars” of an unstressed and a stressed syllable. It is vocalised with the classic “de dum, de dum, de dum, de dum, de dum.” This is the base rhythm of Shakespeare’s verse too- unsurprisingly as it is the rhythm of a lot of our natural speech. However, especially in his later plays, sometimes he disrupts it with almost strident syncopation. One example is the audacious line from the end of King Lear (act 5 scene 3, line 365) where he reverses the order of stressed and unstressed, forcing this syncopated rhythm on us through the extraordinary device of repeating one word five times: “Néver, néver, néver, néver, néver.” However perhaps my favourite example is from the Macbeth soliloquy, and another audacious piece of repetition. The line is so familiar that we barely notice its radical rhythmic brilliance:
Tomórrow and tomórrow and tomórrow”
On paper it’s an iambic pentameter, and if you (unnaturally) stress the “and”s then that is how it sounds too. Yet read well, the line has three stresses, not five. Read well, the three unstressed syllables between the stressed “..mó..” syllables (“..rrow and to..”) have to be rushed through, so you get to the end of the line quicker than the normal line length would allow you to. So what happens then? Without being conscious of doing so, you pause to let the normal iambic pentameter line length catch up. So time rushes on, through tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and then it stops. That’s what I mean by brilliance.
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