John Osborne's Radio Head

Lingua e comunicazione inglese III (cfu 3) (2/9, Friday 15 March 2013, h. 08:00–10:00, aula A8) prof. Iain Halliday Corso di laurea: Lingue per la comunicazione internazionale John Osborne’s Radio Head: Up and Down the Dial of British Radio The last paragraph of Osborne’s introduction to his book will serve us well for some linguistic considerations, and to help me create an introduction to this module: “I decided to do something with my love of radio. Despite being a regular listener since those early days of enjoying Just a Minute, I had barely scratched radio’s surface. Scrolling through the presets of my digital radio I realized how much radio there was that I had never heard, and would have no reason to listen to. So I started to tune in to a different station every day and wrote about what I heard. I listened from the moment I woke up, listened while I was at work and carried on until I went to bed. I had a job doing data entry and so was able to listen at my desk to the sounds of the radio stations of the UK rather than office conversations. I discovered stations I never knew existed, listened to shows I had never heard before, from Dynamite MC on Kiss FM to Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. I decided to try to learn about radio and speak to people I had grown up listening to, as well as those who worked in key roles in the radio industry. Some of those I ended up spending time with included Mark Radcliffe, Stuart Maconie and the editor of the Radio Times, to find out their thoughts about radio in the twenty-first century, what makes radio so exciting, and to learn something I feel so close to, yet know so little about.” (xi–xii) Another extract from Osborne’s book, this time the first eight paragraphs from the second chapter, to give us an idea of something of the variety of the book, variety that derives directly from his choice to listen to radio stations that he would not normally listen to. Next week we’ll listen to some audio extracts from various radio stations and consider the differences in the use of the English language that we wind in them. 2 BBC ASIAN NETWORK ‘There are an increasing number of Asian women who cannot cook.’ ‘I know. I married one.’ (Nihal) The booming laugh of Geoff means I wake with a smile on my face and the desire to listen to another station for the day. My face covered in shaving cream, I switch on the radio in my kitchen as the country snaps, crackles and pops. ‘The most likely person to bump into a parked car is aged between twenty-five and thirty-four, female, driving a small blue hatchback, and will be in a supermarket car park on a Saturday afternoon,’ says the female presenter, who sounds like she fits firmly into the demographic she describes. ‘If you bumped into a parked car and made a dent would you leave a note?’ she asks. ‘Of course,’ her colleague in the studio replies. ‘Liar!’ she laughs. ‘Do you think men are better drivers than women?’ ‘I’m not saying anything,’ he replies, perhaps wisely, and the next song comes on, by Avril Lavigne. I am listening to the BBC Asian Network. It is not a station I have ever heard before and am intrigued. When I first decided to try out kinds of radio I wouldn’t otherwise listen to, this was the station I thought of first, something I wouldn’t normally tune in to, which is why it’s exciting to give myself the opportunity. After two records the presenter, Sonia Deol, talks about the increasing problem of faith healers advertising in the Asian press. It has been a recent phenomenon with adverts full of unlikely boasts; promises such as ‘a hundred per cent guaranteed success’ and ‘results every time’. Sonia interviews the head of Trading Standards. He explains that the faith healers get away with it because victims rarely complain. ‘In the last two years there have only been a dozen complaints. People are either too embarrassed to report anyone to the authorities, or are superstitious that if they complain then the matter which the faith healer has been dealing with will never be resolved.’ The problems faith healers have been solving vary from the hysterical to the profoundly sad: from ‘Please make my boyfriend be nicer to me’ to ‘I am struggling to cope without my late wife’. The faith healers thrive because people who seek them tend to be in a vulnerable state. ‘It is against the code of practice,’ the man from Trading Standards continues, ‘but these people can easily change their name and telephone number. Also, it is hard to prove that somebody isn’t a faith healer, they can counter any allegation by maintaining that they believe they possess this special power.’ As I explained in class today, the aim in this type of close reading of a text is to get you used to the idea of carrying out this type of reading, a type of reading that's essential for you to improve your language. In embarking on any project, it’s very important to make a decision, to follow one’s will, one’s desire Soon you will all be embarking on your own writing projects, i.e. your final essays (undergraduate), your degree dissertations (postgraduate)… To barely [only just] scratch the surface of something – the figure of speech indicates that the action is merely superficial The noun “scroll” [rotolo] is very old – what is a scroll? Scrolls now are very rare and precious things and we find them generally in archives and libraries. Scrolls existed before books … “scroll through presets on a digital radio” – what does that mean? The device automatically tunes* itself *This verb in Italian has two synonyms for the two main meanings in English – one verb is “sintonizzare”, the other is, “accordare” I wonder if Osborne would have written this book before the advent of digital radio – because all these stations would not have been immediately available to him The other one [the other “student” radio station in Catania] is an offshoot of Radio Zammù – Radio Lab There are several “radio portals” on the web The type of decision and the type of self-discipline that is essential for learning – Osborne's decision to listen to a new station every day and to write about it How many of you are addicted to the game, Ruzzle? The reason I talk about all of this is because it’s a question of how we choose (or don’t choose) to spend our time … The way he chooses to write about some of his colleagues is not always very flattering “flattery will get you nowhere” – a common locution, a riposte in English if someone is trying to flatter you Deliberately flattering you to “get in your good books”, to gain favor with you [“allisciare” by the way is in the Zingarelli as a rare form of “lisciare”, which has the figurative meaning of “adulare”, “lusingare” …] “MC” stands for “Master of Ceremonies” “Woman’s Hour” often has a very feminist stance to have the giggles BBC Asian Network and BBC Radio 6 Music were recently under threat of cuts, but they were both (I think) reprieved (saved) following listener protests [“i before e, except after c” – a mnemonic aid] The new restaurant in vico Santa Filomena: “Fud”* [“fuddy-duddy”, a noun indicating a very boring and/or awkward person] – very entertaining for Italian speakers, but potentially confusing for native English speakers *I was asked by one student if “fud” means anything in English. I replied that I didn't think so and offered “fuddy-duddy” as the nearest similar word, but in fact on consulting the OED, I found this: fud, n.1 Pronunciation: /fʌd/ Etymology: Of uncertain origin; perhaps < or cognate with Old Norse fuð... Sc. and north. dial. 1. ‘The backside or buttocks’ (Jamieson). 1785 Select Coll. Poems Buchan Dial. 5 He..turn'd to us his fud. 1804 W. TARRAS Poems 99, I..wad yir heavy fud gie A piercin pike. Which is funny, because it brings us back to “bum” ... And then I found this acronym on the Oxford Dictionaries American website: FUD Syllabification: (FUD) Pronunciation: /fəd/ Definition of FUD noun fear, uncertainty and doubt, usually evoked intentionally in order to put a competitor at a disadvantage:as modifierthe FUD factor “boom” in Italian phonetic spelling, “bum”, a fact which potentially creates problems for a native English speaker Kellog’s had the slogan “snap, crackle, pop” for their product, Rice Krispies – Osborne is a clever writer in the way he transforms the slogan into a verbal form .

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