R D Kernohan
War on words

McDonald's are rightly in trouble for not knowing the difference between a pound and five pence or (in old English) a shilling. A rather hashed defence of a silly advert which offered an alleged bargain for 'a bob', by which it meant a pound, claimed that the 'technical meaning' of a word can change over time and 'what it signifies may develop into something else'.
     As a principle that is undeniable. Think of the quick and the dead, publicans and sinners, and bachelors gay or of arts. In this case the principle did not apply. I have neither heard a pound coin called a bob nor previously seen the usage in print. The advert therefore failed the first test of style, which is that it should clearly convey meaning.
     But media people who rushed to cast the first stone at the House of Hamburger should put their own house in order. Forget for the moment the weakness of modern journalists' spelling (e.g. 'publically') and their problems with majority, amount, less, and fewer. Forgive their obsession with things iconic, which has succeeded incandescent as a good word wasted by being used too much. Forgive sports pages which say of a football manager that it's time 'for he and his assistant to move on'.  Forgive even the Herald for repeatedly using the awful word eatery, sometimes spelled eaterie. Purists loathe many modern usages, even 'have issues' with them, but still know what is meant.
     A more serious problem arises when words are used and meaning is not clear. In the coverage of the cost of involvement in Afghanistan I often see sad totals of 'casualties' which clearly refer only to those killed and exclude others who must be listed in casualty reports. I hope this is sloppiness, not attempted concealment. Nor am I sure about 'redacted'. Does it mean simple editing, conscious censoring, or something in between – some subtle process which demands a new word?
     I have to guess what is meant when told that Cadbury is (or once was) a 'pure-play confectionery company'. I read that someone or something has been 'usurped' and it means (I think) no more than that there has been a change. I also have grave doubts about modern use of the verb 'to doubt', for I sometimes don't know who doubts what about whom. Nor do I know what is meant when told that someone is 'hoping to blindside us'. And even after I delve into Greek origins and progress through medieval Church Latin I don't understand the critic who wanted Jonathan Ross to have a 'Chris Evans-like Epiphany'.
     Any living language must change and be ready to enrich itself. Scottish English is enriched when it holds on to Scots or 'dialect' words for which there is no English equivalent or only a less vigorous one. Bidie-in is better than live-in lover. And what is the English for 'fankle' as noun or verb?
     But change should enrich and diversify. It shouldn't obscure. It mustn't become ridiculous by talking of boyfriends and girlfriends of pensionable age or stilted by house-lawyers' legalism, as when an old lady hit by a car is described as being 'in collision' with it.
    
I don't blame all the usual suspects, even the prime ones in the tabloids and across the Atlantic. Tabloids are brash, banal, and insensitive in their use of language but their meaning is usually clear. I even enjoy the awful puns in the Sun, for they show sub-editors (or whatever they're called there) taking pleasure in language. I'm happy to see beasts caged, yobs nabbed, thieves nicked, pervs trapped, thugs slammed, bunglers blasted, and love-rats dumped.  It's better to write of rampaging junkies than drug-users' inappropriate behaviour. And Americanisms are not only inevitable (as they have been for at least 150 years) but inevitably increasing in number. I guess we soon forget that the better ones were once Americanisms.
     It's too soon to know which of the current wave of Americanisms will settle into British English, either as primary or additional usages. Probably all those linked to computers and other electronic devices will make it, along with many marketing ones. The Plain English Society struggles in vain against supermarkets selling so much in regular-sized packs. The BBC already allows talk of train-stations and of 'apartments' in the American sense, not the Scottish one where a two-room-and-kitchen adds up to three apartments. Most of our media allow people to meet with others and talk with them, even visit bookstores. The Radio Times is among places where 'jocks' appear with the American meaning of footballers.
     A broadsheet which I'll not name and shame had someone 'stepping up to the plate' when he ought to have playing a straight bat or strokes all round the wicket. I have also just heard a senior British officer use the expression twice in a BBC interview. While doing so I was munching through a packet of cookies which have no relation to the plain or cream varieties of Scottish bakers. Maybe after Cadbury's surrender we'll even have to reclassify Dairy Milk as candy.
     But we should be grateful for great mercies. Maybe the astonishing thing is that nearly 250 years after the loss of the American colonies and more than half a century after the break-up of the British Empire there is still an essential unity of both literary and journalistic  English – something easily confirmed by a web-check on, say, Indian, Jamaican, and post-apartheid South African papers. Some of them seem to have sounder house-styles than many British papers and parts of the BBC. Some also seem more resistant to Americanisms than we are.

The English-speaking world faces an uncertainty in which no-one has the power or capacity to impose a settlement if they wanted to. We have also to accept that styles and fashions of speech inevitably change just as they do in writing. We may drift towards a situation in which English is spoken as a first language in such varied ways that the only unity remains that of the written word: or we may realise that speaking proper, which is desirable, is not the same thing as speaking posh, which is immaterial – unless (as is happening with some upper-class styles of 'Estuary English') it becomes as slurred and slushed as less exalted dialects.
     The reaction has gone too far against 'received standard pronunciation', whether in the over-dipthonged Southern English form or the variants used elsewhere. And just as good speech has been confused with posh speech so clear speech has been confused with the unfashionable teaching of elocution, a trade I can no longer find in my phone book or yellow pages. Even the internet is sparse in what it offers, though a chap in Stirling is prepared to give voice coaching and even 'soften' my accent for a minimum of £260 + VAT.
     What I'd like, however, is neither a national elocution service nor creation of some new received pronunciation but a greater emphasis both in education and social life on the value of clear speech, preferably with enough of a structure in grammar and syntax to avoid ambiguity and confusion.
     I dread for example the commentaries on six nations' rugby. The well-merited obituaries for the peerless Bill McLaren made much of his fairness, skill in commentary, and apt or distinctive turn of phrase but not enough of the clarity of that fine Border voice. Subsequent commentators have lacked that calm clarity, and when aroused may become incomprehensible. Or compare in 'Coronation Street' the rich, clear Lancastrian voices of most of the older actors with a younger batch of gabblers. But it can be said in extenuation that they probably think acting demands they be true to life. Then listen to the vox pop inserted into even BBC Radio 4 or Radio Scotland and discover how hard to follow much real-life speech has become for people outside some geographical or social tribe.  The trouble is less with the vast range of vowel-sounds and varying emphases in regional and overseas accents than with rapidly slurred speech, ill-expressed consonants, and a drab, subdued monotone.
     The ideal situation, especially for Scotland, would be one where everyone has a clear mastery in speech and writing of a standard world language, sometimes giving it a local tinge, and also command of a robust regional language or dialect. That is probably almost too much to hope for, though in the British Isles it has been eloquently achieved in the past by many Gaelic, Welsh, and Scots speakers and it ought to be available and accessible to everyone receiving upwards of 10 years' compulsory schooling.
     At present we may be getting the worst of all worlds: insipid and slovenly usage even in the more pretentious sections of our media, decay of local languages and older dialects, and   disintegration and depreciation of spoken English, even while in a bland and functional form it becomes more and more of a world language.

R D Kernohan is a writer and broadcaster