Language and Politics
Preliminary Questions
According to the poet Craig Raine: “Swearing is a more extreme instance of untranslatability. Let me give you four examples. Fuck to bloody shithouse. Shite and onions. I besmirch the milk of thy duty. What are you doing now, you lazy drunken obscene unsayable son of an unnameable gipsy obscenity?” Is he right? How many of these sentences are actually properly swearing in English?
What are the words that most people find offensive these days? Is this something that has changed over time? Why is that?
What would you consider to be an “offensive” work of art? Has the criteria for this become more lenient and tolerant now than in the past?
Should such works be censored?
How does this tie in with how words are used in politics? Look at what Orwell has to say about this: “Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except insofar as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet Press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.” Can you think of any modern examples of words that are used in politics in this way?
James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
I meant a different kind of lamp, sir, said Stephen.
-- Undoubtedly, said the dean.
-- One difficulty, said Stephen, in esthetic discussion is to know whether words are being used according to the literary tradition or according to the tradition of the marketplace. I remember a sentence of Newman's in which he says of the Blessed Virgin that she was detained in the full company of the saints. The use of the word in the marketplace is quite different. I hope I am not detaining you.
-- Not in the least, said the dean politely.
-- No, no, said Stephen, smiling, I mean --
-- Yes, yes; I see, said the dean quickly, I quite catch the point: detain.
He thrust forward his under jaw and uttered a dry short cough.
-- To return to the lamp, he said, the feeding of it is also a nice problem. You must choose the pure oil and you must be careful when you pour it in not to overflow it, not to pour in more than the funnel can hold.
-- What funnel? asked Stephen.
-- The funnel through which you pour the oil into your lamp.
-- That? said Stephen. Is that called a funnel? Is it not a tundish?
-- What is a tundish?
-- That. The funnel.
-- Is that called a tundish in Ireland? asked the dean. I never heard the word in my life.
-- It is called a tundish in Lower Drumcondra, said Stephen, laughing, where they speak the best English.
-- A tundish, said the dean reflectively. That is a most interesting word. I must look that word up. Upon my word I must.
His courtesy of manner rang a little false and Stephen looked at the English convert with the same eyes as the elder brother in the parable may have turned on the prodigal. A humble follower in the wake of clamorous conversions, a poor Englishman in Ireland, he seemed to have entered on the stage of jesuit history when that strange play of intrigue and suffering and envy and struggle and indignity had been all but given through - a late-comer, a tardy spirit. From what had he set out? Perhaps he had been born and bred among serious dissenters, seeing salvation in Jesus only and abhorring the vain pomps of the establishment. Had he felt the need of an implicit faith amid the welter of sectarianism and the jargon of its turbulent schisms, six principle men, peculiar people, seed and snake baptists, supralapsarian dogmatists? Had he found the true church all of a sudden in winding up to the end like a reel of cotton some fine-spun line of reasoning upon insufflation on the imposition of hands or the procession of the Holy Ghost? Or had Lord Christ touched him and bidden him follow, like that disciple who had sat at the receipt of custom, as he sat by the door of some zinc-roofed chapel, yawning and telling over his church pence?
The dean repeated the word yet again.
-- Tundish! Well now, that is interesting!
-- The question you asked me a moment ago seems to me more interesting. What is that beauty which the artist struggles to express from lumps of earth, said Stephen coldly.
The little word seemed to have turned a rapier point of his sensitiveness against this courteous and vigilant foe. He felt with a smart of dejection that the man to whom he was speaking was a countryman of Ben Jonson. He thought:
-- The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.
Textual Questions
What exactly does Stephen mean when he says that English is for him an “acquired speech”, given what we discussed last week.
What is the significance of the different words that they discuss throughout this passage, such as “detain”, “tundish”, “home”, “Christ”, “ale”, “master”? Think in particular of what Orwell says about the politics of words.
Who actually “makes” the words we use in everyday conversation? Do we ever make them ourselves as Stephen dreams of here?
How important is religion in this debate between Stephen and the Dean?
Is there a case to be made that Stephen is being a little oversensitive here?
Tony Harrison - V
What is it that these crude words are revealing?
What is it that this aggro act implies?
Giving the dead their xenophobic feeling
or just a cri-de-coeur because man dies?
So what's a cri-de-coeur, cunt? Can't you speak
the language that yer mam spoke. Think of 'er!
Can yer only get yer tongue round fucking Greek?
Go and fuck yerself with cri-de-coeur!
'She didn't talk like you do for a start!'
I shouted, turning where I thought the voice had been.
She didn't understand yer fucking 'art'!
She thought yer fucking poetry obscene!
I wish on this skin's word deep aspirations,
first the prayer for my parents I can't make
then a call to Britain and to all the nations
made in the name of love for peace's sake.
Aspirations, cunt! Folk on t'fucking dole
'ave got about as much scope to aspire
above the shit they're dumped in, cunt, as coal
aspires to be chucked on t'fucking fire.
OK, forget the aspirations. Look, I know
United's losing gets you fans incensed
and how far the HARP inside you makes you go
but all these Vs: against! against! against!
Ah'll tell yer then what really riles a bloke.
It's reading on their graves the jobs they did---
butcher, publican and baker. Me, I'll croak
doing t'same nowt ah do now as a kid.
'ard birth ah wor, mi mam says, almost killed 'er.
Death after life on t'dole won't seem as 'ard!
Look at this cunt, Wordsworth, organ builder,
this fucking 'aberdasher Appleyard!
If mi mam's up there, don't want to meet 'er
listening to me list mi dirty deeds,
and 'ave to pipe up to St fucking Peter
ah've been on t'dole all mi life in fucking Leeds!
Then t' Alleluias stick in t' angels' gobs.
When dole-wallahs fuck off to the void
what'll t'mason carve up for their jobs?
The cunts who lieth 'ere wor unemployed?
This lot worked at one job all life through.
Byron, 'Tanner', 'Lieth 'ere interred'
They'll chisel fucking poet when they do you
and that, yer cunt, 's a crude four-letter word.
'Listen, cunt!' I said, 'before you start your jeering
the reason why I want this in a book
's to give ungrateful cunts like you a hearing!'
A book, yer stupid cunt, 's not worth a fuck!
'The only reason why I write this poem at all
on yobs like you who do the dirt on death
's to give some higher meaning to your scrawl.'
Don't fucking bother, cunt! Don't waste your breath!
'You piss-artist skinhead cunt, you wouldn't know
and it doesn't fucking matter if you do,
the skin and poet united fucking Rimbaud
but the autre that je est is fucking you.'
Ah've told yer, no more Greek ... That's yer last warning!
Ah'll boot yer fucking balls to Kingdom Come.
They'll find yer cold on t'grave tomorrer morning.
So don't speak Greek. Don't treat me like I'm dumb.
Textual Questions
According to the Daily Mail newspaper V is not a poem, but a “cascade of expletives”. The Tory politician Teddy Taylor remarked that it was “stuffed full of obscenities” and was therefore “objectionable”; in other words that people shouldn't read it. Another Tory MP stated: “It is full of expletives and I can't see that it serves any artistic purpose whatsoever.” Do you agree with these sentiments? What purpose does Harrison give here for his poem?
Harrison himself has said that he wrote the poem due to his anger at seeing the obscene words graffitied on his parent's graves. As he put it: “Language of that nature ought not to have been daubed over a grave where my parents are buried. I was appalled and I wanted to write about it.” Why does he use this language, if it appalls him? Why does he write the poem in the first place?
The Daily Mail wrote that the poem contains “the most explicitly sexual language yet beamed into the nation's living rooms”. Hmm, true, but is this poem even dealing with sex as a theme? And even if it was, so what? Why is sex seen as such a shocking theme?
What is the common theme that unites all the bad language in the poem? Is it the same in every language? Why is this?
Gerald Howarth sees the poet as “another probable Bolshie poet seeking to impose his frustrations on the rest of us.” What politics do you think the poem is discussing, if any? What is the connection between the politics of the poem, and its language and subject matter? Which political parties are normally more intolerant towards bad language?
Bernard Levin makes an interesting point about the taboo of bad language, especially when it is used in either books or on television: “they will have generally unspecified but very terrible consequences, which will have the effect of undermining all moral standards and restraints, leading in turn to a state of affairs in which the very sheep in their pens and the spaniels in their kennels will not be safe from even the most extreme forms of depravity”. Does bad language necessarily lead to lower moral standards in society?
He also makes another interesting point about this theme: “If the words are printed with only their initial letters, followed by asterixes or dashes (“F***, say, or “Sh-“) they are robbed of their dreadful power, and may be read by the most sensitive souls without harm or danger.” Why the f*&% is that? Why do we have “bleeps” during films like Robocop, or Reservoir Dogs? What about Eminem songs on MTV?
The poem was also made into a film, which caused a huge wave of controversy as Britain in the 80's was “looking carefully and urgently at violence and obscenity on TV”. Is this issue still relevant? Should it be?
One headmaster at a school wrote about teaching the poem to kids: “The poem would make an interesting A-level (English equivalent of the matura exam) text. TV quiz shows and advertisements with their values of greed and selfishness are far more dangerous than the bad language in V.” Does he have a point?
It reminds me of a quote from the comedian Bill Hicks about the pop group New Kids on the Block (completely off topic here but fuck it): "Oh come on, Bill, they're the New Kids, don't pick on them, they're so good and they're so clean cut and they're such a good image for the children." Fuck that! When did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children? I want my children to listen to people who fucking ROCKED!” Should we have such clean, nice role models for our children? Footballers who don't go drinking, smoking and gambling? Rock stars who don't take drugs? Politicians who are happily married, with wonderful kids?
1