I read this article by Linda
Hall with a strong sense that I had seen it before. People have been compleining
about the decline of the English language since well before the Norman Conquest.
They've been right since then, too, but only if you assume that change is
necessarily change for the worse. If there were any learned writers who were
paying attention to English in the first two centuries of the milennium, rather
than writing in Latin to impress religious colleagues or speaking in French to get
on at court, they would have had a very good case for the decline of the language.
It was changing quickly, acquiring a simplified grammar and borrowing new
vocabulary with the speed of a pidgin language, so that grandparents would
literally not have been able to understand their grandchildren, had their own
language remain unchanged. By the time of Caxton's ubiquitous "egges/eyren" story,
English was again the national tongue, but was so fragmented that a dialect from
one district could not be understood in another. And yet it was the result of that
"decline" that became the instrument played by maestros from Chaucer to
Shakespeare on up to Wharton and James, whom Hall holds up as exemplars of correct
English.
It's also interesting that James's work always seems to be
cited as a paragon of good English. There's no doubt that he was the master of an
idiosyncratic style, and none that his weighty sentences are always grammatically
correct. But would it really be a good thing if everyone wrote in James' ponderous
style? Reading James requires plenty of time, and a patient mind. There's still a
place (and there always was) for things that are easy to read at a surface level -
- more so if, like Jane Austen, they also repay a bit of deeper
attention.
And what, precisely, is wrong with hanging out? What else
were Shakespeare and Jonson and Marlowe doing in all those Elizabethan pubs?
(Well, besides tupping barmaids or lads, as appropriate.) What else was Boswell
doing with Johnson? (Besides the hero-worship and puppyish flattery, both of which
is still visible in any junior high -- or Senate office.) What were Chaucer's
didn't equate to, "Dude!! Road trip!"? Except that, according to Hall, the Wife of
Bath was somehow morally superior because she didn't say "Dude!"
Yes, some people get annoyed by youngsters who think they've
discovered sex, or safety pins through facial piercings, or the joys of slang
their elders don't understand. Me? I get annoyed by those who profess to have a
knowledge of history who yet repeat thousand-year-old complaints about the decline
of civilzation and the language.
Today I am thankful for: a
sense of history, and a sketchy but working knowledge of same.