STANDARD ENGLISH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 918, 15 March 1957, Page 11

STANDARD ENGLISH

Sir,-I am grateful to Ruby S. Clift for her interest in Standard English. If, however, she will do me the honour of glancing once again through what I wrote, she will perhaps notice that I drew an implied distinction between Standard English and "educated" English, I wished to make the point that although most New Zealanders speak slackly, not all "educated" Englishmen speak Standard English. I fear that I must regard Miss Clift’s claim that children in contemporary England enjoy full equality of opportunity as a considerable exaggeration. As John Strachey says in his recent book Contemporary Capitalism, "The main mass of the less skilled British wage earners still live lives cramped and narrow indeed, as compared with the lives which the British middle classes demand for themselves as a matter of course. The wage earners still have housing which varies quite arbitrarily

from the excellent to the abominable, stinted educational opportunities, horrible urban environments, and bleak poverty in old age." In a country where the pattern of the social pyramid is set by an hereditary monarchy that is maintained in great splendour, and political power is in the hands of a committee of Old Etonians, one might expect the gross inequalities of wealth and privilege to be mirrored in the speech of the inhabitants; and I think we find this to be so. However, I was at some pains to indicate that English society is not only divided into broad social classes: it is also a "caste" system, Distinctions are deliberately maintained between the various grades, levels and groupings within the non-proletarian section of the population. It would never do, for instance, for country people to speak like suburbanites, or for men from the "best" public schools to exhibit exactly the same mannerisms as do those from the not-so-good schools. Speech, in such a caste society, takes on a sort of totemistic significance and function. In consequence, although all these people are "educated," not all of them speak Standard English. One hears grossly affected and distorted speech at times from Armeh Naveh or Ehah Fawce types, from Oxford and Cambridge, and from BBC announcers. Technically, these distortions are produced by clipping or drawling, booming or whining, constricting the larynx or putting a plum in the mouth. I see no reason why New Zealanders should copy these antics. But they should realise that their own speech is, in general, much uglier. Standard English is based essentially on the proper use of the "organs of speech" considered as physical instruments, We do not admire the violinist who can play only four notes, and those wolf-notes.

A. R. D.

FAIRBURN

(Auckland)