Before listening / watching
1. What is an Anglophone?
2. What is wrong with saying "five items or less"? Why do you think supermarkets use this anyway?
3. What's the difference between "to infer" and "to imply"?
4. What is a pedantic person like?
5. Who was Oscar Wilde? Why do people often quote his sayings?
6. Which is correct: "none of them are of importance" or "none of them is of importance"? Does it matter?
7. What can you do with an apostrophe?
8. Which were these people? Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Monet, Mahler, Baudelaire.
9. Can you think of an example of a noun that we also use as a verb?
After listening
1. What, according to Stephen Fry, is the wrong way to bother with language?
2. What did Oscar Wilde tell his editors to do? What does Stephen want us to infer from this?
3. What do Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Monet, Mahler, Baudelaire all have in common according to Stephen Fry?
4. What is the 'proper' sense of the word disinterested?
5. Who was really good at turning nouns into verbs?
6. What's the similarity between how we dress for different situations and how we use language?
7. " Context, convention and circumstance are all." What doers Stephen Fry mean by this?
Watch read listen enjoy:
Stephen Fry on the pleasure of language
Transcript:
For me, it is a cause of some upset that more Anglophones don’t
enjoy language. Music is
enjoyable it seems, so are dance and other,
athletic forms of movement. People seem to be able to find
________ and
________ pleasure in almost anything _______ words these days. Words, it seems belong to other people, anyone who expresses themselves with originality, delight and
_______ freshness is more likely to be mocked, ________ or disliked ______ welcomed. The free and happy ________ of words appears to be considered
elitist or
________. Sadly, _________ sadly, the only people who seem to bother with language in public today bother with it
in _______ the wrong way. They write letters to broadcasters and newspapers in which they are
rude and
haughty about other people’s ______ and in which they show off their own
_________ ‘knowledge’ of how language should be. I hate that, and I _________ hate the fact that so many of these pedants assume that I’m on their side. When asked to join in a “let’s persuade this supermarket chain to get rid of their ‘five items or less’ sign” I never join in. Yes, I am aware of the
_________ distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘
uninterested’ and ‘
__________’ and ‘infer’ and ‘_____’, but none of these are of importance to me. ‘None of these _____ of importance,’ I wrote there, you’ll notice – the old
pedantic me would have insisted on “none of them ____ of importance”.
Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that
silly approach to language. Oscar Wilde, and there have been few greater and more
complete lords of language in the past thousand years, once included with a manuscript he was delivering to his publishers a compliment slip in ______ he had scribbled the ________: “I’ll leave you to tidy up the woulds and shoulds, wills and shalls, thats and whiches &c.” Which gives us all encouragement to feel less
guilty, don’t you think?
There are all kinds of _______ around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and _________, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with
joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth ________ them to
giddy euphoric _____? Do they ever yoke
impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too
farting busy _______ at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to ______. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re _____ more guardians of language ______ the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.
The worst of this
sorry bunch of
semi-educated losers are those who seem to glory in being
irritated by nouns becoming verbs. How
dense and
deaf to language development do you have to ________? If you don’t like nouns becoming verbs, then for heaven’s sake avoid Shakespeare _______ made a doing-word out of a thing-word every chance he _______. He TABLED the motion and CHAIRED the meeting in which nouns were made verbs. New examples from our time might take some _______ used to: ‘He actioned it that day’ for instance might strike some as a verbing too _____, but we have been sanctioning, __________, propositioning and stationing for a long time, so why not ‘action’? ‘Because it’s
ugly,’ whinge the pedants. It’s only ugly because it’s new and you don’t like it. Ugly in the way Picasso, Stravinsky and Eliot were once __________ ugly and before them Monet, Mahler and Baudelaire.
Pedants will also claim, with what I am sure is
eye-popping insincerity and
shameless __________, that their fight is only for ‘clarity’. This is all ________ well, but there is no doubt what ‘Five items or less’ means, just as only a dolt can’t tell from the context and from the age and education of the speaker, whether ‘
disinterested’ is used in the ‘
proper’ sense of
non-partisan, or in the ‘
improper’ sense of
_________. No, the claim to be defending language for the sake of clarity almost never, ever holds ______. ________ does the idea that following grammatical rules in language demonstrates clarity of thought and intelligence of mind.
Having said this, I admit that if you want to communicate well for the sake of passing an exam or job interview, then it is
obvious that ______
original and excessively
heterodox language could land you in the soup. I think what offends examiners and employers when confronted with extremely
informal,
unpunctuated and
haywire language is the __________ of
not caring that underlies it. You slip into a suit for an interview and you dress your language up too. You can wear what you like linguistically or sartorially when you’re at home or with friends, but most people accept the need to _______ up under some ____________ – it’s only
considerate. But that is an issue of fitness, of _________, it has nothing to do with correctness. There no
right language or
wrong language any _________ than are right or wrong clothes. Context, convention and circumstance are all.
Transcript:
For me, it is a cause of some upset that more Anglophones don’t
enjoy
language. Music is
enjoyable it seems, so are dance and other,
athletic
forms of movement. People seem to be able to find
sensual and
sensuous
pleasure in almost anything but words these days. Words, it seems
belong to other people, anyone who expresses themselves with
originality, delight and
verbal freshness is more likely to be mocked,
distrusted or disliked than welcomed. The free and happy use of words
appears to be considered
elitist or
pretentious.
Sadly, desperately
sadly, the only people who seem to bother with language in public today
bother with it
in quite the wrong way. They write letters to
broadcasters and newspapers in which they are
rude and
haughty about
other people’s usage and in which they show off their own
superior
‘knowledge’ of how language should be. I hate
that, and I particularly
hate the fact that so many of these pedants assume that I’m on their
side. When asked to join in a “let’s persuade this supermarket chain to
get rid of their ‘five items or less’ sign” I never join in.
Yes, I am
aware of the
technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and
between ‘
uninterested’ and ‘
disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but
none of
these are of importance to me. ‘None of these are of
importance,’ I wrote
there, you’ll notice – the old
pedantic me would
have insisted on “none of them is of importance”.
Well I’m glad to say
I’ve outgrown that
silly approach to language. Oscar Wilde, and there
have been few greater and more
complete lords of language in the past
thousand years, once included with a manuscript he was delivering to
his publishers a compliment slip in which he had scribbled the
injunction: “I’ll leave you to tidy up the woulds and shoulds, wills
and shalls, thats and whiches &c.”
Which gives us all encouragement
to feel less
guilty, don’t you think?
There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and
imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems,
love-letters, novels and stories it seems.
They whip out their Sharpies
and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake
their heads
at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and
misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with
joy
at language? Do
they ever let the tripping of the tips of
their tongues
against the tops of their teeth transport them to
giddy euphoric
bliss? Do
they ever yoke
impossible words together for the sound-sex of
it? Do
they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and
tickle those they talk to? Do
they? I doubt it.
They’re too
farting
busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the
apostrophe.
Well sod
them to Hades.
They think they’re guardians of
language.
They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is
the guardian of dogkind.
The worst of
this sorry bunch of
semi-educated losers are those who
seem to glory in being
irritated by nouns becoming verbs. How
dense and
deaf to language development do you have to be? If you don’t like nouns
becoming verbs, then for heaven’s sake avoid Shakespeare who made a
doing-word out of a thing-word every chance he got.
He TABLED the
motion and CHAIRED the meeting in which nouns were made verbs. New
examples from our time might take some getting used to: ‘He actioned it
that day’ for instance might strike some as a verbing too far, but we
have been sanctioning, envisioning, propositioning and stationing for a
long time, so why not ‘action’? ‘Because
it’s ugly,’ whinge the
pedants. It’s only ugly because it’s new and you don’t like it. Ugly in
the way Picasso, Stravinsky and Eliot were once thought ugly and before
them Monet, Mahler and Baudelaire.
Pedants will
also claim, with what I
am sure is
eye-popping insincerity and
shameless disingenuousness,
that their fight is only for ‘clarity’.
This is all very well, but
there is no doubt what ‘Five items or less’ means, just as only a dolt
can’t tell from the context and from the age and education of the
speaker, whether ‘
disinterested’ is used in the ‘
proper’ sense of
non-partisan, or in the ‘
improper’ sense of
uninterested.
No, the claim
to be defending language for the sake of clarity almost never, ever
holds water.
Nor does the idea that following grammatical rules in
language demonstrates clarity of thought and intelligence of mind.
Having said this, I admit that if you want to communicate well for the
sake of passing an exam or job interview, then it is
obvious that
wildly
original and excessively
heterodox language could land you in
the soup.
I think what offends examiners and employers when confronted
with extremely
informal,
unpunctuated and
haywire language is the
implication of
not caring that underlies it. You slip into a
suit for an interview and you dress your language up too. You can wear
what you like linguistically or sartorially when you’re at home or with
friends, but most people accept the need to smarten up under some
circumstances – it’s only
considerate.
But that is an issue of fitness,
of suitability, it has nothing to do with correctness. There no
right
language or
wrong language any more than are right or wrong clothes.
Context, convention and circumstance are all.
