Authors: Terry Eagleton
Across the Pond (2 page)
Miscommunications
I was flying on an American passenger jet from Dublin to New York at a height of thirty-five thousand feet when the flight attendant came on the intercom and announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re now switching off the engines, as they don’t seem to be working properly.” Seizing my fountain pen, I started to scribble an urgent note to a well-known English movie star, to be found later on my body. I was sorry, I wrote, that she had failed to recognise that we were soul mates. It was with regret that I noted that she had chosen a handsome, talented young millionaire movie director as a partner, rather than a more obviously suitable person like myself. Convinced that there should be complete frankness between us, I confessed that my affection for her had been sorely tried by her disgracefully self-indulgent exhibition of tears at an Oscar ceremony. I was, however, prepared to forgive her for this unseemliness, and even managed through gritted teeth to send my best wishes and farewells to her husband. It seemed imprudent to appear before the Judgement seat with hatred in my heart.
I ended by signing my name with a flourish for the last time, put on my jacket with the obscure sense that one should die with a certain formality rather than in shirtsleeves, and awaited a sickening thud. I briefly considered ordering a double whisky, but decided that it was in the best British tradition to go down with a clear head. I would raise my chin high, but not in order to pour liquor down my throat. It then occurred to me to add a postscript to my note, assuring the recipient of my unwavering devotion in the few seconds of life still granted to me, and pointing out on a more practical note that if the public ever got fed up with her and she found it hard to obtain work, I had a little money stashed away in the top drawer of my desk that she was welcome to have. If she did make use of it, a modest statue in my memory would not, I intimated, come amiss.
It was only then that I realised that my fellow passengers seemed to be greeting the flight attendant’s apocalyptic announcement with remarkable
sang froid
. They were still sipping their coffees, fiddling with their headsets, and allowing their children to sport sick bags on their noses, for all the world as though they were not about to perish. When the attendant repeated his announcement, I realised that he had said they were turning off the entertainment, not the engines. His American accent had deceived me. For some of the more media-dependent passengers on the plane, this news was no doubt almost as devastating as being told that they had only four minutes to live. But at least we were going to make JFK Airport in one piece, with or without the accompaniment of Johnny Depp.
The same misunderstandings can happen the other way round. An American friend of mine was driving rather too vigorously in the west of Ireland, and was pulled over by a Gard (police officer). “What would happen if you were to run into Mr. Fog?” the Gard inquired gruffly in his thick Connaught accent. Stung by this patronising query, my friend replied with heavy sarcasm, “Well, I guess I’d put Mr. Foot on Mr. Brake.” Whereupon the officer stared at him rather strangely and growled, “I said
mist or fog
.” My friend, as it happens, is an anthropologist. For one enthralling moment he thought he had stumbled upon a tribe in the west of Ireland which personified aspects of the weather, speaking of Mrs. Hailstorm, Master Sunshine, and so on. Other misunderstandings are possible, too. Some years ago, an American student I taught was surprised to see British road signs reading “Way Out.” I told him that they were left over from the 1960s, when there were also road signs reading “Cool,” “Groovy,” “Peace and Love,” and the like.
I once rang an American colleague and reached his voice mail, which announced: “Hi, this is Mike and Marie. We do not reply to silly questions.” Perhaps they had been besieged by callers asking them how many triangular pink objects they had in the house, or how much it cost to rent a lawn mower in Kuala Lumpur. Later I realised he had said “survey questions.” Americans who are asked by immigration officers to state the purpose of their visit on arriving in the United Kingdom should be advised that some American pronunciations of “tourism” can sound quite like “terrorism.” In fact, the public speeches of George W. Bush seemed to many of the British to be constantly warning against the evils of tourism. Since Bush was scarcely the most cosmopolitan president to grace the White House, this might have reflected his true opinion. Perhaps he was running the words “tourism” and “terrorism” together for reasons of economy. There can also be problems when travelling from Europe to America, since prospective visitors to the United States are now required to complete a form declaring whether they have ever been involved in committing genocide. It would be interesting to note the official response to “Can’t remember” or “Not for quite a while.”
The British and the Americans, George Bernard Shaw famously observed, are divided by the same language. As one who belonged to neither nation, he could be dispassionate about the matter. In fact, the differences can be exaggerated. It is true, as the old song has it, that Americans say “tomato” and the British say “tomahto,” but nobody in Britain says “potahto.” However, many Americans incorrectly pronounce the name “Edinburgh” to rhyme with “Marlboro.” This is particularly confusing, since the British pronounce the word “Marlborough” in a way that rhymes with the correct pronunciation of “Edinburgh.” British and American types of English sound alike but are also different, which is true of the two cultures as a whole. Their ways are both strange and similar to each other, a condition that Freud knew as the uncanny. It is uncanny to see something which looks familiar in outlandish guise, or to see what is foreign as though it were routine.
Every now and then, an American will reveal by a casual word or gesture that he or she is more alien than you imagined. This is rather like those science fiction movies in which the extraterrestrials appear in convincing human guise, but betray by some well-nigh imperceptible blunder—a word slightly mispronounced, a coffee cup held at a bizarre angle, a tiny drop of green blood—that they are not what they seem. At this point, a sinisterly dissonant chord will be heard on the soundtrack. In the same way, Americans can appear convincingly human to the British, only to reveal in a casual aside that they do not know how to boil an egg, brew a pot of tea, or understand the meaning of the word “fortnight.” Their true otherness then flashes out in all its mind-numbing horror.
Everyone knows that when a British schoolteacher asks his boys to get out their rubbers, he is inviting them to have their erasers ready to hand, not about to give them a lesson in contraception. British people who live in flats do not set up home in burst tires. The word “bum” in Britain means buttocks, not vagrant. Americans might be interested to hear that when a British friend tells them he is going to bum a fag, he means that he is about to cadge a cigarette. An Englishman who gets through twenty fags a day is not necessarily a promiscuous homosexual. To say “I’ll call you Wednesday” in British English does not mean that I shall telephone you on Wednesday, but that I shall refer to you by the name Wednesday, even if your actual name happens to be Roger or Roberta. In British English, braces keep your trousers up as well as keeping your teeth straight.
Keywords
Not all Americans know that the following words and phrases are fairly distinctive to their own brand of English: weird, awesome, reach out to, feel comfortable with, have a hard time, big time, way too much, miracle, dream, buy into, gross, closure, impact (as a transitive verb), heal, like, flunk, scary, facility, structure, blown away, I appreciate it, zero in, kind of, issue (for problem), focused, respected, determine, freaking, roil, America, momentarily, at this time, barf, kids, meet with, share with, number one, craft (as a verb), family, hacked off, bottom line, out there, bunch, totally, hero, excited, garner, aggressive (used positively), off of, empower.
Some of these terms (“weird,” for example) have migrated to some extent into British English, as American speech tends to do. Another obvious example is the word “like,” repeated every four seconds or so by young Americans, and now increasingly by other English speakers as well. It is rumoured that you can now find tombstones in the States reading: “To Our Beloved Son, Brother and Like Husband.” There are also proposals to modernise certain time-worn slogans to “In Like God We Trust” and “My Country Like ’Tis of Thee.” There will no doubt soon be headlines in
The
Washington Post
reading: “I Was Like ‘Oh My God!’ Says President of Harvard.” The pathologically compulsive use of the word “like” has much to do with a postmodern aversion to dogmatism. “It’s nine o’clock” sounds unpleasantly autocratic, whereas “It’s like nine o’clock” sounds suitably tentative and non-doctrinaire. “Totally” is another potentially contagious Americanism, as in “Is my husband dead, doctor?” “Totally.”
Even though some of the words I have listed have infiltrated the speech of other English-speaking nations, most of them are still a lot more common in the USA than in the UK, and some of them are scarcely to be heard outside the States at all. If the word “awesome” were banned from American speech, airplanes would fall from the skies, cars would lurch wildly off freeways, elevators would shudder to a halt between floors, and goldfish would commit suicide by leaping despairingly from their bowls. Yet other speakers of English use it very little, if at all. The British do not commonly say “meet with,” “reach out to,” “stay focused,” or “your respected college” (which sounds slightly unctuous to non-American ears). They do not zero in, craft a proposal, desire golden hamsters to be empowered, have a hard time understanding something, ask to be given a break, or tackle a situation aggressively, unless by the latter they mean taking a machine gun to it. Using the word “aggressive” to mean admirably robust, a speech habit which does not reflect particularly well on American culture, sounds almost as odd to the British as complimenting someone on being as ugly as sin. The American use of the word “scary” instead of “frightening” or “alarming” sounds childish to British ears, as though one were to talk about one’s bottie rather than one’s buttocks. To call someone “driven” is a compliment in the States but a criticism in Britain.
“Empower” is a peculiarly American word, and despite being much overused has its virtues. Without really intending to, it challenges the familiar liberal misconception that power is a bad thing. On the contrary, power is an excellent thing, as long as it is exercised by the right people for the right reasons. Only those who have enough of the stuff already can afford to be so disparaging about it. Power is not always oppressive, as some leftists seem to imagine, any more than authority is always to be resisted. There are beneficial forms of power as well as malign ones. There is the authority of those who are seasoned in the fight for justice, as well as the authority that ejects you from a restaurant for not wearing a tie.
Most speakers of British English do not say “a bunch of air,” speak of money as the bottom line, or seek closure. “At this time” is not used to mean right now. Things are ascertained, not determined. The British say “It must be,” whereas Americans tend to say “It has to be.” You can feel comfortable with something in Britain, but nothing like as often as in America. You would not generally say “We feel comfortable using this taxi company,” any more than you would ask someone whether they felt comfortable with the idea of being scourged till the blood ran down their thighs. Your actions may influence a situation, but they cannot impact it, just as you can protest against a ruling but not protest it. To do something momentarily in Britain is to do it for a few moments only, not to do it very soon. This is why it sounds curious to British ears to speak of momentarily cutting your head off, or momentarily ploughing your way through
War and Peace
.
Americans say “Excuse me” when they accidentally get in your way, whereas the British say “Sorry.” They reserve “Excuse me” for either trying to squeeze past someone, or buttonholing a stranger on the street. One knows one is back in the United Kingdom when everyone is constantly saying “sorry” for no reason whatsoever. When a friend of mine is asked by a waiter what he would like to order, he cannot help starting his answer with the word “sorry,” as though he is distraught at putting the restaurant to the trouble of relieving him of his money. If someone slams rudely into you in London, you say “sorry.” No doubt the British will soon be apologising for being stabbed in the street.
What you say in Britain when you don’t hear what someone says depends on your social class. The working class say “Aye?”, the lower middle class “Pardon?”, the middle class “Sorry?” and the upper class “What?” Lower-middle-class people whisper furtively in public, the middle classes speak at normal volume, and the upper classes bray. It belongs to upper-class self-assurance to assume that you have the right to say what you like as loudly as you like, rather as noblemen once had the right to hang revolting peasants or deflower their brides on their wedding night. One is thus forced to overhear the conversation of the well-bred, though these days in Britain plenty of people are only too glad to hear what you are saying. Strangers who used to try to conceal the fact that they were eavesdropping on you have stopped pretending and just shamelessly listen in, occasionally with their hand cupped to their ear. No doubt they will soon be asking you irritably to speak up. Similarly, there was a time when the people at the next table to you in a restaurant used to pretend that they were not staring inquisitively at your food when it arrived. Nowadays they are more likely to stroll over to your table and peer open-mouthed over your shoulder. They might even take photographs of your meal on their cell phone and send them to their friends.