The Galactic Language TOM Mcarthur

The galactic language TOM McARTHUR Some comments on the power and prestige of Californian usage at the end of the twentieth century [The following article is a slightly adapted Even in the farthest depths of the Delta Quad- version of a talk given at an A-Level English rant, where the starship Voyager is limping Language Dayschool organized by the 70,000 light years home, such beings use Cali- National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, fornian English. the University of Sheffield, on 4 November 1998.] The right accent LET'S SUPPOSE for a moment that we aren't in For certain purposes in English-language this splendid octagonal building in Sheffield at radio, television, and cinema some accents are the close of the twentieth century but in Ops right and others wrong. Thus, in the original [the Operations Room] on a space station Star Trek series in the 1950s it was fine if called Deep Space Nine, four hundred years in Montgomery Scott, the chief engineer of the the future and somewhere out beyond Altair Enterprise, had a Scottish accent - even if it and Betelgeuse. An alien appears on the was produced by a Canadian with an Irish viewscreen in front of us - someone with name, James Doohan. This was because the power shoulders and pointy ears, and he is Scots have for decades been internationally seated on the bridge of a Romulan warbird. associated with ships' engines. There's even a Captain Benjamin Sisko of Star Fleet greets the poem by Rudyard Kipling to prove it, called visitor firmly but with respect, and after a McAndrew's Hymn, which is addressed jointly moment's silence the Romulan replies - in a Liverpool accent. Or a Glasgow, Dublin, Aus- tralian, Indian, Singapore, or Sheffield accent. TOM McARTHUR was born in Glasgow in 1938. It wouldn't be right, would it? A graduate of Glasgow and Edinburgh universities, But this is not because we expect Romulans he has been an officer-instructor in the British Army, Head of English at the Cathedral School, to speak their own language. We've never Bombay, organizer of courses for overseas students heard them do that since Star Trek began. We at the University of Edinburgh, associate professor expect English from them, as we expect it from of English at the Universite du Quebec, and is just about every alien we've ever encountered currently an Honorary Fellow of the University of in all the variations of the Star Trek saga. Exeter. His publications include the 'Longman Whether we think about it or not, however, we Lexicon of Contemporary English', 'A Foundation don't expect just any English from the Romu- Course for Language Teachers', 'Languages of lans, Klingons, Cardassians, and all the rest. Scotland', 'Worlds of Reference', 'The Oxford We know that aliens in fact speak American Companion to the English Language', "The English English. And not just any American English. Languages', and 'Living Words'. 5 2 English Today 58, Vol. 15, No. 2 (April 1999). Printed in the United Kingdom © 1999 Cambridge University Press Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 20:45:30, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078400010968 to heaven and the mighty engines that he Californian English serves: But there is more to California than Star Trek I canna get my sleep tonight; old bones are and Hollywood. There are two other areas hard to please; where this particular state of the Union sets the I'll stand the middle watch up here — alone wi pace and a large part of the standard for God an these English and indeed the world. One centres on My engines, after ninety days o race an rack an strain the New Age movement and a style of speech Through all the seas of all Thy world, slam- that has been called 'psychobabble' - mixing bangin home again. the usage of the hippies, of therapy, of the women's movement, and of social conscious- The international and now intergalactic cliche ness-raising generally, and laced with a fuzzy of Scots and their engines is fine, and runs on eager informality often associated with the so- into the early episodes of The Next Generation - called Valley Girls in and around Los Angeles. first with a woman, Chief Engineer Mac- The other belongs to Silicon Valley, whose Dougall, then with a Lieutenant Commander usage is part of 'computerspeak' or 'comput- Argyle, both of whom were however duly erese', which belongs within a wider but replaced by a truly politically correct figure: mainly US phenomenon called 'technobabble' Geordi La Forge, a visually challenged black - a term also used to describe the technical jar- American male fitted with compensatory opti- gon of Star Trek. cal technology. It was also all right in the Orig- In 1980 the British novelist and academic inal Series if the ship's surgeon Leonard McCoy David Lodge published a widely-praised article sounded like a country doctor from Missouri, called 'Where it's at: California language'. I because that's where he was supposed to come looked at it again before coming here, in order from - but it would have been all wrong if Mr to find some suitable words and phrases. But I Spock from the planet Vulcan had had a South- couldn't. Like I mean I couldn't do that any- ern or an Irish or even an East Coast American more, because everybody kinda does it now. Jewish accent (which would have fitted the Like it's everywhere, and I'm like wow! So we Boston background of Leonard Nimoy, the all just gotta hang in there and everybody and actor who played the part). Spock had to be everything has chilled out. vocally undistracting, because the rest of him - The other California-speak can be found in the ears, the eyebrows, the green blood - were such works as The Hacker's Dictionary, edited distracting enough. And only a general by Eric S. Raymond (MIT Press, 1991). Thus, smoothed-out American accent would fit that crufty means 'poorly built' and footprint is the bill, for both Americans and the world at large. desk area taken up by a piece of hardware, and So, for some purposes and under certain cir- a brain dump is telling someone everything you cumstances, some kinds of English are more know, an activity analogous to a core dump equal than others. The key reason of course is (which is a complete copy of the contents of a that the episodes are made in America for core or main storage unit, dating from the fer- Americans - and not in New York or Chicago rite-core memory, back in the electronic Iron but Los Angeles, where the actors needed for Age). Nothing ages as fast as hacker slang. And all kinds of roles (and, if necessary, accents) it has some real curiosities: as for example can be found. Which is all rather like the BBC wank, a term that in all probability began this when it started up in London in the 1920s. stage of its existence at Columbia University, Then and for several generations afterwards, being, before that, no more and no less than the British grew entirely used to hearing the the British word we all know so well. But I news and other high and serious matters pre- quote from the dictionary: sented in Received Pronunciation, the prestige but minority accent of the monarchy, the aris- A noun denoting a clever technique or person tocracy, the upper middle class, and the 'public' or the result of such cleverness. The adjective schools, whereas sports and gardening and one wariky describes something particularly clever or two other areas of radio and television could (a person, program, or algorithm). safely be left to people with broader and earth- Conversations can also get wanky when there ier accents. are too many wanks involved. This excess wankiness is signalled by an overload of the wankometer. When this happens, the THE GALACTIC LANGUAGE 53 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 20:45:30, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078400010968 conversation's subject must be changed, or all aren't as simple as that. I've just written a book non-wanks will leave. called The English Languages, suggesting (on The dictionary then notes that the usage is what I think is a pretty sound basis) that American only: 'In Britain and the Common- English can reasonably be regarded as a family wealth,' it adds, 'this word is extremely rude and of languages rather than just one straightfor- is best avoided.' And for modesty's sake, no fur- ward homogen(e)ous way of speaking and ther details are supplied. writing. There are Englishes and Englishes. The The use of this word is like the issue of English of Liverpool is not at all the same as the accents. Wank poses no problem for American English of London, nor the English of the hackers. The compiler could have the entry in Caribbean much like the English of India, or his dictionary because the word is so utterly the English of northern India much like that of harmless and inoffensive in the US - and so lit- southern India, and here in every case we are tle known there in its non-American role.

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