David Crystal: The Stories of English. Woodstock & NY: Overlook Pr, 2004. 584 pp.
Just between you and I, when I started reading David Crystal’s The Stories of English I had no intention of reviewing it. Crystal is my favorite living writer on language – no one else comes close in terms of wideness of interest, vivacious writing, and encyclopedic erudition. As a teacher of English as a foreign language working in the trenches, I figured I had as much business commenting on him as a flea has commenting on the elephant whose backside he is riding on.
The opening chapters were fascinating. The tone was lively, the learnèd Interludes engaging. I particularly liked the treatment of the 14th – 16th centuries as a period of multilingualism (English, French, and Latin all being used to varying degrees). It was a time when Middle English evolved, regional dialects flourished, and no one was condemned or laughed at for not speaking Standard English for the simple reason that it did not yet exist. In Crystal’s telling, it sounds like a golden age, at least for the language, full of promise and free of anxiety. It’s only later that one figures out that he has constructed this paradise for a single purpose: so that he can claim we have been expelled from it.
I even enjoyed the passages on the 18th century. This is the era that saw the rise of prescriptivism, embodied in figures such as Robert Lowth, Lindley Murray, Dr. Johnson and others. They are the ones who came up with Latin-based rules for English that it has taken so long to overcome, such as “do not split infinitives” and “do not end a sentence with a preposition.” Though Crystal clearly disapproves of their influence, he makes an effort to be fair, and does not simply excoriate them.
Until about Chapter 18 (out of twenty), my only criticism was that our learnèd author seemed to think his readers would be incapable of reading the word “learnèd” correctly without that annoying accent. Otherwise my admiration for the book was total, and I was ready to give it five stars. If it had stopped there, this review would stop here. From that point on, however, I found it increasingly difficult to agree with Crystal. In retrospect, it turns out to be no coincidence that his writing is most persuasive when he deals with ME (Middle English), since for him this period illustrates the ability of English to tolerate widely divergent forms of the language. And this is precisely what he thinks 21st century Standard English should try to emulate, at least in spirit.
In the final chapter he revisits the topic of Middle English literature in order to assert that dialect variation then was widespread and “uncontentious.” Widespread yes; uncontentious hardly, if history is any indication. Here the import of Crystal’s implication that we once lived in a linguistic Garden of Eden really emerges – even though his own record shows that people who lived then regarded the proliferation of dialects as something that was unstable and eventually intolerable. Safe to say they did not revel in their diversity. He seeks to shift blame onto the shoulders of a few prim linguistic Puritans – as though they would have found any following without the existence of a wide-spread felt need. The urge towards prescriptivism, if it had merely been an obsession of a few cranks, would never have lasted as long as it has. As Crystal himself documents, the language was generally considered to be in a sorry state, a condition to which the prescriptivists responded. He only tut-tuts that they went too far for far too long.
In essence, Crystal wants us to return to the situation of ME with a new-found, conscious enjoyment of linguistic diversity which the original speakers of the various ME dialects themselves were never aware of enjoying. For this reason, he celebrates passages like the following (pg. 490, hardbound edition): “The sweat wis [was] lashing oafay [off of] Sick Boy; he wis trembling. Ah wis jist sitting their [there, not “their,” pace Crystal] focusing oan [on] the telly, tryin no tae [not to] notice the c…” Except for the word “telly,” this may look like an example of archaic English, but in fact if you want to read the word “c…” in its entirety, consult the opening of Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (1993). The point is that Crystal wants us to admire Welsh’s use of Scots English.
The question is: Does anyone really think that Welsh is simply writing the way he learned to speak? Or isn’t it the case that he is demonstrating his skill at imitating spoken Scots in print? The difference is crucial. In the Middle English period, people spoke and wrote in dialect naively, as it were; they warbled their native woodnotes wild. Such naiveté today is at best a skill that has been laboriously acquired by some writers of fiction who are well familiar with Standard English but choose to write in an adapted voice; at worst, it is pretense, an affectation. For Crystal to promote the latter as a way back to the former is absurd. He enjoys the benefits of writing in an English that everyone who speaks the language understands, while praising the state English was in when that was not the case.
Crystal has undoubtedly been on the receiving end of many screeds (charitably, he calls them “complaints”) from outraged traditionalists. And they have inflicted wounds that are still raw. Psychological trauma is, I suspect, the root of the only typographical error I noticed in the entire book. He lashes out against prescriptivists by accusing them of wanting to pass on to younger generations their overwrought linguistic “anxieties and preoccupations.” (pg. 525) Except, in some kind of Freudian slip, it comes out “precoccupations.” If you don’t think that reveals unconscious anxieties, try saying the word aloud. Sure, Crystal himself is unlikely to be the source of this typo, but even so I find its placement in the text delicious. For further down on the same page, he quotes Bishop Trench: “How deep an insight into the failings of the human heart lies at the root of many words; and if only we would attend to them, what valuable warnings many contain against subtle temptation and sins!” Indeed.
What does tolerance of nonstandard English mean in practical terms? Well, if you think “between you and I” is okay because, after all, it creates no problems in intelligibility (pg. 526), then Crystal’s your man. The problem is, if you set the bar that low, then how can you deem anything wrong? In the end, even “precoccupations” is understandable enough. For what it’s worth, let me add that you won’t hear many people who learn English as a foreign language saying “between you and I.” So isn’t Crystal privileging a native-speaker solecism?
Or take the variety that once characterized spelling. It came about at least in part because people in Shakespeare’s time simply did not value consistency all that highly – they could happily write the same word having the same meaning two different ways in a single paragraph, or even sentence. Is Crystal, who generally favors integrating “the low” into standard or “high” English, suggesting that we should embrace the same carefree attitude? Be my guest – or “gest,” if you prefer.
His strongest feelings are aroused when it comes to the modern day descendants of Lowth and Murray, who have allegedly turned us all into linguistic automata, prisoners of proper language. He sees his role as that of prophet for the escapees, cheerleader of the jail break. He seems to think that those who have suffered feelings of inferiority at the hands of harsh schoolteachers are ready to rise up, seize the low grounds and demand language reform in the name of – intelligibility. Perhaps they will occupy Grammarcy Park and unfurl banners reading, “Good – more better – bestest” and “Admittit – y’all unnerstan’ us dontcha?”
The thing is, language can’t be made to go where you or I or David Crystal want. He claims repeatedly (pg. 529) we “have to” become more accepting of nonstandard language and “have to” develop a new kind of Standard English, one that fits with his notions of what is acceptable. Sounds to me like he is prescribing his personal norms – relaxed ones, to be sure. Nonetheless, in his own way he is another sort of prescriptivist, a schoolmaster instructing us all how we ought to use the language. But that’s between you and me.
For related reviews at this site, see Ben Yagoda: When You Catch an Adjective and Sound on the Page, Bill Bryson: Mother Tongue, and Stephen King: On Writing.
© Hamilton Beck
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