A Web Of Worries
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 1996
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year's Reith Lecturer is Jean Aitchison, a Professor of Language and Communication in the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford.
In her first lecture, Professor Aitchison asks: Is our language sick? She explores what troubles us most about the way in which our language is changing, who is responsible, and what rules are being discarded. She considers why many of these rules were artificially constructed in the first place and argues that we need to understand language, not try to control it. Informal speech is not intrinsically worse than formal speech, she says, but different, and that the ever-shifting nature of language, is what keeps it flexible.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Ruth Lectures. |
| 0:04.4 | This lecture in the series The Language Web, given by Jean Aitchison, was originally broadcast in 1996. |
| 0:12.3 | Is our language sick? You might think so, judging from complaints in newspapers. |
| 0:17.1 | The standard of speech and pronunciation in England has declined so much that one is almost |
| 0:22.9 | ashamed to let foreigners hear it. The language the world is crying out to learn is diseased in its own |
| 0:29.1 | country. We are played with idiots on radio and television who speak English like the |
| 0:34.4 | Greeks of humanity to the detriment of our children. |
| 0:44.2 | But why, at a time when English is a major world's language, is it really in need of hospital treatment? A wide web of worries, a cobweb of old ideas, ensnars people as they think about |
| 0:51.4 | language, any language, and this must be swept away. |
| 0:55.8 | But clearing the cobwebs is only the first stage. |
| 0:59.5 | The language web is the title of all these lectures. |
| 1:03.2 | Webs, especially cobwebs, may entangle. |
| 1:06.8 | But webs themselves are not a tangle. |
| 1:09.1 | They have a preordained overall pattern, though every one is different in its details. Nature forces humans to weave the language web in a particular way, whatever language they speak. We are free, only within a preset framework. So, liberty within limits will be a major theme. I'll be looking at some |
| 1:31.8 | key topics, how language changes, how it began, how children learn it, and how we remember words. |
| 1:41.0 | But first, the cobweb of worries must be removed. |
| 1:45.0 | This envelops all of language, though especially language change. |
| 1:50.0 | Yet, humpback whales all to their songs every year, and no one's complained. |
| 1:59.0 | Naturally, language changes all the time. |
| 2:05.6 | This is a fact of life. |
| 2:07.6 | In the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer noted that |
| 2:11.6 | in form of speech is change. |
... |
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