Is American English taking over from stuffy English English as the more vigorous language? Malcolm Bradbury finds a way through the verbal jungle

(Novelist Malcolm Bradburyis Professor of American Studies at the University of East Anglia)

There’s nothing like the topic of the English language for stiffening the sinews and summoning up the national blood. After all, it’s the very stuff of our thinking, the voice of our deepest feelings, the means of expression of our finest ideas, the sprinboard of our literature. It also happens to be our most successful export, a real worldbeater.

Though, or because, it requires little servicing and very little work, it’s used on each of the six continents by something like a billion people. Much to the annoyance of the French, it’s the lingua franca; the chief language of science, medicine, diplomacy, sport, pop music and advertising. You can even make love in it, too.

It’s not surprising that the battles about its nature and its future constantly break out. The Prince of Wales has expressed strong opinions about the need of linguistic correctness: fairly enough, for we do call it the Queen’s English. The letters column in The Times has a nearstatutory obligation to print complaints about parliamentory misuse of the word "decimate" (it now means almost the opposite of what it means) or the signs outside greengrocers’ shops. We say potatoe; we say tomatoes but they say tomatos. Language is a minefield – and every word, construction and sentence is already primed to explode.

Now controversy (but how to pronounce it?) is revived by Bill Bryson’s new book about American English, which argues that, while English English is the stuffy language of convention, American is the energetic language of innovation.

Bryson has a case. He lists the remarcable number of Americanisms that have been adopted into English – hangover, bedrock, sweatshop, stag party, gravy train, to bark up the wrong tree or be out on a limb, to highlight, to package, to engineer – and now exist here almost without acknowledgement. He also notes how often the British have commented miserably on the harm such neologisms do – like the outraged Captain Basil Hall, who complained that "there are enough words already".

As Oscar Wilde didn’t say, Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language. This has produced an eternal comedy of confusions (I still blush to recall my wife winding down our window on the Massachusetts Turnpike and telling the adjoining driver: "Do you realise you have petrol pouring out of your boot?"). It has also created a senseless mid-Atlantic prattle that makes listening to local radio sheer agony.

It has corrupted the great discourse of the House of Commons, where MPs now tell us the bottom line is top of the agenda, or at the end of the day it would be better if we rose earlier in the morning. Our doctors chatter Californian psychobabble, our newsreaders pussyfoot on the cant of American campus PC, our offices pour out an endless flow of international office-speak. But there is something different about English English, isn’t there? In the past couple of centuries, the British have seen themselves as the conservers of language, for understandable reasons. After all, English is a magpie tongue to start with. It may have started in the Anglo-Saxon mead halls but would probably have stayed there without the Norman infusion of French. Since then the English (British?) have grown ever prouder of their sovereignty (a French word), their national currency, once based on, exactly, the sovereign (a French coin), and their language (a French word from Latin). They also sought a "correct" English to pull the mess of resulting dialects together.

By the 20^th century, with the expansion of literacy, the idea of "correct English" and Received Pronunciation (RP) – often spoken on the stage by actors like Sir John Gielgud, who said he borrowed it from Ellen Terry – prospered. In another brand it became BBC English, dating from the days when John Reith dressed announcers in dinner jackets to stress the dignity of their task.

RP is RIP; dialect is in. John Birt’s BBC now goes out of its way to find speakers with strange lilts, odd glottal stops, Tyneside whinges, Virgin Atlantic accents. Back when the young Royals practised an old custom called marriage, it was noticed their new spouses spoke something close to Estuary English, a tongue learned only in the back of London taxis. The free-for-all was on.

In my good liberal way, I think both sides – the conservers and the transformers – are right. The British are sensible to conserve their English, and try to speak, write and teach it “well”. But they are also the fortunate possessors and first custodians of the dominant world language. Its vocabulary is vast and everchanging, constantly growing on the streets, in the sciene labs, dealing rooms, newspaper offices and many corners of the world where it is a patois. This adds to its variety, word stock, its history, its power of exploration. In short, it enlarges its creativity, its vigour of intellectual discovery.

As a writer, I feel I should be both a conserver and an innovator of language. But for me the largest source of change is no longer American English, important as it is. It’s the many other transformations of usage that come when English is used as a second language right across the globe. With new languages arrive new stories, new vernaculars, new tones of voice – like the "migrants’ tales" Salman Rushdie sees as a fresh source of vigour in contemporary fiction.

The problem comes when we debase that vigour in cant, jargon and office-speak, when we use words not out of love but routine. American influence teaches us to do both. So yes, let’s keep "rubberneck" and "rain check". But "vertically challenged" is, in my book, for the birds.

DETAILED COMPREHENSION

Student A, answer the odd-numbered questions;

Student B, answer the even-numbered questions.

1. According to Malcom Bradbury, what is England’s most successful export?

2. How many people speak English world-wide?

3. Why are the French annoyed that English has become the "lingua franca"?

4. How many spheres of life is the English language predominant in?

5. Why is it right that the Prince of Wales feels strongly about linguistic correctness?

6. How and where do people get express their complaints about misuse of the language?

7. Why do people get annoyed about signs outside greengrocers’ shops?

8. Why has Bill Bryson’s new book revived controversy about British and American English (try to use your own words in this matter!)

9. In what sense are Britain and America two nations divided by a common language?

10. What makes listening to local radio "sheer agony" (use your own words!)

11. I what sense has American English "corrupted" the way British politicians speak?

12. In what sense is English a "magpie" language?

13. What does the author think would have happened to the English language if the French hadn’t invaded England?

14. Why was a "correct" English essential for the English? (use your own words!)

15. According to the author, where did RP come from?

16. How has the BBC changed its policy on the way in which its presenters talk?

17. Is the author on the side of the conservers or the innovators in English?

18. What source does the author see has having most influence on English at the present time?

19. What sort of words does he welcome into the language, and what sort does he not welcome?

20. Why does he want to keep "rubberneck", but get rid of "vertically changed"?