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'.

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

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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 continent (including Antarctica); in every sea centuries of Anglo-American economic and (including the safety language of shipping, cultural predominance have contributed Seaspeak); in the air (including the safety considerably to the language's status today... I language of aircraft, Airspeak) and in space work in an international organization where English is a main working language. Native (with NASAspeak); in thought (which we don't English speakers have a double advantage at often think about), in speech (what I'm doing such organizations: Even though they are now), in writing (what I'm holding here); in required to speak a language other than print on paper and on screen; in sound on tape English, that other language is frequendy and on film; by radio, television, and tele- French. And compared with the remoteness of phone; and via electronic networks and multi- English from my native language - Japanese - media; and as one's mother tongue or other the difference between English and French is tongue, adequately, haltingly, constantly, negligible. I have to live with this unfortunate fate: My native tongue is remote from European intermittently, happily, unhappily, or ambiva- languages. lently by around a fifth of the human race, with millions more joining the club every year in the Yet I believe I have the right to request that my Anglo-American friends who are involved in world's schools. international activities not abuse their privilege, Edmund Weiner studies English and records even though they do not do so intentionally. it in one of the greatest dictionary enterprises First of all, I would like them to know that the the world has ever seen, the Oxford English Dic- English they speak at home is not always an tionary. It began about 150 years ago, and now internationally acceptable English.... I sincerely proceeds globally with the help of highly believe there exists a cosmopolitan English - a sophisticated electronic equipment. I study lingua franca, written or spoken — that is English, edit a journal entirely devoted to it, clearly different from what native English speakers use unconsciously in their daily life.... and do this for Cambridge. The study of We non-natives are desperately learning English is an international industry. Tens of English; each word pronounced by us thousands of scholars engage in it throughout represents our blood, sweat and tears. Our the world, teaching a student population of English proficiency is tangible evidence of our millions and producing innumerable books, achievement of will, not an accident of birth. periodicals, monographs, dissertations, papers, Dear Anglo-Americans, please show us you are articles, reports, conference proceedings, class also taking pains to make yourselves notes, course books, newsletters, and Internet understood in an international setting. contributions. I help direct the Dictionary Research Centre of the University of Exeter, Such non-native points of view are on the and it is clear from our experience there with increase, and as the reasonableness of their case placements for our M.A. students that there is becomes apparent further efforts are likely to be plenty of work in the business of English dictio- made to regularize whatever we mean by Inter- naries as indeed in the teaching of English national or World Standard English. The worldwide. It is and will be for the foreseeable assumption of the internationalizers is that future a viable career option. everybody - native and non-native alike - should speak distinctly and at an optimal speed, taking Linguistic good neighbourliness turns and not crudely interrupting, and seeking to be aware of different cultural conventions in Yet, oddly enough, this is not a time when the world's Englishes. A kind of linguistic good native speakers of English can just sit back and neighbourliness. And native speakers in partic- congratulate themselves that everybody else ular will take care about using slang, jargon, has to learn the language we have been born idioms, jokes, and allusions that foreign users to. It ain't as simple as that. Recendy in the may not know, so that they find themselves at a International Herald Tribune (3 Nov 95), which double disadvantage. is published by Americans in Paris and calls All of which is fine, but I am happy to note itself - justifiably - 'the global newspaper", something new in the commentaries on English Mikie Kiyoi, a Japanese woman, published an as a world language in the last few years. Vari- article with the title 'Dear English Speakers, ous observers have been noting that one domi- Please Drop the Dialects'. In it she says: nant world language may not in fact mean the It is incontestable that English is the world's end of linguistic diversity. English-speaking peo- most accepted working language. Several ple are famous for being monoglots, noting with

THE GALACTIC LANGUAGE 55

relief that other people will have to learn their other languages, and the future appears likely language. Soon the majority of speakers - and I to be a continuation of this. Indeed, even inter- mean competent speakers - of English in the stellar tongues get in on the act. An academic lin- world will be non-natives: maybe by 2130 a guist in California, Marc Okrand, was asked a billion of them to half a billion of us. That is, they few years ago to provide some Klingon words for will be at least bilingual in one other language an episode of Star Trek. He duly did, creating a and English. This will place all the unilingual language appropriate to these gruff, snarling Anglophones at a communicative and cultural warrior aliens (see panel). Out of that invitation disadvantage, and will mean that the world view Okrand has since spun a series of books that of language use will be predominantly multilin- started with The Klingon Dictionary of 1985. gual. It also however appears to mean that There are now, mirabile dictu, even university English will massively mix with other languages courses in Klingon, which has become a popu- to form a range of Anglo-hybrids such as Spang- lar new American language. So, let me leave you lish, as when someone says 'Sometimes I start a now with the handy phrase Jol Ylchu - which is sentence in English y termino en espanol' ('... the rough Klingon equivalent of 'Beam me up, and end in Spanish'), a condition already wide- Scotty5. This, along with 'to boldly go' and 'It's spread in the United States. life, Jim, but not as we know it1, has become part English has in fact always mixed freely with of English as we all now know it. ED

56 ENGLISH TODAY 58 April 1999