Monday 12 May 2014

On dumbing up

I’ve been appalled, this week, as most language-aware practitioners have, with the misinformation being presented in the media about the proposal to use examples of celebrities’ language along with classical literature in the proposed Language and Literature A-level specification. Russell Brand seems to have been the focus of most of the comment, along with Dizzee Rascal, Jeremy Paxman, and others.

Excellent responses have already been forthcoming from the English and Media Centre and from the EngLangBlog, so I won’t repeat what is said there. But one example from the media illustrates the profound misunderstanding of what language study is all about. Dan Clayton shows how the Daily Mail is typical of the way the facts are being misrepresented by quoting an exam question. The Mail asserts the following:

One question simply states: 'Analyse the text on this Caffè Nero website'.

This is the question that actually appeared:

Text A, below, is an advertisement for coffee published during the Great Exhibition of 1851. Text B, on page 3, is a webpage produced by the coffee company Caffè Nero in 2012.

Analyse how language is used in Text A and Text B to represent the companies’ coffee.

With reference to Text A, Text B and your own studies, illustrate and evaluate different ways of explaining how language changes.

The Mail has omitted the crucial part of the question, which focuses the student's attention on the changes in language which have taken place during the past century or so. It's a brilliant question - and one that would have taken quite a bit of time to research. How many people would know where to look to find 19th-century coffee ads? And it gets to the heart of any language syllabus.

All language awareness, ultimately, is about contrast and change. You appreciate standard English by contrasting it with nonstandard English. You understand singulars by contrast with plurals, present tenses with past tenses, comparatives with superlatives... A friendly intonation contrasts with an aggressive one. A headline contrasts with a sub-heading, and with no heading at all. Usage today contrasts with usage yesterday, or last year, or last century.

The press juxtaposes Russell Brand and Shakespeare, and calls the process a dumbing down. But we appreciate Shakespeare by contrasting him with non-Shakespeare - both in his time (other dramatists, other prose-writers) or afterwards. The point is a general one: we appreciate literature by contrasting it with non-literature. The process can be unconscious - it usually is - but is enhanced when it is made conscious, which is what these A-level courses are all about. Celebrity use of language is not being promoted as literature. It is enabling students to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the language of literature. It is not dumbing down. It is actually dumbing up.

7 comments:

Sarah at Cocoa Bean said...

Great piece. The media coverage of this has depressed me! It has served to demonstrate the laziness of journalists and the lack of knowledge of the much quoted Dfe source. I am very excited by the syllabus that OCR and The English and Media Centre have developed: hope it is recognised as the brilliant and rigorous A-Level that it promises to be.

@BobKLite said...

Good article - I like 'dumbing up'. I wouldn't have got past "...states: Analyse...'; generally I find the Mail scarcely readable.

Having studied Linguistics in the early '70s, and then undertaken a PGCE in 2004/5, I was amazed at the subtlety of language analysis that was required of the A-Level students I met during my teaching practice.

Anonymous said...

Your explanation makes perfect sense. However, why did the exam board need to makes such a point of the fact they had included the words of Brand? They appeared to suggest that using him and Dizzee Rascal was a selling point. One can only assume this was because they thought that would make the paper more 'relevant' and this was more desirable. Surely those assumptions are worth questioning?

Suzy Holding said...

Your blog was shared on Twitter. I found it last night and passed it on to colleagues at University of Hertfordshire. Here's the response from Dr Jon Berry

'Great spot - ta.

There are few advantages to creeping old age, believe me, but at least when I know that I can still get as angry about this sort of misrepresentation as I did when I first heard it, I am properly reassured that I still have blood in my veins and that this stuff still means a lot to me!

'Dumbing up'. Love it.

And my response to the blog is....

Thank you very much for giving my inarticulate, foul mouthed rage a more sophisticated and measured voice.

All the best

Suzy Holding

Dan said...

Thanks very much for sharing the EngLangBlog post and for your reasoned defence of the subject. Unusually for the Daily Mail, many of the comments on their hatchet job challenged the article and noticed the irony of the Mail (The Daily Mail!) accusing anyone else of obsession with celebrity. Perhaps that's why they closed their comments later that day!

Ϯ Lady MacbethϮ said...

I suspect that Brand and Dizee rascal were featured in the DM/on the syllabus because both were featured on 'Newsnight' and left Paxman more than a little discomfited. A linguistic analysis of those exchanges would prove extremely enlightening, I think.

Unknown said...

Great piece. The media coverage of this has depressed me! It has served to demonstrate the laziness of journalists and the lack of knowledge of the much quoted Dfe source. I am very excited by the syllabus that OCR and The English and Media Centre have developed: http://buyreallike.com/