OPTICAL LANGUAGE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 450, 6 February 1948, Page 12

OPTICAL LANGUAGE

Educationese Done Into Verse

NE of the latest shots in the campaign against woolly abstract 6 Ené§glish is fired by the critic I. A. Richards in a recent number of the English "Listener," which marks the Silver Jubilee of the BBC with several articles on broadcasting. Mr. Richards distinguishes between "optical language" and words put together to be spoken. Here is what he said.

HIS has to be a free flight of speculation, uncontrolled by any facts. At least if there are any real facts about the influence of radio on writing, I have not got them, and I am not sure that real facts would be much use to us here, anyhow. The forces that move a writer’s pen are so complicated. Just how its motions may have been affected by voices coming out of boxes is not something that facts help us much in

guessing, I mean facts in the hard sense, facts of the sort science uses. None-the-less, it is tempting to guess and give réasons for one’s guesses, though we shall not be able to prove we guessed right, nor, please note, to prove we gu wrong. The forces which move a writer’s pen are the most complicated sets of facts known. The pen is the most sensitive and responsive thing there is in the world, except one other thing. Of course, what a pen writes can be a very routine matter. When you write your name and address down you are not usually responding to the entire universe, to your whole past, and to all of the present which has reached you, but if you were a good enough poet

or novelist, at work at your best level, you might be doing just that. All the endlessly branching networks of your experience might be pulling on your pen, to make it write one set of words rather than another. The Dumbness of the Pen The one other thing more sensitive than a pen is a voice. It is more sensitive than a pen because it not only chooses its words, but how they are to be said, with what implications and suggestions. I think if we are to guess truthfully about influences for broadcasting, on writing, this is a good place to gtart from. F Any writer of any natural or acquired talent, of course, tries to make up for the dumbness of the pen by suggesting through the way he puts his words together how his sentences should be spoken. But as a rule, that does not get him very far. It is more often than not pretty painful to an ambitious writer, I believe, to hear-other people reading out what he has written, In practice, he cannot, or can no longer, control the rhythms his readers will give him. So he falls back on the last apparatus of directive and _ control machinery, words and phrases like

"but," "certainly," "on the other hand," "in contrast," "in fact,’ "we should be clear that," "it is very important to bring the point out"-and the rest. Prosaic, supporting tissue. The writing craft has developed a lot of these pointers and controls, tricks and dodges, te take the place of the pauses and inflections, emphases and tempo changes of the voice. If you use these elaborate tricks and dodges enough, the result is a prose style which may be clear and exact and

unambiguous and even impressive, but no one can read it out loud in any fashion which any undebauched ear cau bear to listen to. Addressed to the Eye It is optical language, in fact, addressed to the eye, not to the ear, not even to the mental ear. Books by sociologists about psychology, about interpersonal and intra-personal relationships and so on are oddly apt to be written in this Sort of-language, So are income tax and other Government discussions, and it is sad to think that so are very frequently: writings on education, Pedagese is one of the most flourishing among the optical dialects. I ought to give you a specimen of purely optical language, and yet for your sakes and mine, I shrink. Perhaps the best thing I can do would be to take a sample which has been extracted from a Government publication, and artfully arranged in verse, to pleasure the malicious ear, by A. B, Ramsay, the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Its title is "Education." Here it is: (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) It is fundamental to the good of the community, To co-ordinate the many cultural activities And obliterating inequalities of opportunity, To provide a common basis for proclivities, Which has led us to the inevitable conviction That at last, whenever we recover from the storm, The removal of all administrative restriction Is a necessary precondition of reform. The. appropriate authorities for all localities, Bearing in mind the principles of sociology ‘In respect of economic potentialities, Which is merely a matter of expert methodology, Should facilitate the essential consideration Of whatever influence or aspect they may deem To be a unit capable of integration Within the content of a statutory | scheme. And in order that the system may be nationalised, And nothing militate against its generality The relationship of institutions should be rationalised, On a plan to be determined in totality. And attention then should tend to be directed, To the implementing of a regulative sphere, : Where every idiosyncracy is intersected, Andvall the differentiations disappear. I should tell you that not long ago I put this blithe and happy tour de force into the hands of the purely optical reader, a leading educationist. He read it through, carefully though swiftly, and gave it back to me, remarking that he agreed, he thought, with its main points, and thought it was a powerful staterhent of its position. Talking of idiosyncracies being intersected and differentiations disappearing, carve out this from quite another world of discourse from a very ambitious, much-discussed work in contemporary philosophy. I quote: "The oriental artist is dealing with the purely aesthetic object in its aesthetic immediacy, as merely a less definite association of continuum." I hope you feel as I do when you read this sort of optical composition. I cannot help feeling that somehow I am becoming that oriental artist myself, that I, too, am dealing with merely a less definite association of differentiations in an otherwise indefinite indeterminate continuum. Continuum indeed; this sort of writing does continue: it goes on without mercy, but I must not. I will only say this-I don’t know ‘why it should be educators and other experts on human nature who are so often so inhumane to their readers, I suppose Francis Bacon might throw some light upon it where he says: "the true atheist is he whose hands are cauterised by holy things," as