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"An American linguist teaching in England explores the sibling rivalry between British and American English. "If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd sound like an American." "English accents are the sexiest." "Americans have ruined the English language." "Technology means everyone will have to speak the same English." Such claims about the English language are often repeated but rarely examined. Professor Lynne Murphy is on the linguistic front line. In The Prodigal Tongue she explores the fiction and reality of the special relationship between British and American English. By examining the causes and symptoms of American Verbal Inferiority Complex and its flipside, British Verbal Superiority Complex, Murphy unravels the prejudices, stereotypes and insecurities that shape our attitudes to our own language. With great humo(u)r and new insights, Lynne Murphy looks at the social, political and linguistic forces that have driven American and British English in different directions: how Americans got from centre to center, why British accents are growing away from American ones, and what different things we mean when we say estate, frown, or middle class. Is anyone winning this war of the words? Will Yanks and Brits ever really understand each other?"--… (more)
User reviews
For whatever reason, however personable and kind the most prominent linguists may be in ordinary life, they also tend to be, well, abrasive. So you've got the pugnacity of John McWhorter, the rantish bullying of Geoffrey Pullum, and the cloying condescension of Kory Stamper, whose Twitter stream is hilarious but whose book is filled with infuriating I-bet-you-didn't-know-that asides. I'm glad to say that Lynne Murphy avoids all these flaws and has written a consistently entertaining, informative, and charming book that goes way beyond the usual list of obvious differences between North American and British English. As an American living in England with an English spouse, she's perfectly equipped not to analyze that divide from a linguistic standpoint, but from the point of view of one who continually encounters surprising differences in her daily life. So we get not just a dry list of equivalent words (the boot = the trunk, ho-hum) but some very intelligent discussions of when both cultures use the same word (such as "hot dog") to mean something very subtly different. (In America, a hot dog must include a frankfurter. In the UK, it's the roll that makes a hot dog, not the meat: it can be any kind of sausage.)
You get a discussion of the impact of lexicographers such as Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster. You get a startling sub-chapter about the completely opposed philosophies about how to teach English to college students. You get endlessly amusing stories about why British complaints about "Americanization" are ill-informed and otherwise all wet. And you get some very informed speculation about the future of the English language in the UK and around the world. Surprise: it's not likely to become "more American" after all!
All that's lacking in this book is an index of terms so that one can look up a particular phrase, whether American or British. It's a real shame, because in depth and number of examples, The Prodigal Tongue has my British/American Language Dictionary (1984) all beat. Highly, highly recommended to all lovers of English throughout the world, wherever they may read it.
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| 427.9 |