|
EMIGRĒS : French words that turned English.
Richard Scholar
ISBN978-0-691-23400-7
All modern, and probably many ancient, languages are mongrels.
French developed from Vulgar Latin, English in its Anglo-Saxon seed
arrived with the northern invaders. Languages are always on the
move. What do we mean when we say “English”? What they speak in
Glasgow or the very different speech of Alabama? It’s in the nature
of words to migrate, to be purloined, to be shape-shifters. What
remains stable is the language faculty, unchanged since its
emergence 50-70,000 years ago. Language, the externalised
phenomenon, is so flexible because what underpins it is so fixed.
Scholar is concerned with the externalised form. His title perhaps
creates an expectation of more than he delivers, in the sense that
he focuses on only four French words or expressions: à la mode,
naïveté, caprice and ennui. What he has to say about them is,
however, fascinating and informative. His research is excellent, he
writes clearly, and the book is full of charming and memorable
detail.
To begin, perversely, at the end: Scholar quotes Sir Thomas More’s
speech from Act 1 of Munday and Chettle’s play, named after the Lord
High Chancellor. The original play was re-worked by Chettle, Dekker,
Heywood and Shakespeare. The speech in question is the latter’s only
surviving original manuscript. It’s excellent and pertinent. Scholar
says his book isn’t about migrant peoples, yet he can’t help using
More’s speech to the crowd of London xenophobes in 1517 as a
metaphor for the need for exchange, the benefits of openness, the
creative energy of miscegenation. This conclusion is a poignant
comment on what has gone before: this isn’t merely a book about a
few words which travelled from one language to another; it’s an
exploration of the nature of foreignness. We are all foreign, of
course, as Shakespeare is at pains to make his audience understand.
There is no language against which all others can be measured. They
are of equal value, as language. To be nervous of foreign words is
absurd. All the words of our own language are foreign. In the 1640s
John Hare called for French and Norman words to be expunged from
English because of the “depravation” they had caused, Today he might
be made Home Secretary.
George Orwell, in his effort to improve the quality of written
English, suggested that foreign terms for which there are perfectly
serviceable English terms, should be avoided. Was Orwell deluded, a
linguistic xenophobe, a man on a fool’s errand? The barbarity of the
English has long been observed by foreign visitors. In the 17th
century, French manners were considered civilised and civilising.
This found its way into two plays Scholar discusses: Dryden’s
Marriage – à – la- mode and Etheredge’s Man of Mode. What
Orwell is regretting is the unnecessary use of foreign terms.
Sometimes there are employed for showing-off. Orwell sees the sense
in using them only when they touch on something we can’t otherwise
render.
From the use of à la mode as one of the signs of sophistication in
late seventeenth century England, Scholar moves onto a more abstract
level to elaborate his theory of creolization. He brings the concept
of creolization together with that of “keywords”, derived from
Raymond Williams’s famous 1976 book. Scholar is favourable to
Williams’s effort to show that language is not delivered from above
as set of fixed meanings, but is rather an ever-changing capacity
people can mould according to their own needs and priorities. He
adds to Williams’s categories the notion of the “émigré”, ie the
word borrowed from another language which never becomes fully
integrated. Williams pointed out that “ideology” for example was
derived from French, but had been fully Anglicised. Scholar is
interested in those words which refuse complete naturalisation,
which retain a residual foreignness. This might put him at odds with
the prevailing attitude: maybe there are some who believe such words
should be shipped to Rwanda.
Having established his theoretical basis and aims, Scholar goes on
to explore naiveté,
ennui and caprice. This is where the book comes into its
own. Scholar lectures in French but he also knows his way round
English literature. He’s previously discussed Evelyn who in 1665
defended the importation of foreign terms on the grounds “we have
hardly any words that do so fully expresse” their meaning. In his
discussion of naiveté, he
embraces Montaigne, Pascal, Schiller, Rousseau, Blake and
also Le Carré. He treats the latter as an equal, but though The
Naive and Sentimental Lover may be a decent novel, it can’t
stand comparison with the best writers he cites: Le Carré’s prose
can’t match Flaubert’s. Perhaps he’s been nibbled by the post-modern
bug: there are no hierarchies of value. A truly naïve (in the worst
sense) perspective.
In his chapter on ennui, he touches on de Scudéry, Flaubert,
Baudelaire, Lamartine, Verlaine, Laforgue, Mallarmé, Chateaubriand,
de Staël and also George Cheyne’s famous The English Malady
and the unduly neglected Edgeworth’s Ennui. Not surprisingly
he dedicates some paragraphs to Sickert’s famous painting. What his
fascinating exploration reveals is the remarkable prevalence and
endurance of ennui over the past several centuries. Interestingly
the Situationist International and others railed against the boredom
of modern life and identified its cause in our economic arrangements
with their demand for subordinate labour, repetitive tasks and
diminished status. Perhaps the inauthenticity imposed by our
economic and social relations for centuries is the cause of what
George Cheyne diagnosed. Scholar quotes Christopher Hill on the
freedom of the Anglo-Saxons prior to the Norman invasion. The
conquest of the English might be part of the problem, but the
complaint seems to have been Europe-wide. It seems more likely that
the pursuit of material wealth has divorced us from the possibility
of authenticity.
Caprice
takes us to Richard Strauss, Edgeworth’s Belinda and the
little known in the UK, George Bowering whose novel Caprice
was published in 1987. One of the delights of this book is its
signposts to reading. Follow up Scholar’s suggestions and you’ll be
kept busy and engaged for weeks.
Whether Scholar’s theory of creolization will take hold remains to
be seen, but notwithstanding he’s written a captivating book in an
accessible style. It would be good if reading him became de
rigueur among students of language and literature, but perhaps
ça serait trop beau.
|
