English: A Dolphin or a Lonely Transvestite?
Posted on October 25, 2008
Filed Under Books, The Secret Life of Words |
How do we best talk about English in English? There’s a lot to be said for the geographical analogies commonly invoked to describe any language — map, artifact, fossil. Perhaps more than any other tongue, English has been decisively shaped by the series of intense geopolitical events that mark its short but vivid history. Of course, you can’t talk about the development of a language without using some kind of analogy, but is it helpful to call English a mallard or a dolphin or a lonely transvestite? What’s the best way to talk about English? Christine Kenneally reviews Henry Hitchings’ The Secret Life of Words:
‘In the first nine pages of Henry Hitchings’ The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, words can see. (They are “witnesses.”) They are containers (with fossils in them). Language is a combination of earth and artifact. (It allows us to do archeology.) It is both abstract and communal. (It is a “social energy.”) English is an object of trade. (It was “imported.”) It is an animal. (It has a “pedigree.”) It is a human professional. (It has a “career.”) It is a space (”a place of strange meetings”). English vocabulary is a building (it has architecture), and English has sex, lots of it—it’s not just “promiscuous”; it’s a “whore.”‘
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