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Sashadroogie · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 4:35 am Post subject: Orwell attacked by BBC non-entity

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28971276

Capt Lugwash · Joined: 14 Aug 2014 Posts: 346

Hardly an attack, more an opinion which does indeed have merit and the author is no more a nonentity than Orwell was.

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 5:02 am Post subject:

What? You didn't like my sensationalist headline?

But seriously, where's the meritorious opinion in this piece of blather?

Capt Lugwash · Joined: 14 Aug 2014 Posts: 346

Haha! It was the title that made me open your post.

He is disagreeing with Orwell in that he believed in general that English should remain static rather than, as it does, evolve. Personally I am betwixt the two, some words which enter the language I consider worthy, others utterly appalling.

The man was asked for his opinion (hence the name of the radio programme) and I doubt they invite people who they think will give an opinion which everyone agrees with or they wouldn't have any listeners.

Will Self is a controversial figure with whom I disagree as often as I agree.

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 8:25 am Post subject:

Interesting questions are raised in the article. For instance, has Chomsky actually settled questions about the language learning process? Linguists are not as much in agreement as Self would make it seem. And is any one language, or dialects of one, more grammatically complex than any other? Whatever is meant by 'grammatically complex'. And does 'African American Vernacular English' really have more ways of saying the same thing as standard English?

However, all of this is hidden in the obvious sensationalist nonsense of calling Orwell a mediocrity.

Boo hiss BBC! Get on with reporting more about your own failures!

Capt Lugwash · Joined: 14 Aug 2014 Posts: 346

Well they got your attention!

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 10:41 am Post subject:

Oh, yes. They've been on our radar for quite some time now. Shameless propagandising of the Piggie cause!

Capt Lugwash · Joined: 14 Aug 2014 Posts: 346

How are the sanctions?

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 1:20 pm Post subject:

Sanctions? You mean the sanctimonious window-dressing that passes for international diplomacy in the EU these days? Barely a ripple registered here. In any case a small price to pay for Greater Russia.

Can't see a writer of Orwell's calibre emerging to write an insightful critique of the goings on in the world today. Certainly not the likes of Selfie : )

buravirgil · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 1:50 pm Post subject:

Sasha,

This piece is being discussed on another forum I enjoy. What follows is the most informative reading, in my opinion.

Orwell is a great stylist, without a doubt. The quality of his political and cultural ideas should still be open to debate regardless of the beauty or effectiveness of his prose.

As a few previous posters have suggested, part of the problem is that Orwell's words are forever being misappropriated for present-day political purposes. But Self is also right that Orwell's thinking was limited by his refusal to question certain middle-class orthodoxies of the time, and his derision for anything that didn't fit itself into those orthodoxies.

He rejected what we wold now call identity politics, for example, but in a way that retains "white, bourgeois, Englishman" as the tacit default. And his distrust of radicalism, however well-founded in his own experience, places strict limits on how far any permissible critique of present circumstances could go.

If he has been reappropriated by the American right, it is because of his consistent appeal to classical liberal virtues. Such virtues can rather easily be transformed into pieces of a tradition rather than subjects of living debate, and both Orwell's appeal and the conservative use of same tend to treat them as unquestionable. They also tend to connect civic virtue with a particular kind of middle-class existence and tradition, both of which lend themselves well to illiberal beliefs.

The key point in Self's critique is this paragraph:

He is not attacking Orwell's prose as inelegant, but rather critiquing Orwell's rules for style as a set of boundaries that place culturally exclusionist limits on what constitutes "good prose" or "acceptable ideas" in print.

Self makes his purpose clear in the final lines, where he outright tells the reader that his objections are aimed, not at Orwell, but at Orwell's appropriators. And earlier he notes the "particular genius" of Orwell for stating certain opinions with "a painful clarity." His concern is with the limits Orwellian style and its underlying assumptions place on the range of opinions that may be stated. More specifically, he is commenting on the irony of how easily Orwell's rules have been turned into the citation pads of latter-day language police.
posted by kewb at 5:43 AM on August 31

johnslat · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 2:36 pm Post subject:

"If you want to expose the Orwellian language police for the old-fashioned authoritarian elitists they really are, you simply ask them which variant of English is more grammatically complex - Standard English or the dialect linguists call African American Vernacular English. The answer is, of course, it's the latter that offers its speakers more ways of saying more things - you feel me?"

I'm always a bit suspicious when a claim is dropped into a discussion with no supporting evidence.

Can anyone supply any such evidence that "African American Vernacular English" is "more grammatically complex?"

Regards,
John

buravirgil · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 3:40 pm Post subject:

johnslat · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 5:03 pm Post subject:

So, it can be considered "more complex" because it's "piggy-backing" on the "imposed code?"

Would any deviation from the "norm" of any "imposed code" therefore be "more complex?"

For example, if, like Thoreau, you simplify your life, would simplifying your life be more complex than the "norm?"

Regards,
John

buravirgil · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 5:52 pm Post subject:

johnslat · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 6:15 pm Post subject:

Dear buravirgil,

Thank you for your response, but I do have a request, if I may. Could you somehow simplify this part of you post:

"The semantics beg a tedium, but I would argue differences between deviation and derivation to address my use of "reflect' versus "piggy-backing" because vernaculars arise by disparate causes."

so that one as semantically-challenged as I can grasp its meaning? Perhaps if you could put it in the "black vernacular" . . . . ?

Regards,
John