implicaturephonemedialectlexemelin guisticscorpusaccentoldenglishspeec hactsmetaphoresdiachronytranslatio nmetonymylksjdkldjklaasldkjgovernGavagai mentaccqwertyuiopasdfghjklphonoloJournal gyforeignizationzxcvbnmqwedomesti A Student Journal on All Matters Linguistic
Edited by cationsocrtyuiopasdfghjklzxcscreoleMaciej Grabski & Magdalena Zając
Published by morphemeidiomcognateslanguagechGavagai Student Society Chair of English Language and Applied Linguistics Institute of English Studies University of Lodz angesemanticsphaticwordformationi Gavagai Journal 1 , 2011 ISSN: 2083-6872 nflectionsyntagmaticnounphraselexic oncommonnounagentinstrumentpara phraseconversationalmaximsillocutio naryactmessageinferencepsycholingu isticsaccommodationborrowingloans hiftacquisitionfossilizationlexicalamb iguityblendingaffectivefilterinputacro Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 1 nymallophonemeaningshiftcompeten cebnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmq Contents
Agata Barańska - The examination of the vowel length in the pronunciation of the English adjectives with -able, -ate, -ative suffixes...... 3
Maciej Grabski - Select Anglo-Saxon riddles through the prism of Freud’s theory of wit...... 17
Michał Piotrowski - Queen’s English: Is Queen Elizabeth II becoming non-standard?...... 28
Magdalena Zając - Dread Talk in reggae music – a universal language of resistance to oppression and inequality?...... 39
All submissions to this journal go through the process of peer-review. The articles published in this issue were reviewed by:
Anna Cichosz , Ph.D., Institute of English Studies, University of Lodz
Anna Gralińska-Brawata , M.A., Insitute of English Studies, University of Lodz
Przemysław Ostalski , Ph.D., Institute of English Studies, University of Lodz
Ewa Waniek-Klimczak , Professor, Institute of English Studies, Univeristy of Lodz
Gavagai Journal editorial board:
President: Ewa Waniek-Klimczak, Professor
Vice-president: Anna Cichosz, Ph.D.
Member: Magdalena Zając, M.A.
Technical Editor: Maciej Grabski, B.A.
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 2
The examination of the vowel length in the pronunciation of the English adjectives with -able, -ate, -ative suffixes.
Agata Barańska University of Lodz
1. Introduction
It is very difficult for a second language learner to master the phonology of a non-native language. This process is considered to be complex and time-consuming. Not only is a learner of a foreign language faced with the task of new articulations, but also has to represent and achieve the knowledge connected with such phenomena as the segmental inventory, structure of the syllable, prosody and also phonotactics of a second language (Major, 2001). A common characteristic of L2 learners who acquired the language either in late adolescent or adulthood is the fact that their speech is affected by phonological and phonetic transfer from L1. As a consequence, it is perceived as being accented. All late L2 learners` phonetic realisation of L2 phonological structures is definitely different form the patterns of native language. The situation where second language learners pronounce L2 words using their L1 phonological system is especially widely observable at the beginning of the proficiency level (Archibald 1998). Very often native listeners of English can very easily identify that a speaker or their interlocutor is a late learner of their mother language. Moreover, they are able to identify that these accented phonological patterns are due to interference from the speaker`s native language phonology (Strange & Shafer, 2008). That is to say, L2 speakers, during the process of producing utterances in a foreign language, tend to produce phonetic segments and sequences as if they were a product of miscellaneous interactions between L1 and L2 realisation of phonetic rules, or in other words, interlanguage phonology (Strange and Shafer, 2008). Furthermore, it is widely maintained that the crucial reason why L2 production is marked with accent is the fundamental problem connected with the perception of L2 phonological structures (Flege, 1995). L2 learners are very often unable to correctly recognise and categorise phonetic segments which are not distinctive in learners` L1 phonology unlike in L2 phonology. Such a situation causes difficulties in comprehension of spoken L2 utterances (Strange and Shafer, 2008). Therefore, imperfect perceptual ability causes difficulty in producing new sounds by L2 language learners. In the situation when the phonological contrasts cannot be perceived, there will be some difficulties for non- native speakers in producing them. Several studies have proven that adult L2 learners are unable to perceive differences between L1 and L2, e.g. Flege, Bohn, and Jang (1997).
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Archibald`s (1993) studies on how L2 learners acquire the stress patterns of a foreign language reveal that many informants often put stress in a word according to their L1 rules. Therefore, their errors are the results of L1 transfer. Archibald (1998) suggests that “[i]t is still a case for the distinction of pronunciation within the critical period; the adults did retain non-native stress ” (Archibald, 1998:50). Nevertheless, it cannot be explained in the same way as segmental phenomena. As far as critical period is concerned, it is not possible to maintain that phonology is privileged. Not only do we take into consideration the fact that sounds are affected more than syntax but also we have to focus our attention on the sounds which cause difficulty for a certain language group. Moreover, the fact that some areas of phonology might function differently than others, i.e. segmental vs. prosodic phonology, is very significant (Archibald, 1998). Therefore, apart from the segmental phonology, L2 learners should also focus their attention on L2 stress patterns during the process of acquiring a foreign language. It is especially crucial in terms of languages where the stress patterns differ significantly, e.g. Polish and English, which are crucial in terms of this project.
2. Stress in Polish
Polish language has essentially fixed stress. Where there is more than one syllable in a word, the primary stress falls on the penultimate syllable. In the situation where at least two syllables precede the penultimate syllable a secondary stress falls on the initial syllable (Archibald, 1998). Stress pattern in Polish is perceived as being either dynamic or tonic. The former is characterised as a stress which is based on intensity. The latter, on the other hand, is based on pitch movement (Wierzchowska, 1980). In Polish, the differences in duration are given the least attention and significance. Moreover, it is easily observable that the stressed syllables are denoted by the use of pitch difference. It is also worth mentioning that Polish is defined as a language with restricted extrametricality. Only in formal style, on a limited set of items a syllable is marked as extrametrical. Furthermore, there is a very small number of inflectional endings that become extrametrical (Archibald, 1998). Additionally, it should also be pointed out that Polish is defined as a language which is quantity insensitive. Regularly, Polish stress assignment is not modified by syntactic category or stress. However Polish speakers have syntactic category sensitivity, e.g. they shift the penult-syllable stress to the antepenult-syllable stress pattern in nouns of foreign origin like matematyka (mathematics) or muzyka (music) (Waniek-Klimczak, 2002).
3. Polish vs. English metrical parameter settings
Despite the fact that English as well as Polish are likely to mark stressed syllables by the combination of the correlates of stress, that is increased intensity, change of the pitch and longer duration, the extent to which duration or, in other words, quantitative features are used causes an important difference. As I have already mentioned, Polish is quantity insensitive. Conversely, in English pitch change is very often associated with quantitative features. As a result, English stress is regarded as extremely rhythmical. Therefore, it can be concluded that English and Polish use the pitch difference in terms of denoting the syllables that are stressed.
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Nevertheless, they are different when it comes to the use of quantity vs. intensity features (Waniek-Klimczak 2002). As far as Polish and English differences in metrical parameter settings are concerned, it should be added that Polish, as opposed to English, has no quantity and extrametricality features in its phonological structure (Archibald, 1998). On the other hand, English has extrametrical syllables and is sensitive to the weight of the rhyme. The abovementioned differences in word stress assignment may cause some difficulties for Polish learners of English and be perceived as a major challenge in terms of rhythmic organisation of L2 speech. The metrical parameters, in terms of Polish language enumerated above, are very often transferred and, as a result, Polish accent which is noticeable during speaking English gains some specific characteristics, namely Polish learners of English tend to stress the penult in English words without considering the weight of the syllable. On the other hand, in English stress tends to be assigned to heavy syllables (Archibald 1998). As the examples of a non-native stress pattern in which the second to last syllable is always stressed Archibald (1998: 9) gives the following words:
English Target Non-Native Form astónish astónish maintáin máintain cábinet cabínet
Therefore, the errors in terms of the stress pattern are the results of L1 transfer.
4. The examination of the vowel length in the pronunciation of the English adjectives with -able, -ate, -ative suffixes: a pilot study
4. 1. Objectives
I conducted the pilot study presented here in order to examine the vowel length in the pronunciation of the stated suffixes in the chosen English adjectives and to check whether the general phenomenon of the L2 learners` pronunciation of these suffixes in the certain English words is closer to metrically strong or rather weak, reduced vowel sound. Moreover, as far as the objectives of the study are concerned, I wanted to compare the Polish students of English` pronunciation of the selected suffixes with the RP pronunciation of these sounds.
4. 2. Research questions
The following research questions were asked:
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 5
• Is the general phenomenon of the informants` pronunciation of the –able, -ate, -ative suffixes in certain English adjectives closer to strong vowel sound or rather metrically weak reduced vowel sound in Polish users of English? • Does the formal instruction improve the pronunciation of the –able, -ate, -ative suffixes in English adjectives? • Does the variability concerning the quality and length of the pronounced vowel sound in the stated suffixes depend on gender? • Does the stress pattern have an influence on the quality and length of the vowel sound in the selected suffixes in certain English adjectives?
4. 3. Research procedure
• Approach: attention to speech paradigm (Labov, 1972) • Conditioning factors: the effect of formal instruction, gender and stress pattern • Target variety: Received Pronunciation • Informants: 14 Polish students of English ( 7 men and 7 women) of the first year on the English Department at the University of Łódź; their experience in English was more or less similar,: between 10 and 12 • Instruments: Digital dictation machine, laptop, computer programme PRAAT • Formal elicitation tasks a) The first formal task was based on the text (Appendix 1) which included thirty-three English adjectives suffixed with –able, -ate, -ative (eleven words with adjectival suffix –able, eleven with –ate, and eleven with – ative). During that stage of the study, informants were asked to read the text out loud. What is more important, the Polish students of English had never seen the text before. b) The formal instruction, i.e. using the correct RP pronunciation of the examined words I read the word list (Appendix 2) which was comprised of the same English adjectives, with the stated adjectival suffixes, as those from the text in the task number one. During the formal instruction, the informants were told to pay special attention to the quality and length of the vowel sound in the selected suffixes. c) The second formal task was based on the same word list which was read during the formal instruction. Here, informants were asked to read the word list carefully focusing on the quality and length of the vowel sound in the stated adjectival suffixes. The reading tasks were recorded on the digital dictation machine.
4.4. Results and analysis
I decided to divide the study into two different stages: a) Auditory study, during which I made the auditory evaluation of the vowel sound quality in –able, -ate, - ative suffixes pronounced by the group of Polish students of English from the University of Łódź. In this part of the analysis, I focused on a pedagogically oriented approach of auditory analysis leading to the assessment of correctness. In other words, I evaluated, by auditory means, whether the English adjectives were pronounced
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 6 correctly or rather incorrectly in terms of the RP pronunciation rules. That procedure enabled me to pick the most frequently mispronounced English adjectives and those which were pronounced correctly during the whole study. The most oft-repeated English adjectives pronounced incorrectly: • Elaborate • Considerate • Admirable The most oft-repeated English adjectives with the correct pronunciation: • Favourable • Declarative I was able to choose only two English adjectives in terms of the correct realisation of the vowel sound in the adjectival suffixes, because of the fact that the rest of the words from the text or the word list were mispronounced in most cases. b) acoustic study, during which I made the thorough acoustical analysis of the exact length of the vowel sound in the –able, -ate, -ative suffixes in the chosen English adjectives using the computer programme PRAAT. The fact that I worked with the same group of informants and the same recordings should be emphasized. Moreover, during that stage of the research, I decided to limit the number of the analyzed English adjectives with the –able, -ate, -ative suffixes from thirty-three to eight (Table 1.).
-ABLE -ATE -ATIVE
ADMIRABLE CONSIDERATE COOPERATIVE
DESIRABLE DELIBERATE DECLARATIVE
FAVOURABLE ELABORATE ------Table 1. Limited list of English adjectives suffixed with -able, -ate, -ative which were taken into consideration in the acoustic analysis.
I limited the number of words because I wanted the analysis to be very detailed. It would not be possible if I had to examine the same amount of the English adjectives as in the qualitative study. As the table above shows, each of the English adjectives has the same preceding consonant (R) before the selected suffixes. I assumed that it would be easier and my examination would be more accurate if I had the same consonant before the analyzed vowel sound in the selected adjectival suffixes. Furthermore, one English adjective with the suffix -ative is missing because of the fact that it was impossible to find the adjectival suffix – ative preceded by the consonant – r - among the English adjectives included in the text or in the word list. That is why I decided to enclose only two words with –ative suffix. The first analysis during the acoustic study was connected with the differences in male and female informants` pronunciation of the adjectival suffixes –able, -ate, -ative. I was wondering whether the realisation of the certain English adjectives would be influenced by gender. That is why I chose such a group of informants
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 7 which was composed of seven men and seven women. After the deep analysis, using Praat as well as the auditory evaluation, the overall percentage of the mispronounced English adjectives and those which were pronounced correctly was fixed in terms of male an d female informants separately. The Diagram 1 and Diagram 2 depict the relationship between men and women`s correct and incorrect pronunciation of the adjectival suffixes –able, -ate, -ative placed in the chosen English words.
MEN WOMEN
RIGHT RIGHT WRONG WRONG
Figure 1. The ov erall percentage of the correct ( green colour) and incorrect (red colour) pronunciation of the adjectival suffixes –able, -ate, -ative in the chosen English words in terms of the male and female informants respectively.
As far as the data depicted on the figures are concerned, it is easily noticeable that in terms of the female informants the overall percentage of the mispronounced English adjectives is twice as big as that in terms of the male`s. Therefore, the conclusion can be drawn that gender has a c onsiderable impact on the process of realisation of the analyzed adjectival suffixes. It is hard to say which factors determine men and women`s different perception and pronunciation of the quality and length of the vowel sound in the stated suffixes. Howe ver, I would like to focus my attention on the gender influence on the realisation of the analyzed sounds in the future because I consider it to be fascinating. In order to improve the results described above, Figure 1. and Figure 2. are enclosed below.
WOMAN 1 250 200 WOMAN 2 150 100 50 WOMAN 3 0 WOMAN 4 WOMAN 5 WOMAN 6 WOMAN 7
Figure 3. Correct and incorrect pronunciation of the examined English adjectives suffixed with -able, -ate, -ative in terms of the female informants.
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300 250 MAN 1 200 150 MAN 2 100 50 MAN 3 0 MAN 4 MAN 5 MAN 6 MAN 7
Figure 4. Correct and incorrect pronunciation of the examined English adjectives suffixed with -able, -ate, -ative in terms of the male informants.
The above figures confirm the previous results which revealed that the pronunciation of the adjectival suffixes in the chosen English words is different in terms of men and women. The mid vowel length values, counted in milliseconds (depicted on the left side of the figure), for the certain English adjectives are very irregular when it comes for male as well as female informants. Furthermore, apart from the clearly visible irregularity, it should be emphasized t hat the mid vowel length values in the adjectival suffixes are considerably higher in terms of women`s pronunciation. It means that the length of the vowel sound in –able, -ate, -ative suffixes produced by female informants is longer than the length of the vowel sound which is considered correct in terms of the RP rules of pronunciation of the analyzed English adjectives. Male`s mid vowel length values are significantly lower. That is why their realisation of the stated suffixes is more correct. Therefore, the described results also prove that, as far as the study is concerned, gender influenced the pronunciation of the analyzed English adjectives and the vowel length in the stated suffixes. The last figure connected with this stage of the quantitative study depicts the comparison of the mid vowel length values in the adjectival suffixes pronounced by male and female informants. It clearly shows the differences between men and women`s realisation of the analyzed suffixes.
1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0
WOMEN MEN
Figure 5. The comparison between m ale and female informants` pronunciation of the –able, -ate, -ative suffixes from the chosen English adjectives.
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The next analysis included in the quantitative study is connected with the comparison between the pronunciation of the adjectival suffixes in the same English words recorded during the text and the word list. I wanted to check whether the formal instruction, conducted after the text which included the English adjectives suffixed with –able, -ate, -ative read by the Polish students of English, in fluenced the pronunciation of the same adjectives while reading the word list. I wondered whether their realisations of the vowel length in the stated suffixes would be improved after the formal instruction. Figure 4 . depicts the differences in the mid vow el length values in the analyzed suffixes from the text and from the word list.
200 150 100 50 0
WORD LIST 1
Figure 6. The comparison of the mid vowel length values in the –able, -ate, -ative suffixes produced by the informants during the text ( black line) and the word list (green line).
The black line reflects the mid vowel length values (counted in milliseconds) in terms of the English adjectives, enumerated below the figure, pronounced during the text. On the other hand, the green line reflects the mid vowel length values of th e –able, -ate, -ative suffixes from the same English adjectives realised while reading the word list by the same group of informants. It is clearly noticeable that there are very inconsiderable differences between the values depicted by the black and the g rey line. In order to check whether the differences in the pronunciation of the selected adjectives during the text and the word list are statistically significant I applied the chi -square test. Assuming that α=0,05 and degree of freedom is 1, the critical value for the analysis is 3,84. Since, my value of chi -square is 2,28, which is smaller than 3,84, it can be concluded that there are no statistically significant differences between the pronunciation of the selected adjectives during the text and the wo rd list. Conversely, the differences are inconsiderable. Moreover, the level of incorrectness in the pronunciation of the examined adjectival suffixes was not diminished: the mid vowel length value, of all suffixes from the English adjectives taken into c onsideration in terms of the quantitative study, was about 120 ms. It means that the length of the vowel sound in the –able, -ate, -ative suffixes was too long, as far as the RP rules of the pronunciation are concerned. Therefore, the conclusion can be dra wn that the formal instruction did not improve the pronunciation of the chosen words. Despite the fact that informants were told in a direct way to pay attention to the vowel length in the –able, -ate, -ative suffixes in the English
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 10 adjectives while readin g the word list by the instructor, their incorrectness in the pronunciation was not diminished. In order to emphasize the irregularity in the pronunciation of the English adjectives suffixed with –able, -ate, -ative produced by the informants and to demons trate the differences between the recorded speakers, I enclosed figure 5. which perfectly portrays the fluctuations of the mid vowel lengths.
300 PAIR 1 200 PAIR 2 100 0 PAIR 3 PAIR 4 PAIR 5 PAIR 6 PAIR 7
Figure 7. The comparison of the mid vowel length values in the -able, -ate, -ative suffixes produced by each of the examined pair (man - woman) of students for the analyzed English adjectives.
It should be mentioned that I recorded the informants in man – woman pairs in order to have the comparison between their pronu nciation in terms of the gender role in the realisation of the analyzed adjectival suffixes. Figure 5. reveals that there is no systematic realisation of the examined suffixes. Therefore, it can be presupposed that the Polish students of English participat ed in the study were not aware of the correct RP pronunciation of the English adjectives suffixed with -able, -ate, -ative. Taking everything into consideration and analysing the results from the qualitative as well as from the quantitative study, I observed that in most cases (68%) the vowel sound in the –able, -ate, -ative suffixes was pronounced incorrectly, i.e. the informants tended to pronounce metrically strong vowel sound similar to short diphthong /e Ǻ/ rather than the reduced, weak vowel soun d ‘schwa,’ which is considered to be correct in terms of the RP pronunciation rules of the stated adjectival suffixes. Moreover, I was able to count the mid vowel length value in the analyzed suffixes for the chosen English adjectives in the quantitative s tudy: 120ms. It also proves the assumption mentioned above that the informants pronounced too long vowel sound in –able, -ate, - ative suffixes. As far as the formal instruction is concerned, I noticed that it did not influence the process of pronunciation of the adjectival suffixes in the chosen English words. The differences between the mid vowel length values during the text and the word list were hardly noticeable. Furthermore, as the matter of gender role in the students` pronunciation of the given words is analyzed, I obse rved that there was a considerable difference, in terms of the pronunciation of the stated suffixes in certain English adjectives, between male and female informants. Men` s vowel quality and its length in the given suffixes turned ou t to be better than that of women`s. What is more, in terms of the gender relationships connected with the study, there was no tendency to adjust the quality of the selected English adjectives` pronunciation towards the interlocutor of the opposite
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 11 sex in the pair. Despite the fact that female informants` realisation of the English adjectives suffixed with –able, -ate, -ative turned out to be poorer and more incorrect, they shared one similarity with male informants in terms of the mid vowel length values in the stated suffixes, i.e. Figures 1. and 2. enclosed earlier in this paper revealed the considerable and easily noticeable irregularity in the pronunciation of the adjectival –able, -ate and –ative. That fact may suggest that the first year Polish students of English, recorded and analyzed during the whole study, were not fully familiarized with the general RP pronunciation rules of the examined adjectival suffixes. Therefore, their realisation of the English adjectives suffixed with -able, -ate, -ative was not systematic.
5. Discussion
I would like to consider some weaknesses of this study. First of all, I am aware of the fact the number of informants who participated in the experiment was too small. It is motivated by the fact that it was only a pilot study which will expand in the near future: I intend to record more informants (Polish students of English) as well as native speakers of English in order to have the clear comparison between the native RP pronunciation of the English adjectives and the pronunciation of the same sounds produced by Polish students of English with the same experience and level of proficiency in English. Moreover, as far as the weaknesses of the study are concerned, informants were not familiarize with some of the English adjectives enclosed in the text and in the word list. That is why in the future, in terms of such a study, I will take into consideration the word familiarity as a significant factor. Furthermore, despite the fact that I had prepared and recorded informal task connected with the subject of the research: the conversation between the informants conducted in man-woman pairs, I was not able to analyze it because of the fact that the prepared questions were too complicated for the students and in most cases I did not get the answer I expected. That is why in the future I will try to prepare the informal task in a different way.
6. Conclusions
The results of the pilot study corroborate the claim that very frequently in terms of adult L2 learners at the beginning level of proficiency, their pronunciation of L2 words is influenced by their L1 phonological system (Archibald, 1998). This study reveals that the Polish students of English, who participated in the examination, put stress in the words (here: the adjectives) according to their L1 rules: in Polish, in a word with more than one syllable, the primary stress falls on the penultimate syllable. That tendency influenced the informants` L2 pronunciation of the selected suffixes which resulted in the accented pronunciation of the examined words. That is to say, the informants tended to put stress on the final syllable in the selected adjectives which influenced the length of the vowel sound in the analysed suffixes: the quality of the vowel sound in the suffixes -able, -ate, -ative in the chosen English adjectives was closer to metrically strong vowel sound similar to the short diphthong /eǺ/ rather than the weak, reduced vowel sound (“schwa”), which is required by the RP
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 12 pronunciation rules connected with the stated adjectival suffixes. However, in some exceptional cases, the quality of the vowel sound in the stated suffixes was closer to /a:/. Such a pronunciation occurred the most frequently in terms of the adjective elaborate . Moreover, as I have already mentioned, the overall percentage of the mispronounced English adjectives in terms of men and women during the whole study was 68%. As far as more detailed analysis is concerned, 34% of men pronounced the vowel sound in the stated suffixes of the English adjectives incorrectly and 56% of their pronunciation was appropriate. On the other hand, 69% of women pronounced the vowel sound in the stated suffixes of the English adjectives incorrectly and only 31% of their pronunciation was appropriate. Therefore, in terms of the results of the study, it is noticeable that gender had an influence on the quality of the vowel sound in the stated suffixes during the pronunciation of the analyzed English adjectives. I also wondered whether the formal instruction improve the pronunciation of the English adjectives suffixed with –able, -ate, -ative. That is why, the students were told to pay special attention to the vowel length in the chosen analyzed adjectival suffixes while reading the word list comprised of the thirty-three English adjectives suffixed with –able, -ate, -ative. The results were surprising: the quality of the vowel sound in the stated suffixes did not improve after the formal instruction. The percentage of the mispronounced adjectives during the text and the word list remained almost the same, more precisely 62%.
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References
Archibald, J. (1998) Second language phonology. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Flege, J. (1995) Second language speech learning theory, findings, and problems . In Strange, W. (ed) Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research . Baltimore, MD: York Press, 233–277. Flege, J., Bohn, O.-S. and Jang, S. (1997) The effect of experience on nonnative subjects’ production and perception of English vowels. Journal of Phonetics 25, 169–186. Hansen Edwards, J. G. and Zampini, M. L. (eds) Phonology and second language acquisition . Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1-15, 63-95, 153-193. Major, R. C. (2001) Foreign accent: The ontogeny and phylogeny of second language phonology. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Major, R. C. (2008) Transfer in second language phonology: A review . In Hansen Edwards, J. G. and Zampini, M. L. (eds), 63-95. Strange, W. and Shafer, V. L. (2008) Speech perception in second language learners: The re-education of selective perception. In Hansen Edwards, J. G. and Zampini M. L. (eds), 153-193. Waniek-Kimczak, E. (2002) How to predict the unpredictable – English word stress from a Polish perspective. In Waniek-Kimczak, E. and Melia, P. J. (eds) Accents and speech in teaching English phonetics and phonology. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 221–241. Wierzchowska, B. (1971) Wymowa polska. Warszawa: Państwowe Zakłady Wydawnictw Szkolnych. Wierzchowska, B. (1980) Fonetyka i fonologia języka polskiego. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich: Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk. Zampini, M. L. (2008) L2 speech production research: Findings, issues, and advances . In Hansen Edwards, J. G. and Zampini M. L . (eds), 1-15.
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Appendix 1
TEXT
Every one of us has a predominate, desirable and passionate need for having a friend. In our heads, we create an imaginative and cumulative picture of the most acceptable, applicable, valuable, admirable and appropriate person, who might be considered as our best friend. This frequently debatable issue concerning the clearly declarative image of a perfect friend, tends to be very elaborate and widely observable. Among the most favourable and at the same time very predictable virtues of a perfect friend, enumerated by us are: affectionate, candid, compassionate, deliberate, polite, cheerful, considerate, communicative, cooperative, talkative, reasonable and also combative. We tend to perceive our best friend as a person who should give us a cup of hot chocolate and provide a comfortable shelter when we are depressed, frustrated and have no place to go, someone who stands by us no matter what we have done and what has happened to us, and at the same time someone, who knows how to spend the free time in an alternative and innovative way. We do not want our friend to be degenerate, accusative, dishonest, disloyal, disgraceful, unhelpful, quarrelsome or rude. We want an ideal mate without any faults. That is why we have big difficulties in finding such a person. We should remember that no one is perfect, respect and tolerate other people`s imperfections and look for a moderate type of a friend. Otherwise, we might be alone for the rest of our lives.
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Appendix 2
ACCEPTABLE FAVOURABLE
APPROPRIATE PREDICTABLE
COMMUNICATIVE ALTERNATIVE
APPLICABLE PREDOMINATE
COMPASSIONATE
CUMULATIVE
DEBATABLE
VALUABLE
ELABORATE
IMAGINATIVE
INNOVATIVE
REASONABLE
CHOCOLATE
DEGENERATE
TALKATIVE
MODERATE
DESIRABLE
DELIBERATE
ACCUSATIVE
CONSIDERATE
ADMIRABLE
PASSIONATE
COOPERATIVE
AFFECTIONATE
COMFORTABLE
COMBATIVE
OBSERVABLE
DECLARATIVE
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 16
Select Anglo-Saxon riddles through the prism of Freud’s theory of wit.
Maciej Grabski University of Lodz
1. Introduction
The year 1923 saw the publication of Sigmund Freud’s paper on the case of Christoph Haitzmann. Interestingly, both gentlemen never met. They could not have – Mr. Haitzmann, a German painter, lived in the 17 th century. Back then, what Freud recognized as a paradigm of neurosis inspired awe and terror as demonic possession and was of a particular interest to the Church, who commissioned one of their scribes to compile a written record of the case, to be used by Freud 250 years later. Despite the considerable time gap, Freud managed to conduct a successful and rather detailed analysis of Haitzmann’s disorder. This comes as a major reassurance. Though mine is a journey as remote as to one millennium ago, the analysis to follow is nowhere near as audacious as the one of Freud’s: with face-to-face interaction with a patient being typically a proper diagnosis’s sine qua non , Freud had to allow for the occurrence of certain discrepancies between the actual state of affairs and the manuscript under scrutiny, inasmuch as the latter was never intended to serve as a medical casebook. The Anglo-Saxon riddles seem somewhat more reliable: just as any such devices, they are well thought-out before they are put down. Or rather, they are well thought-out so as to be put down; so as there is virtually nothing coming between the writer and the recipient; so as for them to be graspable across space and time. This kind of deliberation makes for the potential analysis’s credibility. That said, this largely psychological (and to some extent socio-historical linguistic) case study undertakes what I hope to be seen as a rewarding mission of straddling Sigmund Freud’s 20 th century theory of wit and a set of Anglo-Saxon riddles included in Exeter Book. Since Freud would have probably labeled the selected riddles “smutty”, the short analysis of mine will focus on the Austrian’s idea of obscenity: its sources, goals, use, as well as its users, unequivocal forms and, most importantly, its indirect realizations, which is precisely what some Old English puzzles are.
2. Freud’s theory of wit
Freud’s wit theory (laid out in his 1905 work, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious ) goes in accordance with his psychoanalysis’s central premise that only a fraction of what is referred to as mental is conscious. It is the remaining part, the unconscious, that conditions human identity and perceivable actions. Jokes are also said to emerge from the inaccessible depths of the psyche; a joke is described as a preconscious thought which for an instant of time is processed in the unconscious, before it is eventually transferred to conscious thinking. The joke’s nature is determined by this brief spell in the unconscious; in other words, the joke’s ultimate shape
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 17 is modeled on the principles valid therein. Therefore, a joke, as Freud saw it, is a means of introducing certain unconscious aspirations into conscious thinking, or rather, of the reinstatement of those aspirations, since what currently lies beneath our perception would typically prosper on the surface before (Freud, 1905/1960).
3. More than just riddles
Since the following instances of Anglo-Saxon humor are generally referred to as riddles, it may be questioned whether they are susceptible of examination through the prism of Freud’s theory of jokes. The author seems to distinguish between the two categories and sees the difference come down to the amount of effort required on the part of the joke/riddle recipient: “The allusions made in a joke must be obvious […]; an awakening of conscious intellectual interest usually makes the effect of the joke impossible. There is an important distinction here between jokes and riddles”. Laughter (in a person on the joke’s receiving end only) and, possibly, the feeling of pleasure (in both the joke’s recipient and the joker) are what Freud understands as “the effect of the joke”, and the two resulting reactions are implied not to hold for riddles (1905/1960: 149). However, this appears not to be the case for the following:
Riddle 42 Wrætlic hongað bi weres þeo, [A small miracle hangs near a man's thigh,] frean under sceate. Foran is þyrel. [Full under folds. It is stiff, strong,] Bið stiþ ond heard, stede hafað godne; [Bold, brassy, and pierced in front.] þonne se esne his agen hrægl [When a young lord lifts his tunic] ofer cneo hefeð, wile þæt cuþe hol [Over his knees, he wants to greet] mid his hangellan heafde gretan [With the hard head of this hanging creature] þæt he efenlang ær oft gefylde. [The hole it has long come to fill.]
Riddle 43 Ic on wincle gefrægn weaxan nathwæt, [I heard of something rising in a corner,] þindan ond þunian, þecene hebban; [Swelling and standing up, lifting its cover.]
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on þæt banlease bryd grapode, [The proud-hearted bride grabbed at that boneless] hygewlonc hondum, hrægle þeahte [Wonder with her hands; the prince's daughter] þrindende þing þeodnes dohtor. [Covered that swelling thing with a swirl of cloth.]
Riddle 52 Hyse cwom gangan, þær he hie wisse [The young man came over to the corner] stondan in wincsele, stop feorran to, [Where he knew she stood. He stepped up,] hror hægstealdmon, hof his agen [Eager and agile, lifted his tunic] hrægl hondum up, hrand under gyrdels [With hard hands, thrust through her girdle] hyre stondendre stiþes nathwæt, [Something stiff, worked on the standing] worhte his willan; wagedan buta. [One his will. Both swayed and shook.] þegn onnette, wæs þragum nyt [The young man hurried, was sometimes useful,] tillic esne, teorode hwæþre [Served well, but always tired] æt stunda gehwam strong ær þon hio, [Sooner than she, weary of the work.] werig þæs weorces. Hyre weaxan ongon [Under her girdle began to grow] under gyrdelse þæt oft gode men [A hero's reward for laying on dough.] ferðþum freogað ond mid feo bicgað. [ ]
Riddle 60 Ic eom heard ond scearp, hingonges strong, [I am the hard punch and pull of power,] forðsiþes from, frean unforcuð, [Bold thrusting out, keen coming in,]
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wade under wambe ond me weg sylfa [Serving my lord. I burrow beneath] ryhtne geryme. Rinc bið on ofeste, [A belly, tunneling a tight road.] se mec on þyð æftanweardne, [My lord hurries and heaves from behind] hæleð mid hrægle; hwilum ut tyhð [With a catch of cloth. Sometimes he drags me] of hole hatne, hwilum eft fareð [Hot from the hole, sometimes shoves me] on nearo nathwær, nydeþ swiþe [Down the snug road. The southern thruster] suþerne secg. Saga hwæt ic hatte. [Urges me on. Say who I am.]
There are reasons to believe that the fragments of Exeter Book in question are riddles merely on the face of it (though the bulk of the remaining ones leave no doubt as to their nature; the texts presented are just an occasional variation on what are otherwise usual riddles). What they are getting at is obvious enough for anyone not to believe that the only items the authors had in mind were a key, a bread dough, a churn and a poker respectively. It is crucial for those “riddles” to work, however, that those “innocent” objects of everyday use are mentioned in the process; their presence is, most probably, what the technique of those jokes (as they will be referred to from this point onward) revolves around. The joke technique, that is basically the form a given joke assumes, is not to be overlooked, since it emerges as one of the two main sources of pleasure coming about as a result of a successful witticism (Freud, 1905/1960). To pinpoint the position of the technique of the jokes analyzed within the Freudian wit typology is, however, not so simple a task, since the Anglo-Saxon riddles will prove fairly complex in this respect. The analysis’s starting point is double entendre , which Freud (1905/1960: 39) listed as an example of wit technique based on double meaning of a word thanks to which a joke thrives, i.e.:
This girl reminds me of Dreyfus. The army doesn’t believe in her innocence .1
Here, the punch-line hits home with the word innocence , which can denote one’s being not guilty of a crime, or alternatively, one’s virginity. Accordingly, the Anglo-Saxon jokes offer a number of obvious innuendos which seem to flourish thanks to the phenomenon of ambiguity: riddles 42 and 60 mention a hole (OE hol ), a word used to describe various cavities, indentations, etc, but also an informal, rancid term for vagina. Otherwise, the riddles are packed full of: verbs denoting moving forward, often abruptly ( to come in, to tunnel, to shove in riddle 60, to thrust [OE hran ] in riddles 52 and 60), upward ( to rise [OE weaxan ], to swell [OE þindan ], to stand
1 Alfred Dreyfus was a French officer wrongfully convicted of divulging military secrets to the Germans.
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 20 up [OE þunian ], to lift [OE hebban ] in riddle 43), downward ( to burrow [OE wadan , actually to advance , to wade ] in riddle 60), or alternatively, both upward and downward ( to heave in riddle 60); other verbs denoting physical effort ( to sway , to shake [OE wagian ] in riddle 52); all of these hint at the sexual act; adjectives denoting firmness ( strong [OE heard ], bold [OE stede hafað godne , to be of good firmness] in riddle 42, stiff [OE stiþ ] in riddles 42 and 52); vague descriptions with a number of possible referents ( a small miracle … pierced in front [OE foran is þyrel , there’s a hole in front ] in riddle 42, a boneless wonder [OE banlease ] in riddle 43); these, in turn, suggest the male sexual organ as a referent. It is a moot point, however, if these are, the way the word innocence indisputably is, lexically ambiguous (or polysemous, therefore characterized by one dictionary entry, but different, conceptually related senses), or merely euphemistic. In any case, it can be tentatively assumed that some portion of the joke-derived pleasure in the examples under scrutiny results from some kind of ambiguity. If the key was described as a small specially shaped piece of metal that you put into a lock and turn in order to lock or unlock a door , the joke would disappear; if the word innocence from the Dreyfus joke was substituted for the phrase not having committed treason , it could hardly be considered funny 2. The contribution of the unexpected “answers” to the effect of joke will be accounted for toward the later sections of this paper.
4. “Economy” equals “pleasure”
So far, only the question as to what it is that contributes to the feeling of pleasure that the joke causes has been addressed. It is, however, equally important to establish why certain modes of expression, such as, for instance, playing on ambiguous words, are a major source of pleasure. Freud was of the opinion that the sensation in question is traceable to certain “economy” that the various wit techniques offer, the economy which, at first glance, is likely to be mistaken for the mere economy of expression: to stick to word ambiguity, which occurs extensively in the texts discussed, the technique would save on using two different words, coming up with a single word instead. Freud noticed (1950/1960: 43), however, that such an approach
may remind us, perhaps, of the way in which some housewives economize when they spend time and money on a journey to a distant market because vegetables are to be had there a few farthings cheaper. What does a joke save by its technique? The putting together of a few new words, which would mostly have emerged without any trouble. Instead of that, it has to take the trouble to search out the one word which covers the two thoughts. […] Would it not have been simpler, easier, and, in fact, more economical to have expressed the two thoughts as they happened to come, even if this involved no common form of expression? Is not the economy in words uttered more than balanced by the expenditure on intellectual effort?
The nature of the economy peculiar to a joke is about the economy of “psychic expenditure in general” (Freud, 1905/1960: 118), then described as originating from the reproduction of old liberties that one could
2 Interestingly, this could still work in Polish, where the word zdrada may either refer to marital infidelity, or to being disloyal to the state. The implication would be slightly different, though.
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 21 indulge in during one’s childhood. In the course of maturing, certain modes of expression, which indisputably abound with pleasure, are being gradually banned from one’s everyday speech once the “reasonableness” takes over; “a repetition of what is similar, a rediscovery of what is familiar, similarity of sound, etc” that a child so much enjoys are now most unwelcome. In order for the blacklisted techniques to cause pleasure again, a wordplay must be at least ostensibly meaningful; thus, the play evolves into a jest, “in order to find words and aggregations of thoughts in which this condition is fulfilled” (Freud, 1905/1960: 126-127). As soon as it happens and one’s reasonableness is eluded, the old liberties are temporarily restored, and getting carried away into this less psychically demanding way of expressing one’s thoughts defines the character of the pleasurable economy:
[T]he economies in psychical inhibitory expenditure brought about by a joke (…) will remain a source of pleasure for us because they save us a particular expenditure which we have been accustomed to make and which we were already prepared to make on this occasion as well (Freud, 1905/1960: 154).
5. A “hidden agenda”
But throughout this paper, the Anglo-Saxon “riddles” have been repeatedly referred to as jokes and not jests. Therefore, a distinction between the two terms needs to be introduced: a joke is different from a jest only in terms of the quality of content offered:
Jests still give the foremost place to the purpose of giving us enjoyment, and are content if what they say does not appear senseless or completely devoid of substance. If what a jest says possesses substance and value, it turns into a joke (Freud, 1905/1960: 129).
Hence, it transpires that a joke is never free from certain “tendencies”; even if it abstains from serving various malicious impulses or emotions, its task, tendency, is by definition to magnify a given thought: “the thought seeks to wrap itself in a joke because in that way it recommends itself to our attention and can seem more significant and more valuable”, remarked Freud. That way, reason, liquidated by the reinstatement of infantile liberties, is joined by the “critical judgment” as another impeding instance to be temporarily revoked. This property of “augmenting” a thought, argued Freud, opens up a golden opportunity to smuggle in a joke a powerful message, a thought that will no longer reject malevolent impulses, such as, for instance, sexual aggression (1905/1960: 129-130). The Anglo-Saxon riddles fully capitalize on that chance, and the feeling of pleasure they produce goes even beyond discarding reason and critical judgment. The help of a tendentious joke is enlisted so as to circumvent repression ; one of the core concepts of Freud’s psychoanalysis, repression is a process which “keeps whole complexes of impulses, together with their derivatives, away from consciousness” (Freud, 1905/1960: 100). Repression of infantile sexual impulses and their being invested with libido is how, according to Freud, a neurotic disorder is contracted (Freud, 1916/1963). Neurosis is therefore the return of the repressed, a resurgence of infantile sexuality in a distorted
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 22 form (Freud, 1906/1953). Repression is also said to be the foundation of certain aesthetic concepts; in his essay on the nature of the uncanny, Freud tried to explore the sources of the feeling and explain the strange mixture of disturbing emotions which overhaul whoever finds themselves under the phenomenon’s influence. He is of the opinion that the uncanny effect can be traced back to the once prevailing beliefs or complexes invalidated by repression, forcing their way back producing fear once triggered by some current evocative occurrence (1919). In a way, tendentious jokes are yet another means facilitating the return of the repressed; this time, however, the original pleasure is reproduced in an unobscured manner. Anglo-Saxon riddles wield the power of reinstating obscenity as a major source of joy: “When we laugh at a refined obscene joke, we are laughing at the same thing that makes a peasant laugh at a coarse piece of smut”, concluded Freud (1905/1960: 100). Smut, or obscenity, as Freud defined it, is “the intentional bringing into prominence of sexual facts and relations by speech”. Smut, went on Freud, targets a woman and can be compared to a “seduction”. Since its recipient, a woman, “become[s] aware of the speaker’s excitement and as a result [becomes] sexually excited in turn”, smut’s aim is to derive pleasure from “see[ing] what is sexually exposed”, a desire peculiar to infantile libido. In males, certain part of this “urge” has been retained, and makes itself heard in a “wooing speech”, whose role is to prepare the sexual act. If a woman is unwilling to submit, however, a wooing speech “becomes an aim in itself in the shape of smut” and “derives pleasure from the signs of [sexual excitement] in the woman”. Thus, noticed Freud, “the woman’s inflexibility” is necessary for smut to crop up, a condition particularly likely to be fulfilled if another man is present. Then, surprisingly, this third party, originally an obstacle in libido’s way, becomes of much assistance to the aggressor; also, it is the third party who seems to become the intended recipient of obscenity: “Through the first person’s smutty speech the woman is exposed before the third, who, as listener, has now been bribed by the effortless satisfaction of his own libido”, a success manifested through the third party’s laughter. However, in more “refined” circles, where the higher levels of culture and the resulting repression of certain crude sexual aspirations apply, smut comes to an end in the company of a woman, or at most “is only tolerated when it has the character of a joke” (1905/1960: 97-99), a condition that the “riddles” discussed seem to fulfill. However, one important factor is not to be overlooked as far as the Anglo-Saxon social structure is concerned, a factor which, as a matter of fact, does tend to be disregarded, at least in some more recent attempts at movie portrayals of the era: namely, that women were denied participation in feasting, one of the most popular ways of entertainment of those days, a brilliant occasion to share some smutty jokes. Therefore, if mead halls were places of exclusively male gatherings, the necessity of disguising obscenity as obscene jokes may seem redundant. Yet, the repression is an internal hindrance, largely independent from external circumstances, and thus, “[t]he woman who is thought of as having been present in the initial situation is afterwards retained as though she were still present, or in her absence her influence still has an intimidating effect on the men” (Freud, 1905/1960: 100).
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6. Fore-pleasure and comic façade
It is therefore what is blocked by repression that emerges as a chief source of pleasure in a tendentious joke. However, it needs to be emphasized that the access to beneath repression is granted only through what was defined as the joke technique, which, as explained above, is capable of creating independent pleasure. In a tendentious joke, both those kinds of pleasure are amalgamated according to the “fore-pleasure principle”. The fore-pleasure, that is “the pleasure that serves to initiate the large release of pleasure” (Freud, 1905/1960: 133), is the same phenomenon that holds for the introductory activities of the sexual act: kissing, fondling, stroking etc. are undoubtedly characterized by the pleasurable sensations, and at the same time, pave the way for the proper sexual act, which in its turn offers even greater amount of pleasure (Freud, 1905/1953). Tendentious jokes work accordingly, using the technique-related pleasure so as to liberate the pleasure disabled by repression:
[T]he enjoyment obtained [through a tendentious joke] is not only that produced by the joke: it is incomparably greater. It is so much greater than the pleasure from the joke that we must suppose that the hitherto suppressed purpose [e.g. sexual aggression] has succeeded in making its way through, perhaps without any diminution whatever (Freud, 1905/1960: 133).
At this point, it may prove particularly interesting to re-examine the “riddles” in question in terms of their technique, since it may turn out that it serves to build the fore-pleasure in slightly different manner. In the form in which they come, the Anglo-Saxon riddles are only capable of satisfying one’s libido, since they seem to be openly and directly referring to the realm of sexuality. It is not until the actual “answers” are provided that the riddles start working as jokes; that the ambiguity of certain words or phrases becomes apparent. With the Dreyfus joke and the likes, this ambiguity is valid from the very beginning. In order for the Anglo-Saxon jokes to work accordingly, they would have had to be phrased differently, i.e.: “A key is like a penis: it is stiff, strong, pierced in front and fills a hole with its hard head”; the phenomenon of double meaning would then have been exclusively responsible for generating the fore-pleasure. As regards the riddles in question, various ambiguities they resonate with seem only to pave the way for a proper joke technique, where the element of surprise is the foremost factor; the ambiguity is there chiefly as a means of “turning to nothing” of certain “expectations”, (Kant, qtd in Freud, 1905/1960: 174) and not as an independent technique. This brings about the problem of comicality. Freud noticed that certain jokes use what he calls a “a comic façade”, and that those “jokes are able to renounce entirely the fore-pleasure produced by the ordinary methods of joking and make use only of the comic for fore-pleasure” (1905/1960: 151). Freud defined the character of the comic pleasure through the phenomenon of “comparison”, which is “made between two cathectic expenditures that occur in rapid succession and are concerned with the same function, and these expenditures are either brought about in us through empathy into someone else or, without any such relation, are discovered in our own mental processes” (1905/1960: 172). Let’s illustrate this apparently convoluted theory with an example.
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If a woman is confronted with one of the Anglo-Saxon jokes, she is likely to form certain expectations regarding the “riddle’s” subject, or, more precisely, regarding the “magnitude of the impression that is expected” (Freud, 1905/1960: 174). Obviously, the more grand, profound, or generally interesting the impression to come, the greater the effort to be invested into the expectation. Then, out of a sudden, comes the “answer”: “It’s a churn!” Immediately, the entire psychical effort, standing by to be spent on what a woman anticipated would follow, becomes dispensable. Therefore, she becomes a comical figure, having been ready to expend a considerable sum of psychical powers on something that required no such labor. The watchers, through empathizing into her, compare both the quanta and, as a result, experience the comic pleasure (again built upon the “economy of psychic expenditure”) that the joke employs as the fore-pleasure. Whether or not a woman is physically present seems again of no great importance – as was a mere awareness of her constant influence enough to change crude smut into obscene joke, so does it appear enough to make her an object of comic empathizing.
7. Some dream symbolism parallels
The last observation to be made points to an interesting parallel between the Anglo-Saxon jokes being the subject of this paper and another area of Freud’s psychoanalytic research, namely dreams. This final remark of mine is going to draw upon the chapter of this paper’s main source devoted to the matter (Chapter VI: The Relation of Jokes to Dreams and to the Unconscious), in which Freud investigated some analogies between how a dream and a joke emerge from the unconscious material. I will expand the parallels offered by indicating that on certain occasions (on at least four, which are discussed in this paper) jokes and dreams may use similar symbols . In dreams, sexual intercourse, the theme around which the analyzed riddles revolve, may find its symbolic representation as various “rhythmical actions”, “violent experiences” or “certain manual crafts ” (Freud, 1916/1963: 156). All of these feature prominently in the jokes under scrutiny and have already been listed. The female genitals, in their turn,
are symbolically represented by all such objects as share their characteristic of enclosing a hollow space which can take something into itself … (Freud, 1916/1963 : 156).
Hence the presence of what turn out to be a keyhole (riddle 42), an oven (suggested in riddle 43 and actually present in riddle 60; ovens tend to be associated with the uterus more, though), and a churn (the barrel part, in riddle 52). Accordingly,
the male organ […] finds symbolic substitutes in the first instance in things that resemble it in shape - things, accordingly, that are long and up-standing, such as sticks , umbrellas , posts , trees and so on; further, in objects which share with the thing they represent the characteristic of penetrating into the body and injuring - thus, sharp weapons of every kind, knives , daggers , spears , sabers […] (Freud, 1916/1963: 154).
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Obviously, keys, bread dough (when rising), churns (a pole inserted through the lid) and pokers, though not listed, fulfill the criteria Freud named. Interestingly, so does the inseparable cigar of his. Yet, on being approached by one of his students who asked Mr. Freud of the significance of his addiction, the distinguished professor is said to have replied: Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.
8. Conclusions
However, as regards the riddles under scrutiny, a cigar is never just a cigar ; from a Freudian perspective, the analyzed constructs emerge as skillfully crafted, complex, intricate mechanisms which aim at obtaining pleasure by means of a temporary revocation of formidable psychical obstructions, which results in arriving at a major “economy of psychic expenditure”. Ambiguity, the help of which is repeatedly enlisted, has been described as wielding the power of creating independent sums of pleasure. Through disguising the jokes as riddles, however, this power is renounced and the double entendre mode sets the stage for comicality. The latter then acts as the “fore-pleasure”, an incentive whose role is to reopen the long-lost lavish source of pleasure – obscenity. Yet, the most compelling observation comes with realizing that the Anglo-Saxons, on at least some occasions, felt the necessity of resorting to jokes to gain the obscenity-related pleasure. Obscenity, as has been explained in much detail, seeks disguise in the form of an obscene joke as a result of repression, the powerful tool in ego’s hands that is oftentimes launched to overcome some primitive, or, psychoanalytically speaking, infantile and ego-incompatible complexes. Repression, therefore, only occurs with certain personal refinement. Hence, numerous movie portrayals that center around the deeply entrenched stereotypes of the Anglo-Saxons being a bunch of blood-thirsty, slow-on-the-uptake savages probably fail to do them justice.
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References:
Freud, S. (1953) My Views on the Part Played by Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses (1906 [1905]). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume VII (1901-1905): A Case of Hysteria, Three Essays on Sexuality and Other Works (J. Strachey, Trans.). London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 269-279. (Original work published 1906). Freud, S. (1953). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume VII (1901-1905): A Case of Hysteria, Three Essays on Sexuality and Other Works (J. Strachey, Trans.). London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho- analysis, 123-246 (Original work published 1905). Freud, S. (1955) The ‘Uncanny’. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVII (1917-1919): An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works (J Strachey, Trans.). London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 217-156. (Original work published 1919). Freud, S. (1960) Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume VIII (1905): Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (J. Strachey, Trans.). London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1-247. (Original work published 1905). Freud, S. (1963) Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XV (1915-1916): Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (Parts I and II) (J. Strachey, Trans.). London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1-240. (Original work published 1916).
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Queen’s English: Is Queen Elizabeth II becoming non-standard?
Michał Piotrowski University of Lodz
1. Introduction
Language change is an obvious fact. It includes variation over space, time and social stratification, all of which are interrelated (Holmes, 2001). A diversity of language creates a need for a standard dialect, one that would be “correct” and “appropriate” and allow people to be understood. The process of standardisation consists of seven stages: selection, acceptance, diffusion, maintenance, elaboration of function, codification and prescription (Nevalainen and Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 2006). It affects both speech and writing, the latter being the easier to unify and the former being very difficult to control. In the case of English, the most prominent and acceptable variety was the one used by the monarch, which is how the King’s (or Queen’s – depending on the sovereign) English came to being (Crystal, 2005). In the 18 th century it was suggested that not only could the royal pronunciation be seen as proper, but also pronunciation of “the polite London society” (London is, nevertheless, the residence of the court). Ellis called it “Received” and he accepted some regional colouring (Crystal, 2005: 468). The accent became so popular that it started to be used in public schools and in the Anglican church. With time, the regional element died out, marking the beginning of Received Pronunciation (RP hereafter), a term coined by Daniel Jones (Crystal 2005). From that point on, this accent has been considered supra-regional (Crystal 2005) or supralocal (Nevalainen and Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 2006). Today, it is also called BBC, Oxford or Queen’s/King’s English 3. RP has become a marker of higher social status and, clearly, it has been used by educated people. However, having a standard does not mean that it will not change. The change in RP itself is illustrated by the division of the accent itself into conservative, general (or mainstream) and advanced (Gimson, 1989). Gimson identified conservative RP with older generation, mainstream with the BBC’s presenters and advanced with young speakers from the upper class. The last group was considered to be the most influenced by other accents of English. This division implies that the age of a speaker has an impact on the way one speaks, which is supported by Holmes (2001), who stated that younger people have a tendency to use linguistic novelties more often than elderly speakers. In the light of the abovementioned facts, it might be interesting to investigate the pronunciation of the contemporary monarch, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Undoubtedly, the Queen is a representative of the
3 Queen’s/King’s English referring to the whole dialect, not only to pronunciation.
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 28 upper class, and a native speaker of RP 4. For Wells (2007), however, “’the Queen’s English’ 5 is a somewhat dated synonym of Standard English: the standard dialect, not an accent. It is not the monarch’s personal idiolect, but a variety with millions of speakers”. For the purpose of this study, it may be safely assumed that Her Majesty the Queen is a quite representative speaker of RP and, therefore, is the perfect subject for tracing the changes in the whole standard accent.
2. Aims and methodology
The study was inspired by a comment to an article (Radford 2000) in The Guardian which stated that Her Majesty would soon speak with a non-standard accent, a one that is closer to Cockney. The aim of the study is to check whether there have been some changes in Queen’s pronunciation of consonants, the hypothesis being that they have indeed taken place. To corroborate it, the recordings of the first and then the most recent Christmas messages, i.e. from 1957 and 2010 (the transcripts can be found in Appendix 1 and 2) were analysed in terms of h-dropping, yod-dropping, the quality of /r/ and t-glottalization. The analysis was mainly empirical, but in more problematic cases spectrographic analysis was made. The level of formality of the recordings is indeed very high, probably even higher than reading word lists. The assumption was that peculiar pronunciation in such a formal environment may be of greater value than pronunciation heard in informal surrounding.
3. Variables
H-dropping was chosen, apart from being suggested by the title of the article from The Guardian , as the most stigmatised of all the features used in the analysis. Trudgill (2001) pointed out that h-dropping (in lexical words) is immensely popular in Britain, though it cannot be a standard feature. If it crept into the Queen’s speech, it would prove that Her Majesty’s speech is highly non-standard. Yod-dropping is a popular feature of American English (Gimson, 1989). Because of the Americanisation of the British society, it is considered to be a typical distributional difference. Though widely accepted in RP, it is more likely to be used by the young. Such a tendency is to be seen in surveys in Longman Pronunciation Dictionary . Thus, analysing this feature may point the Queen’s tendencies to assimilate to either the younger or older generations of British subjects. When it comes to the trilled/tapped /r/, it is most commonly, realised as a frictionless continuant. Nevertheless, there are some other possible allophonic realisations. A tap is old-fashioned, but still may be observed in intervocalic positions. A trill is pronounced in highly stylised speech (Gimson, 1989). Usage of either depends entirely on the speaker, Gimson gave only the most common examples of consonants followed by a tap and no examples of those followed by a trill. In such a case, for the purpose of this analysis, all prevocalic /r/’s were considered as a possible token for these features to appear.
4 Trudgill (2001) used such a term to describe a person who was born in an RP-speaking family. 5 Note: Queen’s English, not Queen’s accent.
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T-glottalization is the most popular non-standard feature that is present in RP. Also, it is considered to be non-regional, which makes it a perfect material for a standard feature (Trudgill, 2001). All possibilities of /t/- glottalization were taken into consideration: intervocalic (stigmatised) and those accepted in RP, i.e. “a glottal closure often replaces /t/ when the following consonant is homorganic” (Gimson, 1989: 170). No distinction was made between a glottal stop or glottal reinforcement. The spectrographic analysis was of little help, because both /t/ and glottal stop are stops and they are visible in the spectrograms only in certain environments.
4. Results and analysis
The results of the analysis (shown in Tables 1. and 2. below) did not differ considerably. Therefore, the p-value was not calculated.
/t/- h-dropping yod-dropping Trill/tap glottalization Possibilities 32 8 90 76 Actual 4 4 ( 12,5% ) 2 ( 25% ) 8 ( 10,53% ) instances (4,44% ) Table 1. The results of the analysis of the Christmas message from 1957.
yod- /t/- h-dropping Trill/tap dropping glottalization Possibilities 22 3 77 66 Actual 3 1 ( 33,33% ) 3 ( 3,9% ) 7 ( 10,61% ) instances (13,64% ) Table 2. The results of the analysis of the Christmas message from 2010.
4.1. H-dropping
The results in Tables 1. and 2. may seem surprising, because they prove the fact that sometimes the Queen does not pronounce the /h/ sound. It is not really the case, because both function and lexical words were taken into account during the study. Table 3. shows the analysis in detail. The choice of analysing h-dropping in function words may seem not justified, because the phenomenon in question occurs very often in connected speech and is by no means non-standard. However, the character of the speech entails very clear pronunciation. Thus, it might be stated that h-dropping is not preferred and that it is rather avoided. Still, the number of instances recorded does not allow to form any rule. The choice of analysing h-dropping in function words may seem not justified, because the phenomenon in question occurs very often in connected speech and is by no means non-standard. However, the character of the speech entails very clear pronunciation. Thus, it might be stated that h-dropping is not preferred and that it is rather avoided. Still, the number of instances recorded does not allow to form any rule.
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Function words Lexical words
1957 2010 1957 2010 Possibilities 18 13 14 9 Actual 4 3 ( 23,08% ) 0 ( 0% ) 0 ( 0% ) instances (22,22% ) Table 3. A deeper analysis of h-dropping.
The analysis posed no considerable problems, except for the case of and his leadership . The empirical study was dubious, but the spectrogram (Figure 1.) showed that the /h/ sound is pronounced. Interestingly, it pointed out voicing of that sound.
Figure 1. Spectrogram of and his leadership .
4.2 Yod-dropping
Unfortunately, many words that are prone to undergo yod-dropping were not used frequently in any of the speeches. Figures give little insight into the Queen’s speech. However, from such a small sample some interesting patterns may be observed. Her Highness did not drop /j/ after voiced alveolar nasal and voiced velar plosive. It seems that the style of Her Majesty’s has been kept. The only occurrences of the abovementioned process are visible in the words figure , durin g and Portugal . The pronunciation without /j/ of the former word is widespread in Britain, but condemned in America (Wells 2008). However, it is still an example of yod-dropping. The latter words, Portugal (in 1957) and during (in 2010), are examples of yod-coalescence. Nevertheless, Wells (2008) in his dictionary also suggests the alternative pronunciation with /j/. Therefore, for the purpose of this study, yod-coalescence is counted as an instance of yod-dropping. The word during , used in 1957, posed some problems. Spectrogram (Figure 2.) did not help much. Although /j/ creates a kind of a slope from a formant, in this case it looked more like /u/ realised with an [i] onglide. After deeper empirical analysis it was counted as the example of non-dropped /j/.
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Figure 2. Spectrogram of during .
4.3 /r/ realised as a tap or a trill
The analysis showed that Queen Elizabeth uses only a tap and this is in intervocalic positions only (see Table 4.). What is interesting, is the fact that she used a tap in the word very in 3 out of 3 tokens in 1957. In 2010, she did not use a tap in 1 instance and the second one is rather confusing. The spectrogram of very (Figure 3.) in the phrase a very happy Christmas does not help in identification of the sound. Empirically it seems to be in between a continuant and a tap, though in the end, it was classified as a tap.
1957 2010
intervocalically C/r/V intervocalically C/r/V Possibilities 33 58 23 54 Actual 4 ( 12,12% ) 0 ( 0% ) 3 ( 13,04%) 0 ( 0% ) instances Table 4. More detailed analysis of the realisation of /r/.
The results suggest that the Queen is probably trying to avoid tapping. Despite her age, she uses a modern realisation of /r/.
Figure 3. Spectrogram of very . /r/ is in the place where there is a blank spot in F2.
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4.4. T-glottalization
The number of actual instances do not differ much. More important is the fact that in 1957 the Queen was using t-glottalizing in one-syllable words, when /t/ was followed by /l, s, θ/. In 2010, she was glottalizing /t/ in more complex words, before /n, p, t/. Surely, Queen does not use glottal stops as often as her grandsons do.
5. Conclusions
It turns out that there has been no real and serious change in the accent of Queen Elizabeth II. The study reached its aim, though the zero hypothesis that the Queen’s speech has changed was rejected. Lack of H- dropping proves that the Queen takes little from Cockney and she probably will not change that in the future. Yod-dropping varies and it should be analysed more carefully with a much larger sample. The Queen seems to have some preference for the words she wants to sound /j/-less. I assume it is not a result of Americanisation. When it comes to the quality of /r/, Queen Elizabeth is still using the dated tap, but only in voiced positions. Last, but not least, the process of /t/-glottalizing was not used as often as it was thought it would be. Nevertheless, the Queen uses it, though it appears to be controlled. In that respect, Her Majesty is not following the trend and keeps to the old habits. This study presented only one side of Queen’s English – the consonants, which are not so susceptible to change. To gain a deeper insight into the changes which have taken place within the Queen's pronunciation of English, it would be advisable to carry out a follow up study focusing more on the vowels.
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References
Crystal, D. (2005) The Stories of English . London: Penguin. Gimson, A. C. (1989) An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English . New York: Routledge. Holmes, J. (2001) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics . London: Pearson. Nevalainen, T. and Tieken-Boon van Ostade, I. (2006) Standardisation. In Hogg, R. and Denison, D. (eds) A history of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP. 271-311. Radford, T. 2000. The Queen's English of today: My 'usband and I.... The Guardian. (http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/queen.htm) [Last accessed 28 th June 2011] Trudgill, P. (2001) Received Pronunciation: Sociolinguistic Aspect. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 36, 3-14. Wells, J. C. 2007. Any young U-RP speakers? John Wells’s Phonetic Blog Archive. (http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/blog0707a.htm) [Last accessed 28 th June 2011] Wells, J. C. (2008) Longman Pronunciation Dictionary . Pearson Education Limited: Essex.
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Appendix 1
The Christmas message – 1957
Happy Christmas. Twenty-five years ago my grandfather broadcast the first of these Christmas messages. Today is another landmark because television has made it possible for many of you to see me in your homes on Christmas Day. My own family often gather round to watch television as they are at this moment, and that is how I imagine you now. I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct. It’s inevitable that I should seem a rather remote figu re to many of you. A successor to the Kings and Queens of history; someone whose face may be familiar in ne wspapers and films but who never really touches your personal lives. But now at least for a few minutes I welcome you to the peace of my own home. That it’s possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us. Because of these changes I am not surprised that many people feel lost and unable to decide what to hold on to and what to discard. How to take advantage of the ne w life without losing the best of the old. But it’s not the new inventions which are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery. They would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint. At this critical moment in our history we will certainly lose the trust and respect of the world if we just abandon those fundamental principles which guided the men and women who built the greatness of this country and Commonwealth. Today we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in batt le but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corr uption of the cynics so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future. It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult. That’s why we can take a pride in the new Commonwealth we are building. This year Ghana and Malaya joined our brotherhood. Both these countries are entirely self-governing. Both achieved their ne w status amicably and peacefully. This advance is a wonderful tribute to the efforts of men of goodwill who have worked together as friends, and I welcome these two countries with all my heart. Last October, I opened the ne w Canadian Parliament, and as you know this was the first time that any Sovereign had done so in Ottawa. Once again I was overwhelmed by the loyalty and enthu siasm of my Canadian people. Also during 1957 my husband and I paid visits to Por tu gal, France, Denmark and the United States of America. In each case the arr angements and formalities were managed with great skill but no one could have 'managed' the welcome we received from the people. In each country I was welcomed as Head of the Commonwealth and as your representative. These nations are our friends largely because we have always tried to do our best to be honest and kindly and because we have tried to stand up for what we believe to be right. In the old days the monarch led his soldiers on the batt lefield and his leadership at all times was close and personal. Today things are very different. I cannot lead you into batt le, I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else, I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations. I believe in our qualities and in our strength, I
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 35 believe that together we can set an example to the world which will encourage upright people everywhere. I would like to read you a few lines from 'Pilgrim's Progress', because I am sure we can say with Mr Valiant for Truth, these words: "Though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arr ive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carr y with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought his batt les who now will be my rewarder." I hope that 1958 may bring you God's blessing and all the things you long for. And so I wish you all, young and old, wherever you may be, all the fun and enjoyment, and the peace of a very happy Christmas. _ - possible h-dropping H - h-dropping _ - possible t-glottalization T - t-glottalization _ - possible alveolar tap/trill R - alveolar tap/trill _ - possible yod-dropping J - yod-dropping
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Appendix 2
The Christmas message – 2010
Over four hundred years ago, King James the Sixth of Scotland inherited the throne of England at a time when the Christian Church was deeply divided. Here at Hampton Court in 1604, he convened a conference of churchmen of all shades of opinion to discuss the future of Christianity in this country. The King agreed to commission a ne w translation of the Bible that was acceptable to all parties. This was to become the King James or Authorized Bible, which next year will be exactly four centuries old. Acknowledged as a masterpiece of English prose and the most vivid translation of the scriptures, the glorious language of this Bible has survived the turbulence of history and given many of us the most widely-recognised and beautiful descriptions of the birth of Jesus Christ which we celebrate today. The King James Bible was a major cooperative endeavour that required the efforts of dozens of the day’s leading scholars. The whole enterprise was guided by an interest in reaching agreement for the wider benefit of the Christian Church, and to bring harmony to the Kingdoms of England and Scotland. Four hundred years later, it is as important as ever to build communities and create harmony, and one of the most powerful ways of doing this is through sport and games. Du ring this past year of abundant sporting events, I have seen for myself just how important sport is in bringing people together from all backgrounds, from all walks of life and from all age-groups. In the parks of towns and cities, and on village greens up and down the country, countless thousands of people every week give up their time to participate in sport and exercise of all sorts, or simply encourage others to do so. These kinds of activity are common throughout the world and play a part in providing a different perspective on life. Apart from developing physical fitness, sport and games can also teach vital social skills. None can be enjoyed without abiding by the rules, and no team can hope to succeed without cooperation between the players. This sort of positive team spirit can benefit communities, companies and enterprises of all kinds. As the success of recent Paralympics bears witness, a love of sport also has the power to help rehabilitate. One only has to think of the injured men and women of the Armed Forces to see how an interest in games and sport can speed recovery and rene w a sense of purpose, enjoyment and comradeship. Right around the world, people gather to compete under standard rules and, in most cases, in a spirit of friendly rivalry. Competitors know that to succeed, they must respect their opponents; very often, they like each other too. Sportsmen and women often speak of the enormous pride they have in representing their country, a sense of belonging to a wider family. We see this vividly at the Commonwealth Games, for example, which is known to many as the Friendly Games and where I am sure you have noticed that it is always the competitors from the smallest countries who receive the loudest cheers. People are capable of belonging to many communities, including a religious faith. King James may not have anticipated quite how important sport and games were to become in promoting harmony and common interests. But from the scriptures in the Bible which bears his name, we know that nothing is more satisfying than the feeling of belonging to a group who are dedicated to helping each other: ‘Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should to do to you, do ye even so to them’. I wish you, and all those whom you love and care for, a very happy Christmas.
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_ - possible h-dropping H - h-dropping _ - possible t-glottalization T - t-glottalization _ - possible alveolar trill R - alveolar trill _ - possible yod-dropping J - yod-dropping
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Dread Talk in reggae music – a universal language of resistance to oppression and inequality?
Magdalena Zając University of Lodz
1. Introduction
The aim of the paper is to determine whether Dread Talk, the language of Rastafarians, can be called a universal language of resistance to oppression and inequality by examining its usage by Gentleman, a German reggae artist. The first section of the article provides historical and social background of the language, while the second discusses Dread Talk itself as well as its origins and some examples of its usage. The two final sections focus on Gentleman’s incorporation of Dread Talk into his lyrics and the possible conclusions that can be drawn from this fact.
2. Historical and social background
2.1. Jamaica – introduction
Jamaica, situated in the Caribbean Sea, is one of the four islands forming the chain called the Greater Antilles. The first known inhabitants of this land had been the Taino, a South American tribe who arrived in Jamaica in the seventh or eighth century A.D. (Mordecai, 2001). In 1494 the island was discovered by Christopher Columbus and became a Spanish colony. Its wealth and prosperity attracted the British who attacked in 1655 and took possession of Jamaica for the next 300 hundred years (Phillippo, 1843). Since 1962 the island has enjoyed full independence and is a parliamentary democracy today (Shechan and Black, 2001).
2.2. Black resistance in Jamaica
The majority of Jamaica’s population descends from African slaves who were brought to the island by Spanish and British colonisers. Since they first set foot there, black people have shown a remarkable spirit of resistance to oppression. Some escaped from their white masters and established free communities that began to be known as Maroons (Mordecai, 2001). Fierce opposition to white domination sparked off two wars between the
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 39 escapees and colonisers, the second of which resulted in the banishment of some of the Maroon inhabitants to Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone. The part of the slave population who did not manage to flee to the Maroons instigated numerous conspiracies and uprisings against their oppressors. According to Phillippo (1843), there were nearly 30 slave insurrections within the period of the British rule over Jamaica. The spirited resistance lead to abolition of slavery in 1838. Sadly, this event did not bring about an improvement in African-Jamaicans’ social standing. Underpaid and living in abject poverty, they still had to face racial discrimination (Black and Shechan, 2001). Such a state of affairs triggered more riots and rebellions that swept Jamaica in the nineteenth and later also in the twentieth century. One of the pivotal figures of black resistance in Jamaica was Marcus Garvey, an activist and founder of Universal Negro Improvement Association, who waged a campaign against the discrimination of black people. Garvey advocated the establishment of a strong Negro nation and advanced the opinion that all people of African descent should unite and repatriate to their African homeland. This viewpoint, which came to be known as pan-africanism, was the bedrock of Rastafari movement (Manget-Johnson, 2008), while a statement that Garvey made in 1930 about the historical importance of Haile Selassie’s coronation gave rise to one of Rastafarians core beliefs (Jamaicans.com 2008).
2.3. Rastafari movement
Rastafari movement originated in Jamaica in the 1930s and was an expression of black Jamaicans’ protest against the dreadful socio-economic situation they found themselves in (Manget-Johnson, 2008). An event that precipitated the rise of the movement and aroused the hope of liberation in African-Jamaicans was the crowning of the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie I, in 1930 (Barrington Edmonds, 2003). The term Rastafari is a combination of Ras , a title bestowed on Ethiopian royalty, and Tafari , Haile Selassie’s family name (Manget- Johnson, 2008). One of Rastafarians’ most salient features is their worship of Haile Selassie, which was inspired by the following statement made by Garvey after the emperor’s coronation (Jamaicans.com 2008):
The Psalmist prophesied that Princes would come out of Egypt and Ethiopia would stretch forth her hands unto God. We have no doubt that the time is now come. Ethiopia is now really stretching forth her hands. This great kingdom of the East has been hidden for many centuries, but gradually she is rising to take a leading place in the world and it is for us of the Negro race to assist in every way to hold up the hand of Emperor Ras Tafari.
Rastafarians look upon Haile Selassie as a messiah who will lead the black race to salvation and use Old Testament verses to provide supportive evidence for the emperor’s deity. Even though Haile Selassie is undoubtedly the key figure in the movement, Rastafari ideology is nevertheless deeply embedded in Christian tradition and culture (Jamaicans.com 2008). Another major aspect of Rastafari movement is its fascination with Africa and the motif of repatriation to the African homeland that has its roots in Garvey’s pan-africanism. This feature of Rastafari culture is also reflected in the fact that, as argued by Savishinsky (1998), Rastafarians’ usage of marihuana as well as their penchant for dreadlocks draw on African and neo-African influences.
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It is also important to note that the hallmark of Rastafarians is the fact they have maintained the resistive spirit of their slave ancestors. Jamaican Rastas condemn the abuse and maltreatment of the black race and frequently manifest their defiance against the establishment (Manget-Johnson, 2008).
3. Dread Talk
3.1. Origins
Dread Talk, although often termed the language of the Rastafari, is more appropriately a register, i.e. a language variety used for specific purposes by a specific group of people. It was created in the 1950s as a secret way of talking, one that those uninitiated to the movement would not be able to understand. Since Rastafarians felt that English lexis could not be used to accurately represent their philosophy and social situation, they fashioned Dread Talk through the reconstruction of English words. As argued by Pollard (qtd in Manget-Johnson, 2008: 52), it was “a conscious attempt to speak in a way that could accurately describe his [Rastafarian] socioeconomic position as the man looking up from under”. Dread Talk was also a means of expressing Jamaican Rasta’s defiance towards injustice and manifesting their resistance to maltreatment (Manget-Johnson, 2008). Thus, it could be said that the members of Rastafari movement attempted to conquer oppression with words instead of violence.
3.2. Examples
Since, as pointed out in section 2.3., Rastafari movement is deeply rooted in Christian philosophy, there exist a number of Dread Talk words that refer to the Bible. A prime example would be the lexical item Jah, which signifies God or Haile Selassie, and most probably derives from Jehovah , the name that God revealed to his people in the Old Testament. Another Dread Talk word originating from the Old Testament is Babylon . This lexical item refers to the city in ancient Mesopotamia, the inhabitants of which were regarded as highly materialistic and preoccupied solely with making profit. Rastafarians use Babylon to denote everything or everyone they believe to be corrupted or depraved. The word is frequently associated with the police, the establishment or the western society. One other lexeme that deserves to be mentioned in connection with Biblical references is Zion , the name of the mountain in Jerusalem where Jesus held his last supper. In Dread Talk it signifies paradise and is often identified as pertaining to Ethiopia (Manget-Johnson, 2008). Another set of lexical items characteristic of Dread Talk is the group containing the /ai/ diphthong, which is a sound of paramount importance in the Rastafari culture. It significance lies in the fact that it denotes both I, the ego, and eye, the organ of sight. The I = eye pun serves to underscore Rastafarians’ ability to perceive more that non-Rastas (Alleyne, qtd in Jackaman, 2003). Some words belonging to this group include: irie (good, alright), iration (creation), ital (food), as well as the term I and I (me, us, God in us). There also exist a number of English-origin lexical items that Rastafarians reconstructed believing they do not convey the true meaning of the notions they are meant to represent. One of the most prominent examples
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 41 seems to be the word understand , transformed into overstand, since to understand is a positive concept, while the morpheme under- was deemed to carry negative connotations by Jamaican Rastas. Similarly, oppresion was substituted with downpression , as op- was perceived to signify something positive, whereas the notion itself is negative (Manget-Johnson, 2008). Two other Dread Talk elements that seem to be worth mentioning are the words trod and reasoning . The former, derived from the past tense and past participle of tread , means to walk or to travel, whereas the latter refers to the gatherings during which Rastafarians smoke marihuana, talk about scripture, politics and generally converse (Manget-Johnson, 2008).
3.3. Dread Talk and reggae music
Reggae, a music genre derived from ska and rocksteady, emerged in Jamaica in the 1960s and, as many reggae performers were members of the movement, it quickly came to be associated with Rastafari. As argued by Hansing (2002: 100), some of the musicians
[...] began to use the already existing sound of reggae to communicate their Rastafari ideas and critique of society. Their songs spoke of the sorrows and troubles of black people, of slavery, of colonialism and racism, of police brutality and freedom as well as of Jamaican heroes such as Marcus Garvey and Sam Sharpe and of course of Jah Rastafari.
Reggae performers made use of Dread Talk to articulate the aforementioned ideas, and when reggae gained international popularity the language of Rastafarians spread all over the world. Consequently, there exist a number of reggae artist non-native to Jamaica who incorporate Dread Talk into their lyrics. One of such non- Rastafari users of this variety is Gentleman.
4. Dread Talk and Gentleman
4.1. Gentleman
Tilman Otto, know by his stage name Gentleman, is a German reggae musician who has up until now recorded six studio albums. He calls Jamaica his second home and has been travelling to the island since he was 16 years old. Nevertheless, despite his apparent fascination with Jamaica and Rastafari movement, he cannot be considered a Rastafarian. In his music, Gentleman frequently emphasises his deep belief in God, although it seems important to note that he does not specify which God he refers to. The lyrics of his songs, written in English and Patois, speak of the need for justice and equality and underline the importance of independence of thought. The themes of resistance to oppression and denunciation of iniquity are present in the majority of his songs and so is the use of Dread Talk. The following subsection features examples of Gentleman’s usage of the language of Rastafari.
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4.2. Dread Talk in Gentleman’s lyrics.
This subsection contains excerpts from Gentleman’s songs which illustrate his use of some Dread Talk words. The name of the song, the album it comes from as well as the date of the album’s release are given in brackets. The following examples are not the only instances of Gentleman’s usage of Dread Talk; a somewhat limited number was chosen, since the length of such an article as this one is limited to a few pages.
4.2.1. Babylon
Babylon them words them tough like iron (Strange things, Confidence, 2004) Babylon a war but we putting up resistance (Fire ago bun dem, Gentleman and the Far East Band Live, 2003) Babylon a watch, we round the clock (Caan hold us down, Confidence, 2004) Babylon not like it now dem gon insane (Celebration, Another intensity, 2007) Babylon a try dem best to make us grieve (Mount Zion, Another intensity, 2007)
4.2.2. Jah
I know Jah love is superior (Superior, Confidence, 2004) Jah Jah never fail I know (Jah Jah never fail, Trodin on, 1999) Jah Jah light it shine so bright it can be seen by the blind (Leave us alone, Journey to Jah, 2002) Jah power sign and sealer (In pursuit of happiness, Another intensity, 2007) Whole leap of devastation we see dem ina claim Jah Jah works ya fi dem own (Fast Forward, Diversity, 2010)
4.2.3. Zion
I penetrate Mount Zion gate (Children of tomorrow, Journey to Jah, 2002) No looking back we pon the highway to Zion (Strange things, Confidence, 2004) Trodding Mount Zion only one way to go (Send a prayer, Confidence, 2004) Mount Zion is my home got to find the higher zone (Mount Zion, Another intensity, 2007) Zion train nuh wait so you better be early (Lion’s den, Confidence, 2004)
4.2.4. Overstand
Dem should overstand the power Jah storm bring (Caan hold us down, Confidence, 2004) But it’s overstanding that we turn it ina kingdom (Evolution, Another intensity, 2007) Overstanding the part we have to play (The light within, Another intensity, 2007) Full time now the people overstand (Man a rise, Journey to Jah, 2002) Prophets haffi speak and people overstand (Lion’s den, Confidence, 2004)
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4.2.5. Trod
Trodding through the hills now with the powers of a lion (Strange things, Confidence, 2004) Trodding Mount Zion only one way to go (Send a prayer, Confidence, 2004) I trod daily pon the front line (Children of tomorrow, Journey to Jah, 2002) Yes we keep trodin on (Trodin on, Trodin on, 1999)
4.2.6. I and I
To every mother and every father I and I say bless up (For the children, Confidence, 2004) I and I a stone that the builder refuse (Send a prayer, Confidence, 2004) I and I step pon crime (New Day, Confidence, 2004)
5. Analysis
As can be seen in section 4.2, Gentleman does indeed incorporate Dread Talk into his lyrics. It is also apparent that he uses the register consistently on all his albums. Although it is not visible in the results presented in the previous section, taking Gentleman’s lyrics as a whole, it appears that the lexical items Jah and Babylon prevail in almost all of his songs. Zion , overstand , trod and I and I on the other hand, appear not to be as numerous but are nevertheless present as well. Although the word Zion is often used concomitantly with Moun t, after a closer look at the whole lyrics, it can be inferred that Mount Zion refers to paradise instead of the actual mountain in Jerusalem. Apart from Dread Talk elements, some linguistic features of Patois, an English-based Creole language spoken in Jamaica, can be identified in the lyrics. These include, inter alia, pon , haffi and fi .
6. Conclusion
Taking the information from sections 4 and 5 into consideration, it would seem that Dread Talk can indeed be termed a universal language of resistance to oppression and inequality, since Gentleman, who is not Jamaican, let alone a Rastafarian, uses it successfully to advocate justice, parity and independence of thought. Nevertheless, more examples of such artist are necessary to determine whether Dread Talk is a universal language with more certainty. There also remains the question of Gentleman’s sincerity in promoting the aforementioned ideals. Rastafarians’ vigorous protest and the subsequent inception of Dread Talk were motivated by a genuine anger at being maltreated and abused. What motivates Gentleman remains dubious. However, there seems to be no method of establishing whether his call for justice is earnest. What can be done to learn more about the possible universality of Dread Talk is collecting more data, i.e. finding and examining more instances of its usage by non-Rastafarian reggae performers. A follow-up study might include investigating whether Dread Talk is used outside Jamaica solely in connection with reggae music or is it a more widespread phenomenon. It may also prove interesting to take a closer look at when and how Gentleman
Gavagai Journal 1, 2011 Page 44 incorporates Dread Talk lexemes into his lyrics and whether any intriguing patterns of usage emerge. Investigating when and how Gentleman uses Patois might also prove a subject worth studying.
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References:
Barrington Edmonds, E. (2003) Rastafari. From outcasts to culture bearers . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Black A., Shechan S. (2001) Cultures of the world. Jamaica . New York: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark. Hansing, K. (2002) Rasta, race and revolution: the emergence and development of the Rastafari movement in socialist Cuba . Berlin: Lit Verlag, Jackaman, R. (2003) Broken English/breaking English: a study of contemporary poetries in English . London: Associated University Press. Jamaicans.com. 2008. (http://www.jamaicans.com) [Last accessed: 21 February 2010] Manget-Johnson C. (2008) Dread Talk: The Rastafarians’ Linguistic Response to Societal Oppression. Unpublished M.A. Mordecai M. and Mordecai P. (2001) Culture and customs of Latin America and the Caribbean. Culture and customs of Jamaica . Westport: Greenwood Press. Phillippo J. M. (1843) Jamaica: Its past and present state . London: J. Snow. Savishinsky, N. S. (1998) African dimension of the Jamaican Rastafarian Movement. In McFarlane A. A., Murrell, N. S., and Spencer, W. D. (eds) (1998) Chanting down Babylon: the Rastafari reader . Philadelphia: Temple University, 125-144
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