ACADEMY OF ENGLISH: who cares?

Discussing expert and personal views on the so called ‘controversy’.

By Catherine Crocker for 'The Times'



Logo for the Queen's English Society- the people that power our debate.



France, Italy and Spain get over 101 days of sun a year, compared to our 70. You don’t see complaints and debates on that, so why the huge fuss about the Academy of English?

It’s been 2 years since the Queen’s English Society website was launched: and nothing has been done about it. Surely this is enough information to prove that nobody is interested. There are already homemade gangs of ‘nit-pickers’ and ‘pedants’ who feel the need to display their disgust about the use of English, without scaring people off with a society!

I mean, this controversy provoked a best-selling book on punctuation. Is that really how sad our society is?

Arguments have been brought to our attention that the prevalence of English is making it more vulnerable to abuse than any other language. This suggests that one minute we complain that China and the US are overruling us, then the next, complaining our predominance is corrupting us. Somehow I can’t get my head around this. Texting is also an issue apparently. The use of ‘textese’ as it’s called, is causing disastrous effects on our literacy. Technological advances are inevitable in today’s age, its only logic that the use of language is going to change with this.

Where on the other hand we’re being told that words are the most important way to express thoughts, and if they are restricted it constrains free-thinkers. As well as the issue of, if we enforce a limit on the English we use, which English do we go back to - Shakespearean? Anglo-Saxon?  Each of these types of English has had an impact on the one we use today, so how do we choose which is the ‘proper’. Maybe ask the Anti-Queen’s English society, it seems they’ve had more input and support by readers and literary experts.

Jonathan Swift wrote a letter in 1712 expressing his desire for an academy of English. It shows the debate has been ongoing for nearly 300 years and we’ve had no progress. ‘Correct English’ was as hard to define then, as it is now. Isn’t it time these doctrinaires gave up? In 1985 ‘bad’ English was casually linked to crime by Lord Tebbit, that’s worse than the accent prejudices!

Jean Atchison talked about the 3 views on English language. The ‘crumbling castle’ view is the most prominent to me. It treats English like a beautiful preserved building with gargoyles and summits. However the view suggests that English was gradually assembles until it found a point of maximum magnificence in the past, but where’s this year English was at its perfection? John Simon said language should be treated like ‘parks, national forests, monuments, and public utilities ... available for properly respectful use but not for defacement or destruction.’ And that’s an expert.

In my opinion, the idea of an Academy of English sounds enticing for someone with an interest in English like myself. We can’t rely on the unreliable Microsoft to correct our mistakes all the time, and what we perceive as ‘proper’ English is important - even if we just know it but don’t use it. But when you look deeper into the possibilities and realities of our language, its difficult define ‘proper’, it’s difficult to make people listen, and most of all it’s difficult to enforce!

The first academy, the L'Académie française was set up in 1635, and the latest was the Reale Academia d'Italia in 1943. If the Academy of English is going to be set up, i think we’re a bit behind schedule.