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What is English?: And Why Should We Care?, by Tim William Machan
Download PDF What is English?: And Why Should We Care?, by Tim William Machan
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What is English? Can we be as certain as we usually are when we say something is not English? To find some answers Tim Machan explores the language's present and past, and looks ahead to its futures among the one and a half billion people who speak it. His search is fascinating and important, for definitions of English have influenced education and law in many countries and helped shape the identities of those who live in them.
Finding an account that fits the constantly changing varieties of English is, Tim Machan finds, anything but simple. But he rises to the challenge, grappling with its elusive essence through episodes in its history. He looks at the ambitions of Caxton, the preoccupations of Johnson, and the eloquence of Churchill, tussles with the jargons of contemporary business, and pursues his object from rural America to James Cook's Australia. He examines creoles, pidgins, and dialects, and takes apart competing histories showing their assumptions and prejudices. Finally he reveals the stable category English, resting paradoxically within its constantly mutating forms and varieties.
This is a book for everyone interested in English and the role of language in society and culture.
- Sales Rank: #1501461 in Books
- Published on: 2013-09-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.40" h x 1.00" w x 9.30" l, 1.73 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 416 pages
Review
"English never stands still. This intelligent and entertaining book illuminates how a global language depends on that flux." --The Times
"Especially valuable are the many interesting connections Machan makes among conceptions of English in different times and places... A rewarding book for anyone interested in the English language, especially students of English and educators. Highly recommended." --Choice
"[A] rewarding book for anyone interested in the English language... Highly recommended." --Choice
About the Author
Tim Machan is Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. His books include English in the Middle Ages and Language Anxiety published by Oxford University Press in 2003 and 2009 respectively.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
TALKING AROUND ENGLISH
By DAVID BRYSON
One thing that this book could have done with is a preface from the author. A preface could have been relied on to tell us precisely what the author thinks his theme is, and that is something we have to guess for ourselves. There are four sections to the book, headed respectively The River of English, English by the Books, English in Action and Beyond English. The linking thread has to be assumed as Machan’s metaphor of the ‘river of English’. However I found this image contrived and unhelpful. Professor Machan starts promisingly by posing the questions we might expect, namely what is ‘English’ and how do we recognise it? To this he adds the odd question ‘why should we care?’ and this question takes the book down some odd byways and along many a detour. By way of proclaiming his ‘motto-theme’ Professor Machan introduces his ‘river’ on p18, invoking the famous statement attributed to the pre-Socratic thinker Heraclitus that one can’t step twice into the same river. Machan interprets this in the same way as I do myself, namely as meaning that one can’t step twice into the same water. All well and good so far, because it is perfectly obvious and sensible to say that, for example, Washington DC and London have stood for centuries on the banks of the Potomac and the Thames and that these identities have been constant. Unfortunately in his very next sentence Machan says that ‘the flowing of time prevents us from visiting the same place twice’, which states a flatly contradictory position. ‘The same’ does not have to imply ‘unchanged’. This is the first instance of what I find to be an exasperating difficulty with this book – the author seems to shift his point of view from one page to the next. Add to this Machan’s interest in political and sociological aspects of the introduction of the English language on to ethnic cultures colonised in the course of British or American expansion, an absorption so deep that he almost loses contact with the topic of the language, and the reader begins to feel a bit adrift. The river that Machan’s narrative reminds me of is the Meander.
One distinction that might have helped would have been between what the use of the phrase ‘speaking English’ denotes and what it connotes. At one point Machan says something to the effect that the use of English ’means’ certain effects on certain cultures. That is an altogether different matter from saying that ‘English’ means a certain language distinguishable by its morphology from other languages. It is almost as if the professor was taking advantage of this semantic swerve to indulge his enthusiasm for recounting certain historical episodes, most of which, I regret to say, interest me a good deal less, although of course other readers will be more of Machan’s mind. Indeed I believe that some of what I perceive as shortcomings in this book are the direct outcome of Machan’s enthusiasm and love for the great English language, something that I certainly share with him to that extent. Machan has his academic hat on when he discusses ‘English’ in the narrower sense, and as you would expect this side of the book is full of excellent and illuminating perceptions. When it comes to the American Indian boarding schools and certain other historical depictions I don’t know whether he is really being academic or whether he is just an enthusiast. What is very clear, to me at least, is that this professor of English is proud of the language and keen to assert, or at least imply, its high status and significance.
For me the book starts to get back on the rails (to vary the metaphor) from the point at which Machan’s variable focus lights on Churchill’s vision of an English-speaking union. In this case we have an acknowledged master of the English tongue who was also a political visionary, and I myself hold the view (probably heretical) that here again we have a case of an eminent man’s enthusiasm for the English language running away with his judgment. If I remember rightly, Machan does not endorse Churchill’s idea but it obviously fascinates him, and probably for its grandiosity. Churchill’s famous oration at Fulton MO certainly illustrates the power of the English language as manipulated by a master, but it seems to me to have had the effect of establishing the cold war as a situation beyond recall. It does not need any liking for Stalin, who was a sociopath, or for the Soviet Union, which was a squalid monstrosity, to recall the history of Russia, particularly its very recent history, and understand how such a speech with its appeal for an exclusive union of Anglophones might have convinced Stalin that he had to put the shutters up and keep the English-speakers out.
Do British and American speakers of English speak the same language? Well, quite obviously they do, say I. However Professor Machan concludes his chapter 9 by referring to the dictum usually attributed to Shaw that Britain and America are two nations divided by the same language. That says quite explicitly that it is the same language, but somehow Machan manages to finish with ‘Many of us Anglophones are separated. And what separates us is the reality that we don’t, in fact, all speak the same language.’ With respect to the professor, I disagree. A word and concept that he gives little attention to is ‘dialect’. Many dialects can be under the aegis or umbrella of a single language; and another distinction that I would have liked to see more of is that between using English words and speaking the English language.
A final word on the legitimacy of ‘It’s me.’ Does nobody recognise such a thing as a disjunctive pronoun in English? In French they don’t say ‘C’est je’ for heavens sake. Back to the overview – this book is full of good things, but it’s not a single coherent book.
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