There was a rare literary event at the University of Peradeniya
There are a lot of things to say but I shall leave
event-review for another day. I will
limit comment here to a thought-provoking poem read by Marlon Ariyasinghe, who
was classed as a ‘budding poet’ in what was possibly a careless moment when
titling the programme. Among the six
‘budding’ poets featured were 3 who have published collections and three whose
work was by no means inferior to the ‘non-budding’ or ‘budded and
flowered/flowering’ writers.
Marlon read from a collection that’s going to be published
in January, titled ‘froteztology’. The
‘word’ comes from the poem so here goes:
I
is wanting to Frotezt
I is
wanting to frotezt,
Againzt
theeze mad men
Who
appear radically
But
think and live ideally
And
strain us linguistically
I is
very worry
“To
think that thinking men
Should
think so wrongly”
Imagination
is stunted
Creativity:
not allowed!
We
are brainwashed out of our
Vulgar
un-linguistic ways
And
reformed or forced to reform
To
be radicals with no faze
Say
special with a IS
And
face with a Z
Protest
with a F
And
F*** with a P
Say
it proudly.
So
puck opp n let we be.
Ok, the asterisks were inserted by me and that has nothing
to do with any issue I may have with the content of the poem; just editorial necessity
that is far less pernicious than the straight-jacketing the poet refers to,
especially given the fact that the restrictions come, according to him, from
self-appointed authorities on language-liberation.
This is a poem that need to be read out loud to capture the
play on the politics of language standard, for example those surrounding the ‘o’
sound, i.e. the ‘Yakko-O’ (as opposed to the ‘Snooty-O’). Print doesn’t do it and apologies on this
account. I had a question, which I asked
then: ‘Isn’t it because you can say ‘f*** off’ that you can say ‘puck opp’? Marlon conceded that there was some logic in
my proposition.
We had a conversation over email subsequently which might
illustrate some of the issues pertaining to language standards and I believe
reproducing the gist would be better (and perhaps more entertaining) than commentary. I just asked him to send me the poem and he
said, ‘This poem is
aimed at those at the university who promote academic writing but at the same
time say that we need to broaden linguistic barriers.’ Marlon is not a big fan of ‘English Our Way’,
by the way.
I
responded, ‘Those who rubbish language standards don't say puck-orp and
don't use such 'language' when they themselves write. They only use it in the
dialogues they insert, though, and this only affirms language hierarchies.’
Marlon agreed: ‘Exactly. They only
criticize it in theory and they themselves speak in an RP accent (RP, he told
me later, was ‘Queen’s English’ or ‘Received Pronunciation’). They may as you
say bend language boundaries in speech, but this is also a "made-up"
effort.’ He pointed out that it is
fashionable to say there’s nothing wrong in bending, but that in reality such
bending-advocates do not dream of doing it, especially in writing.
I
tossed my two-cents’ worth.
‘I
think that language standards don't have any defensible theoretical foundation.
Having said that I am acutely aware, as you are, that it is a class
instrument that is mercilessly employed. We can take one of two
approaches. We can say 'f*** it, it is not ours' or we can learn it so that we
can meet sword with sword and not butter-knife. It's a simple mechanism
taken from the realities of combat.’
I
think there are 4 categories of people who talk about this issue. There are the puritans, who think there’s
only one family of Englishes, the RP Family. There are the sour-grapers, who
dismiss English as para bhashawa (foreign language), tag it to the
colonial enterprise and all kinds of discriminations and marginalizations
consequent to it and advocate a ‘Mother Tongue Only’ approach to language. That’s a dying breed these days as more and
more people realize the disservice that S.W.R.D. Bandaranyaike did to those who
were not RP-privileged. Then there are
those who Marlon takes issue with, that is, the class of academics/writers who
promote anything-goes English as a progressive and even anti-colonial or
anti-establishment instrument but are suspiciously reluctant to put those words
where there mouths are, literally and metaphorically. Then there are those who take cognizance of
the politics pertaining to language, language standards as well as the relevant
hierarchies, especially the hands-off aspect of promoting Yakkho-English in
order to keep the riff-raff off their ‘traditional homeland’ called
Snooty-English.
It is
not clear in the poem where Marlon stands, the third or the fourth of the above
categories or in a fifth, perhaps, i.e. located somewhere between the two. I told him I was of the view that I feel the
third category considers people like Vihanga Perera a threat because they
(those like Vihanga) know this standard business is crap but are not lacking in
weapons of any ‘standard’-class, from the supiri-snooty to the yakma-yakkho.
Marlon
located himself: ‘The only way to criticize or even break the standard is to
know the standard (you have to know your enemy). Mispronunciation and bad
grammar are "radical" only when we know the correct standard.’ He still had a question, and one which I had
too: ‘But don't you think that once we learn and use the standard we have
already lost the battle. Since knowing it means that we are a part of it; that we
ourselves become one of those "gate keepers". This is my dilemma.
What do you think? Is there any way out of this predicament? To say fuck the standard and not learn it
will only be a disadvantage because we will not be taken seriously. The second approach makes us a
part of the system.
‘Mispronunciation and bad grammar
are “radical” only when we know the standard’.
A great line, I thought. Here’s
my response: ‘We can choose to be gatekeepers or we can be gate-openers; make
sure we do everything possible to erase the gate, i.e irrelevance the gate.
It has to be conscious. We got to pick and choose method and hope
like hell we get it right, given that our ignorance is infinite.’
I think there’s a radical politics in English ‘Standarding’
and that what passes off as ‘radical’ right now is complicit in the elite
project, i.e. the entrenching of Snooty-English. I think those who organized ‘SLAM 2010’ have
got it right. The poetry that was read,
Marlon’s ‘I is wanting to Frotezt’ was not the only poem that consciously
articulated this radicalism, bodes well for an informed intervention in this
regard. Something good to look forwards
to in the little dingy backroom of the literature archives of Sri Lanka where
Englishes languish, I felt.
And since Marlon brought up the terms ‘gate-keeper’, the
following would be a good puck-opp flourish to end this comment. Eric Alterman a professor of English and journalism at
the City University of New York, writing about Wikileaks disclosures (‘Do you
want to know a (top) secret?’) and claiming that mainstream editors and
reporters may be forgiven for wondering just how long they can remain central
(in dramas such as the one generated by the revelations), asks, ‘when the
gate’s been toppled, how long does the keeper keep a job?’
It is not about the gatekeeper. It is about the gate. Maybe.
Let’s meditate on this.
*This was published in the Sunday Observer on December 2010
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