Wordsleet

Words sleet down like numbers in 'The Matrix'. Words define our world.

I started reading a new book and the opening line was,
'Et ma mère tomba à genoux.' Instant hook, simple, yet resonating with powerful imagery, and in the same moment I was reminded how French formal writing can be delineated by the use of the past historic.

On the back of Bill Bryson's 'Troublesome Words' is this quote,
'Barbecue is the only acceptable spelling in serious writing. Any journalist or other formal user of English who believes that the word is spelled barbeque or, worse still, bar-b-q is not ready for unsupervised employment.' Last year, I remember such a controversy raging on a post entitled 'Barbecue', well, ok, maybe 'raging' is too strong a word.
More than that however, it made me question whether, when writing my blog, I am a formal user of English. To some extent I think not, since I tend to write in an informal manner, the way I speak I suppose. And yet I have been accused, since arriving here, of speaking in a formal manner. I don't feel that's true, but I am certainly quite careful about my use of language.

Our friend Steve, a jobbing actor who also teaches his craft at the Vancouver Film School, was telling me how he was trying to get students to stop using distancing strategies in speech. He went on to say how difficult they found it to make statements when they weren't allowed to use these fillers.

'I, like you know, basically think that, well, um, I kinda feel that, mostly, say, Tim Horton's coffee is sort of, you know, better than um, Starbucks,' requires a lot less ownership than,

'Tim Horton's coffee is better than Starbuck's.'

Steve made me think. We all do that, and as a general rule I can't see much wrong with it because it basically allows us to converse. (Basically is a distancing word and one that Bill Bryson says we don't need.)
When I was teaching language, we would actively encourage students to use distancing language, quantifiers like 'quite' and 'very'. It enriched their use of the target language. But I did find it a very interesting exercise that Steve was doing with his students and agreed with him wholeheartedly, that leaving out the hedges gave the speaker much stronger ownership of the opinion. And I think it is important to be aware of the linguistic games we play.

Bill Bryson, born and raised in Iowa, but having lived most of his adult life in Britain, is at times a man after my own heart and at others, a step too far. I did like this one though,
'Bouy. Though this book does not normally address matters of pronunciation ... I cannot help pointing out to my fellow Americans, and any who may be influenced by them, that the increasing tendency to pronounce this word boo-ee is mistaken and misguided. Unless you would say boo-ee-ant for buoyant, please return to pronouncing it boy.'
I particularly liked the 'and any who may be influenced by them'.

A word which came to my attention yesterday is 'Bardolatry'. Austen pointed me to an article in Saturday's Guardian which gave an underpinning, an introduction to some of the social and political history surrounding the Bard's life and work. I found the article quite fascinating, if a little slow to start. I was also interested to find out about David Garrick, after whom, presumably, the Garrick theatre is named.

Very timely too. I am trying to work out the best dates for booking our tickets to Bard on the Beach. This summer we will have two English teachers and an undergraduate student of English with us.

We saw two films yesterday, 'Children of Men' and 'Man of the Year'. The first relied rather heavily, in my opinion, on Clive Owen being the main character. It had a couple of other greats in it, Pam Ferris and Michael Caine. But despite its intention, I didn't find it particularly thought-provoking, rather old hat really and I found myself mulling over the inconsistencies in the plot, screenplay and props.

Man of the Year was slow to start, but then did hold my attention. I loved that Robin Williams' character's integrity was held intact throughout, it always annoys me, when, quite out of character, someone's integrity wavers.