HOW THE BBC BEARS ON ENGLISH USAGE AND BRITISH DEMOCRACY.

SA lecture given on 2 December 1982 at the Kamuzu Academy, Malawi

How the BBC Bears on English Usage and British Democracy

The word Democracy has become very elastic. It’s even been stretched to such totalitarians as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

If one takes Democracy to mean “rule by the expressed will of the majority”, then the Naziz were democratic. Hitler was voted in by the Germans, and his early policy against Jews was approved by the majority of Germans: and if one looks at the main aims of Nazism and Soviet Communism, one sees that they are the same as those of British Democracy …. security, health and a roof for all.

However, British Democracy could never be stretched to Nazism or Soviet Communism. In this talk I shall tell you why. I shall also indicate its most vulnerable point, and suggest how that may be fortified by a simple change in the policy of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Why advise on fortification so far from the fort; and why here, in the middle of Africa? Because the officers at the fort have a chronic latter-day blindness, which the Kamuzu Academy may do much to cure by its example of standing on long-tested foundations of education.

What makes British Democracy so different from Nazism and Soviet Communism? Profound respect for the individual, and hence for minorities, and hence for FACT. That is its foundation. Whereas the other systems exalt the state over the individual and may ignore or change fact for state-policy, British democracy has the person paramount and sees to it that the Majority of the State is not allowed to coerce him or any minority unlawfully, or by falsification of fact.

Personal liberty in Britain has two main bulwarks. One is Suspicion. Henry Hallam, the historian, said rightly that ‘The durability of liberties owes its greatest security to the constant suspicion of the people’. Certainly the British are a suspicious, hard-headed people, not given to hero-worship.

The other bulwark is THE GREAT CHARTER OF LIBERTIES or MAGNA CARTA wrung from a wicked king by the English aristocracy nearly 800 years ago. I quote from Hallam’s MIDDLE AGES:

“An equal distribution of civil rights to all classes of freemen forms the peculiar beauty of the charter. In this just solicitude for the people, and in the moderation which infringed upon no essential prerogative of the monarchy, we may perceive a liberality and patriotism very unlike the selfishness which is sometimes rashly imputed to those ancient barons”.

In its 63 clauses the Charter lays down rules on many mundane matters such as standardization of weights and measures, fishing, borrowing and repaying of money. Here, however, are the six clauses that stand most for the protection of the little man from the State:

(20) (which I give in part) A fine shall fit the offence, but it must never be so heavy that it prevents a man from earning his living. Thus a merchant shall be spared his merchandise, and the husbandman the implements of his husbandry.

(24) No sheriff, constable, coroners or other royal officials are to
Hold lawsuits that should be held by the royal justices. (That clause bars the police from punishing a man they have arrested).

(30 and (31) promise that a man’s property shall not be used by any government official, even the king, without the owner’s permission. They made an Englishman’s home his castle, and founded the fact that a British monarch is never like a late Roman emperor ‘released from the laws’; and hence that the majority cannot be so released. Thus parliamentary majority, which embodies the once-expressed will of most of the nation, has enormous power, but if that power were misused in tyranny over a majority (for example, if the majority party voted perpetual office for itself in parliament) it could be checked by the Courts, and, most powerfully, by the Monarch.

The following two clauses are the most important:

(39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possession, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

(40) To no-one will we sell, or to no-one deny or delay right of justice.

How ingrained in the British character this idea of justice for the individual is may be gauged by an instance from World War II.

In that war the two most crucial battles for Britain were the Battle of Britain, fought in the air over Southern England, and the Battle of the Atlantic, fought in the vast Atlantic Ocean. In both these battles she was very near defeat.

Of the two, the Battle of the Atlantic was the more taxing. It was fought continuously for over four years.

German strategy in the Battle of the Atlantic was simple: to strangle Britain by sinking so many of her merchant ships that she could no longer bring in sufficient food, raw materials and material supplies, or move out her armies and exports. The maritime losses suffered were stupendous: 1299 ships in all in 1941, and most of those were sunk in the Atlantic. If Germany could have sunk just a few more she would have beaten Britain without having to fire a shot in any other part of the world.

Germany’s main weapon in the Battle of the Atlantic was the submarine: hence the German submarine commander was Britain’s deadliest foe, and was rightly treated by his countryman as a lion of German valour. The most successful German U-boat commander, Otto Kretchmer, in a little over two years sank 44 ships totalling more than a quarter of a million tons.

Of course Britain did all she could to win her battles, and her courses were ruthless and sometimes irregular. During the Battle of Britain, German air aces gathered for an ostentatious celebration-dinner on the French coast were surprised in their cups and all shot dead in a commando raid briefed by British Intelligence.

Now, the instance of British respect for the individual that I’m giving concerns British Intelligence in the Battle of the Atlantic.

A plan was submitted by Ewan Montagu, who after the war became a distinguished judge, but who was then a senior intelligence officer at the Admiralty, with the job of feeding the Germans false information. His plan, brilliant in its assessment of Nazi gullibility, was to have one of the most successful German U-boat captains killed by framing him so that the Germans would execute him as a traitor for passing information to the British. Of course, he had done no such thing, but a German court-martial would almosty certainly not have believed him in view of the false evidence that British intelligence would have stacked against him.

The advantages of the plan were enormous. I quote from Montagu’s book (Beyond Top Secret U’: “If successful it would not only have removed one of the top scorers in the sinking of our merchant ships, and thus have saved many ships, lives and cargoes, but it would also have struck heavily at the morale of the U-boat crews, which at that time was high. Also it would have helped enormously in the vital concealment of our reading of the U-boat signals on which so much depended”.

After describing his plan Montagu goes on “After discussion my plan was turned down flat on the ‘it’s not cricket’ principle”.

If you add these four points:

(i) Britain’s desperate position at sea then; (ii) the awesome weight of an ace German U-boat commander in the war at sea; (iii) that there was hardly any likelihood of the framing ever coming to light; and (iv) the tendency of Man’s decency to break down under prolonged strain of war;

you may come to my conclusion that history shows hardly anything more decent than that decision. I am sure it would have been thoroughly approved by the drafters of Magna Carta, and by the majority in a typical pub now and even during the war; and leading to that predominant opinion in the pub there would have been political and ethical discussion with most men speaking or listening as individuals, not as members of a group.

There would be little political individuality or general morality in Britain were it not for free popular discussion; that is, examination of the matters without fear, by arguments for and against, not only in parliament, but in homes, in pubs, in newspapers and, now most important, on radio and television.

Obviously, the better informed and educated the discussers, the more efficient the discussion, because the vital points for and against are more likely to be highlighted and then weighed in the scale of reason; and with such discussion widespread the people are less likely to elect politicians who are below a well-recognized standard. Reversely, a low standard of public discussion is more likely to raise incapable people to political power. Hence, in today’s British democracy of universal suffrage the wisdom or foolishness of government derives from the collective wisdom or foolishness of ordinary people.

Ordinary British commonsense is still pretty sound, but little thanks for that is owing to ordinary British education.

There has been much public discussion of the sophisms that have undermined it, but for the present theme suffice it to say that most of the incompetencies of contemporary British education stem from teaching of English that does not sufficiently teach grammar and the meaning of words; and that this insufficiency is rooted in sociological notions that have no more to do with education than lavender soap has to do with an internal combustion engine.

Pleas bear in mind that none of the examples that follow is far-fetched. Each is egregious only by the eminence of the exemplar, whose dogma or type of inaccuracy is repeated authoritatively every day by lesser influencers.

Let me show you a sociological notion slipped into English-teaching at the very highest level. I quote from a talk on English by Professor Randolph Quirk over BBC radio in 1970:

“Our tired journalists are using language that gets tireder and tireder, cliché-ridden with things that can even get to the heights of ‘Traffic snarling to a halt’.

“The influence of Block language, and the gimmickry of the press is as great as ever: GRAB, BLAZE, HAUL, BID and the like. But we musn’t sneer at this. The alleged loss of flavour in language, like the loss of flavour in frozen food, is a necessary condition of what, surely, we all want … that the benefits of our culture, material, moral and linguistic should be made more and more widely available”.

The sociological notion there is that nowadays, for the general spread of benefit, a general levelling-down is necessary; and the sophistry of the notion is floated on a false analogy that confounds stomach with intellect as follows: modern food-processing is to good nutrition as current media- fashion is to good language.

Mark also the word ‘alleged’ (“alleged loss of flavour”), which vaguely prepares the mind for another key notion that TALK OF DECLINE IS ILL-FOUNDED.

All critical approaches to Education are obstructed by such innuendos; and by a type of journalistic trivialization much employed by quasi-intellectuals. Inaccuracy is its stigma, and it generally plies its lop-sided course with a leg short of fact.

Here is a plum of that trivialization from Mr David Frost, who was made a mighty man of British broadcasting by the BBC, and hence automatically had a bearing on general education: his BOOK OF THE WORLD’S WORST DECISIONS: I COULD HAVE KICKED MYSELF, which has recently come out.

I opened it at random and almost at one read:

“Consider the case of the grizzled seadog Sir Cloudesley Shovell, who found himself in 1704 returning to port in Cornwall, carrying a priceless treasure of Greek antiques from Naples, the property of Emma Hamilton’s husband, Sir William Hamilton”.

But the Sir William Hamilton referred to was not even born at that time,nor was his famous wife, and Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s disaster occurred in 1707 and not 1704.

I soon found worse inaccuracies in the book. Let me give you two. The first is ludicrous, the second very ugly.

Headed PROPHET IS A DIRTY WORD is the following travesty of a story from Herodotus:

“In the year 480 BC Xerxes, King of Persia, decided to settle a long-running feud with the Greeks, and bury forever the Athenian Empire, which had given him trouble ever since they trounced him at Marathon. He planned to march his army from Asia into Europe across a bridge of pontoons which his engineers would build over the Hellespont. But, aware that this could be a risky venture, he first sought the advice of the Oracle at Delphi.

‘If you cross the Hellespont’, he was told, ‘a mighty Empire will fall’.

Being an optimist, Xerxes did not pause to consider that the Oracle already had a reputation for being ‘delphic’. He interpreted her words as encouragement and pushed ahead with his plan. At first all went well and his armies overcame the Spartans at Thermopolyae; but then he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Salamis. At this point, presumably, it dawned on Xerxes that the Oracle hadn’t specified which Empire would fall. It is not recorded whether the King kicked himself. He did, however, work off his hard feelings by ordering his executioner to give three hundred lashes to the water of the Hellespont”.

Very wrong! Xerxes had no such message from Delphi, nor did he lose his empire. He just retreated from Greece. That story applies to Croesus, King of Lydia, who lost his empire in 546 BC to Cyrus II, King of Persia.

My final example from the book: Mr Frost tells how two rabbits brought to Australia as pets produced the rabbit-pest there. He goes on:

“Some generations of humans later a French farmer deliberately decided to get even with the rabbits which were plaguing him by introducing a plague of his own, the disease myxomatosis, previously unknown in Europe. (A method similar to that adopted by that enlightened colonist Cecil Rhodes who deliberately spread smallpox among the natives).”

That monstrous calumny, so triflingly given, is raised from the smallpox epidemic of 1882-1883 in South Africa. At that time, the economy of South Africa depended on the diamond mines of Kimberley and Rhodes, far from spreading the disease, did his utmost to stop it, for it could have cut off his supply of mine-labour.

Much blame was attached to Rhodes and his associates at that time, and still is, for the prevarication that wilfully called all cases of smallpox in Kimberley ‘Felstead’s Disease’ in order that a stampede from the mines might be prevented, but all such cases were quarantined and treated. (For my briefing on this matter I am indebted to the historian Dr Phyllis Lewsen).

And to help him in making this simple book Mr Frost had a prominent British television producer and a researcher!

Consider another trivialization. It is from a high official of the BBC, the Managing Director of its radio, Mr Aubrey Singer. I quote from the report on THE QUALITY OF SPOKEN ENGLISH ON BBC RADIO, which he commissioned in 1979 in response to public criticism, and in particular to criticism by the late Alvar Lidell, who was a prominent news-reader on the BBC during the Second World War. Mr Singer wrote in his preface to the Report:

“… the main point is that there is lively public scrutiny of the way we use language and that is something we welcome.

“The concern is fairly constant, but every now and again something happens that intensifies it. The most recent occasion was when Alvar Lidell, one of the best remembered of BBC voices, wrote an article saying roughly that things weren’t what they used to be”.

If Alvar Lidell said only roughly that, he had better have said nothing, because such an observation suggests querulous senility purblind to the present: who doesn’t know that things are seldom if ever what they used to be?

Part of what Alvar Lidell did say was in the Report. It was far from trivial. He maintained that news-reading was no longer in an undistorted manner, but was subject to “widespread distortion, an endemic disease arising from insinuation and implication”.

Let me give you just one more example. This one is a mixture of innuendo and trivialization. I quote from the same report some remarks of \Professor Quirk that were publicly addressed to its compilers while they were preparing for their investigation. The Report has:

“He had no doubt that we should find numerous instances of ‘media mannerisms’ (…mixed metaphors, tired metaphors, bendy trendiness, and the amount of cliché that has become established in presenting news and interviews), but the real question is ‘So what?’ … The report may well confirm that English is changing and (equally unsurprising) that some people don’t like some of the changes. He believed that ‘the extensive social revolution of the past quarter-century has caused the “demotic” voice to be heard more loudly and more widely than ever before”.

It needs no report to make the point that English is changing. English, like every language, changes so long as it is spoken; and there will always be silly criticism of changes, and rebuttals of silly criticisms that are themselves silly.

My criticisms are fundamental, and apply only to the most important divisions of language, Vocabulary and Grammar. It is the gross misunderstanding of their fundamental logic that has brought on an educational calamity that would be even worse were not aristocratic tradition still respected by most ordinary British people.

You may ask how it is possible that so many who have studied hard and long to be teachers of English should be so blind to simple fundamentals of language-teaching as to be mis-educators. The answer is too long for this talk, but bear in mind that enormous misleadership going unnoticed is not a new phenomenon. If you look at the military tactics of the First World War you will see that people stupidly blind to a simple new factor of warfare nevertheless exercised devastating leadership.

In that war, despite similar battle after similar battle year after year, the generals on the Western Front failed to grasp the fact, now taken for granted even by junior army-officers, that a slow mass of attackers sent unshielded over open ground in day-light offered slaughter-house conditions to well-prepared artillery and machine-guns backed by magazine-rifles: and thus Europe squandered its youth.

If, as has been said, the human brain is the most complicated thing in the universe, then language as the principal expression of intelligence, is the most wonderful thing in the universe.

Its foundations, like those of sexuality, have nothing to do with man-made laws, but are formed by the physiology of the human brain. When a child utters its first word and it first sentence, it gives its parents the same joy whether they are Eskimos, Frenchmen or Malawians; and one of the signs that rationality has the same basis in all brains irrespective of race, culture or geography is that infants the world over start speaking at the same stage of life.

The chief end of language is accurate transfer of thought from one mind to another, and its greatest potency is its ability through some of its words and phrases to make a man’s thoughts more accurate; and the greater the man’s intelligence, the greater the power of language to help him. Thus are great leaders made more by accuracy of language than by anything else. “Language most shows a man: Speak that I may see thee”, says Ben Johnson. “As language is, so is the nation”, says Jesperson.

A combination of two bodies of people has made English a powerful and accurate language … literature that has been to the ordinary people a continually evolving example of the very best English; and the mass of speakers since Anglo-Saxon times who unconsciously made that most powerful of rulers, Usage.

Usage was generally right because what came to the surface of general acceptance from a ferment of dialect, slang, jargon, new coinages and changed grammar was the collective preference of ordinary people of the time; and this mass-edition was generally approved by eminent authors because it was right: countless individuals having thought and uttered along the same lines made a collective genius. And the great writers, who were all tuned to the demotic voice, themselves influenced usage profoundly, because their fine language was copied by the sensitive, and the sensitive were followed by the sheep. And the same process towards greater and greater accuracy and brevity occurred every generation as an accruing interest on linguistic capital. That is how grammar and vocabulary evolved. Grammarians and lexicographers merely recorded the concurrence of eminent writers and usage. About 100 BC a grammarian of classical Greek, Dionysius Thrax, called grammar “the acquaintance of with what is uttered by poets and writers”.

A new factor now bears on usage more powerfully than new weapons bore on warfare between 1914 band 1919; and this factor has not been appreciated. The factor is Broadcasting, which can circumvent the gradual sifting of Usage. The old, unconscious democratic check can now be swept aside by one broadcaster speaking at the same instant to millions.

For example, less than two years ago I saw, with more than 300 million people, a BBC television broadcast of a World Cup soccer match. Within the first two minutes of the broadcast the BBC commentator used DISINTERESTED when he meant UNINTERESTED. Now, DISINTERESTED has been refined over generations, in the manner I have described, to its present meaning of unbiased by not being privately or selfishly interested, and it adds to the accuracy and brevity of English as there is not another single word for that concept.

My final example. On the evening of 22nd October, 1979 I watched the popular BBC programme ‘Blue Peter’, which is for teenagers. The commentator, standing by a huge railway engine held up a model of it and said “It’s an exact replica”. But REPLICA is an art-term meaning exact copy done by the same hand that made the original work of art; and again, no other English word now carries that precise meaning.

No properly educated person would misuse those words; and a few years ago few uneducated people would have used them, because they were not in their vocabulary, but they are now, and the BBC has done much to put them there botched. Is this what Professor Quirk means by “alleged loss of flavour” and the “demotic voice” being heard more and more widely than before?

Faulty grammar, vocabulary and idiom are all too common on the BBC, mainly because sensible officials there seem to have been struck helpless by the nihilistic dogmas now in vogue at most educational institutions. These dogmas can be summed up as follows: One man’s language is as good as another’s. Therefore hardly anything in language should be classed as wrong: and in any case, you can’t say anything is wrong because language changes.

Consequently grammar is no longer taught at most ordinary schools in Brtain, and no-one at the BBC says to a grossly erring commentator, you made such-and-such a mistake, do not repeat it.

I aim my criticism and advice at the BBC, not because I think it is bad. Far from it. Its general standard is very high, far higher than those of all other broadcasting systems in English I have heard.

The BBC is my target because it is the chief exemplar of English for the whole English-speaking world, and therefore a most powerful teacher. If the BBC gets it right, most other broadcasting systems will, I believe, follow its example; and proper education, which must be based on good comprehension of English, will be encouraged to make its way back to English-speaking schools and universities. But if it continues to promote ill-educated people to high positions (particularly such people as have little regard for fact) I fear it will spoil the demotic voice, and that spoiling will do irreparable harm to British democracy.

Here are what I think are the two most pertinent statements in the BBC’s report on THE QUALITY OF SPOKEN ENGLISH. Mr H V Hodson, editor of the ANNUAL REGISTER wrote:

“Why do men and women of sufficient education to gain them responsible posts in broadcasting so often commit faults of speech for which, it seems, thy have no ear”, (emphasis is mine) “nor a standard of what is right? We must certainly blame the broadcasting authorities for their complacent indifference”.

And Professor Peter Felgett, head of the Department of Cybernetics at Reading University, after citing a number of catchphrases:

“Why does this matter? It matters because those who ill-use our language steal our language from us”.

I recommend three rules to the BBC. I shall give them and then say more about them.

(1) Only applicants of the highest standard should be accepted.

(2) Announcers and producers should have excellent ears for language.

(3) All news-reading and comment should be monitored.

Only the highest standard should be accepted

Unless there is proof of his high competence in English, a person should be accepted as producer, script-writer or announcer for broadcasting in English only if he passes a written English examination. Of course, this includes sports-commentators and disk-jockeys.

That contemporary examination certificates are no proof of having passed a good English course is evidenced by the frequency in broadcasting of elementary mistakes in grammar and vocabulary; and by the last London GCEs I saw, which had no question on grammar at either O or A Level. The BBC should therefore institute its own examination of English grammar, vocabulary and idiom. I have made up such a test, which I should be glad to pass on to the BBC.

An applicant who passes a written test should be given an oral examination for depth and understanding of his reading of literature.

Announcers should have excellent ears for language

The hearing of applicants should be tested for pitch, loudness discrimination and rhythm. The sensibility of their reading aloud should also be assessed.

All news-reading and comment should be monitored

And mistakes in grammar, vocabulary, idiom and pronunciation brought to the attention of the speaker within a few hours, he hearing his mistake from a recording.
Because of rules (1) and (2) there would be very few admonitions.

There should be three monitors to a programme, one within the BBC, the others without, the outsiders serving gratis, and being supplied with tapes and recording machines, and given reimbursement for postage and telephone calls only.

Would suitable people do this for nothing? Yes, gladly, if I know the British; and more suitable people than needed would volunteer.

Those general recommendations are based on administrative details. If the BBC would like to have the details, I should gladly supply them: and I should like to assure the BBC (and all their broadcasters in English) that if those recommendations were implemented nothing good in society would be harmed or changed, nor would they bring undue hardship or annoyance to anybody, because they are for the very opposite of censorship and constraint. Indeed, I pray with Milton, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties”. But I know that if a person’s language is spoiled, particularly in childhood, there is much he can never know, utter or argue well.

Ian V Bruton-Simmonds