Jonnie Comet
30 May 1997There have been some who question my use of British Commonwealth English, claiming that, for an American-born writer and scholar living in the late 20th C., and especially as an educator in language arts, I of all people ought to be embracing the usage of modern American English. The fact is that for purely academic reasons I have been adhering to this usage almost exclusively since about 1972, except in those forums where Americentric instructors and those unable to recognise the Queen’s English forbade it (I have had PhDs in English literature ask me why I’d misspelt this way, not realising it might have been deliberate). Though it may leave me vulnerable to heated debate, particularly from anti-Anglo Americans, I can and do set forth my rationale in honest, reasonable terms.
The first is that the English invented the language. Swift once
advocated a ‘language police’ to correct errors and enforce spelling and
mechanics, an idea upon which Dr Johnson obviously leaned in compiling his
first English Dictionary in 1755. I confess I sort of like the idea– well,
consider the alternative, which smacks of linguistic relativism. But then,
openly despising all things English or European, Emerson advised his friend
Webster to concoct an American dictionary in the early 19th C, in which all
vestiges or Anglo- or Eurocentric usage would be ‘corrected’. In this
heavy-handed anti-Anglo anti-dogmatism, itself hypocritically dogmatic, the
idea of a deliberately deviant form of the language emerged. I would therefore
submit that this typically Romantic (and American) rebellion has caused more
confusion than good, and my next few points will support that.
Next, the use of Commonwealth usage represents a more enlightened
world view. Only the culturally ignorant would refer to British spellings and
usage as ‘wrong’ and the American ones as ‘right’, when the United States is
the only English-using society which deviates from the established English
usage materially, such as in prescribed rules of grammar, spellings and
pronunciations. If we are ever to unite this world by a common language, that
language ought to be English, and not American English but the real thing.
Consider, dear Reader, before you claim that America
somehow outweighs England in
all things considerable, that the largest English-speaking populace in the
world is neither America nor
England itself, but the
Commonwealth Republic
of India; and the Indians
use British English. In numbers alone the original form must take precedence;
for in fact, the total population of the world using British English in
everyday discourse, occupying every continent of the globe, in writing as well
as speech, outnumbers the Americans three to one.
I may be American by birth and Italian at heart, but I am English
by choice. My sensibilities are English, not American. Like a pre-1770s
Colonial I see things through English precedents and do not subscribe to
Emerson’s proud boast that the United States
is somehow entitled to be culturally and linguistically superior to and
insulated from England.
For my life I cannot see how any thinking person can claim that. The British
have been America’s
staunchest ally, culturally, financially and militarily, since the first third
of the 1800s and still own more real estate in America than any other foreigners.
Further the entire institution of the American nation is predicated on English
common law and the forerunners of English history, culture, architecture and
philosophy. Refusal to accept this is akin to denying the genetic primacy of a
parent. To contend that the United States
could somehow exist entirely independent of England is rash, unenlightened and
possibly even an indication that one is feeling ideologically threatened.
The last justification is the most strongly held of all and
hearkens back to Swift’s point. In all my pedagogical studies, especially in
the English content areas, the gravest concern of the instructors and textbook
authors seems to be the inclusion of what are known as ‘multicultural’
influences. The modern stated mission for liberal language educators in America is to
tolerate, absorb, and in some cases even teach ‘nonstandard’ variations of
English. I submit that this is woefully anti-literate and anti-intellectual. These
deviations tend to come from people whose education in standard English is
below the desired ideal, as defined by the schools themselves– in other words,
the people who deviate from standard English do so because they are ignorant of
it, not because out of poetic licence they have opted to use something else for
some kind of effect. My argument is this: if we are expected to accept
alterations to a dynamic language from undereducated elements of society, then
why must I be considered ‘incorrect’ to insist that the language could and
should likewise be affected by higher-educated elements of society, even– and
mark this point very clearly– from the most enlightened and highest-educated
elements of all, those who are aware that American English is not the
definitive form of the language? If we are ever to be better people, and a
better society, we must be upwardly mobile in our aspirations. Rather than
accepting inferior linguistics, we should be fostering superiority in our
communication. For my part, then, I shall adopt the language of kings and
nobles, use it well and encourage all in my sphere of influence to do
likewise.
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