Mern Þonke

Today's Chronicle of Higher Education contains an article entitled American Idioms Have Gone Missing by Ben Yagoda. The article begins as follows:

One of Peter De Vries's comic novels has a character who accumulates Briticisms. As I recall, he orders shrimp cocktail as a "starter," refers to a friend "called" James (instead of "named" -- that's a subtle one), and fills his car with "petrol" for the ride home. Eventually, he winds up in hospital.

De Vries's conceit, delicious as it was, was an exaggeration. Generally a Yank can get away with at most one such locution in his or her active vocabulary, for example the person I know who likes to refer to his time "at university," the university in question being a large land-grant institution. Any more than that and he would be laughed out the door, like the professor who habitually shows up at faculty meetings in a bespoke suit, Turnbull and Asher shirt, and Liberty of London tie, done in a Windsor knot.

Lately, however, the American press has become that professor.

What follows is a fascinating catalogue of the extent of recent borrowing from British English in the United States, for which readers should view the whole article. Here, I am primarily interested in Yagoda's conclusion:

It's hard to pinpoint the cause of the use of all these Briticisms. Anglophilia hardly seems to be rampant at the moment. Perhaps the success of BBC America is a factor, or maybe the importation of British editors like Tina Brown and Anna Wintour a decade ago is finally trickling down. But I wouldn't underestimate the eternal appeal of sounding classy without seeming pretentious. The gathering storm of Briticisms would seem to provide a perfect opportunity.

At this point, the trend is moving beyond journalism, and to terms that (unlike "go missing" and "run-up") have perfectly good American counterparts. In his campaign for governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger talked about having "a" (not "some" or "a cup of") coffee. A visiting friend of mine talked of "booking" (not reserving) a hotel room. David Letterman recently made fun of Oprah Winfrey's saying that she couldn't appear on his show because she was "on holiday" -- what was wrong, he wondered, with "vacation"? A friend has taken to saying, "I'll ring you" instead of "phone you" or "call you up." From various sources, I have heard repeated uses of "sack" (fire), "row" (argument), and "chat up" (talk to, usually in a flirtatious way). Briticisms all: Together they constitute a cultural equivalent of De Vries's poseur.

I'm afraid I can't resist the inevitable conclusion, so here goes: Briticisms have passed their sell-by date, and the odor (or should I say odour) is getting a bit rank.

The wittiness of Yagoda's conclusion--given in British English--perhaps reveals its insubstantiality and triviality. It does not follow in the least from his discussion--except from the example of fictional poseur, who presumably represents the cultural prejudice that British means classy. If Yagoda finds this offensive, he is surely buying into the prejudice even though he is reacting against it. Moreover, his horror at the loss of "good ole" American idioms sounds a lot like the nineteenth- and twentieth-century passages I teach in my history of the English language classes in which British speakers are horrified by the borrowing of "Americanisms". It seems that Yagoda has inherited that model of linguistic isolation and exclusivity.

And this is what Yagoda acknowledges only obliquely. The two cultures (British and American) interact, and English is not evolving separately in each country. Every day, Americanisms arrive in that sceptred isle through the gargantuan American media; should Professor Yagoda be surprised that the reverse process also takes place. (I'm forced to wonder if, Yagoda, as a professor of journalism, is not in some way trying to protect his own turf.)

Yagoda also misses a larger point. Although he acknowledges that the likely cause of this linguistic borrowing is unlikely to be Anglophilia, he falls back on cultural prejudice as an explanation. He misses the importance of English as a world language. Many of the "Briticisms" he identifies are not just British, but Indian, Australian, South African, and (here's the one that will really horrify Americans) Canadian. American English is as much influenced by English in these countries as English in Britain. Yagoda's desire to retreat from British influence is really a desire to retreat from world influence. From my point of view, linguistic interaction with the rest of the world is part of a larger process of cultural and political interaction from which the United States can only benefit (even if it means that many of its top media positions go to foreigners).

American English is participating in this cultural exchange. Have no fear that it is being entirely replaced on the shelves by goods imported from abroad. Multiculturalism is here to stay, and, as far as I can tell, has no sell-by date.