Robert Sharp

Pupil Barrister

Category: Diary (Page 146 of 300)

Things that happen to me, or things I do

Hindi versus English

4 October 2010 / / 0 Comments

Last Thursday was International Translation Day, and I spent a little bit of time at a translation conference, hosted by English PEN and the Free Word Centre. Plenty of rabble-rousing for more international fiction to be translated into English. Our Director Jonathan Heawood did a great job noting the key points on Twitter, under the hashtag #ITD.
We know that the use language can be ideological. My Welsh grandmother told a story about how my great-grandmother was punished at school for speaking Welsh in the playground… by teachers for whom Welsh was the native tongue: an act of class oppression, for sure. At the opposite end of the spectrum, South Africa’s Constitution provides for eleven official languages. It is a clear attempt to negate previous forms of oppression-through-language (perhaps at the price of confusion and cohesion?).
Last week I watched an interview with Bollywood superstars Priyanka Chopra and Ranbir Kapoor on a programme called Buzz of the Week. It was a very casual and undemanding piece of promotional puffery on a big red sofa, but the two actors different approach to language was striking. Priyanka insisted in answering all questions in English, even those that were asked mainly in Hindi. Meanwhile, Ranbir spoke nothing but Hindi. This was odd – both are clearly bilingual and laughed at each others’ banter – and I assume they are native Hindi speakers, yet both steadfastly refused to respond to the other in the same language!  I am told that this has an ideological component too:  Priyanka was “showing off” and putting on airs; while Ranbir was trying to be more down-to-earth.
However, what really puzzled me was the interviewer, who jumped between Hindi and English with no apparent pattern – some clauses in one language, some in another.  Moreover, the phrases she was using were fairly simple: It was not as if she was forced to use English for a complicated concept for which there was no Hindi equivalent.  What was going on there?

Priyanka Chopra, English speaker

Priyanka Chopra, English speaker

Crowdsourcing Clegg Commentary

21 September 2010 / / 3 Comments

One perk of working for English PEN at the Free Word Centre is the annual festival, which includes the welcoming of a poet-in-residence.  Last year we had Ray Antrobus and Joshua Idehen dropping the rhymes. This year Kate Fox has been reciting poems to us at our desks.  Under the alternym Kate Fox News, she quickly writes and publishes poems about current affairs, such as the Pope’s visit and the party conferences.
Kate recited for us an experimental poem she wrote yesterday entitled “Nick Clegg’s Conference Speech Remixed“.  She has spliced some of Clegg’s soundbites together with realtime Twitter commentary.

Just imagine how different our country will be.
Not exactly a vision thing
Stick with us
It wasn’t a bad speech
Stick with us
Looks all so sincere
Stick with us
We’re stuck with U

I like this format.  For one, it includes a random, crowd-sourced element.  It is surprising how often the act of yeilding some control of your content to The Cloud or The Rabble yeilds something true and pleasing – Cybraphon and FOUND are the arch mongers of this type of art.  I also like the juxtaposition of the primary source material – the speech – with the commentary.  A poem that could not have been created before social media tools became ubiquitous.

"Psychosis" as a term of abuse

20 September 2010 / / 9 Comments

On Twitter, I have been discussing the use of mental health terms in political speech with the journalist Beatrice Bray.  In recent weeks, Guardian cartoonists Martin Rowson and Steve Bell have both used the term ‘psychotic’ to describe political figures in negative terms.  Beatrice says this is wrong and that is marginalises people who are actually clinically diagnosed with psychosis.
On the one hand, I think this is a case of ‘useful’ political correctness.  First, I’ve said before that a respect for names and labels, of people, groups or cities, is one of my tenets of useful and persusive speech.  Free speech campaigners always reserve the right to offend… but when we do, we are usually referring to the right to offend the people we are talking about!  What Beatrice is complaining of in this case, is that other people – those with an actual mental illness – are the ones being hurt in the cross-fire.  And I have sympathy with her contention that the ‘hurt’ caused is a very real social marginalisation, rather than just ‘hurt feelings’.
On the other hand, I cannot shake a feeling at the back of my mind, a sense that Rowson and Bell and others who use mental health terminology, are in fact using the words as metaphors.
Often, the term employed as a metaphor is not always used properly.  ‘Spastic‘ was often used to convey mental deficiencies when in fact it refers medically to a motor/physical illness; and schizophrenia means delusional and disorganised, not split-personality.
However, I think Rowson and Bell are at least getting their metaphors straight.  They seek to describe the Conservatives’ policies as being dangerously out-of-touch with reality.  They reach into our vocabularies for a word that describes such trait… and often, the word ‘psychotic’ fits the bill.  We all know that David Cameron does not actually have a clinical mental illness… but the term seems the perfect metaphor for his political tactics (as least to a liberal lefty).
So, while many will consider the word extreme, they nevertheless know that it is an accurate metaphor for the concepts under discussion.  Does that necessarily translate into harm against people with a clinical psychosis?  Thoughts and opinions welcomed.

Who Can Reclaim Derogratory Words?

17 September 2010 / / 2 Comments

The PCC have upheld the complaint made by TV presenter Clare Balding against the Sunday Times.  In July, the critic AA Gill called her a “dyke on a bike”, which the PCC agreed was a form of discrimination.

In addition, the newspaper drew attention to two organisations called Dykes on Bikes (an American lesbian motorcycling movement; and a UK-based cycling movement) whose members had reclaimed the word “dyke” as an empowering, not offensive, term. It argued that an individual’s sexuality should not give them an “all-encompassing protected status”. …
In this case, the Commission considered that the use of the word “dyke” in the article – whether or not it was intended to be humorous – was a pejorative synonym relating to the complainant’s sexuality. The context was not that the reviewer was seeking positively to “reclaim” the term, but rather to use it to refer to the complainant’s sexuality in a demeaning and gratuitous way.

This reminds me of an interesting video blog I watched recently by Jay Smooth of the Ill Doctrine. In it, he makes the pithy point that, in general, “if you are not the original subject of an insult, you can’t be the one to reclaim it.”  This seems a sensible rule of thumb to me.

This reclaiming of offensive words relates to david Foster Wallace’s discussions around dialect.  He pointed out that words in opne dialect – for example, ‘Nigga’ in Black Urban English – is very different from using the ‘N-word’ in other contexts.  This should be the put-down to idiots like AA Gill who are deliberately offensive and then try and cover their tracks by wailing “but other people use it!”

Qu’ran burning and America's moral plummet

9 September 2010 / / 0 Comments

Just as I was mulling the idea of writing a blog-post on Liberal Conspriacy about the stupid Koran-burning event planned at a church in Florida, Dave Osler gazumps me with a lucid take.  As a campaigner for PEN, the idea of book-burning presents a particular conundrum: The aborrence of the act, versus the right to free expression.  I think Dave’s final paragraph nails the argument:

But Dove World Outreach Centre do not exercise state power. For much the same reasons as al Muhajiroon should not be banned from demonstrating at the funeral processions of squaddies and the English Defence League should not be banned from the streets of British cities, the lesser evil is to tolerate its cretinous intolerance.

Earlier, Dave dismisses Heinrich Heine’s quote (“wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings”) as being a soundbite.  I would not be so glib.  Reading the hysterical comments over the so-called ‘Ground-Zero Mosque’ from prominent and elected US politicians, I fear some particularly nasty events may unfold later this year.
The rise of fascism and other dictatorships is often cited as an excuse to regulate free speech.  “If only we could have stopped Hitler giving speeches” goes the argument, “we would have prevented Nazism.”  That is one way of looking at it, but such an approach is unsophisticated and leads to a fascism of its own.  The proper response, when rabble-rousing turns to vitriol turns to hate-speech turns to incitement… is counter-speech.  If demagogues threaten division and hatred, then others in power need to refute them as forcefully as possible. Democracy’s core values, as embodied in our concept of human rights, are always under attack.  It is when ‘cretinous intolerance’ is are inadequately defended that the moral fall begins.
Regarding the Cordoba Initiative controversy, those who should be standing up to the bigotry are often staying silent, or worse, pandering to the mob.  For example, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, in a close re-election battle with a Palin-style politican in Arizona, chose to pander.  President Obama’s response, while initially strong, was blunted by clarifications and spin.  Only Michael Bloomberg, major of New York, has taken a stand on principle.  The different responses of these three men to this moral challenge is clearly indicative of their very different electorates,  The dark side of democracy threatens the light.

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