G.B. Shaw’s Radio Talk, ‘Spoken English and Broken English’:Broken English’s Relevance in Today’s English Spoken World


In a lively, witty and conversational style G. B. Shaw in his essay (a transcript of a radio talk and was recorded in 1927. The talk was broadcast over Manhattan's radio station WNEW)  ‘Spoken English and Broken English’ gives some instruction to a foreign student of the English Language in regard to speaking English when he travels in the British Commonwealth or in America or when he meets a native of those countries or it may be that he is himself a native but that he speaks in a provincial or cockney dialect of which he is a little ashamed, or which perhaps prevents him from obtaining some employment which is open to those only who speak in correct English. Read More Teaching English

The essay  is divided into three sections. The first part rightly stresses that there is no single model of correct speech in English. Whether he is a foreigner or native, the first thing that he must remember is that there is no such thing as ideally correct English. Shaw discusses notions of ‘correct English,’ that is, the proper way in which English should be spoken. No two British subjects speak exactly alike, according to G. B. Shaw. He himself is a member of a committee set up by the BBC for the purpose of deciding how the utterances of speakers employed by the corporation should be pronounced in order that they should be a model of correct speech from the British Islands. The committee is comprised of Irish members, Wales’s members, Scottish members, Oxford University members, American members all recognizable by their differences of speech. They differ also according to the countries in which they are born. Though they all speak differently they all speak presentably and if a foreign student of the English language speaks as they do he will be understood in any English speaking country and accepted as a person of good social standing.   Shaw demonstrates that even among the educated and the specialists on language; the manner of speaking is determined by one’s origin, background, training and workplace.

In the second part, Shaw illustrates how everyone, irrespective of whether they are educated or uneducated, speaks differently in public and in private. Read More Teaching English G.B. Shaw, an Irishman, says that as a public speaker he has to take care that every word he says is understood by his hearers. But at home when he speaks to his wife he takes very little pains with his speech. He shows that in familiar surroundings and in one’s exchanges with close friends or relatives, one is quite careless, both in one’s articulation and in framing full- bodied, grammatical sentences. This is because they are confident of being understood in these circumstances without seeming rude or uncivilized. In the public sphere however, there is no such assurance. So we are much more careful with our speech while speaking with strangers or on formal occasions. This section is particularly amusing and most of the instances are drawn from Shaw’s own life, namely his conversations with his wife. By directing laughter at himself and presenting himself as the guinea pig he makes his arguments more convincing. His suggestion of spying through the keyhole is a good- hearted jibe at the reader’s human weakness that cleverly maneuvers the reader into a position of complicity with the author. Although Shaw is concerned only with the English language, his arguments in both the first and the second section are applicable to any language. Everyone has company manners and home manner. At home people speak in a careless manner but when they speak in the presence of a stranger they have speak very carefully. Even when their home manners are as good as their company manners they are always different and the difference is greater in speech than in anything else.

In the last section Shaw advises foreigners on how to communicate in English while travelling in English speaking countries. Shaw now gives to foreign students another warning of quite a different kind. If they are learning English because they intend to travel in England and wish to be understood there, they must not try to speak English perfectly, because if they do, no one will understand them. Read More Teaching English He reiterates that though there is no such thing as perfectly correct English, there is presentable English which is called ‘good English’, but in London nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand people not only speak bad English but speak even that very badly. Even if they do not speak well themselves they can at least understand it when it is well spoken. They can when the speaker is English, but when the speaker is a foreigner, the better he speaks, the harder it is to understand him. 

No foreigner can ever stress the syllables and make the voice rise and fall in question and answer. Therefore the first thing a foreigner has to do is to speak with a strong foreign stress, and speak broken English, that is English without grammar. Then every English person to whom he speaks will at once know that he is a foreigner and try to understand him and be ready to help him. He will not expect him to be polite and to use elaborate grammatical phrases. He will be interested in him because he is a foreigner, and pleased in making out his meaning and being able to tell him what he wants to know. Read More Teaching English This advice is flawed for several reasons. First, it is outdated and suggests a time when perhaps few foreigners visited England. Today not only are several foreigners visiting many English speaking countries but people belonging to different races and nationalities also reside in countries like America and Britain. English has also become the global language of communication.

 The native speaker of English, therefore, is accustomed to hearing several kinds of people speaking English in different ways. Significance in today’s time Classified as borderline boring or a sheer waste of perfectly good time by many of the modern day students, Spoken and Broken English’s relevance in today’s time cannot be more emphasized upon. With Globalization taking hold of the world and the need of learning multiple global languages out of which English stands at the very helm, has led people to seek out the ‘Correct’ form of the language. G. B. Shaw explains to us that although it is an insult to the native speaker of English who cannot understand his own language when it is too well spoken, times have changed and we simple have to accept the fact that Good English is more important than ‘Correct’ English. India, which carries in it English of different accents and pronunciations, could very well benefit by adding this piece to its education curriculum in order to make people realize the true sense of the word language. India is one of the chief exporters of human resource to the world. Thus, a study of this recording can help people overcome their obsession for correct and start focusing on the good aspect of English.

The Irish Literary Renaissance and the New Irish Theatre: Consciously Represented Irish National Aspirations



"Part of the problem with Ireland is that everything is named after someone. In Dublin, there is a railway station called Sydney Parade, and for many years, I thought Sydney Parade was one of the leaders in the 1916 Rising."

Joseph O'Connor (1963 - )

Though Irelandwas a part of the British Isles, like Wales and Scotland, the Irish people considered themselves as different and were contemptuous of British Suzerainty. Eventually, by the late 19th century the Irish had lost faith in political solutions to Ireland’s problems and turned to cultural nationalism instead. They revolted against British exploitation and ruthless suppression of Irish national aspirations, in spite of Irish representation in British parliament. The British overlords, domineering over the Irish grew more ruthless when the Irish Republican Army went underground to organize the relentless struggle for Independence. Read More Drama Thus Irish nationalism was born and sought expression in Irish literature that consciously represented Irish national aspirations. Read More Drama The Catholic faith and pagan beliefs of the Irish people too had a pervasive influence that inspired rebellion against the protestant English rulers. 

In 1893 Eoin Mac Neill and Douglas Hyde founded the Gaelic League to restore Irish as the spoken language of the country; the organization eventually became the driving force for the assertion of Irish identity. The search for Ireland’s lost Gaelic heritage ushered in a period known as the Irish Renaissance in the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century. Towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th Century the patriotic Zeal of W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, George Moore, George Russel, Edward Martyn and Maude Gonne created a literary movement.   Its intention was to find the sources for a new Irish literature in the Irish countryside and in Irish myth. The new Irish   Theatre and the Irish plays of Synge and others helped this movement create a sort of awareness that led to Irish Renaissance. These new plays used the language spoken by the Irish peasant workers and fishermen whose life and experiences formed the nucleus of the plays.

The new Irish   Theatre and the new Irish drama did not aim to appeal to the senses; they meant toappeal to the intellect and the spirit, eventually furnishing a sort of vehicle for the expression of the nationalist thought and ideals. Read More Drama Its end was a revival of Irish cultural traditions and a renewal of national onsc1ousness that merged in the organized movement against the English. All the plays written and Staged with this aim did not quite succeed. Two dramatists, Synge and Sean O’Casey, fulfilled their roinmitment and made Irish literary Renaissance proud with their contributions.

Drama, however, was the literary form that best captured the ideals of the Irish Renaissance and established Ireland's literary reputation. Read More Drama  Yeats, Lady Gregory, and playwright Edward Martyn published their Irish Literary Theatre manifesto in 1899, promising to create a national theatre for Ireland. The Irish Literary Theatre, which opened that year, was succeeded in 1902 by the Irish National Theatre Society. In 1904 the Society opened the Abbey Theatre, whose purpose was to present Irish plays about Irish subjects. The plays it produced dramatized Irish myth and history and portrayed Irish peasant life realistically.

In its first year the Irish Literary Theatre produced Yeats's The Countess Cathleen and Martyn’s realistic drama The Heather Field. The Countess Cathleen aroused controversy, especially among Catholics, because its heroine sells her soul to feed her starving tenants during a famine. One of the theatre’s biggest successes was Cathleen ní Houlihan (1902), produced in the theatre’s fourth season. Read More Drama Now accepted as written by both Lady Gregory and Yeats but originally attributed to Yeats alone, Cathleen ní Houlihan dramatized a myth of blood sacrifice that transforms a poor old woman, a symbol of Ireland, into a young girl. That same year Lady Gregory’s translation of the Ulster Cycle’s Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) provided writers of the Irish Renaissance with access to material from that saga. Lady Gregory's other nationalist play, The Rising of the Moon (1907); her comedies Spreading the News (1904) and The Workhouse Ward (1908); and her tragedy The Gaol Gate (1906) also enjoyed success at the Abbey.


References

1. W. B. Yeats, man and poet : Jeffares, A. Norman : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (n.d.). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/wbyeatsmanpoet00jeff    
2. A History Of English Drama 1660 1900 : Allardyce Nicoll : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (n.d.). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.58964
3. Bentley, Eric. "Abbey Theatre." Microsoft® Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008.

Critical Appreciation of Virginia Woolf’s "Professions for Women"



The cheapness of writing paper is, of course, the reason why women have succeeded as writers before they have succeeded in other professions”__
Virginia Woolf’s ‘Professions for Women’

 Virginia Woolf’s ‘Professions for Women’ originally presented as a paper to the Women’s Service League dwells on Woolf’s own professional experiences of female sensibility. Although she is speaking primarily of her own experiences, she feels that women in all professions face the same kind of difficulties and those women starting new courses face greater obstacles than the rest. Here, Woolf shows how it is difficult for women to come out of the age-old-prejudices that prevail in the society and also within women themselves. In this essay, she explores the challenges faced by women in pursuing a professional career.

While writing the review she discovers that if she were going to review books she has to fight with a certain phantom. Read More Essay Many of the actual barriers preventing women from becoming successful professionals had been removed by the time Woolf was making her speech but she stresses that there are important invisible and internalized obstacles which still need to be surmounted. And the phantom is a woman whom she calls ‘The Angel In The House’ stands for womanly perfection of the so called good nurtured social identity. Whenever she begins to write ‘The Angel in The House’ comes between her and her paper. In desperation she kills ‘The Angel In The House’. She feels that it is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. By and by she rids herself of ‘The Angel In The House’. Being a professional writer Woolf goes beyond the limits allotted to women. She cannot remain nice and modest. She has to be bold, forthright and open in her descriptions and criticism.

Woolf shares a strange experience in writing novels. She feels that a novelist’s chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. Read More Essay She has to induce in herself a state of continuous lethargy so that nothing breaks or disturbs the illusion in which she is living. Woolf imagines herself to be a girl sitting with a pen in her hand for minutes and for hours without dipping it in the inkpot. The image that came to her mind was the image of a fisherman lying sunk in dreams by the side of a deep lake with a rod held out over the water. She let her imagination sweep unchecked. The line raced through her fingers. Her imagination had rushed away until it dashed against something hard. She was roused from her dream. She was indeed in a state of the most acute and difficult distress. She had thought of something about the body, about the passions which she found it difficult to express as she thought, men would be shocked. She could write no more. The trance was over and her imagination could work no longer. She felt that women writers were obstructed by the extreme conventionality of other sex. Woolf acknowledges that some progress has been made in the field of economic independence but a lot more has to be done before women become truly free in every sense of the word. For example, women still have to define their true selves but this is not possible unless they are allowed to participate in all arts and professions. So she calls for collective action to end discrimination, break away from stereotypes and achieve true freedom.

 Virginia Woolf thus acquired two experiences in her professional life. The first, killing the Angel in the House and the second, telling truth about her own experience as a body. According to her, women face internal and external obstacles in their professional pursuits. Internal obstacles are a result of societal expectations and stereotypes, which limit women's potential and self-confidence. External obstacles are systemic barriers such as discrimination, unequal pay, and lack of opportunities. She had been successful in solving the first problem by killing the Angel in the House. But she does not think that he had solved the second one. Read More Essay She also doubts that any woman has solved it yet. The obstacles against her are still very formidable and yet they are very difficult to define outwardly, what is simpler than to, write stories and what obstacles are there for a woman rather than for a man? Inwardly the case is different. She has still many ghosts to fight and many obstacles to overcome. 

 Virginia Woolf next says that if there are so many impediments in literature, the freest of all professions for women then there are more obstacles for women who, for the first time, enter in the new professions.  Virginia Woolf desires to discuss all these things because women in other professions too have the same obstacles, though in different forms. To discuss and define them, Mrs. Woolf says is of great value and importance; for in this way the labour can be shared and difficulties be solved. She also thinks that the ends and aims for which they are fighting should be continually discussed, questioned and examined to ensure greater freedom for women.

The essay presents the case for women’s freedom from economic slaveryWomen need to challenge traditional gender roles to succeed in their careers. Woolf argues that women must break free from the traditional roles assigned to them and establish their own identity. By defying gender norms, women can find success in male-dominated professions. She makes a strong appeal for women’s liberation from conventional shackles. In the late Victorian and early twentieth century women had no economic independence. They were not still free to speak, to write and to think in the way they liked. They were impeded by man-made standards of womanly conduct Virginia Woolf makes a strong but bold appeal for women’s freedom from conventional shackles. No creative work can be done in such conditions. She calls upon women to break the idol of womanly perfection which she describes as the woman in the house after the title of a long poem written by Coventry Patmore. She lays stress on intellectual freedom and artistic integrity. She emphasizes the importance of economic independence by citing her own example. Unless women earn their own money, they will not be able to take their own decisions or shape their own lives. Read More Essay But while striving for economic independence women have to contend with non-economic factors as well. 

The two major obstacles that all women, including women authors, face are the conventional notion of the role and function of women and the taboo regarding the expression of their sexuality. Women must find their own voice and resist the pressure to conform. 
Woolf emphasizes the importance of women finding their own voice and speaking out against gender inequalities. She encourages women to resist the pressure to conform to societal expectations and instead pursue their passions. The idealized woman of the late Victorian age and the early twentieth century was the soft, tender, self-sacrificing domestic drudge who always catered to the needs of the men and joyfully accepted her own servility. Moreover, women were not expected to speak of or acknowledge their physical needs and desires, as this was considered highly brazen and unwomanly. Sexuality—its expression and gratification—was considered to be the exclusive domain of men as though women were completely asexual beings. 

Professional success requires perseverance and sacrifice. Woolf believes that professional success requires dedication and the willingness to make sacrifices. Women must be willing to overcome obstacles and persevere in their pursuits. Women must support each other in their professional pursuits. Woolf advocates for solidarity among women, as they can provide each other with support and encouragement. By working together, women can challenge societal norms and create more opportunities for themselves and future generations of women. Woolf urges women belonging to every profession to combat these negative stereotypes and conceptions, both externally and internally, and emerge as positive, independent individuals. While the women’s voices uttering the plights have different names, scenes, and histories, the similar language of their plights often seems more like different aspects of the same consciousness, perhaps representing the various aspects of womenfolk as a whole. 

Virginia Woolf's "Professions for Women" essay is a powerful call to action for women to challenge the obstacles and stereotypes that limit their professional pursuits. Woolf argues that women must find their own voice, challenge gender roles, and persevere in their pursuits to achieve success. By supporting each other and working together, women can create a more equitable and inclusive professional world for themselves and future generations.

Why You Must Experience Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" At Least Once In Your Lifetime?




Robert Frost based the theme of The Road Not Taken on classical comedies of our ‘choices’ and conveys complex theories of life. The poem, Frost’s finest, depends for its appeal on the mistaken identities of two sets of twins both separated in their forestry ways. The comedy ends cynically with the reunion of both sets of twins, after a bewildering series of confusions - watchful waiting. In fact, Frost makes his poem more complex when it comes that making a choice is itself the dilemma. We can well remind the famous crossroad puzzle of the Cast Away and can redeem  The Road Not Taken as an autobiography of everyman. Like that of Tagore’s verse, ‘nadir e par kahe ccharea niswas, o parete sarba suhk amar biswas’( this side of the river says that the other side is more happy)

It is a very simple looking poem with profound nuances and begins in delight and ends in wisdom. As there of course is some confusion about what Frost really meant. However, we would like to go by the simple explanation that The Road Not Taken concerns choices that we face in life and the decisions we take with a certain amount of risk. One can recapitulate on one's decision on a later date when the path has been walked - of course, with a sigh. But   Frost definitely means taking the decision is the real difference that is made.

One day, the traveler (Robert Frost representing everyman), traveling all alone, reaches a point where the road forks into two. He faces a dilemma as to which road to take to continue his journey. He is unable to decide which road to follow. He pauses for a long time, ‘And sorry he could not travel both’.  He gives a careful thought to which path he should follow. Then he decides to choose that road which seems to be less traveled: 
“And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could”
 He feels it will make all the difference to his future. He decides to save the other road for another day, thought he knows that he will never get a chance to go back to it. Later, he wishes that he had taken the other road.
  
Frost's poetry mainly reflects life in rural New England, and the language he used was the uncomplicated speech of that region. Although Frost concentrates on ordinary subject matter, he evokes a wide range of emotions, and his poems often shift dramatically from humorous tones to tragic ones. Much of his poetry  is concerned with how people interact with their environment, and though he saw the beauty of nature, he also saw its potential dangers. Frost listened to the speech in his country world north of Boston, and he recorded it. He had what he called 'The ruling passion in man ... a gregarious instinct to keep together by minding each other's business.'   Frost continued to mind his neighbours’ speech and business in his volume Mountain Interval, which included the poems The Road Not Taken,   An Old Man's Winter Night, Birches, Putting in the Seed, Snow, and A Time to Talk.

The traveler feels that after ages from now he would be telling about his decision with a sigh. He would tell how the less frequented road, and that had made all the difference in his life. Poem  describes how someone could take a risk, or take the easy way out, but mostly everyone takes the smooth grassy path, but the smart people who challenge their minds, take the rocky, bumpy path that is hard to travel and very tiring, but they keep on going through determination. He always amazes us with his rhythm and other poetic devices. He also takes a simple thought and extends it in exceedingly amazing ways that wish we could do ourselves. Frost did not say the roads were the same; they could look similar, but could not be the same as they were going in different directions - diverged. His choice, as in all our lives, was to make a decision concerning direction.  Frost presented the difficulty or making a choice in life. We cannot travel all the roads available to us. We have to make a choice. The dilemma faced by the traveler making his choice is the dilemma that we all face at some point in our life:
“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

It is a common misconception that in life we have to maintain what is commonly accepted as normality. Robert Frost challenges this. The road less travelled by is the traveler’s way of telling us that he did not accept the norm he lived beyond the limitations set by others. The only profitable point of view from which The Road Not Taken can be regarded is one that, while giving distinctness to the serious error of unclean exposure and to the frequent feebleness of ideology which reduce large portions of the creativity to tedious and helpless receptions, leaves our vision clear for the occasional glimpses of uncanny beauty that the poem discloses: knowing the unknown or seeing the unseen like that of Tennyson’s Ulysses. The absurdities, the crudities, in which Frost indulges, are almost unlimited and all but omnipresent and it is here Nature interpreted through human experience.

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