Stephen Fry on the changing language

Stephen Fry was on the Today programme a couple of days ago (listen here for a few more days) publicising his new TV series about language (I haven't watched the first episode yet, but will no doubt write a post on it soon). He welcomed the constantly changing nature of the English language, and criticised John Humphrys, one of the Today presenters renowned for his books and strong opinions on language, for seeing only negative aspects of change.

 

To illustrate his assertions of the benefits of change, he reworded the 6.30 news bulletin from an hour earlier (which you can listen to here, if you want, - half an hour roughly into the programme) so that it sounded like a BBC news report of the 1950s, say. The actual news bulletin began: "The Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, will today set out Labour's plans for the British economy, saying a future Labour government would adopt strict rules on public spending". Fry's 'translation' into the more formal, old-fashioned language typical of the early days of the BBC went as follows: "The Opposition finance minister, Edward Balls, intends today to reveal the Labour Party's blueprint for the British economy, asserting that any future Labour administration would adhere to unswervable strictures on the expenditure of monies distributed from the public purse".

 

For the full interview with Stephen Fry and more about differences in the language of news reports now and a few decades ago, listen here for a few more days.

Comments

[Techczech]

I did watch the actual program (programme) and it was predictably awful. Full of breathless invitations to the viewer to join Stephen in the consideration of the awesome nature of language. But in fact an hour of nothing ranging from innanities to nonsense. He had Michael Tomasello say one sentence about the evolution of language and Pinker talk about nativism for a full minute. Not a mention of any controversy anywhere. Typical BBC TV bullshit fare. Their TV reporting on scholarly matters is simply atrocious. (As opposed to radio 4.)

[Virtual Linguist]

Thank you for warning me! I still haven't had time to watch it, and the second episode is due this evening, I think, which means Episode 1 will drop off iPlayer. It sounds as if I'm not missing much. Thanks for reading and for your comment.