There’s something Hibernian about Oik 64. A welcome change from the bookshop holocaust described in Oik 63 and the sad catalogue of recently defunct proprietors. Three Irish writers contribute: Mary Mannion, Aubrey Malone and Martin Keaveney. Jim Burns isn’t Irish but he writes about the notorious commie crackpot Gerry Healy (Galway).

Elsewhere the Wild family takes up residence (squat?). Bob a founder member of the Oik resurrects the Oiku format (100 words exactly). He describes at greater length the misfortunes of a stray dog. Arthur has another squib on murder but most notably their older brother Ernie – now in his nineties – commemorates the battle of Stalingrad and the reactions of Manc oiks to this event. Ernie is no slouch when it comes to vast sagas and his novel Boabdil recreates the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. Yes, Rushdie has also done it so try that first. A large chunk of Boabdil can be read, if you’re in solitary or just mad, on the Crazy Oik website at http://www.crazyoik.co.uk/spike/boabdil.htm

Ernie, as a literary phenomenon, reminds us of that other great oik sage Tommy Jackson memorialised by Jonathon Rée in his book Proletarian Philosophers (see page 36). I was so taken with this oik freak I collected his miscellaneous papers and published them as a PPP book. Like Gerry Healy he was of a radical persuasion but in the CPGB unlike Healy who was a Trotskyist.

We also resurrect a Tanner poem Group Interview written ten years ago. He now lives in Toronto having given up Eng Lit. Both I and Alexis Lykiard thought him a great talent. I still larf over his account of a drunken episode after which he’s is convinced he’s honked up his liver. Liverpool’s answer to Rimbaud. What will those stuffy Torontons make of him?

LANGUAGE

Ken Champion 

    I’ve just finished a phone conversation with Andy who works for an insurance company - though not before I had to listen to a ‘we operate a real life time environment’ message - in which I am asked if my name is spelt with a ‘haitch.’ ‘It’s ‘aitch’’ I say. ‘Right,’‘haitch.’ ‘There’s no ‘aitch’ in ‘aitch’ I say in a friendly manner. ‘It’s haitch,’ innit, ‘haitch,’ he asks, glottal stoppage and all, sounding rather like the ‘rough’ working class of fifty years ago trying to be ‘posh.’ This is another confirmation that, far from dying - as some social commentators would have it - cockney is spreading ubiquitously and exponentially. I’m defining cockney not in terms of phrasing, ‘though there are long-established London phrases and idioms still in use, but in pronunciation, especially the soft and hard ‘th,’ It is a commonplace that the London ‘f’ now dominates, as in ‘frew’ (through) ‘free’ (three) and can be heard, often in recorded form, at stations and airports - there is now a recorded voice on the Heathrow, ‘eafrow,’ Express that tells us that we can now travel ‘free to terminal free.’ And the ’v’ is everywhere too, as in ‘bovver,’ ‘wivout,’ ‘altergever,’ etc. The glottal is also the norm, it’s everywhere, even, or especially, amongst middle class inarticulates who say ‘you know’ three times in one sentence, and TV and radio presenters, commentators and pundits of one sort or the other are using it as if it’s been the RP for a century.

       Professional footballers favour the London ‘f’ and the foreign ones are picking it up eagerly, wanting, of course, to belong to this particular symbolic universe: Drogba, the articulate Adebayor, even the stylish Thieri Henri amongst many, and the England manager, Capello, all fink about getting on the end of frew balls. (the French at one time pronounced ‘through’ as t’rew, not having a ‘th’ sound themselves). We do, of course, expect Ferdinand and Harry ‘I fink we’ll get frew wivout bovver’ Redknapp to continue the trend (‘though this doesn’t stop Henry Wynter of The Times commending him, along with Ferguson, on their ‘command of the English language’). I have little doubt that in fifteen years hence the Oxford Dictionary will officially declare that ‘th’ should be pronounced ‘f’ or ‘v.’ Power to the people.

      You could suggest that I’m looking for some certainty in the social world, an absolute perhaps (not really, there’s no such thing, ‘though that statement, itself an absolute, cannot claim privileged exemption and is thus self-stultifying), but my salient frame of reference is not necessarily the old BBC Southern home counties RP before it began morphing about twenty years ago into whining Estuary with its stretched and emphasised last syllables; it’s a consideration for and a liking of a written and spoken language that is certainly prior to the current one which has developed over the  last twenty years.

    And yes, this is my value judgement. We have agreed upon the language we use, fortuitous it may be, but a consensus has been created, To break that agreement, as increasingly seems to be the case, to choose to pronounce or/and spell words in a manner which somehow suits ourselves, would lead to linguistic anarchy - as in the clamour for phonetic spelling and its attendant problems, such as words that are pronounced the same, such as ‘pour,’ ‘pore,’ ‘poor,’ site,’ sight,’ might,  ‘mite,’ etc. but  spelt in different ways. (‘So what?’ Andy would say). Language is a shared phenomenon; we don’t share it equally, but we cannot have a private language.

      The aetiology? Partly physiological; it’s easier to bring the bottom lip up to the top teeth for ‘f’’- than place the tongue there for the soft ‘th,’ as doing similarly in the ‘v’ for the hard ‘th.’ A physical laziness if you like and, in small part, a culturally determined definition (here I’ll go for the Freudian model of man as lazy, hedonistic and self-seeking), but why is this ‘laziness’ more pronounced at this time?

       Technological determinism, especially in communication: text language, the email, is one obvious causal strand, and the want-it-all-want-it-now solipsism  manifested in public places, with its insular, screeching mobile use, ipod tinnitus, self-administered full facials and the consumption of hot food on trains and buses engendered by rampant globalized corporate capitalism turning wants into needs, is an increasingly untrammelled expression of the id – ‘allowed’ perhaps by  the weakening middle class notion of deferred gratification. The superego steps in of course - the internalization of external values, of behavioural guidelines - but arguably these are being diluted, not only by capitalist media but by mass immigration which obviously changes and dilutes the values of any country, including language. For example, the African-American influenced Afro-Caribbean diction adopted by many white youths - ‘yoots’ - both working and middle class gives us ‘be’ah,’ ‘muvah,’ ‘bruvah,’ ’innit,’ etc. (Does it ma’ah?). There’s the importation of the American inappropriate use of ‘like,’ departing from its ‘similar to’ and ‘fondness for’ meanings, the increasing use in the media of public speakers using direct speech without the quote marks, grammatically crossing the line into reported speech ‘People are worried about what is the economic model?’ instead of, ‘People are worried about what the economic model is.’ - just about  acceptable if you’re going  to use a question mark, and quote  marks around ‘what is the economic model.’ But they’re not there.

      This drive for Me - ‘my ipod my music my life’ - has another cause, Liberalism, that white middle class guilt trip that in the educational world of the 60s encouraged the replacing of grammatical rules by ‘creativity,’ hoping that this would enable working class children without the cultural capital enjoyed by their middle class counterparts to ‘succeed’ at school, where to do so, according to Bernstein, ‘the working class child must leave his own culture at the school gates.’  The idea at the time that working class language with - according to implicit Liberal patronising - all of its ‘richness and hyperbole,’ was ‘better’ than the entrenched view that it was inadequate. (How can ‘creativity’ flourish without the rules? They can’t be ‘creatively’ broken without knowing what’s being broken). All of this gives liberals the vicarious street-cred they hunger for. (Who was it, after all, that mythologised the Krays?). Recently I was told that liberal Stephen ‘fey’ Fry, (‘a stupid person’s idea of a clever person’) harangued ’pedants’ for not being able to put a sentence together themselves and having no love of language. Such crass, specious stereotyping. They are called pedants because of their love of language, at least respect for it. I imagine him listening to Andy, ‘Oh, those ‘f’s,’ those glottals, such rich, pungent language, such hyperbole!’ (similar to liberal Ian Sinclair and his perception of graffiti as a ‘vibrant urban discourse’. Would he, strolling his garden one morning and seeing the ‘C’ word scrawled over his Georgian bricks, say delightedly to his wife, ‘Oh look darling, look, such a vibrant urban discourse!’).

      Thus: change brought about by liberalism, its normative protection of ethnic influences on language, (Racist!) the internalised philosophy that only self exists engendered  by globalized corporate capitalism and, perhaps, physical laziness - with its growing Liberal-buttressed acceptance - has created the rapid linguistic change rather sparsely and selectively covered here.

       I mentioned some of this to a friend recently who stated with casual, untroubled certainty that language ‘evolves.’ And? What a catch-all cop-out that word is, with its implication that language ‘progresses,’ becomes somehow ‘better’ over time. Of course language changes, but does this mean that we want, or can have, a laissez faire free-for-all in pronunciation? In spelling? If we have syntactical chaos we have it semantically too. Everything changes, all is flux, all is energy, but there are rules and an increasing diminution of their influence in language would mean, as implied in this brief broaching of the subject, not being able to understand one another. What then would be left to hold together a frayed society?