Not so long ago, the Leader of the Opposition introduced a motion dealing with what he called the principles of fairness and meritocracy. Then the Minister of Foreign Affairs soon joined in the talk [about] meritocracy. Both men have doctorates. What is the simple point that both presumably missed?
The word meritocracy refers to "a ruling or influential class of educated people." What Dr Rowley had in mind was a system which promotes people on the basis of merit, a shorter word but the one that English speakers use.
Here is a sample of English as spoken by parliamentarians: "You had to be in good physical stature;" "the onus was cast upon you;" "the sporadic firing was not taking place continuously;" "talks continued and it went on for a few hours;" "I did the best I can;" "some of my colleagues was finding it difficult;" "the police gave a strong supporting role;" "governments are made to pay heavy." There is also the fact evident in speech and writing that we have lost the ability to distinguish between will and would. "Would" has almost completely overtaken "will" to denote the future. What I found surprising was that the people speaking were old enough to have had a colonial education, those bad old days [when] knowing Standard English and using it in public life was considered a good and indeed admirable thing.
There used to be an old joke about a politician whose name was Chanka Maharaj. It was alleged that at a political meeting he referred to bread and spelt it out as bred. Someone whispered to him "a." He then spelt: "b-r-e-d-a." What I subsequently discovered is that the same joke was told about Bustamante in Jamaica. The view then was that defective literacy was a widespread source of amusement even among people who only had a primary school education. Let us look at the matter at another level. Decades ago, a study was done by Dr Lawrence Carrington with Clive Borely and the late Hollis Knight, which revealed that many teachers, both at the primary and secondary school levels, were not aware that they were mixing the vernacular with the Standard.
There was a confusion of language use. This has led some linguists to suggest that English should be taught as a foreign language. The most obvious reason for the decline in awareness of the English is the loss of the habit of reading good quality English prose. It is the case that with the move to political independence and the gradual withdrawal of colonial authority and the fact that the English language was seen as part of the hated colonial heritage, the language of massa became suspect. After all, the gullible were told that Massa day done. At the cultural level in a narrower sense, the calypso that struck a bell even with intellectuals was Dan is the Man, a comic apparent exposé of the absurdities of colonial education.
So the image of a cow jumping over the moon was ridiculous but also highly imaginative for we have lived long enough to see that men in spaceships can land on the moon. Moreover, what anthropology has revealed to us is that mother goddesses, abhorred by Judaism, Christianity and Islam but not by African religions and Hinduism, were sometimes imaged in cow form. The nursery rhyme was a residual instance of the mockery of the mother goddess idea. Another rhyme I saw mocked at a Talk Tent performance some years ago was the one called "Rock a bye Baby on the Tree Top." What, asked the young comedian, was a baby doing on top of a tree? The answer is that the baby is always at the top of the genealogical tree. And when the wind of change blows and mothers make their babies barrel children, then down will come baby with a gun in his hand.
Recently Dr Kim Johnson, speaking at the Sabga Award for Excellence ceremony, remarked on the difference between Sparrow's great and memorable calypsoes and the inarticulate and instantaneously forgettable soca shouts. I would suggest that this is connected with the loss of appreciation for English because the vernacular fed upon the fertile possibilities of the English language and equally our best writers, and writers all over the world, brought the genius of their places into that language, which is why English is now an international language.
What we must face up to, and try to bring clarity to, is the reality of the ambivalence most seem to feel towards the English language and that this has led to a literacy deficit at all levels of our society. Radio announcers cannot pronounce the word "corporation." They compulsively say "co-operation." The resistance runs deep. To understand what it is about, we must go back to what missionary work was about both during and after slavery. The missionary's intention was to make people over, and turn them into a different kind of person. Insofar as the missionary was a more congenial and perhaps acceptable and accessible manifestation of colonial power, then the enslaved and liberated found it useful to embrace or pretend to embrace their beliefs and recommended behaviours.
With anti-colonialism, praise has been reserved for those who most pretended to embrace Euro-westernisation but rejected its blandishments in their hearts.They are, by definition, more authentic and more creative than the educated or semi-educated middle class with their pretentions.
The word "resistance" comes up all the time and part of that resistance by a kind of slippage has come to be applied to the English language. I would point out the irony, often not noted by those who take things too literally. Some of the "up-pressed" are masters of English prose. People had better sit up and smell the coffee.
I will end with two observations. One is a claim in an article in the UK Guardian that "dialect and idiom are the warp and weft of English literature and are there in Shakespeare, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy." They were in their own way mulattos of style as are all West Indian writers. The use of the vernacular is not incompatible with the use of the Standard. The tension between them cannot but be creative. Similarly, our parliamentarians can benefit from reading the prose of great public men of the past. That way we will be sure they belong to that group called the meritocracy.
Lloyd King
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