Moscow state University
OLGA AKHMANOVA,
ROLANDAS F. IDZELIS
ШНЯТ IS
THE ENGLISH
ШЕ USE?
A Course
in Practical
Stylistics
MOSCOW UNIVERSITY PRESS 1978
Печатается по постановлению
Редакционно-издательского совета
Московского университета
Рецензенты:
профессор ТО. В. Роокдественский,
доцент Л. А. Тимпко
70104 — 038
А---------------63-78
077(02) — 78
© Издательство Московского университета, 1978 г.
Contents
Introduction ................................................ 7
PART I
Why not the “Best English”, Then? .	.	16
PART II
Inflated “Art-Criticese” and the Problem of
Comprehension................................................38
PART III
English as a “Tool of Our Trade”	....	58
PART IV
Vocabulary and Syntax........................................76
PART V
Specimens	of	Our Kind	of	English .	.	.	110
APPENDIX
“Restricted”	Forms of	English.....................134
References..................................................146
Index	of	Terms..........................................151
Index	of	Names..........................................155

Introduction
The question, used as the title of the present book
has been discussed time and again, by leading linguists,
but, unfortunately, at long intervals, and apparently
without much influence on the actual learning of lan-
guages, or the linguistic thinking of modern scholars.
How is this unfavourable state of affairs to be ac-
counted for-seeing that the general idea was clearly
and conclusively formulated so long ago? 1 As far back
as 1899 it had already been made abundantly clear
that learning to use proper English requires something
(a certain kind of knowledge, or proficiency?) that
is n о t confined to grammar (in the ordinary sense), or
orthography, or acquaintance with a reasonable number
of words. Texts like the one adduced by Henry Sweet,
innumerable other texts which appear not only in manu-
als of English, but as books in their own right, as
scientific treatises and translations of scientific treatises,
are too often flagrantly unacceptabl e-not
only unpleasant to read, but also, very often, difficult
to understand 2.
Although there exists a large number of books on
"style", "good English", etc.3, the foreign learner has
never (to our knowledge), been given, actually
shown, a text of any length which he could safely
"make his own", which he could imitate as a model
for his own style of writing and speaking, as an obraz-
eovoje proizvedenije reci to be assimilated the way
Flaubert drank in pages of Napoleon's "Code" before
sitting down to work 4. In other words, where do we
-foreign anglicist s-go, or what do we turn
7
to, if we are setting out to write and speak English on
our subject, that is, to use English for our special
professional purposes. Surely not to the many instances
of "bad English" collected in most manuals on the sub-
ject. We may sound too categorical, but so far n о
practical solution has been offered, no way
out actually shown.
We do not mean to say, of course, that the question
of models, of masters of style to be studied and imitat-
ed, had never been asked or answered before. The re-
cognition of the undisputed superiority of so many great
writers-classics and classical literature-is one of the
most general and most firmly established facts. But
where do they come in, how, in actual practice, are
they made to serve our specific purpose? 5
This brings us naturally to the more general pro-
blem, that is, the scope and aims of philology-the sci-
ence (nauka in the Russian tradition) which concerns
itself with everything that has ever been written or
said. Philology, then, is a science in whose domain are
included all imaginable kinds of proizvedenija reci how-
ever different, for the humbler, more everyday uses of
language are closely connected with the loftier ones:
the latter grow out of the former, thrive on them, could
not exist without them. It is, therefore, unfortunate
that in recent times it should have become customary
to keep apart, on the one hand, what is now often called
"linguistics", and, on the other, "literary criticism"
(literaturovedenije).
It is usually assumed that somewhere (where exact-
ly nobody has so far been able to show) 6 there is a line
which divides the rest of proizvedenija reci from those
which have a specific aesthetic or, as is sometimes
said, literary value. But however hard it may be
to say what literature is-as distinct from what it it
n о t-we are all convinced that the division is there,
that it does exist. In our University curricula this is
manifested in the now generally accepted administrat-
ive division: philological faculties in this country have
been neatly divided into two parts-literaturovedenije
and jazykoznanije. But however firmly established, this
division is largely artificial, for how can one really
know a language-that is, be a linguist in the proper
8
sense of the word-unless one has read widely, has
covered a large quantity of literary texts? We cannot
expect the student of English at the Philological faculty
of a University to confine himself only to trivial every-
day proizvedenija reci of the type "What's the time?",
"How are you?", let alone those of "The bill is large"
or "He filled the chair" kind7. Obviously 99% of his
studies are based on the bulky and elusive "something"
which carries such a wealth of aesthetic, historical and
social values.
At the same time if the literary critic does not study
the original texts, if he hopes to get away with (the
usually imperfect) translations which are assumed to
help him to understand the ideas or ideals contained
in them, or the social background of this or that writer
-and nothing else-he cannot be regarded as a philolog-
ist in the proper sense of the word. A literary critic's
work is worth-while only if he has studied d fond the'
language of the original literary sources.
A philologist, then, must be able to understand every
variety of text in the chosen language and be able to<
place it within the overall thesaurus of existing proiz-
vedenija reci. At the same time, he must have a very
clear idea of the kind of English he has decided to
use in his own speech and writing. In other words, the
philologist must know exactly what it is he is expect-
ed to imitate, what kind or variety of the language he
should endeavour to produce when "performing" orally
or in writing.
The aim and purpose of the present manual is to
provide concrete material-texts and explanations-which
should enable the learner to know what it is he (or
she) must regard as the model, the obrazec to be fol-
lowed as closely as possible when using English profes-
sionally. Although we are mainly concerned with the
English philologist (or anglicist) it could well be as-
sumed that the same kind of language should be re-
commended for scientific disquisition in general.
We have spoken of "scientific disquisition in gene-
ral" because in Russian we do not call the Humanities
"arts"-with good reason, of course, because all of the
intellectual pursuits at, for example, the Moscow Uni-
versity are based on scientific principles and
9
methods. But as far .as using language is concerned,
especially a foreign language, there is a world of
difference between those who specialise in the Humani-
ties (the philologists in particular) and those whose
subject belongs to the natural-let alone the "technical"
-sciences: it has been conclusively shown again and
again that the English foreigners "use for science" at
international conferences, etc., is mostly what Profes-
sor Quirk calls "Restricted English" 8 (RE is discussed
at some length in the Appendix. We have also included
a short text where the more salient features of this
way of talking-such as disregard for deictic rules and
morphosyntax-stand out).
However widely spread, RE is certainly not ac-
ceptable as far as the anglicist is concerned. The chemist
or the mathematician can let his verbal language go
very far down because in his case the passing on of
intellective information depends mainly on slides, dia-
grams, and other semiotic devices which to him are
more exact and important than words. Not so with the
philologist. In the case of the foreign anglicist the
"minimization" can go no further than the EWU (The
English We Use)-the kind of English we are setting
out to describe and explain in the present book.
A very important point to be made (with the for-
eign anglicist in mind) is that the EWU is "the langu-
age we speak w i t h"-to be kept distinct from the
languages (the registers or styles) the anglicist must
know how to speak about, for there is nothing in
English literary tradition that he is not expected to be
able to understand, appreciate, and enjoy. He must
begin by making quite sure he can use the EWU
both in speech and writing to the best advantage. But
even in his "active", his own oral and written speech,
he should always hope to rise above it and acquire,
later on, individual refinements of style.
To reiterate: the technical student often stops at
RE (Restricted English). For him the EWU level of
"performance" is the utmost achievement. For the for-
eign anglicist it is the lowest rung on the ladder. But
he will not be able to place his foot firmly even on this
unless he clearly understands the difference between
10
"the English he speaks with" and "the English he
speaks about" from the very beginning.
Although in all linguistic description it is traditional
to begin with the sounds, we shall have very little to
say on the subject. In this book we are concerned with
the choice and arrangement (or is it "dispo-
sition"?) 9 of word s-not with the more abstract rules
of Syntax or variations in Morphology, and certainly
not with the different kinds of sounds different native
speakers of English naturally produce.
As far as grammar is concerned, the rules are few
and easily accessible: the grammar of even the most
difficult language can be fully mastered in no more
than six months, according to Henry Sweet10, whereas
it takes a lifetime to become proficient in the choice
and arrangement of words.
For pronunciation-we could do no better than refer
the reader to Dr. R. A. Close: RP (Received Pronuncia-
tion) is the pronunciation we use and teach because
". .. it has become, and is being, adopted by an in-
creasingly large number of people for whom English
is a mother tongue and even for whom it is a second
language; because RP is so widely useful, and because
it has been so thoroughly described and standardised,
it is a very suitable dialect to choose for the purpose of
teaching the language" H.
If we were now to return to Sweet's original il-
lustration of the problem 12, we could easily assume that
all we need is doing away with "translationese"-in
spite of the fact that for years people had been led to
believe that "formal" translation was the only possible
approach to foreign language acquisition. As a result
"translationese"-".. . a banal and artificial form of lan-
guage", which "... fails utterly to do justice to the rich
resources of the receptor language" 13 had come into
being. To combat the tendency, the translators had to
be taught the "dynamic" approach. Unless one learns
to translate "dynamically", one fails to do justice to
the rich resources of the receptor language 14.
In this manual we are not concerned with fiction or
imaginative writing; our practical problem is scien-
tific English in the broadest sense of the word, that
11
is, the English we use when we lecture, write books
and articles, take part in international conferences, etc.
In all those activities we use English cross-culturally:
speaking English (instead of using our own language)
is something unnatural, something that requires a spe-
cial effort, it is an exercise in meaning
equivalence across cultures. When we-
conceive an idea, we must either divest it of its natural
Russian "garb" (if we think that thoughts are never
"in the nude"), or learn to select the proper English
"covering" at once, on the spur of the moment, when
our thought is still in statu nascendi.
But what exactly is the "garb" the educated foreign
anglicist will be expected to choose for his thoughts?
How does he know the difference between the right
and the wrong one? Who or what is he supposed to
watch and follow?
The literature on the subject of English for foreign
students is very extensive. Among other things very
much has already been said about the shortcomings
of the conventional arts-based English course in so far
as the overseas science student is concerned15, also
about the necessity for philologists and teachers of En-
glish to learn new attitudes, to be able to "cater for
restricted areas of advanced research" 16. Many of these
pronouncements are very important, although some of
them, which are critical of the existing textbooks 17, go
too far when they imply that it would be much better
if adult scientists learned their English not from the
"abominable textbooks", but from Swift, or Austen, or
Earaday's History of a Candle18. The History of a
Candle may be good reading for scientists, but, as we
shall show further on, classics and classical literature
are hardly the proper texts for them to choose.
Of the categories discussed above only the abstract
concept of "general English" has not so far been called
in question. But it is much too abstract to serve as a
guide; besides it probably comprises a variety of dif-
ferent registers. It follows that the kind of English we
are setting out to discover, describe, and deliberately
teach to the foreign anglicist as his variety of En-
glish, (that is, the kind of English for him to use
when he speaks, gives lectures, takes examinations,
12
talks to foreign specialists about his research, etc.), is
neither the elusive "general English", nor is it the
"restricted English" of the natural scientist, for this
cannot be "institutionalized", described and taught.
What is it then? This is the question we shall seek
to answer below by scrutinizing the more likely of the
existing registers. We shall also try to include "posit-
ive" material: books on English too often adduce "bad"
-or unacceptable modes of expression in order to con-
demn them and thus warn the learner against them. Al-
though one cannot prescribe convincingly without a
certain amount of underlying criticism, precept must
go hand in hand with practice and the learner must not
only be told, but also shown what to do.
NOTES
1.	See Sweet (1964, p. 71-72) and Akhmanova
(1969, p. 27-28).
2.	Almost any translated text would do as an example
(for obvious reasons the sources will remain unnamed). Thus,
for instance:
. On the other hand the statement which describes the
view regarding the essence of language, formulated by the last
and most advanced stage of the comparative and historic lin-
guistics of the XIXth century, the so-called neo-grammarian
school as a helenistic, romantic, linguistic conception is a re-
pulsive back slapping and annoying schematism which forces
the whole of the most developed linguistic conception of the
last quarter of the XIXth century into the ban of subjective
or objective idealistic psychologism and therefore does not
correspond at all to the historical facts....”
.. Although natural science may consider the matter of
plants, animals and human beings as if it were a part of an
inanimate universe, it also may, without ceasing to be pure
science, be applied as an auxiliary science to biological objects
and consider the matter of any organism as no less and no
more than matter of a certain form, so delimited, reactive to
its surroundings, receptive, expansive and primarily determin-
ed by a guiding principle of vital behaviour. Natural science,
applied as an auxiliary science, assists biology to observe any
form of behaviour of flora and fauna and the human race.
... .Whereas, however, the matter of forms of vital behaviour
is investigated by natural science, the matter of psychical and
mental forms cannot be examined in that way, but, it may
be understood in respective ways of interpretation and it may
be reflected, reflection being interpretative thinking.”
3.	We are thinking of books like Bernstein (1965),
43 о 11 ins (1956), Chapman (1956), Evans (1966),
13
Tennant (1964), Hill (1968), Gowers (1968), King
and C rerar (1970), S heard (1962), Vail ins (1963),
(1965), Whitten and Whitaker (1950).
4.	See Part II.
5.	This question is discussed at length by Quirk (1959*,
p. 15-46) and especially by Brookes (1959, p. 130-131;
160). See also: Catford (1959, p. 172-173), Enright
(1970, p. 193-197), Fowler (1971, p. 84-90), Hester
(1972, p. 284-290), Smith (1972, p. 274-277), Steiner
(1972 p. 278-283).
6.	“What is it that makes a piece of writing literature? It
is by no means an easy question to answer.” (V a 11 i n s,.
1963, p. 162).
7.	We are alluding to the now very large and interesting
collection of mostly ambivalent sentences which constitute so-
mething that may with good reason be described as “modern
linguistic folklore”. Sentences of this kind abound in modern
linguistic literature and should certainly be taken into account
by whoever concerns himself with kinds or types of English
to be “heeded” by philologists.
8.	The term “restricted English” is used to denote each of
the different kinds of English which “.. .the African politician
at the United Nations Assembly, the scientist at an internation-
al conference, the merchant, businessman and technician...”
will require for his special professional use (Quirk, 1968,
p. 23-24).
9.	See Gowers (1968, p. 7-8). Sir Ernest calls it “choice
and arrangement”, but in one of the quotations that head the
first chapter it is described as “choice and disposition”.
10.	Sweet (1964, p. 65).
11.	Close (1971, p. 148-149). We shall also quote in full
the following extract from Trim (1959, p. 95) :
“In short, convergence towards standard pronunciation is a
natural, progressive response to the conditions of our time.
Although those who have done most to codify RP, particularly
Henry Sweet and Daniel Jones, have scrupulously refused to*
prescribe it as a standard—as befits descriptive scientists—
there seems to me no reason to doubt that as the form of
speech at the apex of the cone it exerts an attraction and has.
already become accepted, tacitly, as a standard form of speech.
The codification of the phoneticians has caused it to become
widely available (it is the form of British English universally
taught abroad). Radio and television, moreover, have made its.
many styles familiar to the entire nation. Its use and propa-
gation in schools are perfectly justified and desirable.”
12.	See Notes 1 and 2 above.
13.	Nida and Taber (1969, p. 100).
14.	The Bible translators were the first in the field and
did a tremendous amount of work. It was this type of “texts”
which were so useful in formulating and actually working out
the concept of “translationese”. As a result of translating the
same text into thousands of different languages very many
facts were accumulated on the basis of which a reliable theory
14
could well be worked out. So long as the original purport is
assumed to have been retained — the translation is a ‘‘good”
one. ”.. .Bad” translations are of two kinds: 1) “Formal cor-
respondense: the form (syntax and classes of words) is pre-
served; the meaning is lost or distorted”, and 2) “Paraphrase
by addition, deletion, or skewing of the massage” (Nida and
Taber, 1969, p. 173). For a detailed discussion of the pro-
blems involved see Sveicer (1973), (1970, p. 30-42).
15.	See, for example, “A report on the proceedings of the
fifth Annual Conference of teachers of English as a foreign
language”, which took place in January 1972: “The Bulletin
of the International Association of Teachers of English as a
Foreign Language”, Newsletter No. 23, May 1972. From the
point of view of the present manual the materials of the Con-
ference are most important, because they help us to understand
the connection, if any, between “the English We Use” (or, at
any rate, we want to use) and the different forms of SFE
(“Special Forms of English”) discussed there.
16.	As quoted in the above (15) from the Report by Stre-
v e n s (p. 6).
17.	“.. .conventional textbooks for beginners are insulting
to the intelligence of adult learners” (McKeown, p. 25 of
the Report). Unfortunately all these very interesting statements
appear mainly in the form of theoretical pronouncements. The
reader is not referred to texts or manuals in which they could
be seen “in action”, where concrete examples could be found
of the “.. .style that could be used for most purposes of speak-
ing as well as writing” (Dr. King, 1970, p. 13)—a very
important idea, because when we speak of the English We
Use, it is the English we must learn both to write and speak.
18.	“It is better to get a budding scientist to read Swift
or Austen or Faraday’s History of a Candle than to read many
of the textbooks in their subject. It will enable them to write
better in their subject, for one cannot write well unless one
is a well-read man”. (Dr. King, 1970, p. 9). But do we
really expect physicists or mathematicians to learn to write
well in English, meaning by “well’ their ability to work out
a powerful individual style or at least one with some literary
merit? The answer to this question is an obvious “no”!
Parti
WHY NOT THE "BEST ENGLISH", THEN?1
According to G. H. Vallins the "best English" is
equated with literature. "Literature, as distinct from
ephemeral writing and officialese, preserves what is
best and most worthy out of the past and hands it on
as a living tradition". Although ". . . there is no ultimate
answer to the question. .. what is it that makes a piece
of writing, literature", nevertheless there can be no
doubt about its existence: it is not only there, but
also and always open to whoever wants to become
"literate" in the proper sense of the word 2.
It has long and generally been assumed that all one
needs to do if one's aim is to learn to write properly
is to study the best writers very deeply, peruse them
again and again: "... he need only attend to, observe,
and imitate the best authors" s.
One of the generally recognised masters of English
is Jane Austen. Now, when one reads her books, does
one do it in the hope of becoming engrossed in the
story, or is one looking for excellence of style, wonder-
ful ways of saying things? The plot does not move
fast enough for the 20th century reader to forget him-
self in it. The enjoyment must be more complex, there
must be something besides the mere story to hold the
interest of the reader: he must not mind coming back
and re-reading certain passages and enjoying the ex-
cellence of style.
It is different with detective stories. Thus when one
reads a book by Agatha Cristie, for example, one is,
obviously, concentrating on the plot, the excitement
(the plot developing very quickly), on effortlessly en-
16
joying oneself, considerations of style, the way she says
things never rising to any prominence.
As far as the student of English, the foreign an-
glicist of the Introduction, is concerned, there is one
more side to his reading. The student of English (es-
pecially the not very advanced one) will have to con-
cern himself with the very important question of the
acceptability of certain forms from the point of
view of the modern reader or speaker. Let us take,
for example, the opening sentence from Jane Austen's
"Emma": "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and
rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition,
seemed to unite some of the best blessings of exist-
ence . ... with a comfortable home and happy dis-
position .. .". Would we say this today? In modern
usage "disposition" is temporary, whereas "a comfort-
able home and happy disposition" implies something
permanent. Now we would, probably, speak of a "happy
character". "... and had lived nearly twenty-one years
in the world with very little to distress or vex her"-
meaning "worry" or "trouble"? "... they had been liv-
ing together as friend and friend very mutually attach-
ed, ..We cannot any longer be "very mutually at-
tached", or "slightly mutually attached", etc.
One goes on reading: "It was Miss Taylor's loss
which first brought grief". The use of the possessive
case with objective meaning-it was not Miss Taylor
who lost something, but it was the loss of Miss Taylor
herself. If one is a twentieth century reader and wants
to read Jane Austen, one is very likely to stop here with
a jolt. "The wedding over, and the bride-people gone,
her father and herself were left to dine together"-one
cannot but stop here and wonder what is meant by
"bride-people". It must have been in common use at
the time, but it could also be Jane Austen's innovation.
"... though it had been entirely a match of affec-
tion. .Nowadays we would call it "a love match" 4.
". .. she is a civil pretty-spoken girl"~"pretty-spoken"
does not mean "she speaks well or knows how to use
language" in present-day English. "Mr. Elton is a very
pretty young man...". We no longer speak of men as
"pretty", although at that time words describing and
2 Akhmanova, Idzelis
17
differentiating personal qualities (pretty, handsome;
glow, bloom) "... could be applied to men as well as
women"5. "Some scruples and some reluctance the
widower-father may be supposed to have felt; .. ."-
not "widowed father"? This may be part of Jane Aus-
ten's individual predilection for "bride-people", "widow-
er-father", etc. "Mr. Weston .. . satisfied an active
cheerful mind and social temper by entering into the mi-
litia of his country, then embodied"-"embodied" in
this sense is now obsolete. It was a military word mean-
ing "formed into a military company" 6. "Mr. Knight-
ley, a sensible man about seven or eight and thirty. . .".
To the modern reader it would be difficult to under-
stand what was meant at that time by "a sensible man".
The word "sensible" ". .. was overburdened with mean-
ing". Being related to the words "sense" and "sensibi-
lity" it "... could have by the latter half of the eigh-
teenth century at least four distinct meanings, the com-
monest now of "having good sense" being the last to
develop" 7. "For a few days every morning visit in
Highbury included some mention of the handsome let-
ter Mrs. Weston had received." Letters are not spoken
of as "handsome" any longer. "She knew that at times
she must be missed, and could not think without pain
of Emma's losing a single pleasure, or sufferring an
hour's ennui from want of her companionableness".
One can no longer "lose pleasure" or "suffer from the
want of anybody's companionableness".
". . . nor anything objectionable in the degree of ob-
servance and attention which Clara paid". The adver-
bial phrase is not only excessively long and nominal,
but also hardly acceptable in terms of modern colloca-
tion. ". . . but though united in the gross, very distinctly
divided again"-obsolescence of adverbial phrases. "In
the gross" is an adverbial modifier which could hardly
be used figuratively at present. Then, the contrast be-
tween being "united in the gross" and "distinctly divid-
ed"-we no longer speak of anything being "distinctly
divided". ".. . she was ... sufficiently well-read in novels-
to supply her imagination with amusement. . .". We no
longer use "supply" in a transferred sense, confining
its use to direct physical processes. We can supply peo-
ple with cigarettes, we can even supply them with in-
18
formation, but we can hardly supply anybody with
amusement.
The idea, then, as far as excerpts of this kind are
concerned is the following: what does a modern philo-
logist, a student of English (we are always thinking, of
course, of the foreign student of English, of the foreign
anglicist) do about it? How does he set about imitating
this excellent writer? Jane Austen is on the curriculum;
so is Charlotte Bronte and many others 8.
It follows that undergraduates are supposed to
read Jane Austen. But when they read English books
they tend to record indiscriminately all the words and
word-combinations they find (especially if it is a writer
of Jane Austen's calibre) as proper, correct, even
admirable ways of saying it in English 9.
Obviously this is not the way to use literary texts.
On the one hand, there is too much in them that cannot
form part of the students' "active", or "productive"
English. On the other, their reading cannot be confined
to the lighter kinds of modern prose. What exactly
do we do, then, if we want to learn English at the Phi-
lological faculty-which, by definition, implies reading
extensively? Even if we decide that our students d о
read Jane Austen, for example, and should be encourag-
ed to do so, they evidently do not know enough English
to be able to mark off the words and expressions which
are no longer in use and should only be "talked
about", not "w i t h'"-their command of English is
not sufficient by far. They would tend to regard Jane
Austen as the great model, that is, something to be di-
rectly "attended to, observed and imitated" in their
"active" performance. How, then, do we approach the
problem, and where do we find the solution?
Before we go any further, we must explain why we
excerpted Jane Austen in preference to one of the
modern writers of fiction. The reason is in the follow-
ing: although XIXth century masters of English style
(among whom Jane Austen, of course, stands out) write
on questions, discuss problems (social, moral, etc.)
which, perhaps, are no longer of great importance to
the modern reader (while the modern writers may be
assumed to discuss extremely important and interesting
modern problems) the way they write-their manner
2*	IS
or style of writing-is, of course, superior to that of
modern authors 10. Besides, when it comes to fiction,
some time must always pass before one can safely re-
gard a writer as a master of style, a "classic", some-
body whose work is indubitably and indisputably good:
the concept of "classics" itself, of classical writing is
in some way connected with the idea of time ("modern
classics" is a metaphor). Otherwise stated, if one wants
to be on the safe side, one begins by having a good
look at the more generally recognized masters of the
language H.
We must also make it quite clear to our readers
that it is not to the detriment of Literature that we want
to narrow down our material and focus attention on the
English of an educated foreign philologist (anglicist).
If we appear to belittle the classics, we do it for a very
good reason. Reading the great masters of English
literature is a conditio sine qua non. We cannot pos-
sibly do without them. The educated foreign anglicist
is somebody who must have covered thousands of pages
of classical English literature. Without this his know-
ledge of the language will always be superficial, he will
never be able to appreciate what he is reading or list-
ening to-let alone judge of the qualities of his own
writing. He will know nothing about the proper choice
of words, he will never acquire the ability to find the
right word and use it to the best advantage.
But this aspect, or part, of our work cannot be
rationally organized, for it is essentially irrational.
The knowledge acquired in the course of reading lite-
rature extensively is subconscious. The process, then, is
one which it is practically impossible rationally to
control. It follows that Literature (with a capital letter)
can help us solve our problem only indirectly.
It cannot provide us with a readily accessible text or
texts which we could "activize" (aktivizirovat'), on
which ^e could base our own "performance" without
incurring the well-known dangers of misplaced or ma-
lapropistic imitation 12.
We must, therefore, look for a different kind of best
writers-the best writers of the particular variety of
English we are after. As we shall try to show in
Part III, it is not only possible, but, comparatively
20
speaking, easy to put one's finger on exactly the kind
of English which the foreign undergraduate, post-gra-
duate, and teacher of English philology must make
his own.
The above extracts were taken, as it were, for grant-
ed: we thought their unsuitability for the foreign
student's "active" performance required no special me-
thodology or scientific discussion. But as we enlarge
and diversify our material, a consistent step-by-step
methodology becomes a must.
What does one do when it is the words and the
way they are used that require detailed and profound
analysis 13. Grammar, including Syntax, is reducible to
a comparatively short and concise list of pertinent phe-
nomena 14, but the systematic study of words (and es-
pecially word-combinations) as used by an author, re-
quires the elaboration of special techniques. The best
known of these consist in writing out a text in the form
of a functional concatenation of words-one string of
functionally intertwined words following the other, like
this:
"The Parkers were no doubt a family of imagina-
tion and quick feelings, and while the eldest
brother found vent for his superfluity of sensation
as a projector, the sisters were perhaps driven
to dissipate theirs in the invention of odd com-
plaints"-
"The Parkers were no doubt a family	a family
of imagination and quick feelings,.."... and while
the eldest brother..."; "...and while the eldest
brother found vent for . ."... found vent for his
superfluity of sensation..."; "...found vent for his
superfluity of sensation as a projector,..."; "...the
sisters were .. . driven to dissipate theirs . ."... the
sisters were... driven to dissipate theirs in the inven-
tion of odd complaints."
Another example:
"The whole of their mental vivacity was evidently
not so employed; part was laid out in a zeal for
being useful"-
"The whole of their mental vivacity. .	". . their
21
mental vivacity was evidently not so employed;"
".. .part was laid out. .	". . .was laid out in
a zeal..".. .in a zeal for being useful".
Now a few comments to show how this is actually
done. "The Parkers were.. . a family.."The Parkers
were no doubt a family.. ."-no comment. This can very
well be used by anybody at any time. "The Parkers
were... a family of imagination and quick feelings..
the attributive "of-phrase" is questionable from the point
of view of the user we have in mind, because an "of-
phrase" of this kind would be much more natural if it
were a "family of eight", for example, or a "family of
illustrious descent". One can also object to a ".. .family
of imagination and quick feelings", because this expres-
sion is ambivalent: "a family of imagination" is not a
family which consists of imagination and quick feelings,
but is a family the members of which are imaginative
and sensitive. It follows, then, that in our word-by-
word analysis the word-combination "a family of ima-
gination and quick feelings" would be regarded as "un-
recommendable" (the term "unacceptable" being too
blunt for our purposes, we must think of something
more gentle and euphemistic), "and while the eldest
brother.. ."-no comment. ".. .while the eldest brother
found vent for his superfluity of sensation as a projec-
tor. . ."-"to find vent for one's superfluity of sensation
as a projector" is again a phrase which the educated
foreign user of English should avoid. One cannot find
vent for one's tender emotions as a professor, for exam-
ple, if what this means is "outlet for some kind of stor-
ed energy". Besides, the syntactic relationship between
the different members of this word-combination is not
quite clear. Moreover, the noun "superfluity" is hardly
ever used today, the adjective "superfluous" being pre-
ferred. ".. .the sisters were. .. driven to dissipate
theirs.. ." (meaning to dissipate their superfluity of sen-
sation), ".. .in the invention of odd complaints". When
we "dissipate" something, we do not use it to the best
advantage: we squander or waste by dissipating. Ob-
viously to think of "superfluity of sensation" as dissi-
pated "in the invention of odd complaints" is semanti-
cally correct, but at the same time, formally very unu-
22
sual. As far as the modern user is concerned, this is a
phrase he should never try to include in his own speech
or writing.
"The whole of their mental vivacity.. .". The word-
combination "mental vivacity" would, of course, re-
quire comment and explanation. What does one mean
by "mental vivacity"? Does the author mean that the
Parkers were quick in the uptake, or that they were
imaginative and sensitive? Then, "the whole of their
mental vivacity"~-"the whole of"-we speak of "the
whole country which was anxious for peace"; we can
speak of "all his energy", or "his whole energy", etc.,
but we hardly ever speak of "the whole of something",
unless it is something that is "coordinated in space and
time". Thus, we can say: "The whole of my money, all
of it was stolen".
As usual, the separation of the text into syntagms,
into the ultimate units of syntactic arrangement re-
quires what L. V. Scerba described as "linguistic expe-
riment" 15. But while experimenting with texts the stu-
dents should always keep on the safe side and prefer
to be overstrict or overexact. To demonstrate what the
method should consist in one should think of senten-
ces like "The whole of my energy", "The whole of his
muscular powers", "The whole of his mastery in teach-
ing English", etc. "The whole of their mental vivacity",
that is, their mental vivacity as a whole, all the men-
tal vivacity they possessed, "was evidently not so em-
ployed. . .", meaning that it was not, as it were, con-
sumed or spent on what came before, and a conside-
rable amount of it was ".. .laid out in a zeal for being
useful." ".. .a zeal for being useful..." requires no
comment, while ".. .part was laid out in a zeal.. ." is
questionable, because of the peculiar use of the prepo-
sition which recurs again and again in Jane Austen's
novels 16.
This kind of analysis, then, enables us to proceed
carefully step-by-step: by elimination we gradually ar-
rive at the kind or kinds of English the educated
foreign philologist should be advised to peruse before
he sits down to write or prepare for his lectures.
There is another kind of writing which will require
attention before we go any further. The case in point
23
is what we find in many "sub-genres" of the ".. .prose
which "conveys ideas", which states facts and gives
commentary upon them, which expresses critical opi-
nion" 17. A classical example of this is Lord Chester-
field's "Letters to His Son and Others", whose lan-
guage is much closer to what we are thinking of as
"the English to use" than Jane Austen's. If we take
the following extracts from the volume and subject
them to the same kind of analysis, the result will be
markedly different from the one arrived at with Jane
Austen's texts-much more of it will suit our purpose.
Thus:
"The business of Oratory, as I have told you be-
fore, is to persuade people; and you easily feel,
that to please people is a great step towards per-
suading them. You must then, consequently, be
sensible how advantageous it is for a man who
speaks in public, whether it be in Parliament, or
in the pulpit, or at the bar (that is, in the courts
of law), to please his hearers so much as to gain
their attention; which he can never do without
the help of Oratory. It is not enough to speak the
language he speaks in, in its utmost purity, and
according to the rules of grammar, but he must
speak it elegantly, that is he must use the best and
the most expressive words, and put them in the
best order. He should likewise adorn what he
says by proper metaphors, similes, and other figu-
res of rhetoric; and he should enliven it, if he
can, by quick and sprightly turns of wit."
Another extract:
"I have written to you so often of late upon
good-breeding, address, les manieres liantes, the
Graces, etc., that I shall confine this letter to ano-
ther subject, pretty near akin to them, and which,
I am sure, you are full as deficient in-I mean
style.
Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be
ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and
vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage,
and be as ill-received as your person, though
ever so well-proportioned, would, if dressed in
24
rags, dirt and tatters. It is not every understand-
ing that can judge of matter, but every ear can
and does judge, more or less, of style; and were
I either to speak or write to the public, I should
prefer moderate matter, adorned with all the bea-
uties and elegancies of style, to the strongest mat-
ter in the world, ill-worded and ill-delivered/'
"The business of Oratory. . . "-"business" has been
narrowing down in its meaning. We would not speak
of the "business of Oratory" now, we would rather
speak of the "aim" or "purpose" of Oratory. Besides,
we would, probably, prefer the verbal phrase to the
nominal one: "What Oratory seeks to achieve", for
instance, or "What Oratory is used for". ".. .as I have
told you before...", ".. .is to persuade people"-very
good. ". . .and you easily feel, that to please people is
a great step towards persuading them"-the whole sen-
tence could very well be used in the educated foreign
philologist's own style.
Before we go any further we should remind our
readers that it is very important to distinguish carefully
between a certain genre, or type, or kind of language
as belonging to a certain period or sphere in which
the language was used, and style as an individual pe-
culiarity 18. Quite often we may be dealing simply with
some kind of omission or mistake. For instance, if we
take the sentence: "You must then, consequently, be
sensible how advantageous...", one wonders why these
two practically synonymous expressions-"then" and
"consequently"-should be used together. "You must. ..
be sensible how advantageous it is.. ."-"you must.. .
be sensible..." from the point of view of the modem
language means that you must show common senser
that you must be reasonable. To use the compound pre-
dicate "to be sensible" to mean "you must be aware
of", or "know" is certainly an archaic way of putting
it. ".. .how advantageous it is for a man who speaks in
public, whether it be in Parliament, or in the pulpiL
or at the bar (that is, in the courts of law).. ."-a very
long attributive clause which could perhaps be altered
or split up. As far as the word-combination ".. .whether
it be in Parliament. . ." is concerned, the simple, non-
2&
paraphrastic form of the Subjunctive would give an
archaic tinge to one's text today. ". . .or in the pulpit
or at the bar (that is, in the courts of law). .." ".. .to
please his hearers so much..." require no comment
with the exception of ".. .to gain their attention. ..".
". . .which he can never do without the help of Ora-
tory"-very good. "It is not enough to speak the lan-
guage he speaks in, . . ."-we do not speak in a language
any longer. ". . .the language he speaks in, in its ut-
most purity,. .." is from the point of view of style not
so good, therefore, the whole phrase ". . .the language
he speaks in, in its utmost purity, .. ." should not be
recommended to the modern foreign learner. ". . .and
according to the rules of grammar"-all right. ".. .but
he must speak it elegantly, that is, he must use the
best and the most expressive words, and put them in
the best order"-all this is very good writing, and one
would be very pleased if in one's own language one
could do half as well. "He should likewise adorn what
he says by proper metaphors, similes, and other figures
of rhetoric; and he should enliven it, if he can, by
quick and sprightly turns of wit."-this sentence requi-
res no comment with the exception of ".. .by quick and
sprightly turns of wit".
"I have written to you so often of late. . ."-very
good, but "I have written to you so often of late upon
good-breeding..." raises a very important question,
because writing or speaking on something should be
carefully distinguished from writing about or speaking
about something. When Lord Chesterfield speaks of
writing "upon" good-breading and not "about" good-
breading, this shows that he is probably taking it very
seriously, and "upon" is as good to him as "on". ". . .a
subject you are as deficient in. . ."-what he means is
“"deficient in style". A very difficult word to use is the
word "dress", because it is mainly used to denote "an
outer garment worn by a woman or a girl; gown or
frock " 19. But it can also be used metaphorically, and
in this sense it is, probably, the best choice-if we com-
pare it with all the other possible ways: "expression
of thoughts", "outfit of thoughts", "garment of
thought" 20, etc. ".. .and let them be ever so just..."
(cf. honourable, right, fair)-as a bookish phrase and a
26
slightly affected one it is not at all bad. ". . .if your
style is homely, coarse, and vulgar.. the word
"homely" is not very clear to the modern user of Eng-
lish, because one does not really know whether it is
a meliorative or a pejorative epithet or attribute. One
could hardly regard "homely", "coarse", and "vulgar"
as an instance of synonymic condensation21, because
"coarse" and "vulgar" are clearly pejorative, while
"homely" is only mildly so. In the case ". . .they will
appear to as much disadvantage.. ." one cannot help
wondering whether "disadvantage" should be modified
in this way. ".. .and be as ill-received.. .". Interesting-
ly, the adjective "ill" either when used by itself, or
when included as a stem in a compound, has clearly
changed in the course of the last two hundred years.
His style was ".. .as ill-received as his person..."
sounds archaic. At the end of the paragraph we find "ill-
worded", and "ill-delivered". Clearly these uses of "ill"
are no longer in the "active". The whole construction
is very interesting: "...though ever so well propor-
tioned. ." is something that in the context is not easy
to understand, for both the "thoughts" and the "per-
son" are said to be "well-proportioned", that is, "well
constructed" or "well built". When we speak of a
"well-proportioned" person we mean a person who is
reasonably tall and not too fat or too thin. But for
reasons of style Lord Chesterfield speaks not only of
a "well-proportioned person", but also of "well-propor-
tioned thoughts", which, of course, is a very interest-
ing way of putting it. At the same time this expression
is much too unusual stylistically to be recommended
to the modern foreign learner. Then the metaphor is
"sustained"-".. .if dressed in rags, dirt and tatters".
One does find it difficult to understand how it could
be dressed in "dirt". "It is not every understanding
that can judge of matter, but every ear can and does
judge, more or less, of style.. ."-"style" in this sen-
tence is opposed to "matter", that is, the way some-
thing is expressed, to the actual subject matter, to
the thoughts which are "dressed" in this or that way.
Although we still speak of "mind and matter", "it was
a serious matter", etc., "to judge of matter", meaning
"to form an opinion about the subject matter of
27
something said or written/' is certainly not the best
way to put it today. The predilection for the nominal as
against the verbal expression requires special research.
The sentence "It is not every understanding that can
judge of matter..." is too nominal to please the modern
ear, ". . .but every ear can and does judge, more or
less, of style" is pleasantly verbal. ".. .and were I
either to speak or write to the public,.... I should pre-
fer moderate matter"-"moderate matter" is opposed to
"the strongest matter in the world, ill-worded and ill-
delivered". "Matter" here means "content" or what a
person talks about. The thought is rather complex: it
is not so easy to express it simply, but, all the same,
the way Lord Chesterfield uses the word "matter" dif-
fers widely from modern usage.
When we deal with brilliant masters of style, we are
inevitably hampered by the fact that purely linguistic
analysis, the attempt to "place" certain words and ex-
pressions in time (or analyse them diachronically) is
not an easy task, because quite often one becomes so
impressed by the clarity of the exposition, by the "ele-
gancy" (as Lord Chesterfield calls it) of expression, by
the effectiveness of the construction, that one cannot
help forgetting about one's more modest pursuits. Ne-
vertheless, to speak of "moderate matter" as against
the "strongest matter", that is, using these two word-
combinations to denote the content of one's thoughts,
(or what one is trying to say) as against how one is
saying it—this contrast (althought very well brought
out by these means) remains quite a difficult rhetori-
cal problem to solve, and it is not easy to find a mo-
dern substitute for it. "Moderate" is at present much
narrower in meaning, which makes it difficult to speak
of "moderate matter" as against the "strongest mat-
ter".
These short extracts will suffice to show that Lord
Chesterfield's "Letters", partly because of the diffe-
rence in genre, are much more usable as the model, as
the manner of writing to be imitated by the modern
anglicist, than Jane Austen. Nevertheless, Lord Ches-
terfield (as well as Jane Austen) remains one of the
masters of style the study of whose writings cannot
28
be rationally organized 22, for profiting by them
is a lengthy and subconscious process.
From what has been demonstrated above, it may
well be concluded that we think rather highly of our
method of analysis, and seem tacitly to imply that it
is different from the more ordinary kinds. We do be-
lieve that the study of choice and arrangement of
words, the study of word-combinations (slovosocetanija)
had not so far received all the attention it deserves.
To clarify our point let us consider a very useful
and interesting book devoted to Jane Austen's English,
the well-known manual by K.C. Phillipps 23. This com-
prehensive research contains an exhaustive analysis of
peculiarities of Jane Austen's style, which certainly
cannot fail to interest the student of that great stylist's
language.
As usual, the material is divided into two basic
sections, that is, Vocabulary and Sentence Structure.
From the part called "Vocabulary" we learn very much
about the specific use of the verb "to sink" in Jane
Austen's novels; words like "amount", "account", "de-
licacy", "elegant", "superior", "sensible" and many
others are neatly arranged and really make wonderful
reading. One finds not only plentiful information about
words which were peculiar to Jane Austen's English,
but also those points of vocabulary which were in ge-
neral use in her time as against our own. The import-
ance and interest of this information is very great in-
deed. It is of the greatest value and interest not only
to the student of Jane Austen. It also reveals the chang-
ing forms of English, introduces the reader to the his-
tory of English words, the way they were used at dif-
ferent times, etc. Materials of this kind show clearly
how words change with respect to referents, how the
range of connotations they evoke can be widened, made
more interesting, etc.
The same applies to "Sentence Structure" where we
find a large number of very interesting points such as
the use of "do", "must", "may", "shall", "will". Com-
petent observations have also been made by Phillipps
concerning a large number of purely syntactical points.
Thus, concord: "I felt almost as if you was an old ac-
quaintance", (instead of "were"); the question of per-
29
sonal pronouns which is persistently discussed in most
books on grammar and style: "Depend upon it, it is
me. .. It is me, Baddeley, you mean" (not "I"), or
"If I was her, I would not have put up with it", (in-
stead of "she"). In the use of personal pronouns Jane
Austen appears to have been ahead of the usage of her
time. Or, for instance: "Whose great kindness I shall
always thankfully remember, as well as Edward too,
who I have told of it", (instead of "whom" I have
told of it)-a point which is still discussed in all books
on the subject.
Every student of the English article will derive very
much useful information from Phillipps' analysis. We
also find very useful information on inversion, gerunds,
the passive voice, etc., and on what happens to those
well-known syntactical features in Jane Austen's novels.
Then, adjectives as against adverbs: "She was vastly
pleased at your all going", or "I really thought be-
fore, young men despised novels amazingly". Then, the
difference between "very much" and "greatly": "Mrs.
Dixon must be very much disappointed", or "The girls
were very much delighted", etc.-different points which
are always in the limelight, things students of English
never tire to write about 24. Conversion: "Ever since her
being turned into a Churchill she has out-Churchill'd
them all in high and mighty claims", or "Her being
handsomely legacied hereafter", or "Let me not sup-
pose that she dares go about, Emma Woodhouse-ing
me" 25-a metasemiotic derivation which we so often
find in P. G. Wodehouse. The nominalization of phrasal
verbs-verbs with prepositional adverbs following. For
instance, "cry out", and then ". . .there would be a ge-
neral cry-out upon her extreme good luck.", or "The
whole of his break-off with lady H. is very well done",
or "That was the wind-up of the history". Very note-
worthy are agent-nouns: "He is no complimenter", "A
very liberal thinker", "The principal arranger of the
plan" 26.
We made a point of beginning with a short review
of a book on style in order to set off our own metho-
dology and final aim of research. Whenever we ap-
proach a text, what we want to do is assess it from the
point of view of our own practical uses and require-
30
ments: we want to make quite sure from the very out-
set in how far this is a form of written English which
we can use "as a tool of our trade" 21. We are, there-
fore, not concerned with the history of words or with
the features of style which Jane Austen particularly
favoured. As far as using English as a "tool" is con-
cerned, we are not at all worried about the difference
between, for example, "It's I" or "It's me", or "who-
whom" and all the rest of these well documented, care-
fully listed points of grammar 28, about the use of which
we have already made up our minds: we shall not take*
any liberties and be very careful when making a choice.
What has been said about morphology and syntax ap-
plies also to individual words. We are not going to
use "floated" instead of "flooded", "infer" instead of
"imply", "grateful", instead of "gratifying", etc.
We should like to reiterate that we would not for a
moment think of casting aspersions on previous work
in our field. We shall also never tire of repeating what
we said above about the subconscious assimilation of
the style of great writers. They made no bones about
taking liberties with the way they turned out or round-
ed off their phrases29. Nevertheless they remained
giants of the "best English", and nobody can ever
achieve anything in the way of linguistic expression un-
less he has covered thousands and thousands of pages,
of those inestimable models of "best English". One is
bound to familiarize oneself with the infinite variety
and wealth of expression, all the different ways of say-
ing things which none of us, of course, could ever
dream of reproducing exactly. As we read the classics,
our own style improves subconsciously and impercep-
tibly. A good speaker or writer is imbued with particu-
lar choices and arrangements of words without being
aware of it. This point must be made again and again
for fear of a most unpleasant misunderstanding.
What we are after, then is the choice and a r-
rangement of words. That is what Sir Ernest Go-
wers calls it. He quotes G. M. Young who spoke not of
the choice and arrangement, but of the "choice and.
disposition" of words 30. Whatever we may call it what
we are thinking of is how to learn to use words as
"tools of our trade" in teaching the language at Philolo-
3t
*gical faculties of Universities, writing books and arti-
cles on philology, taking part in international confe-
rences, giving lectures, making reports, etc.
How can we solve the problem of choice and arran-
gement of words? Excellent books like G. H. Vallins'
and Sir Ernest Gowers' (as well as so many other books
on the subject) help us in our research only indirectly
in the sense that they are written for the native
speaker of the language, not for the educated foreign
philologist, and are much more concerned with what
n о t to say or what kind of English n о t to use. When
we turn to books of this kind, what we mostly find is
a certain preference for the negative aspect, a ten-
dency to bring together rather too many examples of
how not to do it. We find selections of particularly
badly written texts with copious explanations of why
these texts are bad. Thus they may be bad mainly be-
cause the punctuation marks are not properly placed,
because the meaning of what is being said has not been
made clear enough, or because too many words were
used without being properly chosen 31.
This does not mean to say, of course, that we never
find examples or extracts, or passages gleaned from
very good writers. But again what they tell us boils
down to the following: "Look at those marvellous texts,
and look how well they are written. Look at the bad
ones and avoid that kind of mistakes. Look at the
good ones and try to imitate them". But why exactly
are they good? How do we know they are good? Must
we be made to believe that it is only classics who
knew how to write well?32 Why not give us exam-
ples which would be a little nearer home, examples of
English as used by our contemporaries-ordinary philo-
logists, men of our profession. But this, to our know-
ledge, never happens.
Seeking for an answer to the above questions, in
Part III of the present book we have made it our main
purpose to subject to word-by-word analysis (accord-
ing to the method demonstrated above) several kinds
of late modern English prose, English as it is used
today by people who are supposed to know how to
use their own language. We shall concentrate our at-
tention on a study of concrete examples of good mo-
32
dern English, the English for u s to use, "transcribe,
imitate and emulate".
NOTES
1.	The title of this part was suggested by the name of
G. H. Vallins’ well-known book (V a 11 i n s, 1963).
2.	Ibid., p. 10, 13, 162.
3.	See Chesterfield (1929). Lord Chesterfield’s style
being one of the best examples of the “best English”, we take
the liberty of reprinting here more extracts from his famous
“Letters”:
“It is by no means sufficient to be free from faults in
speaking and writing; you must do both correctly and ele-
gantly. In faults of this kind, it is not ille optimus qui minimis
urgetur; but he is unpardonable who has any at all, because
it is his own fault; he need only attend to, observe, and imi-
tate the best authors.
You have with you three or four of the best English
authors, Dryden, Atterbury, and Swift: read them with the
utmost care, and with a particular view to their language; and
they may possibly correct that curious infelicity of diction
which you acquired at Westminister. Mr. Harte excepted, I will
admit that you have met with very few English abroad, who
could improve your style; and with many, I dare say, who
speak as ill as yourself, and it may be worse; you must, the-
refore, take the more pains, and consult your authors, and Mr.
Harte, the more. I need not tell you how attentive the Romans
and Greeks, particularly the Athenians, were to this object. It
is also a study among the Italians and the French; witness
their respective academies and dictionaries, for improving and
fixing their languages. To our shame be it spoken, it is less
attended to here than in any polite country; but that is no
reason why you should not attend to it; on the contrary, it
will distinguish you the more. Cicero says, very truly, that it
is glorious to excel other men in that very article, in which
men excel brutes; speech” (London, November 24, O.S.
1749).
“Having mentioned Lord Bolingbroke’s style, which is,
undoubtedly, infinitely superior to anybody’s, I would have
you read his works, which you have, over and over again,
with particular attention to his style. Transcribe, imitate, emu-
late it, if possible; that would be of real use to you in the
House of Commons, in negotiations, in conversations; with that,
you may justly hope to please, to persuade, to seduce, to im-
pose; and you will fail in those articles, in proportion as you
fall short of it” (London, March 18, O.S. 1751).
“Speaking and writing clearly, correctly, and with ease
and grace, are certainly to be acquired, by reading the best
authors with care, and by attention to the best living models.
These are the qualifications more particularly necessary for you
3 Akhmanova, Idzelis	33
in yeur department, which you may be possessed of, if you
please;...” (Bath, October 9, O.S. 1746).
Vail ins (1963, p. 29) quotes Dr. Johnson as saying that
a man who desired to write good prose would “.. .give his
nights and days to Addison”.
4.	Interestingly, Jane Austen very rarely uses the word
“love”, preferring words like “attachement”, “affection”,
“attraction”. See Phillipps (1970, p. 74-75).
5.	Phi Hipps (1970, p. 80-81).
6.	Ibid., p. 97.
7.	Ibid., p. 39-40.
8.	We know how Charlotte Bronte achieved excellence of
style:
“One set of words was the truthful mirror of her thoughts;
no others, however apparently identical in meaning, would
do... She would wait patiently, searching for the right term,
until it presented itself to her. It might be provincial, it might
be derived from Latin; so that it accurately represented her
idea, she did not mind whence it came... She never wrote
down a sentence until she clearly understood what she wanted
to say, had deliberately chosen the words, and arranged them
in their right order.” Quoted in Brookes (1959, p. 56).
9.	It is easy to prove that this is what actually happens
when philological students retell and discuss works of fiction.
The only way to stop them doing so is to make quite sure
that they cannot be allowed to run before they learn to walk,
that is, become proficient in the use of “the English we speak
with” (see Introduction).
10.	“Modern criticism of Jane Austen is concerned less
with defending her status as a classic (this is generally taken
for granted.. .) than 'with defending the precise nature of her
achievement and her importance” (Lodge, 1968, p. 21).
“.. .To read her became a necessity of culture... She is
now firmly established as an English classic...” (Encyclopae-
dia Britannica, 1946, p. 699).
“Walter Scott’s testimony is often quoted: “That young
lady had a talent for describing the involvement and feelings
and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most won-
derful I ever met with. The big Bow-vow strain I can do my-
self . . . ordinary commonplace things and characters interest-
ing from the truth of the description and the sentiment is
denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so
early.” Quoted in Southam (1968, p. 106).
“Though it was to be many years before their lead was
followed, it was Sterne and Jane Austen who were the main
initiators in what has become the most important modern de-
velopment of prose in fiction” (Gordon, 1966, p. 167).
11.	Modern fiction, including its lighter kinds, is indispen-
sable in the teaching of foreign languages. One of the most
dangerous obsessions of some modern language teachers is that
the latter could be reduced to just different kinds of “pat-
tern practice”.
“The selection of literary texts is another question. In his
34
essay in this volume Mr. Mittins endorses Professor Quirk’s
view, that the teaching of language needs literature as its prime
material. In the context of L2 leaching, “literature” raises
special problems. One of these is purely linguistic. Up to a
certain stage in a graded course, it is obvious that “real lite-
rature” must be ruled out. But there comes a point in a gene-
ral-purpose course when it is desirable to introduce literature,
and, particularly, with adult students, the reading of “the real
thing” in the original may be an exciting experience and a
powerful stimulus to further effort. But as Jespersen remarked,
one needs to know a foreign language pretty well in order to
get more out of the original than out of a translation.
The other problem is cultural, rather than linguistic: it
involves the question of cultural difficulty and cultural grad-
ing. The understanding of the literature of an L2 demands
some understanding of the cultural background, the cultural
context, of the language and its literature. Conversely, know-
ledge of the cultural context is a help in learning the langu-
age. Cultural difficulty and linguistic difficulty are not necessa-
rily correlated. A Shakespeare play, for example, may be lin-
guistically difficult for many foreigners (as, indeed, it is for
native speakers of English), but, if it deals largely with gene-
ral human values and situations, it may be simpler from the
cultural point of view than a work of Galsworthy’s, for
instance, which is deeply embedded in an English cultural
matrix. We need lists of English literary texts graded cultu-
rally as well as linguistically.
In a preliminary experiment on this subject, I have given
short passages from Shakespeare, Aldous Huxley, Jane Austen,
Leo Walmsley and George Orwell to a group of foreign spe-
cialists in the teaching of English and asked them to com-
ment on the relative cultural difficulty of the various passages.
The result was much as one would expect. The Shakespeare
passage, from Macbeth, apart from linguistic difficulties, pro-
ved relatively easy from the cultural point of view, but passa-
ges from Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London”, and
Walmsley’s “The Golden Waterwheel”, contained many refe-
rences to Western European or specifically English culture that
were regarded as likely to be baffling to Indian, Indonesian
or Japanese readers.” (C a t f о r d, 1959, p. 172-174).
12.	“There is a passage in Mr. E. M. Forster’s “Howards
End” which illuminates this point particularly well: “Leonard
was trying to form his style on Ruskin: he understood him to
be the greatest master of English Prose. He read forward stea-
dily, occasionally making a few notes. “Let us consider a little
each of these characters in succession, and first (for of the
shafts enough has been said already), what is very peculiar to
this church — its luminousness.”
Was there anything to be learnt from this fine sentence?
Could he adapt it to the needs of daily life? Could he intro-
duce it, with modifications, when he next wrote a letter to
his brother, the lay-reader? For example: “Let us consider a
little each of these characters in succession, and first (for of
3*
35
the absence of ventilation enough has been said already), what
is very peculiar to this flat—its obscurity.”
Something told him that the modifications would not do;
and that something, had he known it, was the spirit of
English Prose. “My flat is dark as well as stuffy”. Those were
the words for him.” Quoted in Warburg (1959, p. 67).
13.	The fact that the main difficulty is in the vocabulary,
that it is words which present the most difficult problem
has been proved again and again. See Idzelis (1972a,
p. 138-149). As far as syncategorematic words are concerned,
the reader could be reminded of Ogden and Richard’s attitude
as explained in their famous “The Meatiing of Meaning”
(p. 88-89). “The” and “which”, according to them, is “...the
business of grammar”. “Or”, “if”, “not”, etc., give rise to “lin-
guistic fictions”, because logicians are prone to hypostatize
them”. In Idzelis (1972b, p. 114-124) it was shown that
word-by-word analysis does not include syncategorematic
words. Even in analysis of literary texts of the Jane Austen
category they are easily accounted for by means of several
generalizations. See Phillipps (1970, p. 174-175; 177).
14.	See Note 28 below.
15.	Scerba (1931).
16.	See Phillipps (1970, p. 151-152; 191-192; 202.).
17.	These words go back to Hazlitt. See Vai И ns (1963,
p. 175).
18.	See Jarceva (1969, p. 162).
19.	The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English,
1963, p. 304.
20.	“Language is called the garment of thought” Carlyle
wrote in Sartor Resartus; “however, it should rather be, lan-
guage is the flesh-garment, the body of thought”. Quoted in
U 11 m a n n (1964, p. 151).
21.	The term “synonymic condensation” is explained in
Marcenko (1971, p. 105-116).
22.	See above.
23.	We have chosen Phillipps (1970) because this
book is representative of one of the linguostylistically most
profitable approaches.
24.	“Very much” is used in modern English only as a
post-verbal intensifier with finite forms, as, for example, “you
work very much”; “he delighted us very much”.
25.	Phillipps (1970, p. 200).
26.	Ibid., p. 203.
27.	See Part III.
28.	This is the reason why we have given next to no
space to Grammar, because the finer points of morphology
and syntax which are discussed in the literature on which
our work is based, are unstable ones, that is, those points
about which the language has not yet made up its mind. Thus,
most books on “style” and “good usage” go on discussing the
status of “shall” and “will”; the use of adverbs and adjectives
of a certain kind: “first” and “firstly”, “second” and “se-
condly”, “original” and “originally”; uses of the gerund in sen-
36
fences like “The anomaly of the nation solemnly punishing
itself...”, or “Instead of a reader being able to pick up a
book containing half a dozen portraits...” — some writers and
speakers would doubt whether it should be “nation” or “na-
tion’s”, “reader” or “reader’s”; the participle phrase: “Starting
in East Anglia, if you want beauty of place enhanced by rich-
ness of performance, there is a Cambridge Festival, lasting a
fortnight from July 30”; different expressions of modality —
“may”, “can”, “must”, “ought”; grammatical relativity:
“who”, “whom”—“who did you see there?” (or “whom?”);
pronouns: “It’s I”, “This is he”, “That’s him”, “That’s her”;
the use of '‘each”, “neither”, “either”, “every” as pronouns:
“He asked the gardiner whether either of the ladies were at
home” (instead of “was”); the use of “between” as a prepo-
sition: “Between you and I”; then, “neither.... nor...”:
“Neither Smith nor White were at the examination” (instead
of “was”); prepositions at the end of the sentences: “The end
he aimed at”, or “The end at which he aimed”.
But in every language there are things which are more or
less settled; that is why the users of that language do not
pause to think of them or write in a way which other spea-
kers of that language would regard as a mistake. Thus, for
example, there would be no point in explaining that the plural
of “house” is “houses”, or that the past tense of “to work” is
“worked”, or that “you” in modern English is the regular,
the only naturally possible form of the second person singu-
lar, etc.
29.	As everybody knows, even the greatest writers were
not always very careful. Thus, for example, “.. .in Early Vic-
torian Novelists Lord David Cecil devotes a paragraph to enu-
merating the defects of Charlotte Bronte’s style, its slovenli-
ness, its turbidity, its insensibility to the quality and capacity of
language, its undisciplined rhetoric. ..”. Quoted in V a 11 i n s
(1963, p. 209).
30.	Gowers (1968, p. 7-9).
31.	See Akhmanova and Veselitsky (1966,
p. 125-131).
32.	These are some of the names most often thought of
in this connection: Samuel Johnson, Edward Gibbon, Matthew
Arnold, W. M. Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy,
William Cowper, R. D. Blackmore, Jonathan Swift.
Part II
INFLATED "ART-CRITICESE" AND THE PROBLEM
OF COMPREHENSION
Our analysis of extracts from Lord Chesterfield's
"Letters" has shown that this genre is much nearer to
the one we would recommend for the foreign angli-
cises "active" than fiction, however good.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the style
of some modern literary critics who so often forget
about "plain words" and do not heed the advice of so
many Masters concerning what Hazlitt called "an un-
varnished medium to convey ideas" l. We repeatedly
laid special emphasis on our intention to keep strictly
within the bounds of that prose which ".. .conveys
ideas, which states facts and gives a commentary upon
them, which expresses critical opinion" 2. By definition
it should be an "unvarnished medium". Nevertheless,
it is easy to give examples of "lavish ornamentation"
in some of the modern compositions of this genre:
"She had to gain command of a variety of tones:
the tone of voice, for example, proper to different
kinds of narrative; not merely for occasional pas-
sages of emotional urgency but also for the sus-
tained course of grave, circumstantial relation of
events."
"Mannerism, especially when it takes the form of
recurrent word or phrase, is by no means easy
to represent; there is but a hair's breadth between
the point at which the reader delightedly recog-
nizes it as a revealing habit of speech, and the
point at which its iteration begins to weary
him. .
38
"By what method did she achieve this discreet use
of idiosyncrasy in speech?".
"Chaotically adolescent as it was in many cases,
the "Howl" of the Beat Generation against insti-
tutionalized poetry served to administer a shock
to academic quiescence in the mid-fifties. Poetry
does not necessarily fall into cataleptic slumber in
a college classroom, particularly if the teacher
happens to be a Robert Lowell, nor does a bohe-
mian uniform and beard guarantee its rise from
narcosis".
"This poem blends a weird awareness of geologi-
cal time in the immemorial process of Nature with
an apocalyptical sense of the sudden doom that
may well impend on us, as it did on so many of
our human and animal predecessors, at the end
of another seasonal cycle."
"Among these elusive echoes of the tones of voice
of her favourites I seem to detect one that may
be worth a moment's notice. The train of possibi-
lities begins with Richardson's realization that a
parenthetical phrase, most often built upon a pre-
sent participle, if introduced abruptly into the
midst of a speech-that is, not qualifying the in-
troductory "he said" or its equivalent, but indi-
cating change of tone or gesture as a stage-direc-
tion might do-gives the air of eye-witness to
any one who reports the speech."
"I suspect that it was Jane Austen's practice of
denying herself the aid of figurative language
which, as much as any other of her habits of ex-
pression, repelled Charlotte Bronte, and has alie-
nated other readers conscious of a dissatisfaction
with her style that they have not cared to ana-
lyse." "Here, however, the satire is also directed
far more acutely at what, in his age, Cowper had
divined as the pursuit of novelty and pleasure,
and what Jane Austen sensed as an uneasy spirit
of change. Her story is full of migrant figures, of
visitors in search of health, profit, or fashionable
company." "They are idiosyncratic, Dickensian
figures, their conversation and behaviour dominat-
39
ed by some wild, leading passion. These four figu-
res constitute a small gallery of human absurd-
ity. ., etc.
It goes without saying that we have taken the li-
berty of borrowing examples from one or two literary
essays not because we would dare to criticise their
style. Our only purpose was to show that so much
otherwise excellent English writing cannot be adopted
by the foreign philologist ready-made, or imitated in
his own speech. Our main task, then, was to give exam-
ples of forms of speech which we cannot make "our
own" for various reasons-mainly because they intro-
duce elements of imaginative writing
into what should be merely a statement of facts, com-
mentaries upon them and "critical opinions" presented
by means of an "unvarnished medium". The modern
poet, for example, may be perfectly justified in using
large numbers of unusual words in unusual combina-
tions. But should a literary critic-what we call in Rus-
sian a literaturoved or an iskusstvoved-Ъе allowed to
follow suit? 3
We have adduced a number of examples of "art-
criticese" to show our readers how far removed this
genre of writing is from what we (foreign anglicists)
should be expected to use. But this is by no means the
whole story. An even more difficult problem is that of
understanding both in general, and with special
reference to the "inflated art-criticese" kind of writing.
It ought to be taken for granted that literary cri-
ticism, when classified in terms of Vinogradov's func-
tional styles, 4 belongs to the "communicative function"
(funkcija soobscenija)-together with all other kinds of
"informative" writing (pbscenaucnyj stil'). Funkcija
soobscenija is by him carefully distinguished from the
function of aesthetic impact (iunkcija vozdejstvija),
which is proper to "imaginative writing" with its ac-
cent on the "poetic" or "metasemiotic" expression-the
style (or genre) of Fiction (xydozestvennaja literatura).
What exactly is meant by "understanding" the lat-
ter is beyond the scope of the present manual. Never-
theless one cannot but be non-plussed by curious
blends of the two functions: nebulous "critical opi-
40
tiions" illustrated by even more obscure extracts from
'^difficult" literary texts. Two or three examples will
suffice:
"In dramatizing the failure of love, which is
death, Albee is ascetically sparing of his dazzling
dialogue and subtle imagery. Though he does not
quite indulge in the fallacy of imitative form, he
implies that a drama with emptiness at its cen-
ter must echo in hollowness."
Can we comprehend or interpret the purport of
these sentences on the semantic level (in ac-
cordance with the principles we have formulated
above 5) by fitting in the meanings of the component
words?
"To indulge in"-means "to gratify one's tastes or
satisfy ones's desires"; "fallacy"-"error, delusion, mis-
leading argument". One can be expected to "indulge"
in something pleasant (a cigar, cycling, for example),
but one hardly "indulges in a fallacy". This, obviously,
should be regarded as an oxymoron-a figure of speech
which consists in combining words whose meanings
are incompatible. An oxymoron cannot be discussed
on the semantic level.
On the metasemiotic level this oxymoron could
make sense if we knew what the fallacy was. Although
the very next part of the sentence is "imitative form",
its meaning remains obscure. We know what "imita-
tive arts" are, for example; "imitative form", probably,
could be a form of playwriting based on actually re-
presenting or imitating life, but this is only a con-
jecture. When reading more deeply into the words of
the author we, probably, could make it clearer, but this
is not what we are expected to do if the text we are
working on, is a mere critical essay and not the work
of a great classical writer of fiction.
"He implies"-"imply" is not used in accordance
with its proper meaning" ("to imply" means to "give
or make a suggestion"; "involve the truth of smth, not
definitely stated"). In the actual context of this ut-
terance it falls to the ground, because, first of all, the
reader is put out by the two abstract nouns in "-ness".
We understand that "empty" means "having nothing
41
inside; containing nothing", and "hollow"-"not solid,
with a hole inside", or, when used figuratively,-"un-
теа1, false or insincere." "A drama" is presumably "a
play for the theatre". But if "a drama" is said to have
an "emptiness at its center" ("center" being "middle
part or point"), then what does one understand by the
"center of the drama"? In what sense can we speak of
"the emptiness" at the drama's center, and how a "dra-
ma with emptiness at its center" can "echo in hollow-
ness"?
However hard we try, we cannot establish the ne-
cessary connection between the meaning of the words
and the total semantic effect which is produced by this
utterance. Otherwise stated, we have failed to analyse
this text according to our principles. True, we could
try and apply to it the method we use for modernist
poetry-a kind of literary art (slovesno-xudozestven-
noje tvorcestvo) which is specific in the sense that it
is completely divorced from the semantics of the words
used (see below).
But if this is the only method to be applied, then
the whole thing becomes an absurdity, because it is
common knowledge that literary criticism does not be-
long to belles-lettres, but to intellective prose-it is a
part of the Humanities, a kind of scientific, intellec-
tive activity.
We thus come to the conclusion that texts of this
kind are practically useless as models of English to
speak with. At the same time when we try to speak
about them, we find that we are unable to do so.
Examples of this kind can be multiplied indefinitely.
One more example:
"Concealing eschatology beneath surface psycho-
logy, however, Albee's play is limited by its ca-
mouflage. George's vitriolic idiom overshadows
his anemic humanistic yearnings; his views of
history are simplistic-the construct-a-civilization
speech; his views of biology are simple-minded-
the mechanical Nickmaker."
It could, of course, be claimed that failure to un-
derstand the art-criticese sentences discussed above is
easily accounted for by lack of sophistication (or even
42
education) and that it is meant for a very narrow and
oversophisticated literary elite.
On the foregoing pages we were at great pains to
explain not only what the English for us to use i s, but
also what it is not. We have also explained in the
Introduction that the philologist cannot stop at a mas-
tery of the "tool of his trade": he must needs become
proficient in speaking about all kinds of English. To
do this, he must not only be provided with an accept-
able metalanguage (in the general sense of this word),
but also with a certain methodology, a certain set of
rules or approaches. Although the subject in its en-
tirety will be taken up in a special publication, the
main division between the two might as well be touch-
ed upon here.
We shall begin by stating that the language-speech
dichotomy-the division into language and speech-al-
though very much has been written on the subject,
still deserves attention. We proceed from the premise
that there does exist a thing called "language" (jazyk),
which is one of the natural, organic (samobytnyx) se-
miological systems, the basic and most important means
of communication between the members of a given
speech community, for whom this system is also a
means of developing their thinking, of passing on their
cultural and historical traditions from generation to
generation. This is what a natural human language is
for, and we have no doubt that English, Russian, etc.,
are instances of semiological systems of this kind.
At the same time what we actually deal with in
every particular case is a peculiar kind of activity, the
activity of a speaker or writer who is using language
for purposes of interaction with other members of the
same speech community (or other communities in the
case of bi- and poly- lingual communication). In actual
fact we are confronted with a host of different means
with which language endows the speaker for purposes
of passing on different "purports", including a num-
ber of ways of affecting the listener or reader one
way or another, and, in a sense, getting affected one-
self by what one is saying. All these different kinds of
activity can be, roughly speaking, covered by the word
"speech". For us it is extremely important to under-
43
stand that what we actually observe and the source
from which we draw our material (on the basis of
which we come to certain conclusions) is, of course,
the product of this activity-the innumerable proizve-
denija reci.
Whenever we say something, we are producing,
creating a certain piece of speech; from this point
of view, everything from a sentence like "How are
you?" to "War and Peace" belongs to the same cate-
gory. We "produce" or "generate" the short trite sent-
ence under certain circumstances for certain purposes,
and so did L. N. Tolstoj in the case of his monumental
work. Nothing in speech is ever purposeless, there is
always a certain aim to be achieved when people
speak or write.
The function of speech which presents particular
problems is what Vinogradov calls funkcija vozdeist-
vija. We describe it as the "metasemiotic" function to
distinguish it from the "semantic" one6. In the latter
case, the function consists in passing on information
and is based on the principle that each unit of expression
is immediately connected with a corresponding unit of
content. On the metasemiotic level the function-
ing of speech is completely different: it includes the
process of creation in literature, literature as an art,
as the specific kind of reverberation of reality which
takes the form of images, etc.
This complex relationship was explained by leading
Soviet linguists. Thus according to G. O. Vinokur 7, the
metasemiotic function of speech is of especial import-
ance when we think of the specific character of fiction
(belles-lettres), and, in general, the artistic creation as
based on verbal art. Obviously, there are three dis-
tinct stages which must heuristically be kept apart; or,
otherwise stated, there must be no less than three
planes or levels of research.
To clarify the point let us adduce Vinokur's well-
chosen example 8:
“Na rodinu t’anetsa tuca
Stop tol’ko poplakat’ nad nej.”
Here is G. O. Vinokur's analysis of these lines. Accord-
ing to him, every single word within it is "metaphoric"
44
-with "metaphoric" used to include the metameta-
ph о r i c. In other words, there can be no doubt what-
soever that we cannot fully appreciate the poem, unless
we begin by understanding the words "tuca", "plakat' ",
etc. a s s u c h. To begin with, we must have a
very clear idea of what they mean "semantically", in
ordinary use, for unless we understand them on the
semantic level, we would not be able to comprehend
their "metaphoric" significance.
What, then, happens to these words when the ana-
lysis is raised to the metasemiotic level? Obviously,
"rain" does not cease to be what it naturally is to every
speaker of Russian (dost')-"condensed moisture of the
atmosphere falling in separate drops; fall of such
drops". But the poetic impact of this distich will be
totally lost unless the reader understands that "rain"
here is used metaphorically. What the poet is
really talking about is not "condensed moisture of the
atmosphere falling in separate drops", but tears
which he sees with his creative artistic mind's eye: he
imagines something which, by using this particular art-
istic device, he succeeds in conveying to his readers.
But the most important point to make-if we speak of
literature as a form of social consciousness (forma
obscestvennogo soznanija)-is that a given piece of ex-
pression cannot serve its purpose,, unless the reader si-
multaneously visualizes something that finds expression
not on the metaphoric or metasemiotic level only, but
on the metametasemiotic one as well. The mo-
ment we want to understand a work of literature or,
more specifically, a poem, we must make it absolutely
clear that we are capable of rising to the metameta-
semiotic level and seeing that it is not merely tears
which somebody is shedding in this metaphoric way,
but complex emotions of a certain person or persons
who are separated from their homeland, whose home-
land is in a very desperate state of oppression; also that
the person (or persons) long to see their mother country
again in order that they may shed tears over it.
Another example: in his analysis of Sergei Esenin
and Alexander Blok V. V. Vinogradov is even more ex-
plicit 9 :
45
“V zalixvatskom stepnom razgone
Kolokol’cik xoxocet do sl’oz.
Potomu sto nad vsem, sto bylor
Kolokol’cik xoxocet do sl’oz.”
In this case a "bell" on the horse's neck is said to
be "laughing"-metaphorically, of course. This meta-
semiotic device on the metasemiotic level serves the
purpose of an imaginative description of very quick
driving across the steppe; later on at the end of the
poem it is the cruel, ironic laughter of Fate: it is Fate
laughing at a wasted life.
To reiterate: "talking about talking", analysing in-
stances of English (or Russian, etc., as the case may
be) begins on the "semantic" level, by knowing what
"kolokol'cik", "step", etc. mean as such. Unless
we know Russian in the simplest sense of the word,
unless we understand the meanings of all the
words on the semantic level, we cannot possiby
enjoy or fully appreciate the meta and metameta con-
notations which are evoked by them. Only if the basic
understanding of what words actually mean has been
firmly established, can one appreciate the literary pur-
port of the imaginative whole.
But confining ourselves to the first two levels-the
semantic and the metasemiotic ones-would end in
barren formalism, if we were unable to pass on to the
third level-the metamerasemiotic one-
where we would be expected to comprehend what Sergei
Esenin was really trying to say. We can see how, hav-
ing reached the metasemiotic level, and having trans-
formed the bell into something that is alive, something
that is spiteful and vindictive, Esenin allows it to be-
have most objectionably and make fun of wasted lives
and forlorn hopes-а mood which was typical of certain
trends in the Russian literature of the time. The same,
of course, applies to another very well-chosen example
from Alexander Bloks' "Na zeleznoj doroge" 10.
It follows from what has been said above that the
metasemiotic level is by no means the limit,
it is by no means what the linguostylistician is suppos-
ed to be confined to, or where linguostylistic analysis
stops. According to our idea of literature and poetry,
46
to stop here would be mere formalism, mere play with
words and connotations. Poetry to be really great must
serve a higher purpose.
The Russian examples will now be complemented by
a discussion of a text in English. We have chosen?
Walter de la Mare's "The Moth", because it is short and
has been the object of an altogether different kind of
analysis. Here is the text:
Isled in the midnight air,
Musked in the dark’s faint bloom,
Out into glooming and secret haunts
The flame cries, “Come”.
Lovely in dye and fan,
A-tremble in shimmering grace,
A moth from her winter swoon
Uplifts her face:
Stares with her glamorous eyes;
Wafts her on plumes like mist;
In ecstasy swirls and sways
To her strange tryst.
The poem begins with two "baffling" words-"isled' ’
and "musked", which make the reader think of "litera-
ture with a zero semantic component" 11-normally as-
sociated with Dada, surrealism, Gertrude Stein, Lewis
Carrol, Rimbaud, Cummings, and Hart Crane. But in
this little verse the "exception" from the normal course
of analysis is reduced to just the two words. Neverthe-
less they very conveniently show that, as far as they4
themselves are concerned, the first stage of the analysis
has to be dropped altogether: we do not have for them
a generally accepted semantic interpretation. It fol-
lows, naturally, that in the case of most of the work
of the above-mentioned authors, what has just been said
applies not to just so many separate elements, but to
the poems (or whatever) as wholes: analysis begins and
ends at the second level, the metasemiot-
i c one.
Let us return to our poem. First, we understand the
words on the semantic level: we insist that every-
one of them makes sense 12. We go over all the words
and find that there is not one in the poem (except
"isled" and "musked") that we cannot directly un-
47
derstand in the present context semantically.
We are also quite ready to apprehend the poem on the
metasemiotic level. Semantically the story is simply one
of a moth killing herself by flying straight into the
candle-flame. If it were not poetry, there would be
nothing in it except the simple statement of the simple
fact.
This being poetry, however, we clearly see how
•everyone of these words is made to serve as both ex-
pression and content for the new "poetic" content. This
may be rendered as follows: whithin a broad expanse
of midnight air there is a flame which, against the
background of solid darkness, appears as a "faint
bloom", and is, as it were, calling to the moth to "come
•out into the glooming and secret haunts".
The moth is endowed with attributes couched in
beautifully assorted metaphors and metasemiotic ex-
pressions: one "sees" the frail, delicate "shimmering
and trembling grace" of the moth, fresh "from her
winter swoon". She "stares with her glamorous eyes",
swirls and sways in ecstasy and is wafted on-to per-
dition. On the semantic level there would be very little
sense in a moth's "glamorous eyes". It would be strange
to describe the wings of the moth as "plumes", etc. But
on the metasemiotic level all these different words serve
their "poetic" purpose and help to create the metase-
miotic effect.
Metasemiotically, then, the whole thing is more or
less the ordinary presentation of the often talked of re-
lationship between flies and spiders, moths and flames,
etc.-whence its metametasemiosis which requires no
special comment 13.
. To reiterate: each word and word-combination in a
poem is assumed to have a simple, straightforward and
unambiguous reference, implied by knowledge of
English. But as poetry the text can be under-
stood only if the reader is able to appreciate the
connotations by evocation, the specific and original
frames of reference into which the author has packed
a mass of images; obviously these will be effective only
if the outcome of the poet's own experience is coupled
with a proper assessment of the background knowledge
of his audience.
48
How is "complete" understanding attained? Only by
degrees. Everybody who knows English will easily
understand the above poem on the "first level", or in
the "first dimension", that is, as a piece of "plain" Eng-
lish. But the more deeply a person goes into the text,
the more sophisticated he (or she) is, the greater the
number and complexity of "levels" of understanding,
the deeper the penetration into the different "dimen-
sions". Only then will the reader comprehend the "se-
cond code", the "poetic content" or the "secondary"
message which, although imaginative, is firmly rooted
in the natural code of the natural human lan-
guage 14.
It might appear that the theme of understanding
has now been exhausted. But this is not the case, be-
cause the higher up we go, the greater the difficulty and
the greater the number of problems which arise at every
step. First of all, as we have already said, quite a num-
ber of famous classical texts have never really been un-
derstood in the simple sense of the word, although there
exists a large number of parallel texts 15.
Not infrequently the understanding of one line in-
volves an extensive philological study of the complete
work of the writer in question. Among the "obscure"
Shakespearean lines there is the wellknown "more rela-
tive than this":
... .1’11 have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks;
I’ll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil; and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds
More relative than this. The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.
(Hamlet)
The "dictionary" meaning of "relative" is "pertin-
ent, relevant". The meaning in the passage above is
"more direct", "closer", that is, one that can be better
related or made more direct. To "read" this meaning
"into" the line one must have proof. This is found, for
4 Akhmanova, Idzelis
49
example, in “the fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she",
"finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deep", etc., where
the suffix "-ive" must be construed as roughly a syno-
nym of "-able", "-ible". By bringing together examples
of this kind the fact that the suffix "-ive" was a modal
suffix for Shakespeare-who knew so well how to break
down a word and then recompose it-seems to be estab-
lished with a very fair degree of certainty.
In the same way the fact that to Shakespeare "limb"
could mean "member of a (metaphorical) body politic
of Rome of which Caesar was the effective head" has
to be proved by minute philological research if the
underscored line in the following extract is to make
sense:
.........O,	pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hands that shed this costly blood.
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,—
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue,—
A curse shall light upon the limbs of, men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife,
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;. ..
(Julius Caesar),
When we spoke of the two levels-the semantic level
and the metasemiotic level-we assumed that the know-
ledge of words and their potential connotations, the
connotations that they can be called upon to express,
when the author or the analyst or both rise to the
metasemiotic level, is comparatively speaking, simple
and easy for a more or less educated person to grasp
and understand.
There may be situations, however, where the metase-
miotic level cannot be reached by the reader unless
his background knowledge 16 is of a specific, historically
conditioned, traditionally bound character. Thus, for
instance, in the following passage from one of John
Donne's Sonnets:
At the round world’s imagin’d corners blow
Your trumpets angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scatter’d bodies go. ..
50
he uses metaphors which cannot possibly be apprehend-
ed unless the reader is familiar with certain dogmas
of Christianity. In this case the knowledge of words
as such would not take us anywhere: we could not pos-
sibly understand the poem even on the metasemiotic
level, to say nothing of the metametasemiotic one. To
comprehend the images (the metaphors being very com-
plex and tradition-bound), we must know that accord-
ing to the teachings of Christianity, when Christ arises
from the dead, there will be four angels who will stand
at the four corners of the world and blow trumpets.
And then all people who had been dead and buried by
that time will arise too.
Unless we are acquainted with the religious beliefs
of Donne's time, we shall not be able to understand
what Donne means by “.. . numberless infinities of
souls". But with the required previous or background
knowledge we are quite capable of understanding what
the metaphor is, what the image is based on. To under-
stand the metametasemiotic content of this
sonnet, we must read the whole sonnet and then we
shall see that Donne was an optimistic, a Renaissance
poet and therefore the metametasemiotic content is re-
birth and victory over death. This, however, would be
only the first step. For a deeper penetration, a wider
study of the subject in general, and the work of the
author in question in particular, would be required. It
must be noted that it is very difficult to tell what the
metametasemiotic content of each particular piece of
verbal art is because it is global: it cannot be fully
apprehended unless it is perused in its entirety 17.
The "comprehension" of a work of literary art is
a special and difficult aspect of understanding in gene-
ral. It would be a mistake, however, to think that on
the semantic level people always understand each
other quickly and without difficulty. When language
is used on the semantic level for intellective communi-
cation, mutual understanding is very often hampered by
people either belonging to different generations, or dif-
ferent social strata, or even slightly different cultures,
in spite of the fact that they use the same language 18.
Thus, understanding remains a problem at literally
all levels of human communication. It is so complex and
4
51
has so many facets that in a book, which is not special-
ly concerned with understanding, the important thing
is to decide where to stop, so as not to take up more
space than is warranted by the general lay-out of the
volume. In what follows, only two or three aspects will
be touched upon.
In simple everyday conversation people fail to un-
derstand each other properly because they belong to
different generations. They do not use the same ap-
proaches to simple everyday situations and sometimes
their attitudes tend to clash, especially in the field of
phatic communication. We begin with a classical exam-
ple (Mark Twain. "Buck Fanshaw's Funeral"): Scotty
goes to the minister to arrange for the funeral of a de-
ceased friend:
"Are you the duck that runs the gospel-mill
next door"?
"Am I the-pardon me, I believe I do not un-
derstand"? With another sigh and a half-sob, Scot-
ty rejoined:
"Why you see we are in a bit of trouble, and
the boys thought maybe you would give us a lift,
if we'd tackle you-that is, if I've got the rights of
it and you are the head clerk of the doxology-
works next door".
"I am the shepherd in charge of the flock
whose fold is next door".
"The which?"
"The spiritual adviser of the little company of
believers whose sanctuary adjoins these premises"
Scotty scratched his head, reflected a moment, and
then said:
"You ruther hold over me, pard. I reckon I can t
call that hand. Ante and pass the buck".
"How? I beg pardon. What did I understand
you to say?"
"Well, you've ruther got the bulge on me. Or
maybe we've both got the bulge, somehow. You
don’t smoke me and I don't smoke you. You see,
one of the boys has passed in his checks, and we
want to give him a good send-off, and so the
52
thing Гт on now is to roust out somebody to jerk
a little chin-music for us and waltz him through
handsome."
"My friend, I seem to grow more and more
bewildered. Your observations are wholly incom-
prehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in
some way? At first I thought perhaps I under-
stood you, but I grope now. Would it not ex-
pediate matters if you restricted yourself to cate-
gorical statements of fact unencumbered with ob-
structing accumulations of metaphor and al-
legory?" 19
Another example:
"A plumber once wrote to a research bureau
pointing out that he had used hydrochloric acid to
clean out sewer pipes and inquired, "Was there
any possible harm"? The first reply was as fol-
lows: "The efficacy of hydrochloric acid is indis-
putable, but the corrosive residue is incompatible
with metalic permanence". The plumber then
thanked them for the information approving his
procedure. The dismayed research bureau tried
again, saying, "We cannot assume responsibility
for the production of toxic and noxious residue
with hydrochloric acid and suggest you use an
alternative procedure." Once again the plumber
thanked them for their approval. Finally, the
bureau, worried about the New York sewers, called
in a third scientist who wrote: "Don't use hydro-
chloric acid. It eats hell out of the pipes" 20
All along we have used "comprehension" and "un-
derstanding" indiscriminately because we could not
hope to go more deeply into that vast, and so far almost
unexplored part of philology21. We have, nevertheless,
ventured to introduce the subject and glean a few il-
lustrations because we thought that by so doing we
would bring our main preoccupation-a form of English
easy to understand and translate 22-into greater relief.
A thorough investigation of the problems involved, will
hopefully, form a large part of the companion volume
to the present book-"The English We Speak About".
53
NOTES
1.	Vail ins (1963, p. 166).
2.	Ibid., p. 175.
3.	Speaking figuratively, the foreign philologist must be-
ware of many traps. Classical literature for him is a vast
maze in which he must try somehow to find his way and tra-
verse it without getting too deeply entangled in figures of
speech and stylistic effects. How does he set about it? How
does he learn to understand what is right and proper as far
as his “active” (“productive”) proficiency is concerned?
4.	Vinogradov (1963, p. 5-93).
5.	See Part I.
6.	Akhmanova et al., (1966, p. 168-169).
7.	Vinokur (1959, p. 388-393).
8.	Ibid., p. 247-248.
9.	Vinogradov (1963, p. 157-163).
10.	Ibid., (p. 120-121).
11.	See Chatman, ed. (1971, p. 155). An excellent
example is found in “Altarwise by Owl-light” by Dylan Tho-
mas—“a classic challenge to explicators”—see Francis
(1967, p. 211-212):
“Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies;
Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam,
And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies,
The atlas-eater with a jaw for news,
Bit out the mandrake with to-morrow’s scream.
Then, penny-eyed, that gentleman of wounds,
Old cock from nowheres and the heaven’s egg,
With bones unbuttoned to the half-way winds,
Hatched from the windy salvage on one leg,
Scraped at my cradle in a walking word
That night of time under the Christward shelter:
I am the long world’s gentleman, he said,
And share my bed with Capricorn and Cancer.”
In “modernist” poetry the first and basic level of un-
derstanding is deliberately dispensed with: the reader is expec-
ted to leap straight into the second level. We are told by pro-
ponents of this trend that poetry, in general, consists in a “per-
petual slight alteration of language, words perpetually juxta-
posed in new and sudden combinations” (T.S. Eliot). What,
exactly, is meant by “slight”? When do alternations cease to
be “slight”? How is understanding secured if the principle of
double coding is practically abandoned?
12.	See Richards (1969, p. 12ff).
13.	The analysis of this poem as made in Darbyshire
(1971, p. 132-140), which spreads over some eight pages would,
therefore, by our standards, appear to be needlessly drawn out
and somewhat far-fetched. This is how it goes:
“.. .The very notion, for instance, of making a candle-
flame behave in the antropomorphic way in which it
does in these lines is itself an imaginative perception, a
54
fusion of humanity and non-humanity, an imaginatively
perceived interpenetration of opposites, of a contradic-
tion in the nature of both humanity and candle-flames.
But this kind of contradiction is, paradoxically, posi-
tive—it is not the mere denial of a way of thinking or
feeling, but the creation of a new way of thinking and
feeling, based on cutting across the categories of the
normal and the familiar” (p. 133).
. .The poem says that a moth flying into a candle-
flame is like the life of man and woman, male and
female, in lonely isolation on a planet shining with light
in the dark vastness of an incomprehensible universe,
and that the beautiful connexion between man and wo-
man can be contemplated with pity and terror even in
the smallest and most insignificant of things, as it is
seen in the cruelty of the dominating male who, never-
theless, fascinates the female who makes herself beau-
tiful only for him so that she can be destroyed by him”
(p. 139), etc.
14.	So far in our practical work we have given little atten-
tion to the method of “key-words”, which, when properly
understood, would develop our first level of analysis. See
Lerner (1973, p. 26ff—“Romeo and Juliet”; p. 106-119—
“Honest in Othello”; p. 194—“Macbeth”). For an application
of the method to modernist (“difficult”) poetry see Hands-
combe (1970, p. 29-37). See also Fowler (1971, p. 112ff).
Of especial interest is the often quoted passage from E mps о n
(1955, p. 6): “The words of the poet will, as a rule, be more
justly words, what they represent will be more effectively a
unit in the mind, than the more numerous words with which
I shall imitate their meaning so as to show how it is con-
veyed.”
15.	Tremendous difficulties also arise when people are sup-
posed not merely to understand, but interpret and translate.
More and more people insist that to understand means to be
able to transpose the original text into a different semiotic sys-
tem. People keep preparing parallel texts—we cannot call them
translations, because the term could be applied to texts of this
kind only if used loosely—of classical plays, poems, etc.,
without at all convincing the readers that their interpretations
are correct, in the sense, that they are the only and obvious
ones. See, for example, Steiner (1975).
16.	See Akhmanova and G’ubbenet (1977). We
can hardly resist the temptation to add two or three more
instances:
“.. .Like the immortal private of the Buffs he stood in
Elgin’s place, not untaught certainly, nor rude, nor
abysmally lowborn, but poor and, at the moment, reck-
less, bewildered and alone, a heart with English instinct
fraught he yet could call his own.” (Evelyn W a u g h.”
Work Suspended and Other Stories”. Penguin Books,
p. 226).
55
“How at Bankside, a boy drowning kittens
Winced at the business, whereupon his sister
Lady Macbeth aged seven—thrust 'em under
Sombrely scornful”
(Kipling. “The Craftsman”)
What does one make of the following text (a discussion
of context in a book on style and language) if, without any
explanations or references the author goes on to clarify his
point by exemplification: “I have for instance only one context
for “polyphiloprogenitive” so that my understanding of it
owes as much to “sapient sutlers of the Lord” as it does to
analysis of its elements”. How great is the portion of the
English speaking community to be relied upon for their know-
ledge of T. S. Eliot?
17.	Examples of this kind could be multiplied almost in-
definitely. Hirsch (1967, p. 234): “Eliot, for example, chided
Poe for saying, “My most immemorial year”, when Poe
“meant” his most memorable year”.
“A couplet from Marvell, used by Wellek to suggest how
meaning changes will illustrate my point:
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow.
Wellek grants that “vegetable” here probably means
more or less what we nowdays express by “vegetative”,
but he goes on to suggest that we cannot avoid associat-
ing the modern connotation of “vegetable” (what it
means “to us”). Furthemore, he suggests that this
enrichment of meaning may even be desirable. No
doubt, the associated meaning i s here desirable (since
it supports the mood of the poem), but Wellek could
not even make his point unless we could distinguish
between what “vegetable” probably means as used in
the text and what it commonly means to us. Simply to
discuss the issue is to admit that Marvell’s poem pro-
bably does not imply the modern connotation, for if we
could not separate the sense of “vegetative” from the
notion of an “erotic cabbage”, we could not talk about
the difficulty of making the separation” (Ibid., p. 214-
215).
“He words me Gyrles” (Anthony and Cleopatra, Act V).
How do we know (if we do know) that “words” is a
verb unless we have already dimly grasped the sentence
as a whole?” (Ibid., p. 259).
“.. .When we read in Wordsworth's “Intimations Ode”
the phrase “most worthy to be blessed”, are we to un-
derstand “most” as a superlative or merely an intensifier
like “very”?”. (Ibid., p. 13-14).
18.	For many interesting illustrations of this point see
Richards (1974) and Mazrui (1975).
19.	Quoted in Young, Becker, Pike (1970, p. 299-
300).
56
20.	Ibid., p. 183. Cf. also Hirsch (1967, p. 103-104):
“.. .How, then, can anyone understand a new type of
utterance? How can an interpreter know which impli-
cations belong and which do not belong if he has never
encountered that particular type of meaning before? If
somebody has just left the army for his first job in
civilian life, and his new boss writes him a note saying,
“Can you conveniently go to New York on the 7:30
train?” what is he to make of this? It is obviously not
the same kind of communication as “You will proceed
to New York on the 7:30 train”, which was what his
previous boss would have written. To interpret properly
this new kind of text our hypothetical tyro will have to
make an imaginative leap and recognize that it belongs
to the same broad type as “You will proceed to New
York”. If he were not capable of this imaginative leap,
he could not understand the new utterance”.
“.. .Suppose someone said, “We talked from religion to
politics”. Most of us would feel uneasy about this sen-
tence. We have a firm enough grasp of English gram-
mar to know immediately that something is wrong—but
what? Since intuition suggests that the phrase “from
religion to politics” creates the difficulty, we can try
eliminating the content words from the phrase to make
the sentence read “We talked from... to...”. What kind
of words do we expect to find in the blanks? “From
eight to nine” would work; so would “from dawn to
dusk”, but not “from dogs to cats” or “from ships to
sealing wax”. We are troubled because the construction
requires words referring to time; words like religion and
politics don’t fit.” (Young, Becker, Pike, 1970,
p. 92-93).
21.	See Richards (1974, p. 167).
22.	See Ogden and Richards (1949); Richards
(1974, p. 1-16).
Part 111
ENGLISH AS A TOOL OF OUR TRADE
It follows from Parts I and II that we are pretty
certain about the kinds and forms of English we can-
not make our own. But how do we know what to
accept? What is the English for us to use?
So far the method consisted simply in reading the
text and marking those word-combinations which we
thought we ought not to recommend to the educated
foreign philologist. We rejected what we thought was
affected or flowery or unduly idiomatic, or highly liter-
ary, or obsolete ways of saying things because they are
not easy to understand or are no longer in actual use.
We often hear now of the need for "objective" cri-
teria, the need for "objective methods" of analysis. There
has been so much misunderstanding on the subject that
the following categorical pronouncement is definitely
called for: mathematically "objective" methods are
useless in philology, for here the criterion is
knowledge of the language L Once and for all it
must be made absolutely clear that mathematically "ob-
jective" methods can be applied to language or languag-
es о n 1 у if what we are after is "informational-logic-
al" languages, informacionno-logiceskije jazyki. Mathe-
matical devices could, perhaps, help to rationalize hu-
man communication for the benefit of exact or technical
sciences, (that is, for those sciences in which linguistic
expression proper, full use of human language simply
does not enter). Some people still hope that computer
techniques and reduction of the complex relationships
within natural languages to the simple one-to-one cor-
respondence between expression and content may help
58
some of the simpler kinds of scientific communication 2.
But as far as full-fledged philological research is
concerned, there is only one way-b ackground
knowledge of the given language, based on
the assumption that there are people in this world who
do know it and who persistently communicate this
knowledge to others through academic dictionaries, dic-
tionaries of usage, all kinds of language manuals, etc. 3.
Although we have no doubt about the existence of
people who know at least their own language, we could
not say offhand where exactly they are to be found. The
quest for somebody who can sit in judgement, evaluate,
explain and demonstrate the difference between "good"
and "bad" English, especially somebody who will point
unhesitatingly to a sample, or text for the educated for-
eign anglicist to imitate, is a very difficult task. For
almost every time one takes up a book concerned with
our problem, with "what English to be used by whom"
we are invariably confronted with disheartening state-
ments like the following: "...the poverty-stricken,
threadbare quality of much contemporary writing"4,
which is too poor to communicate anything; ".. . every
candid teacher knows . .. that the majority of his pupils
at the end of all their schooling understand remarkably
little of what they hear or read ..." 5 etc. What, then, is
the educated foreign user of English to do?
Before we proceed with our analysis of those writers
whose English is the English we are after, it is es-
sential to go over the problems on which the attention
of authorities on the subject has already been focuss-
ed. We shall, therefore, begin this part of our work
by discussing and comparing some of the more import-
ant points made by the two authors-Vallins and Gow-
ers. We decided to begin with a careful comparison of
the two books on the subject, chosen on the grounds of
clarity of purpose and lucidity of exposition. The books
are "Good English: How to Write It", by G. H. Vallins,
and "The Complete Plain Words", by Sir Ernest Gowers.
We thus hoped to have a better idea of the main points
at issue.
The fact that Sir Ernest Gowers concerns himself
mainly with what he calls "officialese" in no way de-
tracts from the more general significance of his re-
59
search. But "officialese" itself is a case in point. If we
compare the definitions and the attitudes to the type
of English called "officialese" in the two books, we shall
find that the two writers do not agree on the subject.
Thus Sir Ernest writes: "The term officialese has been
invented for what is supposed to be their ineffective
way of trying (to express themselves clearly.-O. A,
R. I.). I do not know exactly what that word means, and,
for once, the Oxford English Dictionary is not illuminat-
ing. It defines officialese unhelpfully as "the language
characteristic of officials or official documents". But
that it is not ordinarily used as a term of praise is
certain"6. Vallins, however, finds no fault with the
term: "In an official letter, official English, even what
is contemptuously called "officialese", is not out of
place, any more than the highly technical language of
physical science is out of place in a scientific treatise" 7.
What Vallins means to say is that officialese is merely
the style to use in official letters, for all kinds of Eng-
lish are quite acceptable if the particular variant or
style is used in accordance with the requirements of the
time and purpose of communication 8.
One of the aspects of "good" English invariably dis-
cussed in manuals of this kind is choice of words in
terms of length and complexity. Sir Ernest's book is
called "plain" words because he believes that good
writers should avoid difficult, long and pompous words
and use shorter and simpler, the "plain" ones. This
is a very important point as far as we are concerned.
In Part II we gave some examples of what in our own
performance would surely sound bombastic. We cannot
agree with Vallins's criticism of Gowers:
"Changes are not made by decree in the various
"jargons" any more than they are in the "stan-
dard" language. There is no real reason (except
possibly an economic one) why they should be.
Changes made or advocated deliberately, as by
Sir Ernest Gowers in "Plain Words" or Professor
B. Ifor Evans in "The Use of English", are apt to
give rise to a language or "jargon" as artificial
in its bluntness and simplicity as the original is
supposed to be in its wordiness and circumlocu-
M
tion. They produce, if they produce anything at
all, a "phoney" usage, rather like that by which
certain advanced Christian communities address
the Almighty as "You" instead of "Thou"; and
they are peculiarly apt to ignore the basic prin-
ciple of language, that, just as no two words are
truly synonyms, so no two different expressions,
or ways of expression, can mean exactly the
same thing" 9.
Although Sir Ernest Gowers speaks so often of
"plain words", what he means is not "artificial blunt-
ness and simplicity". This is what he really thinks
about it:
"The precept to choose the familiar word (which
is also probably the short word) must of course
be followed with discretion. Many wise men
throughout the centuries, from Aristotle to
Churchill, have emphasised the importance of us-
ing short and simple words. But no one knew bet-
ter than these two authorities that sacrifice either
of precision or dignity is too high a price to pay
for the familiar word. If the choice is between
two words that convey a writer's meaning equal-
ly well, one short and familiar and the other long
and unusual, of course, the short and familiar
should be preferred. But one that is long and
unusual should not be rejected merely on that ac-
count, if it is more apt in meaning. Sir Winston
does not hesitate to prefer the uncommon word
if there is something to be gained by it. If we
were asked whether there was any difference in
meaning between woolly and flocculent we should
probably say no; one was commonplace and the
other unusual, and that was all there was to it.
But Sir Winston, in the first volume of his Second
World War, uses flocculent instead of woolly to
describe the mental processes of certain people,
and so conveys to his readers just that extra ounce
of contempt that we feel flocculent to contain,
perhaps because the combination of f and 1 so
often expresses an invertebrate state, as in flop,
flap, flaccid, flimsy, flabby, flatulent, and filleted.
61
Moreover there is ugliness of shortness as well
as an ugliness of length. On the same day in dif-
ferent papers I have seen the same official refer-
red to as "Administrator of the Organisation for
European Economic Cooperation", and as "Aid
Boss". Neither title is euphonious, and few un-
hesitatingly prefer the short one.
But there are no great signs at present of any
urgent need of a warning not to overdo the use
of simple diction. The commonest ways in which
failure to choose the simple word in official writ-
ing leads to lack of precision are the use of jargon
and legal language and an addiction to showy
words" 10.
What Sir Ernest objects to is abuse of the pomp-
ous words which convey no clear meaning to the mod-
ern user of English, words which have been chosen be-
cause the writer or speaker thinks it will make him out
to be an educated person, that it will impress the read-
ers or listeners in a certain way H.
The difference between "good" and "bad" English
is thus seen to be much more difficult to understand
than by simply deciding in favour of the "plainer" word.
Grandiloquence and latinised vocabulary have had and
still have their place in English literary writing 12. But
as far as our particular purpose is concerned-the Eng-
lish we would be expected to use-Sir Ernest's warning
could not possibly remain unheeded.
What is "good" English, if we know how to distin-
guish between "good" English and the "best English"
or classical literature? 13 "Good" English, according to
Vallins, is something that could be directly available to
whoever wants to learn to speak or write properly.
Here is his definition of "good English": "We write or
speak good English when, obeying the conventions or
principles of modern usage, and paying due respect to
the context, we express exactly what we mean."
Obviously the definition is much too loose. "But the
book", continues Vallins, "goes further. It tries to make
the reader sensitive to good English by giving examples
of bad English-bad, that is, in the sense that, for one
62
reason or another, it does not exactly express the mean-
ing intended." 14.
What can be more elusive than "meaning". Besides,
the content of "discourse" is "purport", not "meaning".
We distinguish very clearly between the meaning of
separate words, their stable or invariant individual re-
ference, on the one hand, and "purport" (soderzanije-
namerenije) of the sentence, the supraphrasal unity and
so on, on the other. When we construct or "produce"
a sentence, who can decide that the underlying "pur-
port" has been expressed to suit the author's inten-
tion? And what exactly does one do to follow the ad-
vice of Sir Ernest Gowers: "It will take a long time
to put the truth across that "good English" consists....
in a capacity to express oneself simply and neatly" 15.
Both our authors (Vallins and Gowers) see eye to
eye in their assessment of the extremely low level of
the general culture of writing. Thus when Vallins ex-
plains where or how he got his examples of "bad" Eng-
lish, he remarks:
"It would be pleasant to record that the sentences
so criticised were discovered only after years of
patient research and endeavour. But that is not
so. Half an hour or so with any one of the papers
or periodicals concerned usually (but not always)
yielded an abundant harvest of examples. This is
not a sweeping criticism of the writers of the sent-
ences subjected to analysis; since most of them
are journalists of standing and repute, it is rather
a reminder of the almost incredible difficulty of
writing good English consistently-without the sud-
den slip, when you feel safest, into a false cons-
truction, a doubtful idiom or a mixed meta-
phor" 16.
The points of disagreement between Vallins and Sir
Ernest Gowers are of so much importance for the pres-
ent discussion that we are compelled to go on citing at
length. After a few derogatory remarks on what he
calls "the cult of plain English" Vallins goes on to
quote the following lines from "Plain Words":
"No one", he says "listening to the news broad-
63
cast in March, 1947, could fail to note that the
unfortunate people whose homes were flooded
were never taken to other houses; they were all
evacuated to alternative accommodation". "The
implication", says Vallins is that "were taken to
other houses" is plain English for "were evacuat-
ed to alternative accommodation". But this im-
plication is unjustified because it ignores real
nuances of meaning ("alternative accommodation",
was, as many people know, by no means the same
as "other houses") and the natural development
of the language ("evacuated" has now established
itself, and has a significance beyond "taken")" 17.
Vallins is quite right when he condemns "the fallacy
of synonymity"-one of the most dangerous obsessions of
transformational linguistics 18. Nevertheless "evacuated
to alternative accommodation" is an "officialese" cliche
which, like all "prefabricated" units of this kind should
be carefully avoided. When the writer speaks of "tak-
ing people to other houses" he knows exactly what he
means and is actually responsible for stringing these
"plain" words together in this simple way. If he uses
the cliche, he has only a vague idea of what the com-
ponent words really mean.
We have discussed what we think are the main as-
pects of our problem-views and opinions on what is
"good" and "bad". Most of the analysis and discussion
reported above are instructive and cannot fail to give
the foreign anglicist a proper orientation. What those
books lack, however, is a sufficient quantity of exam-
ples of good English-the good modern kind the
foreign philologist could safely imitate and try to emu-
late. The writers of manuals of style and usage some-
how appear to be unable to withstand the temptation
of collecting and bringing together as many choice spe-
cimens of very bad writing as possible to show to the
reader how not to write. "The book", says Val-
lins "tries to make the reader sensitive to good English
by giving examples of bad English-bad, that is, in the
sense, that for one reason or another, it does not e x-
a c 11 у express the meaning intended. The gross faults
are illustrated here, and so are the subtle ones" 19.
64
We could not disagree more. We are absolutely sure
that we can make our readers sensitive to good English
by giving as many examples as possible of g о о d
English, of the kind of good English the educated
foreign anglicist can safely imitate in his own speech
and writing.
We must, therefore, turn not to the "bad" texts as-
sembled by our Authors, but to their own lan-
guage which nobody appears to have
analysed so far. In other words, the new approach
that we are now going to announce is the following:
books like the ones analysed above are of especial in-
terest not as one more "grammar of mistakes" (gram-
maire des fautes) or one more attempt to list some
dubious cases and analyse them, but because the
writer's own language must be good. If
their own language were also bad, we would just have
to give it up altogether. There would be no point in
doing anything in English if nobody can write proper
English any longer-in the style which the educated for-
eign anglicist could safely imitate.
Let us give an example. Here is the opening page
of G. H. Vallins's "Good English":
"Any book that professes to set down rules for
"good English" or "plain English" or "direct Eng-
lish" is based on a fallacy. This book is no excep-
tion. There are good reasons for this, some of
which have been hinted at or touched upon in the
following pages. One lies in the fundamental fact
that the language is living and constantly chang-
ing, so that any formalised record of its accidence
and syntax is bound to be, in some measure, out
of date. For example, Cobbet's famous "Gram-
mar" (about 1820), which is several times quoted
in these pages, is out of date; so is Fowler's
"Modern English Usage", published in 1926; so
is Sir Alan Herbert's "What a Word", published in
1935; and so, already, is this very book, since
there is a time-lag between its writing and its
publication, in which the language has in certain
ways, however small and trivial, developed and
changed. For the same reason, every Dictionary
5 Akhmanova, Idzelis
65
is out o£ date as soon as it is published. Language
always outpaces its grammarians and lexicogra-
phers.
Another lies in the fact that there is no such
thing as "standard English"-an English control-
led, that is, by a central Academy, as French is
controlled by L'Academic francaise. There is, it is
true, an "accepted" standard-of pronunciation, of
syntax, of punctuation, of sentence construction.
But that "accepted" standard is not fixed. Certain
variations are allowed even by those who pride
themselves upon their standard English. We know
that this is true of pronunciation, quite apart from
marked difference of dialect. But it is true also,
though to a less degree, of matters of syntax and
certainly of punctuation. Some people are, as we
say, sticklers for grammar; others pride themselv-
es upon a loose colloquial style which throws
"grammar" (in the strict sense) to the winds" 20.
When subjected to the word-by-word analysis which
we explained above 21, the passage can easily be shown
to suit our purpose to perfection. Only in the three con-
cluding lines does the writer use 1) a colloquialism,
although apologetically, as it were, ("Some people are,
as we say, sticklers for grammar"), and 2) a metaphor
(".. . .throws "grammar" ... to the winds.").
At the end of the book we shall take the liberty of
reproducing several examples of the English we
want to learn to use. But before we go on
with this material, we must digress and discuss a ca-
tegory which is basic to our methodology.
What do we mean exactly when we speak of "imitat-
ing" somebody's style? In the Introduction we remind-
ed our readers of Flaubert's appreciation of le Code de
Napoleon. Is the influence to be subconscious, a kind
of empathy, or is the "imitator" supposed to "quote
without quotation marks", and deliberately appropriate
to himself modes of expression and manners of speak-
ing and writing?
As everybody knows, literary quotation is a danger-
ous and double-edged weapon to be handled with
care, because so much misunderstanding, malapropism
66
and other kinds of flagrantly unacceptable language is
due to the "quoters" not having fully realised the extent
of their imitative ability and the distance between them-
selves and the Master they set out to follow. What hap-
pens if the "best English"-the English of great litera-
ture-is used, so to speak, "directly", if the speaker or
writer (who is not to blame for not knowing what he
is trying to do, because nobody has explained it to
him) begins to regard the "best English" as something
for him to "draw directly from", something for him
to be immediately inspired by, in his own speech and
writing? In most cases something which, when looked
at from a humorous point of view, makes so much ex-
cellent reading 22. This long quotation was adduced in
the Notes to show that "borrowing" whole sentences
from the great writers and using them in one's speech
is something one can do only if one wants to be funny,
or if one is on Jeeves's level of linguistic sophistication.
As far as the texts we are going to adduce are con-
cerned, we shall regard them as a kind of linguistic
"no man's land" from which everybody who wants to
write proper English, the English we want to
use, will be welcome to "draw" as freely as he likes.
These examples of English we shall regard as, in a
sense, impersonal. Thus, for instance, we can
"borrow directly" the following bits of sentences:
"But we need not concern ourselves here with the
question of. ."In former days it was custom-
ary ..."; "These two sentences illustrate the com-
mon use of.."There is nothing faulty in the
grammar or syntax of these sentences"; "A sent-
ence is not easy to define"; "It has been suggest-
ed that"; "It will be clear to the reader that. . .";
"These are peculiar and interesting examples
of. . ."; "These examples will be sufficient to . . .";
"These examples illustrate well enough . . ."; "One
rather important consideration which tends to be
forgotten in discussing these matters is . .."; "This
consideration applies to ..."; "It is very import-
ant to realize that.. ."; "To settle these and a great
many other points../'; "The above article was
written in an attempt to work out certain ideas in
6*	67
order to see what.. /'; "These works vary great-
ly in aim, method,.. ."; "This term has already
been introduced by.. ."; "For this reason it is
worth.. ."; "Above all, we must keep clearly
in view the .. ."; "But before deciding what to
select, grade, and present, it is necessary to know
something about..."; "The reason for this is not
hard to find"; "Much of what has been said
about objects, actions, and situations applies
to../'; "If this principle is applied in..."; "It
would be natural to conclude that. . ."; "It seems
very likely that..."; "One point must be made at
the outset.", etc.
We may also attempt some kind of classification of
the material in terms of dialectical unity of colliga-
tion and collocation. Thus, for instance:
I.	"It would be natural to conclude that..."; "It
would be possible to argue that.. "It would be pre-
mature to suggest that..."; It should be borne also in
mind that. . ."; "It should be observed that. . ."; "It
should be added that. . "It may be difficult to under-
stand that. . ."; "It may also be assumed that. . ."; "It
may be claimed that, . "It must be noted that. . .";
"It must be emphasized that. . ; "It is reasonable to
assume that. . ."; "It is important to realize that. . .";
"It is natural to believe (think, assume) that. . .";
II.	"It seems very likely that the same reguliarities
will be observed . . ."; "It appears that there is no dif-
ference between..."; "It follows that a sound can be
described as . .."; "It goes without saying that the cate-
gories of this kind can be further analysed . . .";
III.	"This consideration applies to many different
cases..."; "This term has already been introduced
by ..."; "Another important point must be made at the
outset."; "The point of view taken here is that. . .".
There is also a considerable number of cliches such
as, for example:
"Strictly speaking"; However that may be"; "Noth-
ing could be more misleading"; ’Tor this reason"; "If
this is the case"; "But it is more than that"; "Very
much remains to be done"; "This is obviously not the
case," etc.
68
We must again lay special stress on the following
point. Although "direct" imitation of phrases of the
above kind is the necessary first step, real profici-
ency is only acquired by covering pages and pages
of the kind of the "best English" as exemplified in the
Chrestomathy below (p. 110-133).
From these examples, as well as from the remarks
made in connection with the extract from Vallins above,
it should be made clear that not the whole of these
texts can be regarded as public property. In all books
and articles on our subject there are many phrases
which are best described, following Vallins, as "indivi-
dualities of expression" 23. Here are some examples of
this kind to teach ourselves and our students to dis-
criminate between "impersonal" or "depersonalized
quotations"-those parts of the recommended texts which
may be regarded as public property-and those phrases
where the authors have, as it were, let themselves go,
in a flight of individualistic imagination:
"If I attempted to lay down any rules I should
certainly go astray, and give advice not seemly to
be followed."
"Now that treatment of prose rhythm may well
seem to be somewhat cavalier; and in a sense it
is."
"Novelists who stray in their creation of character
beyond their experience sometimes fall into this
error of usurpation-Dickens, for example, in the
speech of the upper classes, and Hardy when he
moves from the people of the countryside to the
intellectuals or a group of noble dames."
"There is, as we have already noted, a continual
traffic between literal and metaphorical meanings.
It is at its briskest in speech; a little slower in
writing, which trails upon the heels of speech."
"Whenever the sentence becomes a little entangl-
ed, or a construction gets us in two minds, we
hear the beating of their wings."
"And there the modern grammarian (to use a con-
venient but misleading term) quite naturally and
on the whole justly demurs. He must harness
usage to some kind of established rule or
principle."
69
"But once the memorable spoken word, whether
in verse or prose, takes upon itself the perman-
ence of ink, once it moves from the realm of hear-
ing to the realm of seeing, it becomes "literature",
the proper arrangement (to come back to ultimate
meanings) of litterae, the letters of the alphabet."
"If a course in technical English is believed to be
necessary for apprentices or students prior to the
commencement of vocational training proper, can
such a course be devised to cover many trades?".
Although we have warned our readers against ex-
pressions: "go astray", "error of usurpation", .etc.,
there is a world of difference between these and the
ones we banned in Part II (p. 38-40; 41-42). In the pres-
ent case there is no ambiguity whatsoever-every one
of these phrases is absolutely and perfectly easy to un-
derstand. It has got nothing to do with the affected style
produced to please "a narrow and oversophisticated li-
terary elite" (see p. 43).
NOTES
1.	We do not mean to minimize the role of electronic
computers for concordances, etc. See Akhmanova et al (1971,
p. 151-197). What we mean is that to know a language is to
be familiar with its facts. Hence to be able to judge whe-
ther a statement is true to fact or not is to perceive what is
real and reasonably uncoloured by the analyst’s “subjective”
feelings or opinions.
2.	In such a case it is mostly a question of “restricted”
language where the niceties of expression are jettisoned from
the outset. The user of “restricted” forms does not concern
himself with being impressive, pleasant to read, well-balanced,
rhythmically arranged, etc. His aim is rational, intellective
communication pure and simple:
“For a scientist or technologist English must be a precision
instrument, but he is not concerned with the cultural heritage
of the language, not even with what is of universal value in
it. “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?” (Pattison,
1968, p. 148).
3.	It should be noted that knowledge of a language has
got nothing to do with belonging to this or that ethnic group.
There is another very important point to be made in this con-
nection: even when a foreign adult stays in the country whose
language he has learnt for a considerable length of time, he is
usually clearly distinguishable from the natives. But most of
the time this happens not because his grammar or choice of
70
words are faulty. The reason usually is 1) over-careful enun-
ciation, 2) defective, that is, foreign voice quality, linguistic
mannerisms, etc.—the sum total of features of national lin-
guistic behaviour which is naturally manifested in the speech
of natives:
“.. .One of the most perfect types of what the latter (the
scientific philologist.—O. A., R. I.) would call “the parrot lin-
guist” was Palmer the Orientalist; and it used to be said of
him at Cambridge that when he talked to Orientals in their
own language, he seemed to speak faster than they did. This
excessive fluency often blinds the superficial observer to the
defectiveness of the imitation, especially in the pronunciation,
which in the born linguist of the highest type is always good,
but apparently never perfect, unless with the help of phonetic
training. It is said that when Palmer talked to the Arabs of
the desert, they thought he was an Arab of a different tribe.”
(Sweet, 1964, p. 79).
4.	M i 11 i n s (1959, p. 113).
5.	These are the words of Professor I. A. Richards. See
Mittins (1959, p. 116). What has just been stated in the
body of the book paints so depressing a picture that we are
compelled to adduce some of the relevant texts in full:
“What I object to is that the language used nowadays does
not communicate. Unless educated people learn to use English
correctly and with sensitivity, they will be unable to think
creatively. The kind of English I am talking about is not a
means of communication. It is a barbarisation—an imita-
tion of thought and communication.” (Dr. King, p. 17 of
the Report). Pierre Moreau asked Dr. King if he could give
the audience some concrete examples of this “barbarisation”
of English. Dr. King: “.. .the use of jargon not in the true
sciences but in pseudo-sciences called social sciences; the low
standard of writing in international publications, academic
treatises, etc.; the use of language in the mass media, particu-
larly the comics and popular press; the decline in the use of
language by the unskilled worker in factories as compared
with the artisan and peasant; the increasing number of mis-
prints in the Times; the deliberate heb6tude of the upper and
upper-middle class in England as revealed in incomplete, hesi-
tant, and stammering conversation, and their disinclination to
punctuate in their letters; in sum, the unconcern for clarity
and sensitivity, and the encouragement by contemporary civi-
lisation of language for evasion and dishonesty” (p. 17-18).
“.. .As Sir James Barrie once observed, “.. .the Man of
Science appears to be the only man who has something to
say, just now—and the only man who does not know how to
say it.” (Q u i 11 e r-C о u c h, 1938, p. 118).
Things appear to be no better in the USA:
“Their English”, said Harold Urey, the scientist speaking
about American college students in general, “is very limited.
They have little knowledge of grammar and their vocabularies
are small” (Warburg, 1959, p. 74).
6.	Gowers (1968, p. 261).
71
7.	Vallins (1965, p. 9).
8.	Cf. McIntosh and Halliday (1966, p. 84):
“In speaking of selection I have been careful not to sug-
gest that there is usually a unique “right” choice; as we well
know, there are many simple situations in which five or six
alternative utterances would serve equally well. So what we
are usually dealing with is degrees of suitability, not with any-
thing unique or absolute. In stressing the fa ct that there is a
process of selection, all I wish to bring out is that many utte-
rances would simply not have served in the situation in
question and that we must therefore assess whether an utte-
rance is “good” (if I may use this vague word for the mo-
ment) according to the particular circumstances in which it
has its being. Nothing is good without respect...”.
A passionate statement on this point was made by Hall
(1950, p. 238):
“.. .Our newspapers and magazines are full of advertise-
ments of individuals and institutes offering to teach “good
English”, and of syndicated columns in which supposed
“authorities” put forth their views on what is right and what
is wrong. Dictionaries, grammar-books and “guides to good
usage” are sold in bookstores, with claims on the jackets and
in the books to an authoritative basis for their pronouncements.
But .. .any claim to being “right” or knowing what is “cor-
rect” is, by the very fact of its being such a claim, a pure
fake and an imposture. Anybody who tries to sell you his
own dictum about “good English” as being authoritative or
correct, is cheating and defrauding you, fully as much as
the unscrupulous physician or drug manufacturer who tries
to sell you a patent medicine guaranteed to cure this, that or
the other desease.”
One is thus led to believe that there is no hope for one
who would seek for a straightforward answer. It depends...
In what follows we gradually realize the need to turn to our
own resources and look around for ourselves for an answer
to our particular question: what is the kind or type of English
that is “good” for us?
9.	Vallins (1965, p. 10). We have carefully avoided the
“Saxon—Romance” opposition because for Late Modern English
it has lost most of its one-time importance. The following
quotation shows very clearly that the idea can easily be redU'
ced ad absurdum:
“.. .And in fact, as the Fowlers themselves were aware, н
you deliberately try to restrict your choice of words to one or
other of these two main ingredients of the English vocabulary,
you will merely produce curiosities like this—
Though, for some hundreds of years, English folk—
headed by the best songsters of the land—have been
seeking to shake off the Norman Yoke that lies so heavy
on their speech, yet what many speakers and writers,
even today, call English is no English at all but sheer
French. Nevertheless there are many who feel not a little
ashamed of the needless loanwords In which their speech
72
is clothed, and of the borrowed feathers in which they
strut—
which is “pure Saxon”; or like this—
Despite the fact that during several centuries English
People captained by the chief poets of the country—
have attempted to escape the Norman Yoke which exerts
so ponderous a constraint on their language, the idiom
of many orators and literary people, even at present,
the style of English, is by no means English, but purely
French. Despite this, numerous individuals are conside-
rably abashed by the unnecessary adopted terms in
which their language is dressed and the alien plumes in
which they parade—
which, though denotatively the same as the passage before, is
(almost) “pure Romance” (Vallins, 1965, p. 52-53).
10.	Gowers (1968, p. 107-108).
11.	Vallins makes fun of Sir Ernest Gowers:
“True, Sir Ernest Gowers uses his blue pencil to good effect.
Out goes that offending word, that woolly superfluous clause,
that otiose adverb, that periphrastic phrase.” (p. 148).
There we also find a list of words which Sir Ernest thinks
can be struck out without harming the sense and which he
describes as “padding”. Vallins disagrees with him and thinks
that “.. .after all, ‘“official”, like “legal”, language, with its
apparent circumlocutions and repetitions, is designed to pro-
vide for every possible contingency and guard against every
“twist” of interpretation...” (p. 148). “...The jargon of official
and commercial language”, continues Vallins, “is not always so
defensible, but it does not deserve the foolish and indiscrimi-
nating attacks that are sometimes made upon it. Sir Ernest
Gower’s kind of blue-pencilling is, in fact, as dangerously
facile as it may be unjust and misleading. It could be applied,
not without reason, to the opening sentences of his own book:
The purpose of this book is to help officials in their use
of written English. To some of them this may seem a
work of supererogation, calculated only to place an unne-
cessary burden on a body of people already overbur-
dened.
This is not written in “plain words”. Sir Ernest’s blue pencil
would probably alter and reduce it to something like this:
This book is written to help officials to write good Eng-
lish. Some of them may think it a superfluous book,
designed only to burden unnecessarily a body of people
already overburdened.
And if Sir Ernest protests that this does not exactly represent
his intended meaning, then the argument of his book falls to
the ground.” (p. 149).
As far as this “translation” of Sir Ernest’s English is con-
cerned, it is wrong, for his English is beyond reproach: after
all one can occasionally use a word like “supererogation”. But,
of course, as far as the educated foreigner’s English is con-
cerned, “supererogation” would have nothing to do with his
English. The educated foreigner should know his Fowler very
73
well, should always have him at his finger-ends, or, rather, at
his elbow?
12.	A few quotations to bring out the point more clearly:
“.. .Jespersen once remarked that “no literature in the
world abounds as English in characters made ridiculous to
the reader by the manner in which they misapply or distort
“big” words” (“Growth and Structure”, p. 133). It would be
wrong to reduce the whole problem of malapropisms and of
the language bar to a question of transparency and opaque-
ness; the issues are far more delicate and complex. Yet it can-
not be denied that lack of motivation is one of the chief fac-
tors responsible for this state of affairs: learned Greek and
Latin terms are felt to be “hard words” precisely because they
are unmotivated, without roots in the language, and without
any of “those invisible threads that knit words together in
the human mind” (Jespersen, ibid., p. 133)” (Ullman, 1962,
p. 115).
“.. .Most of the great prose-writers (as Professor Grierson
has pointed out), from Hooker to Milton and Clarendon, were,
we know and we can tell, scholars writing for scholars—hence
their “latinised” vocabulary and their Ciceronian periods, as
well as their quotations and allusions” (W a г b u r g, 1959,
p. 63). See also Gordon (1966, p. 105-129).
13.	See Part I.
14.	Vallins (1963, p. 11).
15.	Gowers (1968, p. 263).
16.	Vallins (1965, p. 11-12). And this is what Sir Ernest
has to say on the subject:
“But it is certainly wrong to imagine that official writing,
as an instrument for conveying thought, is generally inferior
to the lamentably low standard now prevalent except among
professional writers” (p. 262).
17.	As seen, among other things, from the following
extract:
A— How’s married life treating you?
В—It’s very pleasant. The only problem is trying to
find somewhere of our own to live. We’re in rented
accommodation at the moment, and we’ll have to stay
there until such time as we can put a down payment
on a house. Could be years (BBC English by Radio and
Television, No. 205, Aug. 1972).
18.	Generative grammar has now lost much of the original
charm of novelty. We know now that it is of no use in foreign
language teaching.
19.	Vallins (1965, p. 11).
20.	Ibid., p. 7-8.
21.	See Part I.
22.	“Yes Sir, Smethurst—his name is Smethurst—would
consider it a consummation devoutly to be wished”.
“Rather well put, that, Jeeves. Your own?”
“Ne, Sir. The Swan of Avon, Sir.”
74
. .Mr. С. E. Montague argues that the man who reads few
books with true and abiding enjoyment is the best and most
natural quoter. “The only mental food”, he says, “that will
turn to new tissue within you, and build itself into your mind,
is that which you eat with a good surge and surprise that any-
thing so exciting should ever have been written.” In the course
of the chapter he illustrates his point: “You can turn author
yourself. You can go tend the homely, slighted shepherd’s
trade.” Out of his reading of Milton (“Lycidas”, 1, 65) he re-
members a striking phrase—which has, in fact, passed into
general use—and weaves it into the texture of his own prose.
“That’s rather well put, Montague”, Bertie Wooster would
have said. “Your own?”
What С. E. Montague does we all do, even in our speech,
according to our memory and the extent of our reading—
according, that is, as we have our minds stored with prose
and poetry. “Hamlet”, a lady is reported to have said, “is all
quotations”. It is, in a general exaggerated way, true. “To the
manner born”, “in my mind’s eye”, “more honoured in the
breach than the observance”, “hoist with his own petard”—
these and many others are part of our own stock-in-trade,
ready for the lip or for the pen, even if we are not aware
when we speak or write of their origin.” (Vallins, 1963,
p. 68-69).
23.	Vallins (1963, p. 170).
Part IV
VOCABULARY AND SYNTAX
This part of the book is devoted to an analysis of
the English we aspire to in terms of its vocabulary
and syntax.
The vocabulary of our kind of English has
been studied in detail by a special seminar under the
supervision of Helen Mindeli. The overall analysis of
all the running words in some of our books 1 was bas-
ed on the following principle: it had already been es-
tablished by previous research in the field that the
vocabulary of an "unvarnished medium", that is, that
prose which ".. .conveys ideas, which states facts and
gives commentary upon them, which expresses critical
opinion" 2 consists of three unequal parts (unequal
not only in size or frequency of occurence of units,
but also in the importance, in the role the vocabulary
plays in keeping this particular register or kind of
English distinct from other kinds or registers)3.
The three strata or kinds of units which comprise
the vocabulary are the following: general words, that
is words most widely used, most frequently occuring,
words which constitute the core of the language, on
the one hand, and special terms and terminological
word-combinations, on the other. These are the two
extremes. The third and the most important and inte-
resting stratum consists of words which are neither
words of the general language nor special terms. They
have been described as "general scientific vocabulary"
(slova obscenaucnogo izlozenija)-words most natural-
ly used to impart intellective information, irrespective
of whether the information is strictly scientific and per-
76
tains to exact or natural sciences, or whether the infor-
mation is connected with findings, observations and
generalizations in the broader field of the Humanities.
It should be noted from the very outset that it is
difficult to draw a distinct line between these groups,
for, when used within this register, a word may ac-
quire a new meaning and thus enter a different stra-
tum. Thus none of the three groups is a self-contained
system completely isolated from the other two-interac-
tion and interchange are always in progress 4.
When we "perform" within the register of scientific
discourse, the words of the general language function-
ing, as they do, within a specific style of speech, are
made to serve a special purpose. In other words, the
difference between the scientific style and any other
usually consists in the fact that here a "piece" of eve-
ryday language is connected with a specific kind of
human a c t i v i t y-s c i e n t i f i c research. It follows
that the scientific vocabulary is affected by the pecu-
liarities of this particular register. Its style depends on
the purport of scientific discourse, on its main func-
tion-the communicative one.
It is usually assumed that the main function of
scientific prose is to prove certain points or assump-
tions; define and explain this or that phenomenon;
pass on and sum up information; arrive at certain con-
clusions. Otherwise stated, the process of scientific work
finds its reflection in the general scientific vocabulary 5.
If we think of acquiring and using knowledge as a
process then the following main conceptual fields
can be singled out: 1) prospect, outlook; 2) acquiring
knowledge; 3) organization and systematization of the
material; 4) checking up; 5) making conclusions;
6) passing on the knowledge. It goes without saying
that there is a close interaction and interdependence
among these conceptual fields-they cannot be discussed
separately; only their sum total represents what we call
"knowledge".
Before turning to classification according to these
conceptual fields, one more important point must be
made: it is necessary to emphasize that the classifica-
77
tion is not the aim, but the method of our research, for
all classification can do is help generalize on the basis
of the infinite variety of particular cases actually oc-
curring in the language.
If this classification is accepted, then the words of
our kind of English can be arranged systematically in
the following way.
I.	Prospect, outlook
adhere, assume, assumption, attempt, count on,
expect, imply, intend, plan, postulate, predetermine,
propose, proposition, suggest, suppose, term, etc.
II.	Acquiring knowledge
adopt, borrow, carry out, collect, compare, compa-
rison, conduct, create, creation, discover, elaborate,
examination, experiment, find, investigate, investiga-
tion, notice, observation, perceive, perception, record,
register, research, scan, seek, study, etc.
III.	Organization and systematization
ascribe, asign, bring out, class, classify, classifica-
tion, combine, combination, compile, component, com-
prise, concentrate, confine, confinement, connect, con-
sist, constitute, contrast, construct, construction, con-
tain, correlation, correspond, differ, difference, diffe-
rentiate, disproportion, distinction, distinguish, divide,
division, element, enumeration, emphasis, group, im-
portance, include, interdependence, limit, member, orga-
nize, refer, relation, relationship, restrict, result (from),
separation, single out, sequence, select, stand out,
stress, type, underline, unit, unity, etc.
IV.	Checking up
appropriatness, check, clarity, confuse (with), cor-
rectness, defend, discrepancy, doubt, exception, inac-
ceptability, mistake, omission, reconsider, reformulate,
etc.
78
V.	Making conclusions
abstract, abstraction, achieve, acquire, analyse, ana-
lysis, arrive (at), apprehension, appreciation, associa-
tion, avail, assess, assessment, associate, believe, cate-
gory, characterize, character, characteristic, comprehend,
concept, conclude, conclusion, consider, consideration,
define, deduce, effect, establish, evaluation, feature,
formulate, generalize, generalization, judgement, in-
vent, opinion, peculiarity, point of view, precept, pre-
fer, reach, realize, receive, regard, regularity, resolve,
rule, solution, state, statement, succeed, think, thought,
work out, etc.
VI.	Passing on knowledge
advise, consult, discuss, discussion, elucidate, ex-
pound, exemplify, explain, explanation, illustrate, indi-
cate, indication, instance, instruct, introduce, interpret,
issue, mention, reiterate, remind, repeat, review, ren-
der, understand, etc.
From the above sample lists we conclude that words
belonging to the general scientific vocabulary deal with
processes of acquiring and passing on information,
making prospects, arriving at certain results, checking
them, making conclusions, etc. This naturally narrows
down the lexical "diapason" (range) of words in scien-
tific texts in the sense that, on the whole, they acquire
special meanings. It is here that ordinary lexemes cease
to be words of the general language. However stran-
ge it may seem, the general character of this vocabu-
lary is that it is no longer "general" without reserva-
tion. Otherwise stated, it remains general only in the
sense that words appear to be simple and familiar and
can easily be imagined as functioning in all registers of
speech. But the moment they are used in a scientific
text, a certain transposition of their meaning is bound
to occur.
To reiterate: there does exist a category of words
-the general scientific vocabulary-which constitutes a
separate group within the overall lexis of our register.
It is kept distinct from both terms and the general
vocabulary. Although the latter is also used in scienti-
71
fic narration (as well as in any other text) it is by no
means its most important, let alone, constitutive part.
The above approach to the general scientific voca-
bulary is by no means the only possible one6: the
general scientific vocabulary can also be profitably stu-
died from the point of view of the division of its words
into those of Romance and those of Anglo-Saxon ori-
gin. This division, roughly, corresponds to the one dis-
cussed at great length in the controversy we gave an
idea of above between G. H. Vallins and Sir Ernest
Gowers 7.
Our materials have shown that the majority of
nouns are of Romance origin, whereas the most fre-
quently repeated verbs are Anglo-Saxon. Thus, for
example: generalization, exposition, experiment, expe-
rience, conclusion, connection, contribution, creation,
excellence, exemplification, pronouncement, propaga-
tion, reflection, and so on, but: ask, answer, come, call,
bring, feed, grow, keep, lead, learn, make, read, see, set,
sit, speak, show, say, think, understand, write, etc. It
has been suggested that the predominantly Romance
origin of nouns accounts for the scarcity of their expres-
sive-emotional-evaluative overtones. It is generally
assumed that for native speakers of English words of
Romance origin often denote something very general
and abstract.
In Part I the method of analysing and presenting
word-combination has been explained in great
detail. It goes without saying that every single combi-
nation of words in the English we use must, in prin-
ciple, be free from the constraints imposed upon the
word-combinations of, for example, early 19th century
fiction by modern usage as reflected in scientific En-
glish (see p. 65-66, above). Thus, for example:
"It is obvious..."; "It is obvious to all of us
that. . ."; ". . .that different kinds of English..
". . .different kinds of English are spoken. .
". . .are spoken, even inside England. . "This
is not merely a question of. .	". . .a question of
individual peculiarities. . ."; ". . .though these of
course exist.. ."; ". . .a question. . . of the pecu-
liarities of groups of speakers"; "We can all re-
80
cognize. . ."; ". . .recognize a kind of speech, . . .";
". . .speech, characteristic of the north of Eng-
land,.. ."; "...characteristic... of the West
country.. ."; ".. .characteristic... of the London
area. . ."; /z. . .even if we lack the power.. .";
".. .the power to analyse the differences/'; zzin
other words. . .zz; "...there are in England...";
". . .there are. . . clearly marked regional dialects'',,
etc. 8.
So far, then, as word-combination is concerned,,
there appear to be no problems to contend with. In
fact, however, there is the difficulty of dividing what
might be described as "free word-combinations", on the
one hand, and "set expressions", or "phraseological
units" of different kinds, on the other.
Although we know that phraseological units do*
exist side-by-side with more or less free word-combina-
tions, it is not always easy to draw a distinct line be-
tween the two 9. Linguistic analysis requires that things
should be arranged in the form, as it were, of a
"chain": we must specify the extreme cases which em-
body the categories in question in their purest form,,
and arrange, chain-like, between these two extremesA
the bulk of what may be described as "borderline"
cases. Thus, for instance, "bring up to date" is certainly
a set expression (the same applying to "draw atten-
tion"), while to "get a view of" is controversial, where-
as to "make fun of" is somewhere on the borderline.
A phraseological unit is the functional equivalent
of a word because it is characterized by "semantic whole-
ness" or "globality of nomination" 10. As far as the
form of phraseological units is concerned, the follow-
ing groups can be clearly distinguished (this applies
only to "one-peak" (odnoversinnyje) 1 11 phraseological
units) which are most typical of scientific writing:
I. Prepositional-nominal phraseological
units
1. Adverbial propositional-nominal phraseological
units: in fact, in turn, in conclusion, in principle, in
sight, in particular, in question, in general, under con-
st
sideration, under the circumstances, for instance, for
example, etc.
2. Syntactic prepositional-nominal phraseological
units:
a)	prepositions: in terms of, in spite of, in view of,
as a result of, by means of, in case of, on the ground
-of, etc.
b)	conjunctions: in order that, in case that, in spite
of the fact that, for fear that, etc.
II.	Verb-adverb phraseological units
to sum up, to give up, to work out, to carry out,
to call for, to bring out, to make out, to pass on, to
point out, to set about, to turn to, to try out, to come
about, etc.
III.	Phraseological units of the type
to be ill, to be about, to be able, to be unable, to
be sure, to be off, to be worth, to be certain, to be un-
like, etc.
IV.	Ver b-s ubstantival phraseological
units
to take into account, to take advantage of, to take
for granted, to keep in mind, to give rise, to give way,
to bring forth, to take place, to make sense, to put
forward, to come into use, to let alone, etc.
It should always be borne in mind that form-im-
portant as it may be-takes second place as compared
with the semantics of these expressions. In this con-
nection the following observation can be made: it is
very difficult to single out and put on one side word-
combinations which are clearly and indubitably part
of the general scientific vocabulary. In the case of
words like methodology, research, result, discussion,
there is hardly any doubt as to their belonging to the
scientific register. With phraseological units the situa-
tion is quite different. Expressions like, in favour of, at
first sight, in its own right, of interest, in common, at
$2
the moment, step-by-step, bear in mind, keep in mind,,
go hand in hand, more or less, etc., are very properly
used in everyday language and are also usable in practi-
cally all registers.
Within the general scientific vocabulary there is,
however, a considerable number of rather long set
phrases, which are very important. They are said to be
"set", because they, too, are not created in the flow of
speech, but brought into it as ready-made units: "It
is a well-known fact that.. "It is often assumed
that. . "It should be noted that. . ."; "We have no*
doubt that. ."It should be added that", etc.
This brings us back to what has already been said,
about certain typical word-combinations which have-
always been regarded as a kind of linguistic "no man's,
land" 12. The study of these cliches, however, constitu-
tes a separate branch of lexical investigation and will’
be continued in connection with the study of supraphra-
sal unities.
We began our analysis with the vocabulary not:
because we regard this part of our work as the most
advanced, but because it seemed quite logical-after we*
had had a close look at the word-combinations, which
formed so important a part in our previous discussions:
-to examine the words themselves, to consider them-
one by one, as it were, individually, and try to formu-
late, however tentatively, what the words we use in our
kind of English are like. We would be very happy if
by continuing this kind of work we arrived at certain
definite norms and prescriptions. At the present stage'
all we can do is to confine ourselves to the discussion
of the methods we have applied, the approa-
ches we have adopted, and the preliminary-
results arrived at, by means of these methods and’
procedures.
When we look at the now very considerable litera-
ture devoted to the study of scientific texts (the func-
tional style of scientific discourse) we notice that what
people have really elaborated and described in consi-
derable detail is the peculiar morphology of this
register. It may now be assumed-and with good rea-
son-that, in general, scientific discourse is much poorer
in morphological oppositions than fiction 13. It is beli-
83*
eved that in this functional style people confine them-
selves to a very limited number of oppositions. Hence
there is a lot of talk about the deliberate minimization
of morphological oppositions, and attempts are made
to study scientific texts from the point of view of reduc-
ing the use of this kind of semiotic device, so to speak,
to the minimum.
It was in this spirit that M. P. Grigorjev began the
analysis of the English we use from the morphological
point of view. The results of his work are very inte-
resting, because, in many ways, they have demonstrat-
ed the fallacy of the abstract, simplistic approach to
morphology, for it is too much involved in complex
lexical, lexical-phraseological and collocational relation-
ships of all kinds, and above all-and this is particular-
ly important-morphological oppositions are manifestly
s i t u a t i о n-b о u n d.
In our kind of English we do keep an eye on the
morphological oppositions just in the same way as we
keep an eye on vocabulary, word-combination, major
syntax and even supraphrasal unities. But while doing
so, we are always ready to lend an attentive ear to
whatever argument may be presented either in favour
of introducing or retaining the marked form despite
all the potential metasemiotic emotive-expressive-eva-
luative overtones it can, theoretically speaking, or does
actually possess.
This is what was quite interesting and useful in the
methodology adopted by M. P. Grigorjev in his re-
search. He made a complete analysis of all our texts
and has shown that the most important oppositions
are between the present and the past, active and pas-
sive. The passive constructions play a very important
role-this has been established long ago for most lan-
guages, because when what we are doing is scientific
discourse, passive constructions are invaluable, for they
serve to express general statements about things
without bothering to introduce doers or actors into the
statements:
The predominance of "monotonous" or "jerky"
sentences in the passage may result in the gene-
ral effect of monotony. If syntagmatic monotony
84
is not relieved by the use of other rhythm consti-
tuents (mostly syntagmatic parallelism), then, un-
doubtedly, monotony is not the best rhythmical
structure to be chosen for a scientific text.
Although it is still often assumed that monotony
is characteristic of scientific text, writers and
speakers of scientific subjects should not be en-
couraged to adhere to this rhythmical pattern, for
the listener (or the reader) will very soon be bored
to tears, or might miss important information
on the subject if it is not singled out by prosodic
and rhythmical means.
Side-by-side with these, we keep finding in the
English we use marked forms of taxis, as well as
marked forms of the aspectual oppositions. This is a
very interesting point to make. Some discussion has
already taken place on the subject. What should be
our reaction? Do we use them regularly, or replace
them by the unmarked forms? The answer is an em-
phatic no!
The particular importance of the English we use is
its having been created primarily as spoken scientific
discourse. It was not originally written down in some-
body's study, but enunciated. It was a series of
actual speech events, created by the lecturers to serve
the needs of their ordinary professional duties.
The marked forms of, for example, taxis and the
continuous aspect are included in the system of mor-
phological-grammatical oppositions of the English we
use, because this is the natural form of expression for
spoken scientific English. When somebody is addres-
sing an audience, the present perfect form, for example,
as can be seen from M. P. Grigorjev's material, is the
form which helps to establish a direct contact with the
listeners, being so much more situation-bound. In oral
scientific discourse it is simply indispensable.
So far little attention has been given to the syn-
tax of the English we use: very much remains to be
done on all sub-levels of this aspect of linguistic ana-
lysis-ratio of active to passive and impersonal senten-
ces, the different lexical-syntactical means of expres-
sion, such as transitivity/intransitivity, etc. What has
85
been done already is a thorough investigation of the
paragraph.
There can be no doubt whatsoever that optimization
of the linguistic message is bound to begin with a
detailed analysis of the structure of the paragraph, for
it is mainly faulty division of the flow of speech into
these very complex syntactic units that hampers com-
munication.
It is most important to explain at once that, although
the term "hypersyntax" is connected with the idea of
the increasing length of syntactic units, it is by no
means merely a question of length. The moment we
make the first step in the direction of sintaksis kak dia-
lekticeskoje jedinstvo kolligacii i kollokacii, kak nauka
о postrojenii reci, the moment we begin to speak not
of the abstract logical patterns, but of actual discourse,
a large number of different phenomena are sure to
come into play. Not only sentences, but also para-
graphs acquire a new quality. They exist only as part
of discourse, as elements in a series of intertwined
syntactic entities which jointly serve for the expres-
sion of wider, overall purports.
It has also been proved that the concepts of "fore-
grounding", or "functional perspective" really make
sense only when introduced at supraphrasal-unity level.
It is also here that the different types of themes and
varieties of theme-rheme relationships become truly
significant14.
When we speak about syntax, we must make it
quite clear that by syntax we do not understand "the
syntax of the sentence". We are not interested in try-
ing to discover how many simple, compound, complex,
etc. sentences we use. This, we think, is completely
irrelevant, whereas the division into paragraphs-the
paragraph as a semiotic device, and the average length
of paragraphs being 7-8 lines-is an important conclu-
sion to make.
In this connection we might just as well say it all
over again: we are absolutely convinced that there is
no such thing as functional sentence perspective,
for it is the functional perspective of the paragraph
that matters in the kind of English we want to teach
our pupils and ourselves to write.
86
It has also been firmly established that "7-8 lines"
average can be observed throughout the manuals of
the English Department. We can therefore conclude
that, in the case of scientific texts, division into para-
graphs is clearly understood by a well-trained speaker
as an application of a certain semiotic category. It goes
without saying that the semiotic category in question
helps to create proizvedenija reci which present scien-
tific information in as well-organized a way as possible.
If, however, we were to turn to English scientific
texts at large, without confining ourselves to just one
linguistic school or a single author, we would see that
the situation is much more complex than could be ex-
pected: some of the texts are organized more or less
in the same way, while others present quite a different
picture.
Even with the narrow scope of our little "Chresto-
mathy" (Part V of the present book) we shall find
instances of short and long paragraphs, the respective
authors freely availing themselves of this important
semiotic device (the specific kind of "punctuation"
called "the indented line") to suit their own personal
tastes. The content plane of this sign is g 1 о b a 1 i t у
vs division, that is, presenting something as one
whole and establishing a very close connection between
its parts or vice versa-breaking it up into parts to
make them more prominent and independent.
Although the organization of discourse in terms of
supraphrasal unities has been discussed in a wide va-
riety of papers and dissertations 15, very little attention
has so far been given to the prescription of
optimal speech behaviour along these lines. The
problem is greatly complicated by the fact that the
number and variety of factors which must be taken
into account in each particular case is so great as to
make simple prescription impossible. Although
we cannot think of laying down a set of fool-proof
rules, some of our findings may well be presented in
the form of recommendations:
1)	When we use the kind of English discussed here,
the length of paragraphs tends towards an average of
7-8 lines. It follows that extreme length (or brevity,
as the case may be), should be avoided;
*7
2)	There is a number of typical "connectors" of
paragraphs, such as "it must be noted", "as we see",
"as far as. .. is concerned", "in the passage above",
"as has already been mentioned", etc., which are very
convenient and frequently used as a means of connect-
ing supraphrasal unities and separating them from one
another;
3)	Points 1 and 2 are more or less formal. They
are concerned either with certain general-formal prin-
ciples (such as preferable length of paragraphs for a
given register) or with one of the great variety of for-
mal "indicators". What really matters, although little
progress has been made here so far, is that all texts
should be carefully edited in terms of division
into paragraphs. As far as our particular texts are
concerned, it becomes especially important in view of
our basic requirement-that of easy, natural and direct
transposition of our printed texts into the oral form of
language.
This is a point which warrants a new paragraph.
Although the specific relationship of the written and
oral forms of speech in the case of the English we use
has already been touched upon more than once, it was
done in passing, as it were. It is, therefore, high time
we dwelt on this aspect of our work specifically and
in a well-grounded, fundamental way.
When people in general (including the not-so-lite-
rary) use their own language they, normally, believe
that there is a great difference between speaking and
writing it: in writing (unless, of course, it is a casual
note) their style becomes more formal, they may go
in for much longer sentences-compound and complex
ones, and show a preference for longer literary words.
And they may go on writing without availing them-
selves of the invaluable semiotics of indented lines-
sometimes at great length.
Now, the all-important difference between a nati-
ve's and a foreigner's use of a language is that the
foreigner is usually quite happy to be able to master
one kind (or style): he can hardly ever hope to com-
mand two varieties and be able to choose between
them to suit the particular exigencies of the moment.
It was, therefore, of vital importance that "the English
88
we use", "the tool of our trade" should be usable in
both speech and writing, that it should be a sort of
compromise between the two.
The idea is not altogether original, because the
same kind of compromise is brilliantly achieved by our
chosen authors (see the "Chrestomathy"). There is not
one among them whose text is not easily transposed
into the oral. We could even go so far as to claim that
the greater part of our Chrestomathy-if not actually
spoken first and recorded afterwards-was written by
people with a highly developed sense of rhythm. To
write like this one must hear one's sentences, the
text must resound in one's "inner speech".
It ought to follow from what has just been said
that the texts of the reader part (or Chrestomathy) must
be neatly divided into paragraphs "optimally", that is,
to the best advantage. This, however, may not always
be the case because, although in speaking, authors of
that calibre could not fail to realize the signal of end
of supraphrasal unity (the spoken analog of the para-
graph), this does not necessarily imply their equally
spontaneous and reliable ability to use indented lines
with the same unconstrained ease.
One more aspect of this involved syntactic-textolo-
gical problem must be included in the discussion.
Although in books on "Composition" the para-
graph is highly commended as the basis of logical
thinking and proper sequential arrangement and seg-
mentation of the subject matter, very little is said and
done to explain its s e m i о t i c value.
Logic is all very well and it is a very good thing
to be able to practice it in one's speaking and writing.
But do people actually stop, when delivering a lecture,
for example (to realize the overlong pause, the increas-
ed tempo and decreased range and loudness at the end
of the preceding supraphrasal unity-and the slowed
tempo plus increased loudness and range at the begin-
ning of the next one), because they have hit on the
logically superior variant?
The answer is "No", because more important than
logic in oral speech is the average optimal length in
terms of inhaled air and audience-endurance: a supraph-
rasal unity cannot be drawn out when there is no more
89
air left in the speaker's lungs. Also breaking up what
one is trying to get across to one's audience into rea-
sonably short parts or portions will do much to give
one's exposition its optimal form.
One of the undoubted merits of Perekalskaja's
thorough and painstaking research 16 is her overall
criticism of the "logical" fallacy. She has collected a
large number of convincing examples to show that a
supraphrasal unity may and does fulfil a number of
different functions which have very little to do with
the logical arrangement and presentation of "complete
and well-rounded thoughts". A supraphrasal unity may
be.-deliberative-
A report on the proceedings of the fifth Annual
Conference of teachers of English as a foreign
language, which took place in January 1972 is
found in "The Bulletin of the International As-
sociation of Teachers of English as a Foreign
Language", Newsletter No. 23, May 1972 17.
a 11 u s i v e-d eliberative:
According to G. H. Vallins the "best English" is
equated with literature. "Literature, as distinct
from ephemeral writing and officialese, preserves
what is best and most worthy out of the past and
hands it on as a living tradition". Although
". . .there is no ultimate answer to the question.. .
what is it that makes a piece of writing litera-
ture", nevertheless, there can be no doubt about
its existence: it is not only there, but also and
always open to whoever wants to become "lite-
rate" in the proper sense of the word 18.
interrogativ e-d eliberative, etc:
In the Introduction we quoted Dr. King who
named Jane Austen among the masters of Engl-
ish. Now supposing we get a book by Jane
Austen and supposing we begin to read it. Does
one do it in the hope of becoming engrossed in
the story, or is one looking for excellence of
style, wonderful ways of saying things? This is,
probably, the first question to be asked 19.
90
Most important is the general conclusion:
Supraphrasal unities are not the end or ultimate
objects of hypersyntax; their actual and true
nature can be understood only if these larger
chunks of syntactic organization are studied in
conjunction with the preceding and following su-
praphrasal unities. Supraphrasal unities exist
only as parts of discourse, as blocks in a
series of interconnected supraphrasal unities 20.
We now come to the most important part of our
discussion: the actual and true nature of the articula-
tion (segmentation) of the flow of speech can be un-
derstood only if we treat the segments not as membra
disjecta, but as parts of discourse, as blocks in a se-
ries of interconnected supraphrasal unities-the "hyper-
supraphrasal or textual syntax".
It has already been mentioned21, that there is a
number of dished phrases which recur in the English
we use and thus form a very important part of its lexi-
cal-phraseological structure, not only "as such", but
also as hypersupraphrasal connectives22. To present
them "in action" we reprint here extracts from the
English we use, as collected and arranged by Pere-
kalskaja: 23
"We have already said above (p. 130) that
the ontological difference lies in the fact that
however poor the speaker of a native language
may be, he has no "Hemmung"; he is absolutely
satisfied with his own performance and never
questions its excellence.
But if we carefully scan the above examples, the
question will naturally arise: is there no contra-
diction between what we said at the beginning
of this chapter and what we are assuming
now.. .".
". . .Language exists in speech. Its only manifes-
tation is in and through speech. It is in
speech that the basic patterns and units of lan-
guage recur, are regularly reproduced.
It would be a great mistake, however, to be-
lieve that speech is confined to a mere reproduc-
91
tion of the same set of units. A mere (and uni-
maginative) reproduction of a given set of units
is a characteristic of codes. .
". . .Language is a system composed of a large
number of diverse objects, interacting according
to very complex and for the most part so far
undiscovered laws. The functioning of linguistic
and especially of linguostylistic units, usually de-
pends on so many factors that it is practically
impossible to take them all into account and de-
termine the outcome of their interaction.
Nevertheless, linguostylisticians are far from
giving up the idea of style as a statistical ave-
rage. .
". . .Suppose one finds, for instance, that the verb
"to see" is invariably preferred to all the rest of
the "synonyms" by completely different writers,
of completely different "digests", for completely
different purposes.
This, then, can be taken to mean that all
these writers have a very clear idea of the diffe-
rence between words which belong to the more
elevated forms of speech and neutral words".
". . .In all these three cases the connotation is
inherent. On hearing these words a person who
knows English will immediately apprehend not
only the denotation of the three units, but their
inherent connotations as well, for they "cling" to
these words, are inseparable from them. . .
In contrast to inherent connotation, connota-
tion through evocation, or adherent connotation,
creates a variety of new problems. . .".
".. .It is usually believed that the main task
of a student of linguostylistics consists in disco-
vering certain series of words and constructions
which would be aplicable to the same referent
and differ only in the so-called connotations or
stylistic overtones.
Thus, in most books on linguostylistics the
most important discovery is always believed to
92
consist in the fact that, for instance, a "horse" or
a "mare" can be described as a "screw", which is
a slang word for a "horse"... Nothing, however,
could be further from the truth.
To begin with, after all these years and after
so many books on the subject do we know, even
approximately, the number of those interesting
"variations on a theme"...".
". . .We spoke of substantival-verbal opposi-
tion above. But the point is so subtle and delicate
that we shall have to give more examples if we
are to bring it out as clearly as possible".
".. .As has already been mentioned in Chap-
ter 1, consistent overall "normalization" of usage
has been confined to pronunciation and spelling
whereas lexical, syntactical, and especially styl-
istic "orthoepy" still remains if not entirely unex-
plored, at any rate, not presented in orderly
fashion to the practical user of language."
"Style", as we know from Part I, is choice,
the assumption of an underlying identity: we
speak of "style" when we know there is
something underneath which can be presented in
different forms, all the possible (or admissible)
different forms being acceptable on the gramma-
tical, lexical, etc. levels, as the case may be.. .".
So far in this part of the book we spoke more or
less indiscriminately of greater than sentence unities^
in spite of the fact that as we were writing (and
not speaking) all our examples of supraphrasal unities
actually had to take the form of paragraphs,
marked off by means of traditional indented lines. It
is now time to ask the next question: what is the diffe-
rence between speaking and writing as processes,
as differing but closely allied forms of linguistic acti-
vity?
The obvious and immediate answer, of course, is
the following: the writer - in contrast with the
speaker - is free (and encouraged) to return to a pre-
vious part of the text, to arrive at the optimal variant
by reconsidering, rearranging and, above all, e d i t-
93
1 n g it. He has every opportunity to balance its parts
.against one another, to string his thoughts and sen-
tences anew - if necessary.
Are even our best writers (here, as everywhere else
in this part of the book we mean only our model
writers, the select few who have cultivated our parti-
cular register), are even our best writers fully aware of
the difficulties and problems of hypersupraphrasal ar-
rangement? Are they always ready and willing to go
over their text again and again to make sure it is tex-
tually "optimal"?
The reason why they, probably, do not normally
do so is easy to explain: we all tend, after years of
practice, to expect our rhythms and cadences, as well
as our sequences and constructions, to come out natu-
rally well. Besides, most people never give a thought
to hypersupraphrasal or textual syntax (or the "syntax
of discourse"). Sentences - yes. You cannot let your
subject group hang in the air for lack of a suitable
predicate. You are warned against "swapping horses",
etc.24 As to paragraphs... a wide license is offered
to each individual writer. There are no rules to speak
of, no means of strictly and objectively distinguishing
between "right" and "wrong".
In the Chrestomathy below we have included texts,
which though perfect in every other way, may, we
think, be profitably discussed from the point of view
of "optimal division into paragraphs" (no more than
discussed, of course, for there can be no question
whatsoever of "correcting" these excellent specimens
of scientific English) 25.
With due respect, we begin by submitting a variant
hypersupraphrasal arrangement of some of the texts:
1. Charles Barber. "Linguistic Change in Pre-
sent-Day English" 26.
It is obvious to all of us that different kinds
of English are spoken, even inside England. This
is not merely a question of individual peculiarit-
ies (though these of course exist) but of the pe-
culiarities of groups of speakers. We can all
recognize a kind of speech characteristic of the
north of England, of the West country, of the
London area, even if we lack the power to ana-
94
lyse the differences; in other words there are in
England clearly marked regional dialects.
Those are much more numerous and finely
graded than is apparent to the untrained ear; the
ordinary Londoner recognizes a style of speech
as "northern", but he is in fact lumping together
a whole host of dialects; the speech of Lanca-
shire differs from that of Yorkshire, that of West
Riding from that of East Riding, and so on; and
within these areas there are even finer differences,
between districts, between towns, sometimes even
between neighbouring villages; though in real
life you will never meet a dialectologist who can,
like professor Higgins in Shaw's "Pygmalion",
distinguish between the dialects of different
streets.
Nevertheless, to the ordinary speaker, the
most obvious difference between the regional dia-
lects are those of pronunciation: the Londoner
trying to imitate Lancashire speech will usually
concentrate on such things as the vowel-sounds
in the words cup and ask and don't, and (if he is
a good mimic) on certain distinctive features of
rhythm and melody.
But there are also differences in vocabulary
(dialect words) and grammar. "If t' United had
less brass to lake wi', they'd lake better foitball",
says one of Mr. J. B. Priestly's Yorkshire charac-
ters, using words that would be strange (and
even incomprehensible) in the south. "I nivver
reckoned nowt o' barbers", says another, using a
construction equally alien to the southerner.
Besides being thus diversified horizontally
into regional dialects, the language is also diver-
sified vertically, into class dialects. In a given
town, a mill-hand, a clerk, a primary school
teacher, the shopkeeper, the lawyer, the bank-ma-
nager and the company-director may all speak a
local variant of the language, but they will also
speak a sub-variant of it, according to their social
status, social position, and education.
Thus, in every district there is a hierarchy of
dialects, corresponding in some degree with the
95
local social structure. A speaker will tend to
find that the speech of people lower down in this
hierarchy sounds "rough" or "vulgar" (and per-
haps also picturesque); while the speech of
people higher in the scale will sound either
affected ("posh") or desirably refined, accord-
ing to his ambitions and social orientation.
True, such judgements have little to do with
the intrinsic quality of the language, but are
simply due to association: if by some historical
accident the vowel-sounds of the Cockney and of
the Eton boy had been distributed to them the
other way round, we should still have found the
speech of the Cockney "vulgar" and that of the
Eton boy "posh".
The social stratification of the language
appears in syntax and vocabulary as well as in
pronunciation. The speaker higher in the scale
describes many of the usages of lower strata as
"ungrammatical": it would be more accurate to
say that the grammar of these dialects is different
from the grammar of his own.
It should be noted that in vocabulary, one can
sometimes find a whole series of words used at
different social levels: a good example for this
is the word for the course of a meal which
follows the main course; there are regional va-
riations in this, but the general pattern of usage
is as follows: pudding (upper and upper-middle),
sweet (middle), dessert (lower-middle), afters
(lower-middle and lower), and pudding (lower).
The coincidence in usage between top and bottom
is interesting, and is found in some other things.
Such differences are often marked by referr-
ing to the speech as "educated" and "uneduca-
ted"; to some extent, "education" is here merely
a euphemism for "class", for, although class has
for centuries been a topic of the greatest interest
in England (as the novel reveals), our own age
seems to find the subject a trifle indelicate, and
only to be referred to, indirectly (like sex, war,
death, lavatories, and economic depressions).
$6
However, "education" in this context is not
only a euphemism for class, for it is in fact true
that our style of speech is affected by our educa-
tion. This can often be seen where members of
the same family have been through different
parts of the educational machine: one may have
left school at fourteen and gone into the mill; a
second may have gone through grammar school
and got a job in business, while a third may
have won a scholarship to Oxford and ended up
in one of the learned professions.
Even if they make no conscious effort to
adapt their speech to their milieu (which of
course many of them do), such sets of siblings
will end up with markedly different styles of
speech, simply from the influence of their varying
speech-environments. But even here, of course,
there is a close correlation between education
and class, since different educations lead to diffe-
rent occupations; not many university graduates
are content, like Jimmy Porter, to become
barrow-boys.
2. David Abercrombie. "Problems and Prin-
ciples in Language Study" 21.
Language is the medium of literature, and its
use in artistic creation is nearly always associated
with a "literary language", more or less different
from the language of everyday life. A literary
language is not necessarily a written language,
neither is it a prerogative of civilized peoples. It
is reported that the Saramaccaner Bush Negroes
of Dutch Guiana, descended from escaped slaves
and normally speaking the lingua franca known
as Talkee-Talkee, have a special noble language
appropriately called Deepee-Talkee. This is re-
served for their religious ceremonies and songs,
and is unintelligible to other inhabitants of the
country.
A literary language, however, is usually a
written language and usually derived from some
particular dialect, to which chance has given
prestige, of the spoken language of the people
6 Akhmanova, Idzelis
97
(only rarely is it, like Deepee-Talkee or Latin, a
foreign language). It requires to be learnt, at
least to some extent, by the native, since in the
course of time all literary languages diverge from
their spoken origins; the differences may be
small, as in the case of English, or very conside-
rable, as in the case of present-day Greek, Ara-
bic, or Chinese.
A literary language, then, though primarily a
language of literature, usually becomes the ac-
cepted norm for written communication for any
purpose; and moreover always exercises some
degree of influence over the spoken language. Its
standards of correlation become the standards for
all uses of the language, spoken or written, and
departures from the accepted literary norm - "so-
lecisms" - are strongly reprobated.
We hope that we have succeeded in explaining the
importance of what we have thus tried to do. The very
interesting point about the texts of the Chrestomathy
is that they are not as uniform in terms of division
into supraphrasal unities as we should have liked them
to be. We are convinced that the discussion of this
point above will help the reader to understand, first
of all, the enormous importance of paragraph division
and, second, agree with us when we state, following
Perekalskaja's extensive research, that the length of
paragraphs in our kind of English should not exceed
too greatly the recommended average.
We must, nevertheless, conclude by saying that the
actual supraphrasal unities are so complex, so "poly-
phonic" that the stage of prescription will, probably, be
reached only when the complex interplay of all the dif-
ferent factors has been fully understood by unbiased
and open-minded researchers.
As far as shorter syntactic units are
concerned, interesting results have been obtained for
some of the more particular turns of syntactic expres-
sion. Thus, when somebody wants to arrive at an opti-
mal type of writing, or when what one is after is a
kind of language, a way of speaking and writing which
could, under certain circumstances, be recommended
98
as optimal, one is often confronted with a considerable
choice of "variants" or "different ways of saying basi-
cally one and the same thing".
More and more choices of this kind are gradually
taken up by the members of the English Department.
A case in point is Dolinskaja's 28 research devoted to
the choice of the optimal modal expression. The al-
ternative expressions in this case are: "may", "can",
"might", "could", etc., plus infinitive, as against "per-
haps", "phobably", "possibly", etc. The question that
we are interested in is the following: on the one hand,
there is a wide range of modal relationships which can
be expressed idiomatically by means of "may", "can",
"must" with and without negatives, and with both the
indefinite and perfect infinitives. Although the frequen-
cy of these turns of phrase varies greatly, it is usual-
ly assumed, that expressions like "He may have finish-
ed it", "He couldn't have done it", etc., are highly idi-
omatic, and that, when used, they never fail to lend
to one's English the true and really idiomatic ring.
On the other hand, very much the same thing can
be said by using words like "perhaps", "probably",
"possibly". Although the question has been clearly
formulated, it has not really been answered so far.
Do we prefer the "perhaps", "probably", etc. expres-
sions, or do we go out of our way schooling ourselves
into using these other infinitival expressions, because
they are so much more idiomatic?
Let us give a few examples:
In English this meaning of the word "time"
could perhaps be described as "continuity".
The reverse process is also very active and may,
perhaps, be traced in the case of "money".
It might, perhaps, be best described as "interlin-
guistics".
This may probably be accounted for by the fact
that so far the articles have been taught unscien-
tifically.
This state of affairs may, probably, be accounted
for by the fact that. . .
6*
99
It is interesting to note that in all these cases
"double-barrelled" modality is expressed. One may
well wonder whether this lavish use of modal expres-
sion is optimal. It should also be borne in mind that
in scientific texts a certain augmentation of modal ex-
pression may be justified after all. Let us compare the
above sentences with the indicative modality substi-
tuted for the oblique one:
In English this meaning of the word "time" is
described as "continuity".
The reverse process is also traced in the case of
"money".
It is best described as "interlinguistics".
This is accounted for by the fact that so far the
articles have been taught unscientifically.
This state of affairs is accounted for by the fact
that. ..
There would be no objection to the authors' select-
ing the indicative modality, but from the point of view
of the textology of scientific discourse, the avoidance
of very categorical indicative statements is something
that should never be withheld from the scientist. He
should never be deprived of the use of these modal
expressions in general, the double-barrelled ones
included.
We have compared the oblique sentences with the
indicative ones. We could rewrite the former again
without "perhaps" and "probably":
In English this meaning of the word "time" could
be described as "continuity".
The reverse process is also very active and may
be also traced in the case of "money".
It might best be described as "interlinguistics".
This may be accounted for by the fact that so far
the articles have been taught unscientifically.
This state of affairs may be accounted for by the
fact that...
ISO
Every one of these sentences, if "perhaps" and "pro-
bably" were taken out, will loose something of its
expressive quality. When somebody says "may per-
haps", "could perhaps", "may probably"-the intro-
duction of, comparatively speaking, longish words for
greater phonetic and prosodic weight of the utterance,
is also a very important factor when what we are deal-
ing with is the very delicate category of modality.
Dolinskaja's research has shown that double-
barrelled cases are rather the exception than the rule.
In a large number of cases we find "perhaps" and
"probably":
Of all the dialects of
English, RP is perhaps
the one that has been
most fully, clearly and
consistently described.
This parameter, it should
always be remembered,
is perhaps the most im-
portant ingredient of in-
tonation.
This probably depends
to a great degree on ex-
tralinguistic factors.
This is, probably, the
first question to be
asked.
Of all the dialects of
English, RP might
(could) be the one that
has been most fully,
clearly and consistently
described.
This parameter, it should
always be remembered,
could (may, might) be
the most important in-
gredient of intonation.
This may (might) de-
pend to a great degree
on extralinguistic fac-
tors.
This may (might) be the
first question to be
asked.
If one were to analyse the would-be equivalents of
defective verbs, then it becomes obvious that it is by
no means merely a question of substituting the one for
the other, more or less mechanically. In every indivi-
dual case the general lay-out of the sentence and of
the supraphrasal unity must be taken into consideration
before a decision is taken.
When it is "perhaps", "probably", we find, in the
absolute majority of cases, the form of the present
tense: "it is...". It is also quite probable that it
101
actually i s what it claims to be. When one tries to
substitute the highly idiomatic forms with "might",
"could" plus the infinitive, the whole thing is shifted
to an altogether different modal plane. It is no longer
there, but it only "could be", "might be", or
"cant be".
The assortment of sundry syntactic phenomena
above may be a little patchy, but this is due to the fact
that among the different aspects of language-study syn-
tax occupies a special place. It has always been as-
sumed that, in contrast with phonology and lexicology
(including morphology), the place of syntax within the
system of linguistic disciplines is by no means easy to
define. The innumerable actual speech events hardly
lend themselves to analysis in purely linguistic terms;
different logical, psychological, folk-taxonomic,
anthropological and other factors always play a very
important role in the fashioning of the final product.
This, too, is the reason why the number of different
syntactic approaches and different syntactic theories is
so great and why people have repeatedly found it dif-
ficult to single out and define its fundamental cate-
gories. On our part, we have repeatedly stated that
syntax is dialectical unity of colligation and colloca-
tion 29.
Recent research has shown, however, that investiga-
tion of colligation and collocation, although extremely
important, is by no means exhaustive in the sense that
it fails to take into account the actual enunciation, the
factual prosody of speech events. This is the reason
why later on the prosodic organization of speech was
fully appreciated and a serious attempt was made to
present to the learner tonetically transcribed texts,
which could be read (or reproduced) in accordance
with what really happens when people are speaking.
It is claimed that the so-called "orthographic" texts
present a mere skeleton, a kind of shorthand to be de-
coded by the speaker (or reader).
But as far as the present book is concerned, it was
mainly a question of a certain hierarchy, a certain se-
quence or succession of the different aspects of this
branch of linguistic science. For years and years one
102
of the most difficult questions has been the question of
what comes first.
On the other hand, it has been more or less com-
mon practice until comparatively recently to think of
syntax primarily in terms of ultimate units, that is, to
begin with the word, because the word is obviously
the ultimate unit of syntactic analysis. It has also been
believed proper to begin with the sentence and
then proceed both ways, from the sentence down to the
ultimate syntactic unit, or the word, and from the sen-
tence upwards-up to discourse analysis and, ultima-
tely, even larger chunks of speech, considered as glo-
bal units.
The whole tenor of the present book shows that
we insist on dwelling, primarily, on what is somewhat
loosely described as "text", and work gradually down.
It should be observed that the tendency to begin syn-
tactic research with the global unit, and only gradually
break it up into component parts, is steadily gaining
ground. We assume, therefore, that what a student of
syntax is naturally confronted with is larger stretches
of linguistic material. A sentence, taken in isolation,
is syntactically meaningless: it has no purport.
Although basically different from lexical units or other
non-communicative entities, only in larger stretches of
discourse does it (the sentence) really and fully display
and develop its purport.
The obvious "supra-sentential" syntactic unit is the
supraphrasal unity which remains an interesting onto-
logical and heuristic problem because we still find no
conclusive answer to the simplest basic question: does
it really exist? What holds it together? Is it the same
in printed texts and in oral speech? Is it a syntactic
or a lexical-stylistic unit?
The reason why so little progress has so far been
made in the field in question is that syntactic studies
have not yet emancipated themselves: they are still
bound hand and foot, by the conventions and restric-
tions of theoretical logic, and, worse still, by the emer-
ging tenets of general semiotics. It is therefore diffi-
cult to understand even today where the syntax of na-
tural languages really comes in. We are swamped with
bizarre would-be "sentences", whose form is, most of
103
the time, extrapolated from the terms and relation-
ships of theoretical logic, and whose content rests on
imaginary "kernel" units.
In the last two sentences the verbs were used in the
past tense because "formalization" is now losing its
magic power: it can no longer work as a spell to
charm linguists away from their natural object. People
are beginning to realize that the idea of "deep structu-
res" and their "surface realizations" has very little to
do with the syntax of natural human languages, syntax
as the branch of linguistics (not logic or semiotics),
which is concerned with the actual syntagmatic organi-
zation of speech (ucenije о postrojenii reci).
What has just been propounded with some warmth
should not be understood as an attempt to put a veto
on logical analysis of semantics of propositions and
relations between them, but only to draw a distinction
between the different branches of linguistic knowledge.
We think that studies of this kind have got nothing to
do with our subject. We have no use for them. Neither
are we concerned with "linguistic folklore"-the queer
anecdotal sentences which fill so many of would-be
"linguistic" papers, with their ingenious operations
based on the "most unsubtle view of meaning iden-
tity" 30.
The higher the "level", the more difficult it beco-
mes to keep the "adjacent" disciplines clearly apart.
At a certain point one begins to wonder whether it is
at all feasible. "Hypersyntax", "Textlinguistik", "dis-
course analysis"-what do these terms really mean? Is
it still part of "linguistics" or is it a branch of philolo-
gy? In the "Retrospect" to Roman Jakobson's "Se-
lected Writings" we read about ".. .the developing stu-
dies in the make-up of multisentential utterances and
dialogues. The philological hermeneutics of entire texts
enters gradually into the orbit of linguistics; the chasm
between the two sciences-linguistics and philology-
signalled in the Cours becomes obliterated" 31.
Saussure has been held responsible not only for the
severance of linguistics and philology, but also for sett-
ing up a new science-general semiology or semiotics
with language as the most important of the various
sign-systems under its sway. The linguist's task con-
104
sists in discovering what it is that distinguishes lan-
guage from the rest of the "faits semiologiques". To
the great public, language is merely a "nomenclature";
the psychologist concerns himself with the individual
implementation of the sign (le mecanisme du signe
chez 1'individu; but there is also the social aspect of
language). All these, however, must be laid off while
the linguistician concentrates on those characteristics
which language shares with the rest of semiotic
systems.
What, then, within the natural human languages
can be regarded as amenable to the methods of gene-
ral semiology? In Saussure's list we find writing, the
alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, forms of polite-
ness, and military signals. After Hjelmslev, traffic
lights became a welcome addition. There is also the
tradition of numismatology and heraldry. It is also
believed that a general inventory and classification of
semiotic objects can be made. Also there is some hope
of finding a method by which to assign each of the
"sign systems" a place in the general cultural build-up
of human society.
If language is merely one of the numerous semiotic
systems, is it similar to the traffic lights or painting,
for example? If we say that it is "the most important
one", what exactly do we mean? In other words, before
the contrary is proved, we must go on thinking that
linguistics and semiotics are two different disciplines,
because both the subjects and their methods are not
the same. But theyconverge on the h у p e r s у n-
tactic level.
Now let us return to the question we formulated at
the beginning. Does the supraphrasal unity really
exist ? It certainly does, for in the flow of spech it is
neatly marked off by a low terminal fall plus a three-
unit pause. What holds it together? The last terminal
contour being so much more "terminal" than all the
medial ones, with different concomitant devices, such
as deictic words, alternation of verbal categories, spe-
cial syntactic arrangements, etc. There is also every
reason to believe that the beginning of the next para-
graph is louder than the end of the preceding one,
with increased range and slower tempo at the outset32.
105
In the printed text a supraphrasal unity is marked off
by indented lines and is called a "paragraph".
Now this is where complications begin to set in.
When a written text is formatted on the level of sen-
tences, this or that particular "format" is usually sug-
gested by the previous grammatical knowledge the
user of writing has received at school: the uneducated
illiterate person makes a hash of it even at sentence
level. When it is formatted on the level of paragraphs,
how is this done? Nobody has ever tried to teach it-
either at school or University. There are no manuals
to teach us the rules. . . At the same time we are keenly
aware of the fact that the division of discourse into
paragraphs in writing, and into supraphrasal unities
in speaking, is indispensable and have tried to make
the principles of hypersupraphrasal division as explicit
as we could.
From what has been said, done and, above all,
practiced above one can see that we have adopted,
throughout, the empirical approach: we analyse,
discuss, criticize, seek to improve, etc., etc., a certain
kind or variety of texts which have been "created",
produced (proizuedeny) as actual proizvedenija reci-
actual in the sense that they have proved reasonably ac-
ceptable for international and interlinguistic communi-
cation.
The work is still in its early stages. Nevertheless,
we are convinced that this is the only way. Either the
"educated foreign anglicist" will raise his head and
assert himself as somebody who knows how to use
English as a "tool of his trade", or he will forever
remain a slave to the mythical "native informant",
who, himself, may never have put pen to paper and
has no idea whatsoever of registers and functional
styles.
NOTES
1.	By “our books” we mean the recent publications of the
English Department. See, for example, Akhmanova, ed.,
(1972), Akhmanova and Idzelis (1973), Akhma-
nova and Perekalskaja, eds., (1974), Akhmanova
and M i n a j e v a, *eds., (1973).
2.	Vallins (1963, p. 175).
106
3.	See Akhmanova and Glusko, eds., (1974, p. 64-
93).
4.	Ibid., p. 64-76. It is common knowledge that the voca-
bulary should always be viewed as a certain system of lexical
units—studied and analysed as such. The general scientific
vocabulary is brought into a system and unified by the fact
that, by and large, there is always the subject and the object
of investigation. Another factor that unified the vocabulary is
the existence of certain semantic groups based on the main sci-
entific concepts.
5.	See Akhmanova and Glusko, eds., (1974, p. 94-
107).
6.	The composition of the general scientific vocabulary can
also be analysed from the point of view of parts of speech.
If we turn, for instance, to nouns we shall see that nominal
units predominate, and many of them are verbal nouns. Thus,
for example: achievement, addition, assumption, action, con-
nection, application, arrangement, consideration, discussion, and
so on. There are many nouns because it is assumed that scienti-
fic writing is nominal in its character, and that this is due to
the particular nature of scientific prose—its primary and basic
task being to name and define the object of investigation.
When we turn to adjectives, it is no longer merely a ques-
tion of relative frequency, but also of presence or absence
of metasemiotic connotation. This is quite natural because ad-
jectives describe qualities, and when one speaks of a quality,
one always implies some sort of attitude. For example: impres-
sive, excellent, false, harmful, pedantic, tremendous, deplorable,
sophisticated, frustrating, etc.
Emotionally coloured speech is naturally used in po-
lemics or scientific disputes, when one has to defend one’s
point of view, or argue against somebody else’s. A certain
amount of variation is a must when we deal with the register
of scientific discourse. We should, however, be wary and keep
ourselves from going to the extremes of excessive emotional
colouring.
7.	See p. 59-66 above.
8.	See Chrestomathy, p. 110-112.
9.	See Akhmanova, ed., (1974).
10.	“A phraseological unit is a polylexemic arrangement
in which the globality of nomination reigns supreme over the
formal separability of elements. This is a reliable criterion by
applying which a phraseological unit can be distinguished from
a word-combination” (Akhmanova, ed., 1974, p. 13).
11.	See Smirnitsky (1956).
12.	See above, p. 67-68.
13.	It is generally assumed that all the morphological
oppositions that language is capable of, are discoverable in
fiction. A large number of linguists would tend, in general, to
agree with the view—which has also been very convincingly
stated by Roman Jakobson—that on higher planes of functio-
nal styles, the more elevated ones, every imaginable morpho-
logical opposition is certainly discoverable, and is regularly
107
manifested because without this, creative verbal activity would,
in general, be impossible.
M. Dorosenko has made an exhaustive analysis of modern
fiction and has shown conclusively that it is practically impos-
sible to find a modern prose text where all morphological
oppositions would actually be realized. She has also made a
very important discovery which can briefly be formulated in
the following manner: whenever there is a verbal category
which is constituted by the opposition of the marked and the
unmarked forms, the marked form, most of the time, tends to
carry specific metasemiotic connotations.
14.	Perekalskaja (1976, p. 14-17).
15.	See Serkova (1968), Zarubina (1973), Nevi-
zina (1971), Nikolajeva (1974).
16.	Akhmanova and Perekalskaja, eds., (1974,
p. 40-48).
17.	Akhmanova and Idzelis (1973, p. 20).
18.	Ibid., p. 24.
19.	Ibid., p. 24.
20.	Akhmanova and Perekalskaja, eds., (1974,
p. 46).
21.	See above, p. 67-68, 80-81.
22.	Cf: Young, Becker, Pike (1970, p. 322):
“These words and phrases, labeled in various ways, may be
called “plot cues”, for their major function is to indicate the
relationship of one linguistic unit to another within a specific,
or surface, plot—of one sentence to another within a para-
graph, of one paragraph to another within an essay. There
are too many such frords and phrases for us to list them all
here, but some examples follow: because, since, therefore,
consequently, that is, in other words, on the other hand,
however, but likewise, in the same manner, also, then, next,
before, subsequently, next to, beside, under, alongside”.
23.	See Akhmanova and Perekalskaja, eds..
(1974, p. 63-75).
24.	See Akhmanova and Veselitsky (1966).
25.	See Young, Becker, Pike (1970, p. 350 and
353): “Like sentences, paragraphs can be overloaded. An overly
long or complex paragraph taxes the reader’s understanding
and ability to attend to what is said. We seem to be unable
to sustain attention for long and need to pause regularly if
we are to read without effort. An overloaded paragraph can
be made more readable by dividing it between stages in its
plot structure:
“Grant was, judged by modern standards, the great-
est general of the Civil War. He was head and should-
ers above any general on either side as an over-all stra-
tegist, as a master of what in later wars would be cal-
led global strategy. His Operation Crusher plan, the pro-
duct of a mind which had received little formal instruc-
tion in the higher arts of war, would have done credit
to the most finished student of a series of modern staff
and command schools. He was a brilliant theater stratcg-
108
ist, as evidenced by the Vicksburg campaign, which was
a classic field and seige operation. He was a better than
average tactician, although like even the best generals
of both sides he did not appreciate the destruction that
the increasing firepower of modern armies could visit on
troops advancing across open spaces. Lee is usually
ranked as the greatest Civil War general, but this eva-
luation has been made without placing Lee and Grant
in the perspective of military developments since the
war. Lee was interested hardly at all in “global” stra-
tegy, and what few suggestions he did make to his
government about operations in other theaters than his
own indicate that he had little aptitude for grand plann-
ing. As a theater strategist, Lee often demonstrated more
brilliance and apparent originality than Grant, but his
most audacious plans were as much the product of the
Confederacy’s inferior military position as of his own
fine mind. In war, the weaker side has to improvise
brilliantly. It must strike quickly, daringly, and include
a dangerous element of risk in its plans. Had Lee been
a Northern general with Northern resources behind him,
he would have improvised less and seemed less bold.
Had Grant been a Southern general, he would have
fought as Lee did. Fundamentally Grant was superior to
Lee because in a modern total war he had a modern
mind, and Lee did not. Lee looked to the past in war
as the Confederacy did in spirit. The staffs of the two
men illustrate their outlook. It would not be accurate to
say that Lee’s general staff were glorified clerks, but the
statement would not be too wide of the mark...”.
As compared with the paragraph division in Williams’s
original text (before “Lee is usually ranked. ..”, and “Funda-
mentally Grant was...”) the authors of “Rhetoric”: Discovery
-and Change introduce one more indented line—before “In war,
the weaker side...”. It is obviously an improvement because
1) the digression of a more general and abstract nature is thus
brought in proper perspective, and 2) the four paragraphs are
more evenly balanced. See also Bailey (1973).
26.	See Chrestomathy, p. 110-112.
27.	Ibid., p. 117.
28.	D о 1 i n s к a j a (1975).
29.	A к h m a n о v a et al. (1969).
30.	Chafe (1971, p. 11).
31.	J akobson (1971, p. 720).
32.	Most important for “Texttheorie”, “Organization of
the text”, etc., have been the now flourishing studies of Func-
tional Sentence Perspective—to mention only, for example,
Wolfgang Dressier’s and Frantisek Danes’s contributions to the
Marianske Lazne (Marienbad) Symposium in October 1970.
See: Danes (1970), Dressier (1970).
PartV
SPECIMENS OF OUR * KIND OF ENGLISH
1. Standard English and Dialect
Extract N 1. (From Charles Barber. Linguistic
Change in Present-Day English. Oliver and Boyd,
Edinburgh and London, 1964, p. 16-18).
It is obvious to all of us that different kinds of
English are spoken, even inside England. This is not
merely a question of individual peculiarities (though
these of course exist) but of the peculiarities of
groups of speakers. We can all recognize a kind
of speech characteristic of the north of England, of
the West country, of the London area, even if we lack
the power to analyse the differences; in other words
there are in England clearly marked regional dialects,
and those are much more numerous and finely graded
than is apparent to the untrained ear; the ordinary
Londoner recognizes a style of speech as "northern",
but he is in fact lumping together a whole host of
dialects; the speech of Lancashire differs from that of
* That is texts which the educated foreign philologist can
safely “transcribe, emulate and imitate”. The criteria for choos-
ing them were: 1) thematic proximity, 2) the philological cul-
ture of the authors, and 3) erudition and experience in asses-
sing the merits of proizvedenije reci. It goes without saying
that none of the ensuing extracts will “qualify” from beginn-
ing to end. There are always two or three turns of phrase
which the educated foreign learner of English should avoid
for reasons explained above (p. 69-70). These, however, are few
and far between. Thus, by and large,"this is the kind of
English for the educated foreign philolo-
gist to make his own.
110
Yorkshire, that of West Riding from that of East
Riding, and so on; and within these areas there are*
even finer differences, between districts, between towns,
sometimes even between neighbouring villages; though
in real life you will never meet a dialectologist who*
can, like professor Higgins in Shaw's "Pygmalion",
distinguish between the dialects of different streets.
To the ordinary speaker, the most obvious differences
between the regional dialects are those of pronuncia-
tion: the Londoner trying to imitate Lancashire speech
will usually concentrate on such things as the vowel-
sounds in the words cup and ask and don't, and (if he
is a good mimic) on certain distinctive features of
rhythm and melody. But there are also differences
in vocabulary (dialect words) and grammar. "If t' Uni-
ted had less brass to lake wi', they'd lake better foit-
ball", says one of Mr. J. B. Priestly's Yorkshire cha-
racters, using words that would be strange (and even
uncomprehensible) in the south. "I nivver rekoned
nowt o' barbers", says another, using a construction-
equally alien to the southerner.
Besides being thus diversified horizontally into re-
gional dialects, the language is also diversified verti-
cally, into class dialects. In a given town, a mill-hand,
a clerk, a primary-school teacher, the shopkeeper, the
lawyer, the bank-manager and the company-director
may all speak a local variant of the language, but
they will also speak a sub-variant of it, according to
their social status, social pretensions, and education.
In every district there is a hierarchy of dialects, cor-
responding in some degree with the local social struc-
ture. A speaker will tend to find that the speech of
people lower down in this hierarchy sounds "rough"
or "vulgar" (and perhaps also picturesque); while the
speech of people higher in the scale will sound either
affected ("posh") or desirably refined, according to his
ambitions and social orientation. Such judgements have
little to do with the intrinsic quality of the language,
but are simply due to association: if by some historical
accident the vowel-sounds of the Cockney and of the-
Eton boy had been distributed to them the other way
round, we should still have found the speech of the
Cockney "vulgar" and that of the Eton boy "posh".
lit
The social stratification of the language appears in
syntax and vocabulary as well as in pronunciation. The
speaker higher in the scale describes many of the
usages of lower strata as "ungrammatical": it would
be more accurate to say that the grammar of these
dialects is different from the grammar of his own.
In vocabulary, one can sometimes find a whole series
of words used at different social levels: a good
example for this is the word for the course of a meal
which follows the main course; there are regional
variations in this, but the general pattern of usage
is as follows: pudding (upper and upper-middle),
sweet (middle), dessert (lower-middle), afters (lower-
middle and lower), and pudding (lower). The coincid-
ence in usage between top and bottom is interesting,
and is found in some other things.
Such differences are often marked by referring to
the speech as "educated" and "uneducated"; to some
extent, "education" is here merely a euphemism for
"class", for, although class has for centuries been a
topic of the greatest interest in England (as the novel
reveals), our own age seems to find the subject a
trifle indelicate, and only to be referred to, indirectly
(like sex, war, death, lavatories, and economic depres-
sions). However, "education" in this context is not
only a euphemism for class, for it is in fact true that
our style of speech is affected by our education. This
can often be seen where members of the same family
have been through different parts of the educational
machine: one may have left school at fourteen and
gone into the mill; a second may have gone through
grammar school and got a job in business, while a
third may have won a scholarship to Oxford and
ended up in one of the learned professions; even if
they make no conscious effort to adapt their speech
to their milieu (which of course many of them do),
such sets of siblings will end up with markedly differ-
ent styles of speech, simply from the influence of their
varying speech-environments. But even here, of course,
there is a close correlation between education and
class, since different educations lead to different oc-
cupations; not many university graduates are content,
like Jimmy Porter, to become barrow-boys.
112
Extract N 2. (From R. A. Close. The Advant-
ages of Choosing RP for Teaching Purposes.
English Language Teaching 25:2, 1971, p. 148-
149).
Received Pronunciation (RP) has been the dialect
described and presented, for over half a century, in
a very considerable corpus of material produced for
the teaching of English as a second or foreign language.
Not only is RP the sole dialect represented in many
important reference books and textbooks produced in
Britain over the last fifty years, but it has been used
as a standard in books for the study and teaching of
English produced in many other countries as well.
It is quite possible that in the course of describing
and particularly of teaching this dialect, linguists and
textbook writers have systematized and standardized
it. In that sense, it has become a form of standard
English; and for that reason I would be in favour of
dropping the rather meaningless term "Received Pro-
nunciation" and adopting (or rather returning to) a
term like Standard English or "Standard British
English", two characteristics of which would be (a)
that it has become standardised for teaching purposes
and (b) that it is becoming less and less typical of
any particular geographical region or social group.
Note that I have not claimed for RP that it is the
standard English; and that neither Palmer nor King-
don claimed it was that. As they would have done,
I find Bloomfield's references to "the standard English
of Chicago" perfectly acceptable.
The fact remains that RP is only one of the "many
different styles of pronunciation". This raises two
questions. First, should one choose RP rather than
some other very suitable dialect? Second, if one starts
with RP should one expose pupils in a normal English
course to a variety of "styles of pronunciation"?
With regard to the first question, we can only teach
something we are competent and feel competent to
teach. Apart from the personal competence of the
teacher, there may be several valid reasons for choos-
ing some dialect other than RP. There are several
dialects with outstanding claims, according to circum-
7 Akhmanova, Idzelis
113
stances, especially what is known as general American.
But if RP is eligible, because of the teacher's qualifi-
cations and because other circumstances make it soA
then its advantages are obvious. Of all the dialects of
English, RP is perhaps the one that has been most
fully, clearly and consistently described. And, compar-
ed with other dialects of English, it is in itself clearly
define d-and has become even more clearly defined
as a result of standartisation through description and
teaching in recent decades.
Extract N 3. (From Halliday M.A.K.,
A. McIntosh and P. Strevens. The Linguistic
Sciences and Language Teaching. London, 196fiP
p. 87-88).
A dialect is a variety of a language distinguished
according to the user: different groups of people with-
in the language community speak different dialects.
It is possible also to recognize varieties of a language
along another dimension, distinguished according to
use. Language varies as its function varies; it differs
in different situations. The name given to a variety
of a language distinguished according to use is "re-
gister".
The category of "register" is needed when we want
to account for what people do with their language.
When we observe language activity in the various con-
texts in which it takes place, we find differences in
the type of language selected as appropriate to differ-
ent types of situation. There is no need to labour the
point that a sports commentary, a church service and
a school lesson are linguistically quite distinct. One
sentence from any of these and many more such situa-
tion types would enable us to identify it correctly. We
know, for example, where "an early announcement
is expected" comes from and "apologies for absence
were received"; these are not simply free variants of
"we ought to hear soon" and "was sorry he couldn't
make it".
It is not the event or state of affairs being talked
about that determines the choice, but the convention
that a certain kind of language is appropriate to a
certain use. We should be surprised, for example, if
114
it was announced on the carton of our toothpaste that
the product was "just right for cleaning false teeth"
instead of "ideal for cleansing artificial dentures". We
can often guess the source of a piece of English from
familiarity with its use: "mix well" probably comes
from a recipe, although the action of mixing is by no
means limited to cookery-and "mixes well" is more
likely to be found in a testimonial.
The choice of item from the wrong register, and
the mixing of items from different registers, are among
the most frequent mistakes made by non-native speak-
ers of a language. If in L2 English speaker uses, in
conversation, a dependent clause with modal "should",
such as "should you like another pint of beer,..."
where a native speaker would use a dependent clause
with "if", he is selecting from the wrong register.
Transference of this kind is not limited to foreigners;
the native schoolboy may transfer in the opposite di-
rection, writing in his Shakespeare essay "it was all
up with Lear, who couldn't take any more of it."
Linguistic humour often depends on the inappro-
priate choice and the mixing of registers: P. G. Wode-
house exploits this device rather effectively. Fifty years
ago the late George Robey used to recite a version of
"The house that Jack built" which ended as follows:
".. .that disturbed the equanimity of the domesticated
feline mammal that exterminated the noxious rodent
that masticated the farinaceous produce deposited in
the domiciliary edifice erected by Master John".
Extract N4. (From Halliday M.A.K., McIn-
tosh A. and Strevens P. The Linguistic Sciences and
Language Teaching. London, 1966, p. 173-174). ,
In foreign language teaching the question what va-
riety or varieties to teach arises already at the start. Of
course, there is much in common to all varieties of a
given language, and it might be assumed that this is
what should in all circumstances be taught first. But
even this assumption needs examining.
As far as dialect is concerned, there is often an initi-
al selection to be made. This, however, rarely presents
a problem; there is usually some dialectal variety
agreed upon by the native speakers as "standard" in
7*
115
one sense or another. Occasionally there is a problem
of selection between two or more "standard" varieties,
for example, British and American English; but in most
countries where English is taught as a foreign language
the teaching is oriented towards one or the other, and
since either in its standard variety is acceptable to all
native speakers of English, the problem is not so much
which to select as that sooner or later the student will
probably have to cope with both. He may in some
areas meet with both among his teachers, even at a re-
latively early stage.
Formal distinctions between the two are slight, and
when they arise the student usually learns at least to
recognize both versions without much trouble, even if
he selects one for his own use. Differences such as that
between "You've got a class now, haven't you?" and
"You have a class now, don't you?", though they may
affect a large number of utterances, involve only a few
recurring patterns; only a small proportion of the total
resources of English grammar and lexis shows consist-
ent divergence between British and American usage. The
most far-reaching distinctions are in phonetics and
phonology; here it is probably advisable to select one
variety or the other, at least for the elementary stages
of language learning.
In some countries, such as India and Pakistan,
where instead of a native variety of English local L2
varieties are often accepted as a standard for teaching
purposes, confusion is caused by the fact that, once
an L2 variety has become "standardized" in this way,
it is thought to be equivalent to a native language. The
teaching of English then comes to be regarded as a
native language teaching problem instead of as a foreign
language teaching problem, and the whole task is made
more difficult for all concerned. English is not a native
language in India or Pakistan for more than a tiny
minority of the populations; to treat it as such merely
complicates the problem for those learning it, however
early they start.
In addition to dialectal selection there may be ano-
ther selection to be made among varieties of a foreign
language, that between different registers. Foreign lan-
guages are learnt for a wide range of different purpos-
116
es, and for some of these purposes it is appropriate to
teach selectively one or more specific varieties. There
is no reason why a student of a foreign language should
be required to study "the whole language", which in
any case is an aim impossible of achievement, if the
uses he wishes to make of it are restricted and defined;
nor why he should study certain registers, such as the
language of literature, if his need is for quite other
ones.
Extract N 5. (From David Abercrombie. Pro-
blems and Principles in Language Study. London,
1963, p. 13-14)
Language is the medium of literature, and its use in
artistic creation is nearly always associated with a "liter-
ary language", more or less different from the language
of everyday life. A literary language is not necessarily
a written language, neither is it a prerogative of civiliz-
ed peoples. It is reported that the Saramaccaner Bush
Negroes of Dutch Guiana, descended from escaped slav-
es and normally speaking the lingua franca known as
Talkee-Talkee, have a special noble language appro-
priately called Deepee-Talkee. This is reserved for their
religious ceremonies and songs, and is unintelligible to
other inhabitants of the country.
A literary language, however, is usually a written
language and usually derived from some particular
dialect, to which chance has given prestige, of the spok-
en language of the people (only rarely is it, like Deepee-
Talkee or Latin, a foreign language). It requires to
be learnt, at least to some extent, by the native, since
in the course of time all literary languages diverge from
their spoken origins; the differences may be small, as
in the case of English, or very considerable, as in the
case of present-day Greek, Arabic, or Chinese. A literary
language, though primarily a language of literature,
usually becomes the accepted norm for written commu-
nication for any purpose; and moreover always exercis-
es some degree of influence over the spoken language.
Its standards of correction become the standards for
all uses of the language, spoken or written, and depart-
ures from the accepted literary norm-~"solecisms"-are
strongly reprobated.
117
Extract N 6. (From R. Quirk. From Descriptive
to Prescriptive : An Example, E.L.T. Selections 2,
ed. by W. R. Lee. London, 1970, p. 105-107).
It appears in fact that you know and you see and
similar items might be called "intimacy signals"-trifl-
ing signals emitted disjunctively, apart from the main
grammatical complex, which have as their aim the cul-
tivation of intimacy between the speaker and the hear-
er, items which draw the hearer to the speaker, make
him feel at ease, and help prevent obstacles from im-
pairing the easy flow of stimulus and response. And
obviously, since the desire to feel that the hearer is
sharing something with us seems fundamental in our
urge to speak, these sharing devices, these intimacy
signals in our everyday talk, are of considerable im-
portance. Unlike the structural contrast we discussed a
page or so earlier, the present contrast-the presence
or absence of intimacy signals-appears to have little
or no influence upon the amount of information the
hearer absorbs, though more protracted and detailed
tests may reveal their influence also in this direction.
But they certainly seem to have a marked influence
upon the hearer's emotional attitude and reaction to
the speaker and therefore-indirectly-to what he is say-
ing. At a time when more and more is being heard
about the necessity for cultivating good relations be-
tween various groups and individuals in the growing
complexity of our society, it is obviously highly relevant
to devote some study to devices that appear to have
social and emotive significance. It may well be that
when some people strike their fellows as cool, abrupt,
dogmatic, unsympathetic, or who otherwise stimulate an
undesirable resistance, even hostility, the cause may lie
in the difference between actual and expected speech
forms such as these intimacy signals ...
To sum up, then, I am suggesting that some of the
relatively untidy and often deplored features of every-
day speech appear to play a rather important role
in two aspects of the communication act: the efficient
transmission of information on the one hand, and on the
other, the establishment of a relationship fostering wil-
lingness to receive. Some colloquial patterns appear to
118
be both more readily encoded and more readily decod-
ed than the alternative and the synonymous ones which
bear the stamp of literary approval. Many colloquial
forms and patterns have not yet been consciously ap-
prehended or submitted to a linguist's analysis for their
linguistic or cultural significance to be investigated.
Some of the most glaringly prolix items of speech, like
you know and you see, seem to have a function, in
conditioning the reception given to what we are saying.
By all means let us be concerned to "improve our En-
glish" but let us at the same time have more work
done on spoken language so that we do not find our-
selves encouraging people to tidy out of existence some
of the litter that society finds pleasant and useful, some
of the ease and pleasantness which ... is "heard with
delight".
Extract N7. (From David Abercrombie. Pro-
blems and Principles in Language Study. London,
1963, p. 57-58)
In normal friendly conversation, it is most import-
ant to avoid silence. If somebody volunteers a piece of
information or some exciting news, or puts forward an
opinion, or exclaims with surprise at something, an
answer is just as necessary as when a question is asked.
The answer may be purely formal and may convey
little or no information, but it keeps the conversation
going, and prevents the discomfort of a pause. For
someone who is still the learner of a language, in which
the conversation is being conducted, however, it is not
easy to know what exactly ought to be said under these
circumstances. The appropriate words and phrases
which every language reserves for these occasions have
to be specially learnt, for they can hardly ever be arriv-
ed at by literally translating the corresponding phrases
of one's own language, but these conversational lubri-
cants seldom find a place in language courses. The
frustrating effect of not knowing what to say in order
to commit oneself to nothing more than politeness, must
be very familiar to all who have participated in the
social life of a country whose language they do not
know well.
A reply made to a statement or an exclamation, as
distinct from one made to a question, may be called a
119
comment. Comments of any kind are habitually used in
English conversation; I want here to examine one type
only, a type which is simply constructed and yet which
will meet most conversational situations. Comments of
this type, with their flexibility and versatility, are very
useful, but I have rarely heard them from foreigners,
even from those with an extensive knowledge of
English; moreover they often misunderstand these com-
ments when addressed to them.
Extract N 8. (From David Crystal. Linguistics.
Penguin Books, 1971, p. 242).
Another set of vocal effects which we ought to
exclude from language is that commonly referred to
by the label "voice quality". While we speak, apart
from the actual message we are trying to put across,
we also communicate information of a quite different
kind, operating at an entirely different level. This is
information about our personalities. Whenever we
speak, we make known our identity to the outside
world; there are features of everyone's voice which
allow those who know him to recognize him without
seeing him. These features are difficult to pin down
precisely, but they clearly exist, and they are very
different from the rest of our utterance. Voice quality
is a relatively permanent feature of our speech; it
only alters with age or physiological change (as with
a hoarse throat, for instance). Mimics (people who
deliberately imitate another's voice quality) are the
exception in society rather than the rule. Normally
people can do nothing about their voice quality, nor
do they usually want to change it-unless they have
some professional interest in mimicry or acting. Simi-
larly, in writing: a person's handwriting is the factor
which allows us to recognize anyone for who he is,
and we only alter this on very exceptional occasions.
To exclude voice quality from language is not
thereby to exclude "accent", of course. "Accent", as
we have already seen (p. 34), is a more general pheno-
menon, which is used to refer to the totality of
phonetic and phonological features a person has (in-
cluding his voice quality), and in particular to those
non-idiosyncratic features of his pronunciation.
120
2. English as a Foreign Language
Extract N 1. (From P. Christophersen. Towards
a Standard of International English. E.L.T. Selec-
tions 2, ed. by W. R. Lee. London, 1970, p. 222-
225).
Teachers of English abroad, especially perhaps those
to whom English is a foreign tongue, must have asked
themselves from time to time in recent years if all is
well with the basic aim of their teaching. All language-
learning is essentially imitation, but imitation of what
or whom? If native users of English do not all speak
or write alike, what is the foreign teacher to do? Which
form of English should he adopt as a model, for him-
self and his pupils? There are in fact several variant
forms of the language with some claim to serve as a
model; hence the difficulty. Traditionally, since the
introduction of language teaching on modem lines at
the end of the nineteenth century, "Received Pronuncia-
tion" (R. P.) has been practically the only type of En-
glish taught in western European countries, but recent-
ly its position has begun to be challenged. R. P. (in the
sense of the particular pronunciation and the gram-
matical and idiomatic usage associated with it) is no
longer the only kind of English for which good text-
books are available, and R. P. no longer enjoys the uni-
que prestige that it once did, either in Britain or inter-
nationally. Should this be reflected in the teaching of
English, and if so how? A standard will presumably
still be required: is anything gained, then, by throwing
one standard overboard and putting another in its
place? Before I develop my own views on this matter,
I should like to cast a glance at some of the more
important discussions of the problem that I have come
across.
David Abercrombie, in "Problems and Principles"
(Longmans, 1956), put forward the view that, for older
pupils whose speech organs have lost their pliability,
a "limited goal" might be aimed at in pronunciation.
For instance, he says, it is not important for intelligibi-
lity to distinguish between clear and dark 1, since these
sounds are variants of the same phoneme in English,
121
and so there is no need to bother to teach that distinc-
tion if it seems likely to cause difficulty. Altogether,
Abercrombie questions the assumption that the type
of pronunciation that foreigners should use as a model
must invariably be R. P. Other types of English pro-
nunciation are equally acceptable and in some cases
preferable, and Abercrombie makes a special plea for
a "limited" goal, for a "synthetic" style of speech,
adapted from an existing form of English with allow-
ance made for the learner's particular difficulties. Aber-
crombie confines his attention chiefly to pronuncia-
tion, because, if I have inderstood him aright, he con-
siders that there is already an international standard
of written English, although not "exactly the same" all
over the world. Leaving aside this rather curious argu-
ment, I find Abercrombie's idea of a "synthetic" form
of English interesting, and I wonder whether his ap-
proach might not be applied to syntax and vocabulary
as well as to pronunciation. I shall come back to this
point later, after I have mentioned two other recent
contributions to the subject.
Norman E. Eliason, in an article entitled "American
English in Europe" (American Speech, October 1957),
deals with the question of American pronunciation ver-
sus R. P. as a standard in the teaching of English on
the continent of Europe. He concedes, that, for the pur-
pose of teaching English as a foreign language, it is
"convenient if not essential" to adopt some standard
of pronunciation, and he thinks that R. P. is probably
in the circumstances the best choice. His only quarrel
is with the exaggerated veneration in which that type
of pronunciation is held in continental schools and with
the consequent prejudice against American English.
The question of British versus American English in
the schools was taken up again in February 1959 by
R. W. Zandvoort in an article (in Dutch) in "Levende
Talen" called (in translation) "Should we, in our teach-
ing of English, take account of American English?"
Zandvoort includes vocabulary and syntax as well as
pronunciation in his discussion, and he adopts a very
liberal point of view: although British English must no
doubt continue to form the basis or starting-point of the
teaching of English, the pupils should as far as pos-
122
sible be made familiar with, and certainly not warned
off, American English: it should be emphasized to them
that educated American English is neither better nor
worse than its British equivalent.
Zandvoort in one place compares the situation in
Dutch schools, where English is concerned, to that of a
schoolboy who is required in his Greek class to be able
to tell the language of Xenophon from that of Herodo-
tus. It seems to me that this is hardly a fair comparison,
for the schoolboy is not, after all, required to be able
to use Greek actively as a medium of expression to any
appreciable extent. He may be required to do exercises,
but he will never be faced with the question, What
model am I to use in my own personal Greek, Xeno-
phon or Herodotus? This, it seems to me, is the heart
of the matter. In universities throughout the world
Shakespeare is taught, and probably Chaucer and Beo-
wulf as well, but no teacher of English would dream of
advising his students to adopt the kind of English they
find in those works as a model in their own use of
English. However liberal in his views, a teacher would
never countenance constructions like "the most un-
kindest cut" or "the greatest error of all the rest" (of
all), even though Shakespeare used them. Similarly, we
must obviously study American English as an academic
subject. If that were the whole issue, there would be
nothing to quarrel about; but unfortunately it is not
the whole issue-if it is part of it at all. In schools and
outside the English-speaking world in universities as
well, English is taught nowadays not just as an academ-
ic discipline but as something with a direct and prac-
tical application in the students' daily life. Our work
as teachers is not, therefore, purely descriptive; it is
prescriptive as well, and this is where difficulty seems
to arise. Because even if we are able to rid ourselves
of all prejudice, we shall nevertheless have to face
the question, can we at one and the same time pres-
cribe several different models? Is this pedagogically
sound? And, if not, which model should we prescribe?
The best answer, I think, is that we should only
prescribe one type of English, but we need not for that
reason pro scribe other forms of educated English,
whether British or American. The question may also
123
be raised whether, in any one country or in any area
where interchange between schools is likely to occur
frequently, it is advisable to have several alternative
standards in the teaching of English. This might give
rise to difficulties if a child or a teacher moved from
one school to another. Although this sort of difficulty
tends to be exaggerated, it is undoubtedly preferable,
for practical reasons, that in each country the standard
should be generally the same. The choice of that stan-
dard, if it is made centrally, will presumably depend
on such factors as the country's geographical situation,
foreign and commercial policy, cultural history and af-
filiations, etc. For instance, as Abercrombie points out,
the accent of the United States is the obvious one for
learners in Central and South America. For learners in
western Europe, as Eliason admits, R. P. is probably
the best choice, although, with America's influence on
the increase and Britain's on the wane, relatively speak-
ing, a time may come when a switch to American En-
glish will seem natural.
One rather important consideration which tends to
be forgotten in discussing these matters is that there
is a limit to the amount of central planning that can in
fact be done. A person cannot teach effectively any
kind of English other than his own, although he may
of course acquaint his pupils with other forms of the
language. This consideration applies certainly to native
speakers, but also, I think, to non-native teachers if
they are well trained. Consequently, if the majority of
teachers in a given area or country have been trained
to use R. P., it is no good instructing them suddenly
to teach American English instead: they will not be
able to do it. To some extent, therefore, these matters
have to be left to sort themselves out-which is perhaps
from any point of view the wisest policy.
Eliason's and Zandvoort's views form, in my opinion,
a sensible compromise, which will avoid undesirable
discrimination as between different standards. Never-
theless, there is something that worries me about the
whole problem and makes me wonder whether we ought
not, after all, to think along Abercrombie's lines, in
terms of a synthetic model, though possibly for a dif-
ferent reason from his.
124
Before I go on to develop this point, I should like
to make a distinction between the two terms "foreign
language" and "second language", which I intend to use
with somewhat different implications. A foreign lan-
guage is a language which is not one's own, even
though one may have a very good knowledge of it. A
second language, on the other hand, i s one's own,
though not one's first in order of importance nor, usu-
ally, the first to be learnt. The term in this sense im-
plies some degree of bilingualism. The difference in
practical skill and general command between a foreign
and a second language is, in principle, of no consequ-
ence; it is even conceivable that in some cases there
may be no difference in this respect. The difference lies
in the personal attitude and in the use that is made
of the language.
Extract N 2. (From L. A. Hill. Selected Articles
on the Teaching of English as a Foreign Langu-
age. London, 1969, p. 92-93).
The teaching of "neutral" English to all except the
few advanced students who wish to specialize in English
literature will not destroy any literary value. After
all, the fact that the vast majority of native speakers
speak a very pedestrian prose neither prevents poets
writing fine poetry in English, nor makes it difficult for
some native speakers to appreciate this poetry. In fact
without a pedestrian, "neutral" prose to serve as a con-
trast, poetry would be flat and uninteresting. A student
eannot appreciate the distinctive qualities of the poetic-
al style of a foreign language unless he has a thorough
grounding in the everyday language.
Gatenby ends his article by pointing out that "any
mutually intelligible form of educated English is uni-
versally acceptable", and that it is time Indian English
was established as a Regional Standard. This may at
first sight appear to be incompatible with his proposal
about neutral English. But it is not in fact so. Neutral
English is a negative concept, whereas the concept of
Regional Standards is a positive one. The two comple-
ment each other. Neutral English means the avoidance
of anything that will prevent the foreign listener under-
standing, whether it takes the form of a local peculiarity
125
of pronunciation or a local idiomatic usage. A Regional
Standard becomes acceptable for international commu-
nication when it becomes neutral English, i. e. when
it divests itself of those particular local peculiarities
that hamper international communication. I suggest
that the English used by any speech community must be
recognized as a Regional Standard of neutral English if
it conforms to this requirement.
There is a severely practical side to the idea of
Regional Standards. It is a truism that the average
teacher can teach only the brand of English he himself
speaks. Ducks cannot lay hens' eggs; and a teacher
who speaks with-let us say-a marked Thai accent can-
not be expected to turn out pupils who speak with
an R. P. or a Mid-West American pronunciation, even
if it were thought desirable that he should. To train
all the teachers of English in a country to speak R. P.
or some other dialect almost perfectly is quite imprac-
tical. Even Western Europe, with its relatively good
conditions of work and its long traditions of teacher-
training, can produce only a small number of teachers
of English with a near perfect pronunciation. In Asia,
with its vast populations, very many teachers are poorly
trained, overworked and faced by huge classes (a class
of 50 pupils is quite normal, and I have seen 80 first-
year pupils of English in one class). Perfectionism is
quite out of place here. If we try to teach all the small
refinements of pronunciation, we shall end up by teach-
ing nothing really thoroughly. It is only by having
limited objectives that we can hope to achieve success.
We must find out the particular points that interfere
with international intelligibility in the speech-communi-
ty in which we are working, and work out intensive
drills to overcome these obstacles one by one. Our ef-
forts must be based on phonemics, not on phonetics.
Extract N 3. (From M. West. Factual English.
E.L.T. Selections 2, ed. by W. R. Lee. London,
1970, p. 95).
During the period of British rule in India, English
was taught as a language of literature. From the school
textbooks which themselves had a rather literary bias
and contained poetry, the learner proceeded to the an-
126
thology and the set book or books, and thence to a
B.A. with literary English as a subject. To some extent
this remains today. The teachers are accustomed to it;
it is readily amenable to classroom treatment; it is easy
to examine.
Lately there has been some swing towards oral
methods. English, like all other languages, "is essenti-
ally a means of oral communication, a medium of con-
versation. Only secondarily is it a language of reading
and writing. A word in itself has no meaning: it deriv-
es its meaning from the situation: with one intonation
and in one setting it means one thing; otherwise ano-
ther-or another. Hence the spoken phrase and its situa-
tion are primary and essential elements in learning."
Such is the argument upon which the oral or "linguist-
ic" method is based.
We believe that neither of these approaches com-
pletely covers the needs of the present day, both cover
the needs of some, but both the groups so covered are
very limited-both those to whom English is a language
purely of literature (as are Latin and Sanskrit) and
those who have occasion to have personal intercourse
and hold conversations in English.
There is a large and ever-expanding group to whom
English is merely a medium of factual intercommunica-
tion, both spoken and printed. Those are the students
in schools and colleges of science and technology, and
the workers in factories and laboratories.
Extract N 4. (From W. R. Lee and H. Coppen.
Simple Audio-Visual Aids to Foreign-Language
Teaching. London, 1966, p. 2-3).
Clear visual contexts must be provided if the teach-
er is not to use a translation method, giving the wrong
kind of result. The acquisition of a foreign language is
largely a matter of escaping from the tyranny of listen-
ing, speaking and thinking habits formed in acquiring
the mother tongue, and the regular use of translation
only holds the learner back and makes that escape
harder than it need be. So the foreign language has to
be taught to the greatest extent possible in the foreign
language itself without resource to translation. The En-
glish presented and practised while the foundations of
127
a practical command are being laid should be such that
its meaning can be readily made clear by means of
actions, objects and pictures. Presentation and practice
will for a number of reasons be oral at first: reading
in the foreign language should come along later. (See
Ch. 3, p. 42). Teaching the foreign language in the
foreign language, and mixing two languages together
in the language-lesson-that is one important point. Ano-
ther, of equal importance, is that words and sentences
do not mean very much-and may therefore be some-
what unintersting-by themselves. To try to teach a
language by presenting isolated words or isolated sent-
ences-that is to say words and sentences out of context
-is to go about the task in a needlessly difficult way.
A teacher ought never, at least at the early stages, to
say, for example, "Give me the green pencil" unless
there is one green pencil to be had and an appropriate
action is to follow. A pupil ought never to be called
upon to say, for instance, "Krishnan has shut the door"
unless there is a door which a certain Krishnan has
shut.
Extract N 5. (From W. R. Lee. Ten Years of
the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language.
English Language Teaching 26:1, 1971, p. 12-13).
The success with which nearly all of us acquire our
mother tongue has for long prompted the question: Can
one learn a foreign language in the same way? Choms-
kian linguistics, speculating on first-language acquisition,
has re-opened this question, and some linguists have
posited a "language acquisition device" peculiar to man.
The argument has been advanced that because the
young first-language learner is exposed to a wide range
of unsimplified linguistic usage and yet wins through,
it might therefore, be advantageous to drop the step-
by-step graded foreign-language course. But we do not
know with any certainty which factors in the first-lan-
guage-learner's environment are language-advancing
and which are language-delaying. Nevertheless the dis-
cussion has reawakened interest in certain basic as-
sumptions of Foreign-language-course planning.
In more and more countries, and not in the Atlantic
world or Western Europe alone, growing interest in
128
the learning of foreign languages has encouraged an
earlier start. Parents demand English or some other
language for their children of primary-school age, and
where the public authorities are not ready to provide it
private and other fee-taking institutions often will. The
best age at which to begin is a question increasingly
considered.
The tendency over the last ten years has, probably,
on the whole, been away from the learning of English
as if it existed almost in a vacuum and towards the in-
volvement of the pupil in appropriate experience, with
which the use of English is associated. The language is
then seen both as a tool and as a medium of commu-
nication. It is dangerous to generalize on this point,
when the needs and attitudes of learners are so various;
but the view has come to be fairly generally accepted
that, whatever the overall language-learning situation,
school-age beginners are entitled to an all-round basic
course and that specialisation of language skills is ap-
propriate only at a vocational or immediately pre-voca-
tional stage.
It would be an exaggeration to say that everything
in language-teaching theory is still in dispute, but cer-
tainly there are many problems which remain unsolv-
ed. High on the list is the problem of teacher-training
programmes and of how trainers of trainers (those stra-
tospheric beings) can retain contact, if they ever had
it, with the everyday teaching situation-indeed, the pro-
blem not only of what training is needed but of who
is qualified to give it, and of the balance of different
kinds of work in the training programme. Other un-
solved problems include those of the interrelationship
of the language skills (for instance, is oral activity des-
irable to train proficiency in reading?), of the best order
in which to teach the main syntactic features of English
in varying circumstances, of the connection between
drills and ability to use the language in "situations",
of artificiality and naturalness (need the language-learn-
ing situations of the classroom resemble those of "real
life"?), of the role of the language laboratory at various
levels of proficiency, of the introduction of literature
(when, what, why?), of how to measure different kinds
of proficiency in language, and what to concentrate on
£ Akhmanova, Idzelis
12»
in pronunciation teaching ("sounds"? stress and
rhythm? intonation?) if maximum intelligibility is the
main goal.
Extract N 6. (From R. Quirk. From Descriptive
to Prescriptive: An Example. E.L.T. Selections 2,
ed. by W. R. Lee. London, 1970, p. 91-92).
We do not always sufficiently realise that the teach-
ing grammars of English, particularly those directed
at foreign students, must be-and the best have always
been-rather solidly prescriptive. There is little value
to the learner at being presented with a collection of
features observed from the lips (o-r pens) of natives:
he wants to be told which features to learn. It is not
for their prescriptivism as such that the older teach-
ing grammars stand condemned (as they have been
splendidly indeed condemned by dozens of modern
writers, most notably perhaps by S. A. Leonard in "The
Doctrine of Corectness in English Usage"): it is for
the fact that their prescriptions have not been based
upon a sound foundation of description.
All recent grammars of English as a foreign lan-
guage have naturally taken their normative function
for granted, and have explicitly or implicitly sought to
present rules of structure, compliance of which will
produce English of the kind used by educated natives.
In the best recent grammars, this aim has gone alone
with rejection of the old grammarians1 bias towards
seeking authority in logical and universal language con-
cepts, and acceptance of a scientific description as the
primary authority. Now, the scientific description of
English has so far been virtually restricted to the pho-
nological and lexical levels. That is to say, there are
impressive analyses of the phonetics and phonemics
of English, the structure of sound clusters, and to some
extent the patterns of stress and intonation; and there
are valuable word-counts which give a clear picture
of the relative importance of specific words in our
total lexicon.
Extract N 7. (From H. V. King. Oral Grammar
Drills. E.L.T. Selections 2, ed. by W. R. Lee. Lon-
don, 1970, p. 174-175).
130
In learning English, a student obviously has to learn
more than just the words. He has to know how each
word fits together with other words in syntactical cons-
tructions; and for the inflected words he has to know
the appropriate form to use according to the meaning
and context.
The choice of the proper form of the plural ending,
for example, or the past tense form of a verb, or the
appropriate case of a pronoun-all these problems are
more difficult for the learner and of greater immediate
importance in the early stages of language learning than
merely building up a stock of vocabulary items.
But it is not enough simply to understand how the
grammar works. For active use of the language, the
student has to practise all the common patterns until
he can use each vocabulary item in the right inflected
shape and in proper combination with other items with-
out excessive searching and fumbling. No formal study
of grammar, however complete it may be, can take
the place of this practice.
The intent of this is not to disparage the value of
a conscious grasp of English structure, which many
students find interesting as an intellectual pursuit, but
only to emphasize the need for habit-formation in lan-
guage study. In order to develop practical skill in
speaking the language, the student must work toward
the kind of automatic control of grammar that enables
the native speaker to manipulate words without hesita-
tion and with perfect accuracy.
It is quite possible for a foreign student to achieve
this sort of proficiency, even if he cannot arrange to
be brought up in an English-speaking environment.
What is needed is a varied collection of oral exercises
specifically designed to impart fluency in the spontane-
ous production of the correct forms.
In preparing such exercises, we can draw upon the
devices that have been used for many years by those
who apply directmethod techniques, and we can take
advantage of the more recent developments by Palmer,
Hornby, and others in the construction of substitution
tables, and also the pattern-practice drills worked out
by Fries and his followers.
The four types of oral grammar drills described be-
8*
131
low can thus lay no claim to being new inventions, and
they certainly do not exhaust the possible varieties of
practice material for the grammar class. But they are
rather typical of certain techniques that have proved
useful in guiding students toward the confident use of
correct spoken English, and they may serve as models
for the teacher who wishes to prepare additional oral
drills for his own classes.
Extract N 8. (From B. Lott. Graded and Res-
tricted Vocabularies. E.L.T. Selections 2, ed. by
W. R. Lee. London, 1970,‘ p. 76-77).
The paper has a double purpose: first, it attempts
to reconsider, in the light of the most recent research,
the value of some graded and restricted vocabularies of
English words, and of the principles upon which they
are compiled; second, it suggests some ways in which
these vocabularies may be of use to a teacher in normal
classroom practice.
Restricted, minimal, or so-called "island" vocabula-
ries, i.e. those which contain sufficient words for ade-
quate expression at a certain level of achievement, have
so far been used almost entirely in preparing simple
reading-material for students at various stages in their
learning of the language, and in rewriting established
literary classics in a simplified form; the help they may
afford in the major task of learning and exercising
vocabulary has been almost everywhere totally neglect-
ed. It is true that at the lower levels simplified material
for reading practice is a recognized supplement to a
main course, and a worth-while course-book will natur-
ally exercise a vocabulary control of its own; but (as
will be shown) the value of this material for teaching
purposes seems to be at its greatest when the vocabul-
ary is most restricted.
However, the branch of the teacher's class-work in
which the grading of vocabularies is most valuable
may be neither of these, but the oral explanation, when
the need arise, of a "normal" text, with each problem
in the text treated on the spot as it occurs. Despite at
least one published assertion to the contrary, true sim-
plification of material for study must by definition lead
to readier understanding . . .
132
Extract N 9. (From B. Lott. Graded and Res-
tricted Vocabularies. E.L.T. Selections 2, ed. by
W. R. Lee. London, 1970, p. 86).
This detailed study of certain restricted vocabularies
has been necessary because constructive proposals for
their use can be made only if their scope and limita-
tions are fully understood. Yet there is in print little
or no guidance as to the kind of teaching in which
they can give the best service.
Two American critics suggested that restricted vo-
cabularies are not workable unless they result from the
rigorous selection of dictionary sense, and have called
for lists which are most carefully limited in the semant-
ic ranges of their items. It is interesting to notice that
this is diametrically opposed to the principles of Basic,
which admits items for precisely the opposite reason,
that each item is maximally wide in semantic range.
The very precise selection of a limited number of dic-
tionary senses has, of course, a good deal to reconr-
mend it, since the use of the vocabulary would, then,
result in a more perfect control than could otherwise
be attained, but that is more of concern of the text-
book writer than of the working teacher in the class-
room. The writer will set himself limited objectives at
various stages in the presentation of his material, and
will have to decide what words in what senses to admit,
and what to reject. Even he, however, will probably
have to reduce the subtleties of the Oxford English
Dictionary to a more rough-and-ready listing of senses,
but at the earliest stages of the language study ap-
proximation is preferable to over-precision, for it effec-
tively reduces the learning burden.
Appendix
“RESTRICTED” FORMS OF ENGLISH
“Restricted” forms of different languages have
often been thought of as something “fundamental” or
“basic”-see, for example, irancais tondamental, Basic
English, etc. As far as the latter is concerned, it is
rational approach to the problem of vocabulary which
was put into effect by Ogden and Richards after pro-
found deliberation and scientific research. The prin-
ciple is very simple: to eliminate all the words which
we think are not so necessary thus reducing their
number to an absolute minimum. As we know, quite
a few people still think that this is probably the
best way.
It is also believed that if a principle of this kind
is rigidly adhered to and the ensuing systems carefully
codified and rigorously prescribed, the needs of phy-
sicists, mathematicians, etc., who go to international
congresses would be satisfied. Thus “restricted” forms
of English which d о exist should be in the hands
of bodies of specialists who would help put some
order into those naturally or spontaneously existing
systems of communication, that is, not only diagnose,
but also organize them. Given a set of special restrict-
ed rules these forms of English could then be rational-
ly taught.
At first sight what we have just said seems to be
sound enough. In actual fact, however, this is hardly
feasible. When physicists, mathematicians, etc., use
“restricted” forms of English, they do it spontane-
ously. All attempts to officially sanction or institu-
tionalize rudimentary, not to say, broken forms of
134
English are doomed to failure. There exist a host of
"pidgins" 1 which serve as a very efficient means of
communication in different spheres of human activity.
But like so many other things in the world they are
not controlled or controlable: everybody knows they
exist and they serve their purposes, but they cannot
be officially proclaimed valid or be presented in the
form of a set of rules.
To bring out this point more clearly let us look at
the following piece of what we think is English:
"You small boy at Yusefs?"
"Yes, sah."
"You got a message?" [Wilson said.] "from my boy.
He tell you what I want, eh? He's your young brother,
isn't he?"
"Yes, sah."
"Same father?"
"Yes, sah."
"He says you good boy, honest. You want to be a
steward, eh?"
"Yes, sah."
"Can you read?"
"No, sah."
"Write?"
"No, sah."
"You got eyes in your head? Good ears? You see
-everything? You hear everything?" [The boy grinned-
a gash of white in the smooth grey elephant hide of
his face: he had a look of sleek intelligence. Intelli-
gence, to Wilson, was more valuable than honesty.
Honesty was a double-edged weapon, but intelligence
looked after number one. Intelligence realised that a
Syrian might one day go home to his own land, but
the English stayed. Intelligence knew that it was a
good thing to work for Government, whatever the
Government.] "How much you get as small boy?"
"Ten shillings."
"I pay you five shillings more. If Yusef sack you I pay
1 “Pidgin” is used here not in its proper geographical —
historical sense, but to describe all kinds of “restricted”
English, however specific, including those which had never
been touched upon in the literature.
135
you ten shillings. If you stay with Yusef one year ancjl
give me good information-true information-no lies,
I give you job as steward with white man. Under-
stand?"
"Yes, sah."
"If you give me lies, then you go to prison. Maybe
they shoot you. I don't know. I don't care. Under-
stand?"
"Yes, sah."
"Every day you see your brother at meat market. You
tell him who comes to Yusef's house. Tell him where
Yusef goes. You tell him1 any strange boys who come
to Yusef's house. You tell no lies, you tell truth. No
humbug, If no one comes to Yusefs house you say
no one. You no make big lie. If you tell lie, I know it
and you go to prison straightaway." [The wearisome
recital went on. He was never quite sure how much
was understood. The sweat ran off Wilson's forehead
and the cool contained grey face of the boy aggravated
him like an accusation he couldn't answer.] "You go
to prison and you stay in prison plenty long time."
[He could hear his own voice cracking with the desire
to impress: he could hear himself, like the parody of
a white man on the halls. He said,] "Scobie? Do you
know Major Scobie?"
"Yes, sah. He very good man, sah." [They were the
first words apart from yes and no the boy had ut-
tered.]
"You see him at your master's?"
"Yes, sah."
"Now often?"
"Once, twice, sah."
"He and your master-they are friends?"
"My master he think Major Scobie very good man,
sah." [The reiteration of the phrase angered Wilson.
He broke furiously out,] "I don't want to hear whether
he's good or not. I want to know where he meets
Yusef, see? What do they talk about? You bring them
in drinks some time when steward's busy? What do
you hear?".
"Last time they have big palaver," [the boy brought
ingratiatingly out, as if he were showing a corner
of his wares.]
136
"I bet they did. I want to know all about their
palaver/7
"When Major Scobie go away one time, my master
he put pillow right on his face/7
"What on earth do you mean by that?77
[The boy folded his arms over his eyes in a gesture
of great dignity and said,] "His eyes make pillow
wet.77
"Good God77, [Wilson said,] "what an extraordinary
thing.77
"Then- he drink plenty whisky and go to sleep-ten,
twelve hours. Then he go to his store in Bond Street
and make plenty hell.77
"Why?77
"He say they humbug him.77
"What7s that got to do with Major Scobie?77
[The boy shrugged.. ." 2]
There can be no doubt whatsoever that Wilson, as
an educated speaker of English, never had anything
to do with learning to use "restricted77 English or, in
general, must have never given a thought to the lin-
guistic side of this very important practical problem.
Nevertheless when talking to the boy (probably for the
first time) he quite intuitively and undoubtedly under
the influence of the addressee (because speech is a
two-sided affair and there is always an interaction be-
tween the addresser and the addressee) found a
scientifically faultless way of adapting his "linguistic
behaviour77 to the circumstances. True, in contrast
with the non-native user of "restricted7' English, his
"performance77 contains quite a number of "flaws77.
His English habits are too firmly established for
him to drop the inflection "s" of the third person
singular. Instead of saying, "You tell him who
come to Yusefs house77, he says quite naturally,
". . .who comes.. .". He uses the correct analytical
form of the interrogative inadvertently, although these
things, under circumstances of this kind, do not
assist, but hamper comprehension. He also cannot drop
the "s" in, for instance, ".. .when the s t e w a r d7s
2 Greene G. The Heart of the Matter. Heinemann Edu-
cational Books LTD, London, 1968, p. 150-152.
137
busy", although he quite successfully drops most of
the articles: he frees himself from deictic expression,
he sheds the system of deictic oppositions, because this
system (especially when what he is trying to get across
is what we have exemplified above) is much too com-
plex and absolutely unnecessary.
This text is also very important from the termino-
logical point of view. As we have said above, this is
not "pidgin" in the proper sense of the word, because
"pidgin" is usually connected with a very inferior
choice of words. The genuine pidgin speaker, like the
boy, for instance, uses an altogether different system
of lexical oppositions: his word stock is limited, he
speaks in a way which reminds one of the studied
circumlocutions of Basic English.
If we compare from the lexical point of view the
boy's speech with that of Wilson, the difference will
immediately strike the eye. The boy uses words and
expressions which Wilson had either to learn or under-
stand from the context: "Last time they have big
p a 1 a v e r", or "His eyes make pillow wet". These
genuine pidgin words and "expressions" Wilson, who
does not know pidgin, would simply never think of
using.
Spontaneously produced restricted forms of English
are of great importance to us, for by studying them
we may hope gradually to arrive at a satisfactory
formulation of what is the main subject of the present
Appendix. What we are trying to gradually introduce
our readers to is the following: what the modern
scientist naturally acquires and spontaneously uses
when he finds himself in typical situations-as a parti-
cipant of international conferences, meeting foreign
collegues (who most of the time are not English),
making reports, answering questions, etc., -is a kind
of English which has very much in common with the
one Wilson creates spontaneously, on the spur of the
moment, when speaking to that boy. Note that we
equate the scientist's "restricted" English with Wilson's
English, and not with the boy's. Like Wilson the
scientist has an extensive vocabulary which he uses
with precision and which he can manipulate much bet-
ter than the most accomplished user of "general"
138
English, or the most pedantic and informed gramma-
rian of the language. His knowledge of full words
("words of full meaning") is perfect and complete.
But his grammar is greatly simplified in the sense
that, like Wilson, he excludes all the finer distinctions
which are expressed in English by observing some of
the more complicated and elaborate morphological and
lexical-morphological rules of the language.
A large part of research in this field conducted so
far by one of the present authors was devoted to
deixis, because it is deictic oppositions and their ex-
pression that are the most complicated points of English
grammar. These are especially hard to acquire for
those users of English whose own language is
Artikellos 3. But even people who wield elabo-
rate systems of deictic expression in their own langua-
ges, are handicapped by the subtle and irrational di-
vergencies between the two.
The following text was produced when we asked
a professor of physics (who frequently uses English
in all the forms of activity listed above) to answer
several questions we not very competently put to him
by way of making him talk 4:
Q: What is non-linear optics?
A: Non-linear optics is a branch of physics which
was started in 1961 after discovery of lasers. The
discovery of lasers opened many new branches in phy-
3 See Idzelis (1972b).
4 As far as pronunciation is concerned, this again is some-
thing we are not considering here. As on all previous occa-
sions, all we can say on the subject is that the sounds were
phonemically correct, that is, he knew the phonemic composi-
tion of all the terms he used (there was not one case of wrong
stress or mispronunciation leading to unintelligibility in any
of the terms or special expressions he used). Besides, when we
speak of scientists and their “restricted” forms of English, we,
of course, mean educated scientists, that is, people of con-
siderable literacy and general culture. Quite obviously the logi-
cal stresses and the syntactic organization of his speech were
faultless although, of course, some of the niceties of English
intonation (as described in the more sophisticated books on
the subject and hardly ever correctly used by the foreigners)
were completaly unknown to him. But we must repeat again
that his speech was phonetically adequate in the sense that
nowhere did it lead to non-intelligibility.
139
sics, technology, medicine, etc. The main problem
which studied in non-linear optics is how is a optical
phenomenon depends on the intensity of light. Inten-
sities of light beams now available are really fantastic,
about millions of megawatts and gigowatts. Optical
phenomena in these intense fields differ markedly
from optical phenomena as observed with such sources
of light as well-known lamps, the sun and so on. This
is a main problem under investigation.
Q: What is a laser?
A: Laser is a new kind of light source. The prin-
ciple of operation sources is very similar to the opera-
tion of the radio generator-quite different from the
principle of common light source.
Q: And what about the celestial bodies?
A: Generally speaking, the principles here are quite
different from the laser operation. But maybe in stellar
atmosphere, galaxies some stars also radiate as lasers.
The people now is very active to study this problem;
they want to find these cosmic lasers. Recently scien-
tists from California University in USA claimed that
they found in some stellar atmospheres a phenomena
that may be explained as a result of laser action in
the nature.
Q: How do you make artificial lasers?
A: Now it is often a technological problem. We
may buy it.
Q: What do you require lasers for?
A: As I mentioned above the main problem is
obtaining very powerful light beams. Laser give to
us unique possibility to create megawatt and gigowatt
light beams.
Q: Can it also be used for practical purposes?
A: I think that the main interest of non-linear
optical phenomena is in the theory, in the behaviour
of the media under very strong excitation. Now in
physics one of the more interesting problems is prob-
lem of the behaviour of the media in the critical situa-
tion, namely under very large pressure, very large
intensity of light and so on. In such critical situation
many new phenomena may be observed, materials
with unique physical properties may be fabricated. Of
course, after the discovery of a new physical pheno-
140
mena many interesting applications of non-linear opti-
cal phenomena in technology, manufacturing are found.
There was also applications of lasers in surgery. Very
thin powerful light beam acts as a knife, knife which
don't destroy the neighbouring fibres.
Q: What is the difference between a maser and a
laser?
A: Maser is molecular oscillator in the microwave
range. In elecromagnetic spectrum different ranges dif-
fer one from another with wave length, and microwave
range corresponds to wave length of order of several
centimetres. It should be mentioned that first of all
masers were discovered in 1953-1955, and then the
generalization of this idea lead us to lasers (in I960).
Q: Why were these names given to the pheno-
mena?
A: This is abbreviation. Laser is a Light Amplifi-
cation (due to is excepted) Stimulated Emission Radia-
tion, and Maser-Microwave Amplification by Stimulat-
ed Emission Radiation. In Russian some years ago
term "optical quantum1 generator" was useful, but now
the term "laser" widely uses in our literature.
Q: Where did you learn to speak English so beauti-
fully? How did you learn it? Did you study grammar
or phonetics specially? What was your method?
A: I am not sure that my English is so good.
I think good method is conversation with people. It is
the method I used mostly. Also radios were very
useful.
Q: If you want to write your own paper in English
what do you do?
A: It is difficult for me. I know well all the words
which I should use, but I have many troubles with
grammar.
Q: So you must have somebody to edit your paper.
You would agree with us that it is much better for
you to write your paper yourself and have somebody
to correct the grammar mistakes than to ask a trans-
lator who does not know your subject?
A: I think that the first way is better. There are
so many problems, so many abbreviations, special
words used in the special literature that only expert
can use it correctly. There are many examples when
141
translators (not expert in science) given grammatically
correct translations, but this translation is practically
unusable. As example, it is very curious example at
one of the international conferences to which our
people come. You see, there are the phenomena "com-
binational or Raman scattering", "scatter" in Russian-
rassejat', and people from one of our institution asked
translator to translate their abstract, and rassejanije
is also "distribution", and the translator write "com-
binational distribution". The programme committee
rejected this paper. They said that they could not
understand the subject of paper.
Q: And the dictionaries are of no help?
A: No, I think, the situation is not so dramatic,
of course, but the proper use of terms, special words,
abbreviations is absolutely necessary. You know that
in many cases people have no time to read papers
phrase by phrase.
By looking carefully at the material above we find
that all the statements we made in connection with
the first extract are fully corroborated. The speaker
who has learnt the language (as most scientists do)
mainly by, as he himself puts it, using it in speech
and writing, employs this kind of English mainly
under the stress of circumstances because international
communication is constantly going on and on, and.
no scientist can possibly be kept out of it. It goes
without saying that the educated physicist, mathema-
tician, etc., had had primary and secondary education
where some European languages (quite often English)
were taught at school. Therefore they all have a kind
of basic grounding in some modern European language.
Without this background it would probably be difficult
for them to attain the degree of excellence required for
international communication. Those people who have
gone to school and gone through the school curriculum
of foreign languages, but who had never been con-
fronted by the necessity to communicate on their spe-
cial subjects, never learn to communicate at all. The
absolute majority of school-leavers do not know enough
English to use it in any of the ordinary linguistic
situations.
142
As we have repeatedly emphasized above, we are
not in this book concerned with methods of teaching
or practical problems of education. But it would not
be inopportune at this juncture to say that-as far as
"doing something about it" is concerned-the advice
to the teacher of English in the technical faculties of
Universities would be a very simple one. What they
should try to do is to give their learners access to*
the "register", or kind of language they will most
naturally require when working on their papers.
Obviously, writing in a foreign language is an
advanced stage. They must, therefore, begin by learn-
ing to read books and articles on their subject. In
approaching this task he will be guided by the follow-
ing most instructive figurative advice:
"The windscreen of a motor car provides an ana-
logy. Normally the driver looks through the windscreen,
at the road beyond, keeping his eye on possible sources
of interference with his progress and adjusting his
speed and direction as circumstances require. If the
road is dirty, his windscreen will become spotted with
mud. He may be half aware of the spots of mud and
yet be able to see through them and between them to
the road ahead. He will be able to drive at his normal
speed with no risk. The time may come, of course,,
when the windscreen is so bespattered that it would
be dangerous to continue without stopping to clean it;
but this is a rare occurrence. It would also be danger-
ous if the driver became so obsessed with the spots
of mud on the screen that he focussed on them alone;
again, he would no longer see where he was going.
I sometimes think that teachers of English, and others,
become obsessed with the spots of mud. I know that
it would be better to keep the windscreen perfectly
clean. But most car drivers and most readers of
English will look through the mud to the road beyond.
Without stopping to clean the windscreen as every
spot appears, or correcting every mistake they find,
they will continue their journey and reach their desti-
nation" 5.
5 See Brookes (1959, p. 149-150).
14$
This pleasantly figurative way of putting it is exact-
ly what the teacher at the technical faculties of higher
educational institutions should bear in mind: stop
teaching the students elaborate and useless rules of
grammar which they cannot possibly master, for it
takes a lifetime to learn to use English articles proper-
ly, or become really proficient in implementing the
more intricate niceties of English conjugation. Let them
become proficient in the use of their specialised voca-
bulary, let them use their words to the best
advantage.
This is a very important point to make. When
people speak to each other, it is words that matter.
It is the ability to pass on the purport and not
the form of the sentence or supraphrasal unity. We
must also lay special stress on the fact that, in our
case, the two languages belong to the same type-nomi-
native-, not ergative or polysynthetic. The structure of
the subject, predicate, object, adverbial modifiers is
.roughly the same in both languages. Artificial sen-
tences like "The hunter killed the bear" and "The bear
killed the hunter" attach exaggerated importance to
freedom or lack of it in word order. It has certainly
got nothing to do with the manner of scientific think-
ing or speaking. The freedom of ordering of words
in Russian as compared with English is naturally
drawn upon by poets and those writers of fiction who
enjoy formalistic experimentation. But all this is com-
pletely beyond not only the reach, but also the aims
and purposes and possibilities, of the scientist.
One more point: we must begin by looking at the
way the scientist uses his own language. As far
-as general construction and syntax are concerned, the
English of the scientist is often no worse than his
native constructions and syntax. What we are militat-
ing against, and what we are trying to prove the use-
lessness of, are those "spots of mud", those little
points which are either fragments of an earlier system
of grammatical inflection in English-the "s" of the
third person singular-an isolated case which has got
nothing to do any longer with the system of inflection
in modern English, or deixis, which, on the contrary,
is very robust and viable. But taxonomically it is on a
144
completely different level. This level is as elevated as,
let us say, the level of functional sentence perspective
or the complicated tones which succeed each other in
some very little known ways as, for example, within
a supraphrasal unity. But as far as the technical scient-
ist is concerned, all these niceties and refinements are
obviously not only beyond his reach, but also his
utmost requirements.
9 Akhmanova, Idzelis
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Index of Terms
acceptability 17, 18, 22
actor 84
alphabet 70
arrangement 11, 31
“art-criticese” 38, 40, 42
audience endurance 89
background knowledge 48, 51,
58
Basic English 138
“blue pencilling” 73
cadence 94
choice 11, 31, 93, 98
of words 72
Ciceronian periods 74
classical literature 8, 20, 32, 33,
41
writing 20
texts 49
classics 8, 20, 32, 33, 41
cliche 64, 68, 83
code 49, 92
double 54
colligation 68, 102
collocation 68, 102
colloquialism 66
communication 43, 60, 86
bi-lingual 43
human 51
intellective 51
international 106
levels of 51
phatic 52
polylingual 43
scientific 58
written 98
comprehension 38, 51, 53
computer techniques 58, 70
conceptual fields 77
concord 29
connotation 29, 47, 48, 50, 92
by evocation 48, 92
inherent 92
content 48, 58
context 27, 41, 48
conversion 30
critical opinion 38, 40
essay 41
curriculum 19
deictic words 10, 105
denotation 92
dialects 95, 98
dictionaries 49, 65, 72
discourse 63, 86, 87, 91, 103,
106
analysis of 103, 104
oral (spoken) 85
scientific 77, 83, 84, 107
drama 42
English 7, 8, 9, 12, 29, 31, 32,
43, 49, 59, 72, 73
active (productive) 19, 21, 27,
38
American 123
“best” 15, 31
British 14
general 12, 13
good (vs bad) 62, 63, 64, 72
literary 127
restricted 10, 13, 14, 70, 134
ff„ 137, 138
151
scientific 11, 80, 94
special forms of 15
spoken scientific 85
standard 66, 121, 124
translation 127
written 31
“we use” 10, 15, 54, 88
enunciation 102
epithet 27
euphemism 96
euphony 62
expression (vs content) 48, 58
individualities of 69
expressions 19, 61, 66, 70, 82
modal 99, 100
expressive (emotional, evaluat-
ive) 80, 84
overtones 80, 84
false constructions 63
fiction 11, 19, 20, 34, 38, 40, 41,
44, 83, 107, 108, 144
figure of speech 41, 54
first level dimension 49
foregrounding (functional pers-
pective) 86
formal correspondence 15
-”- indicators 88
formalization 104
formalism 46, 47
format 106
function 40, 44
communicative (soobscenija)
40, 77
of aesthetic impact (vozdeij-
stvija) 40
general statements 84
genre 25, 28, 38, 40
grammar 7, 11, 21, 24, 26, 30,
31, 36, 66, 71, 72, 45, 96
grandiloquence 62
humanities 9, 10, 42, 77
hypersupraphrasal division 106
connectives 91
-’’-arrangement 94
hypersyntax 86, 91, 104, 105
imitation 20
indented line 87, 88, 89, 93
innovation 17
information 76, 87
inversion 30
jargons 60, 62, 71, 73
language 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 24,
25, 32, 43, 61, 65, 66, 67, 88,
92, 105
everyday 77, 83
foreign 10
local variant of 95
natural human 58
literary 97, 98
social stratification of 96
standard 60
lavish ornamentation 38
learned terms 74
lexeme 79
lexis 79
“limited goal” 122
linguistic folklore 14, 104
linguistic analysis 28
linguistics 7, 8, 92, 104, 105
linguostylistic analysis 46
literary criticism 8, 9, 40
literature 8, 16, 20, 35, 44, 45,
46, 47, 70
logic 89
logical fallacy 90
malapropism 66, 74
marked form 84, 85, 108
mass media 71
Masters of English 16, 20, 28,
38, 67
meaning 15, 32, 41, 42, 46, 49,
61, 63, 64, 70, 73, 77
dictionary 49
equivalence 12
identity 104
literal 69
metaphorical 69
special 79
melody 95
metaconnotations 46
metalanguage 43
metametasemiotic level 45, 46,
51
metaphor 27, 48, 45, 51, 66
mixed 45, 63
metasemiotic connotation 107,
108
derivation 40
expression 44, 46
-”- level 41, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48,
50, 51
152
minimization 10, 84
modality 101
model 7, 8, 9, 19, 33, 42, 94,
121, 123
modernist poetry 42, 81
morphological categories 84, 85
opposition 83, 84, 85, 107,
108
morphology 11, 31, 83, 84
motivation 74
obsolescence 18
officialese 16, 59, 60, 64
opaqueness 74
optimal form 90
optimization 87
oratory 24, 25, 26
orthoepy 93
orthography 7
overprecision 133
oxymoron 41
paragraph 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 94,
98, 105, 106, 108
connectors of 88
optimal division of 94
paraphrase 15
padding 73
philology 8, 32, 53, 58, 104
phraseological units 81, 82, 107
pidgin 138
plain words 59, 60, 61, 63, 73
poetry 46, 47, 48
precision 62
prescription 123
prestige 121
proizvedenija reel 7, 8, 9, 44,
87, 106
pronunciation 11, 93, 95, 121,
1221Г
prose 23, 32, 35, 38
intellective 42
scientific 72, 107
prosodic means 85
prosody 102
punctuation 32, 66, 87
purport 43, 46, 63, 77, 86, 103,
144
quotation 66, 69, 75
receptor language 11
reference 63, 48
referents 29, 92
regional standards 125, 126
register 12, 13, 76, 77, 79, 82.
83, 88, 94, 106
restricted forms 134, 135, 138
rhetoric 24
rhythm 89, 94, 95
R.P. 113 if, 124
scientific treatise 60, 71
selection 72
semantic level 41, 45, 46, 47,
48, 50, 51
function 44
interpretation 47
semiological system 43
semiotic devices 10, 84, 87
system 55, 105
value 89
semiotics 103, 104, 105
sentence 63, 69, 86, 88, 89, 94,
103, 144
set expressions 81
set phrases 83
sign systems 104, 105
situation 72, 84, 85
solecisms 98
sounds 11
special terms 76
speech 9, 10, 40, 43, 44, 65, 67.
69, 72, 89, 91
educated 96
inner 89
“posh” 96
vulgar 96
flow of 86, 91, 105
speech community 43
events 85, 102
spelling 93
standard form 14, 66
stock-in-trade 75
style 7, 8, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20,
24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33,
36, 38, 40, 60, 64, 65, 66, 77, 88,
93, 125
functional 83, 84, 106, 107
literary 41
loose colloquial 66
of speech 95, 97
scientific 77
sub-genre 23
supraphrasal unity 63, 83, 84,
88, 89, 91, 93. 98, 101, 103. 105,
106, 144
15X
"‘swapping horses’’ 94
syncategorematic words 36
synonymic condensation 36, 27
syntagm 23
syntax 11, 15, 21, 31, 36, 65,
>66, 85, 102, 103, 104
hypersupraphrasal 94
textual 94
taxis 85
text 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 20, 23, 24,
30, 32, 34, 42, 47, 59, 71, 88,
89, 93, 94, 98, 102, 103, 106,
108
scientific 79, 83, 84, 85, 87
theme/rheme relationship 86
theoretical logic 103, 104
thesaurus 9
tradition 10
translation 15, 73, 127
translationese 11, 14
transparency 74
transposition 88
underlying identity 93
understanding 40, 46, 47, 48,
49, 51, 52, 53, 54
usage 28, 30, 61, 64, 69, 96,
128, 121, 126, 130
good 36, 72
modern 62, 80
normalisation of 93
utterance 41, 42, 72, 101, 104
variant 60, 99
vocabulary 29, 36, 71, 72, 76,
83, 84, 95, 96, 107, 122
general scientific 76, 77, 79,
80, 82, 83
latinized 62, 74
words 7, 10, 11, 19, 21, 24, 28,
29, 31, 36, 41, 42, 46, 47, 48, 50,
51, 60, 62, 63, 70, 72, 80, 81,
82, 83, 84, 92, 103, 144
analysis of 32, 66
“big” 74
choice of 60
hard 74
key 55
word-combination 19, 21, 22,
23, 25, 28, 29, 48, 58, 76
writing 9, 10, 20, 26, 28, 65, 67,
69, 71, 88
ephemeral 16
general culture of 63
imaginative 40
official 74
scientific 81
Index of Names
Abercrombie, David 97, 117,
119, 121, 122, 124
Addison, Joseph 34
Arnold, Matthew 37
Austen, Jane 12, 16, 17, 19, 23,
24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 36,
39, 90
Bailey, Richard W. 109
Barber, Charles 110
Becker, Alton L. 56, 57, 108
Bernstein, T. 13
Blackmore, R. D. 37
Blok, Alexander 45, 46
Bloomfield, Leonard 113
Bolingbroke, Henry 33
Вгоп1ё, Charlotte 19, 34, 37, 39
Brookes, В. C. 14, 34, 143
Carrol, Lewis 47
Catford, J. C. 14, 35
Cecil, David 37
Chafe, Wallace C. 109
Chapman, R. W. 13
Chatman, Seymour 54
Chaucer, Geoffrey 123
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer
Stanhope. Earl of 24, 26, 27,
28, 33, 38
Christophersen, Paul 121
Clarendon, Edward Hyde 74
Close, R. A. 11, 14, 113
Cobbet, William 65
Collins, V. H. 13
Coppen, Hellen 127
Cowper, William 37, 39
Crane, Harold Hart 47
Cristie, Agatha 16
Crystal, David 120
Cummings, E. E. 47
Danes, Frantisek 109
Darbyshire, A. E. 54
Dickens, Charles 37, 69
Dolinskaja, L’ubov’ 99, 101, 109
Donne, John 50, 51
Dorosenko, Marina 108
Dressier, Wolfgang 109
Dryden, John 33
Eliason, Norman E. 122, 124
Eliot, T. S. 54, 56
Empson, William 55
Enright, D. J. 14
Esenin, Sergei 45, 46
Evans, В. I. 13
Faraday, Michael 12
Flaubert, Gustave 7, 66
Forster, Edward Morgan 35
Fowler, Roger 14
Fowler, W. S. 55
Francis, Nelson W. 54
Galsworthy, John 35
Gibbon, Edward 37
Glusko, Magda 107
Gordon, Ian A. 34, 74
Gowers, Ernest 14, 31, 32, 37,
59, 60, 61, 63, 71, 73, 74, 80
Greene, Graham 137
Grigorjev, M. P. 84, 85
G’ubbenet, Irina 55
Hall, Robert A. 72
155
Halliday, M. А. К. 72, 114
Handscombe, R. J. 55
Hardy, Thomas 37, 69
Hazlitt, William 38
Herbert, Alen 65
Hester, R. M. 14
Hill, L. A. 14, 125
Hirsch, E. D., Jr. 56
Hjelmslev, Louis 105
Hooker, sir Joseph Dalton 74
Huxley, Aldous 35
Jakobson, Roman 104, 107, 109
Jarceva, Victoria 36
Jespersen, Otto 35, 74
Johnson, Samuel 34, 37
Jones, Daniel 14
King, H. V. 15, 71, 90, 130
King, D. 14
Kipling, Rudyard 56
Lee, W. R. 118, 121, 126, 127,
128, 130, 132, 133
Leonard, S. A. 130
Lerner, Laurence 55
Lodge, D. 34
Lott, Bernard 132
Lowell, Robert 39
Marcenko, A. N. 36
Mare, Walter de la 47
Marvell, Andrew 56
Mazrui, Ali A. 56
McIntosh, Angus 72, 114, 115
Milton, John 74, 75
Minajeva, L’udmila 106
Mindeli, Helen 76
Mittins, W. H. 35, 71
Montague, С. E. 75
Napoleon Bonaparte 7
Nevizina, Z. V. 108
Nida, Eugene A. 14, 15
Ogden, С. K. 36, 57
Palmer, Harold E. 71, 113
Pattison, Bruce 70
Perekalskaja, Tat’jana 90, 91,
106, 108
Phillipps, К. C. 29, 30, 34, 36
Pike, Kenneth L. 56, 57, 108
Poe, Edgar A. 56
156
Priestly, J. B. 95, 111
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur 71
Quirk, Randolph 10, 14, 35, 118,
130
Richards, Ivor A. 36, 54, 56, 57,
71
Richardson, Samuel 39
Rimbaud, Jean-Arthur 47
Ruskin, John 35
Saussure, Ferdinand de 105
Scott, Walter 34
Serkova, Nelli 108
Shakespeare, William 35, 49,
50, 123
Sheard, J. A. 14
Smirnitsky, A. I. 107
Smith, M. S. 14
Southam, В. C. 34
Stein, Gertrude 47
Steiner, F. 14
Steiner, George 55
Sterne, Laurence 34
Strevens, Peter 15, 114, 115
Sweet, Henry 7, 11, 13, 14, 71
Swift, Jonathan 12, 33, 37
Scerba, L. V. 23, 36
Sveicer, A. D. 15
Taber, Charles R. 14, 15
Tennant, J. 14
Thackeray, William Makepeace
37
Thomas, Dylan 54
Tolstoj, L. N. 44
Trim, J.L.M. 14
Twain, Mark 52
Ullmann, Stephen 36, 74
Vallins, G. H. 14, 16, 32, 33, 34,
36, 37, 54, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64,
65, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75, 80, 90,
106
Veselitsky, V. V. 108
Vinokur, G. O. 44, 54
Vinogradov, V. V. 40, 44, 45,
54
Walmslev, Leo 35
Warburg, J. 36, 71, 74
Wellek, Rene 56
West. Michael 126
Whitten, W. 14
Whitaker, F. 14
Wodehouse, P. G. 30
Yotmg, G. M. 31
Young, Richard E. 56, 57, 108
Zandvoort, R. W. 122, 123, 124
Zarubina, N. D. 108
Ахманова О. С., Идзелис Р. Ф.
Курс практической стилистики современного
английского языка. М. Изд-во Моск, ун-та,
1978.
157 с.
В учебном пособии представлен научно обоснованный вы-
бор образцов того регистра английского языка, который мо-
жет быть активно использован учеными-филологами в качестве
средства международного общения. Книга рассчитана на сту-
дентов и аспирантов филологических факультетов универси-
тетов.
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А -------------- 63-78
077(02) — 78
Ольга Сергеевна Ахманова
Роландас Ф. Идзелис
КУРС ПРАКТИЧЕСКИЙ
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ЯЗЫКА
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Формат 84X100/32 Бумага тип. № 2
Физ. печ. л. 5,0, Усл. печ. л. 7,8
Уч.-изд. л. 7,86 Изд. № 334
Зак. 874. Тираж 44 600 экз.
Цена 30 коп.
Издательство
Московского университета.
Москва, К-9, ул. Герцена, 5/7.
Типография Изд-ва МГУ.
Москва, Ленинские горы
Отпечатано в типографии
Изд-ва МГУ.
Москва, Ленинские горы
с набора типографии АПН.
Зак. 348


Цена 30 коп.
Which of the different kinds of English
shall its foreign scientific and literary user
adopt as a means of international communi-
cation, a now indispensable "tool of his
trade"!
Where does he look for a style that is
lucid and simple, easy to speak, write and
understand!
The book presents and discusses the rela-
tive claims and advantages of the more likely
"registers" pragmaticall y—In terms of
efficiency and optimization.
Professor Olga Akhmanova, a widely known
lexicographer, linguistic anthropologist and
linguist, is Head of the English Department of
the Moscow State University; Ph, Dr. Rolandas
F. Idzelis, Senior Lecturer at the University of
Vilnius, specializes in English Style and Usage.