The Evolution of Beauty reveals the true power of sexual attraction – New Statesman

Perhaps, with the ascension of Ruth Davidson to political superstardom and the glorification of Sir Walter Scott on current Scottish banknotes (south of the border, were going for Jane Austen on our tenners), we will all revisit Ivanhoe. The story, youll recall, is set during the reign of the Lionheart King, who is away on crusade business, killing Muslims by the thousand. Like the good Christian monarch he is.

Scotts narrative has a prelude. A Saxon swineherd, Gurth, is sitting on a decayed Druid stone as his pigs root in the dirt. Along comes his mate Wamba, a jester. The two serfs chat. How is it, Gurth wonders, that swine when it reaches the high tables of their masters is pork (Fr porc); cow becomes beef (Fr boeuf); and sheep turns into mutton (Fr mouton)?

The reason, Wamba explains (no fool he), is 1066. Four generations have passed but the Normans are still running things. They have normanised English and they eat high on the hog. How did pig become pork? In the same way as minced beef sandwich, in my day, became Big Mac.

Ivanhoe should be the Brexiteers bible. Its message is that throwing off the Norman Yoke is necessary before Britain can be Britain again. Whats the difference between Normandy and Europa? Just 900 or so years. Scott makes a larger point. Common language, closely examined, reflects where real power lies. More than that, it enforces that power softly but subversively, often in ways we dont notice. Thats what makes it dangerous.

Weve thrown off the Norman Yoke but it remains, faintly throbbing, in the archaeology of our language. Why do we call the place parliament and not speak house? Is Gordon Ramsay a chef or a cook? Do the words evoke different kinds of society?

Matthew Engel is a journalist at the end offour decades of deadline-driven, high-quality writing. He is now at that stage oflife when one thinks about it all in his case, the millions of words he has tapped out. What historical meaning was ingrained in those words? It is, he concludes, not the European Union but America that we should be fearful of.

The first half of his book is a survey of the historical ebbs and flows of national dialect across the Atlantic. In the 18th century the linguistic tide flowed west from the UK tothe US. When the 20th century turned, it was the age of Mid-Atlantic. Now, its all one-way. We talk, think and probably dream American. Its semantic colonialism. The blurb (manifestly written by Engel himself) makes the point succinctly:

Are we tired of being asked to take theelevator, sick of being offered fries andtold about the latest movie? Yeah. Have we noticed the sly interpolation of Americanisms into our everyday speech? Its a no-brainer.

One of the charms of this book is Engel hunting down his prey like a linguistic witchfinder-general. He is especially vexed by the barbarous locution wake-up call. The first use he finds is in an ice hockey report in the New York Times in 1975. Horribile dictu. By the first four years of the 21st century the Guardian was reporting wake-up calls some real, most metaphorical two and a half times a week. The Guardian! What more proof were needed that there is something rotten in the state ofthe English language?

Another bee in Engels bonnet is the compound from the get-go. He tracks it down to a 1958 Hank Mobley tune called Git-Go Blues. And where is that putrid locution now? Michael Gove, then Britains education secretary, used it in a 2010 interview on Radio 4. Unclean! Unclean!

Having completed his historical survey, and compiled a voluminous dictionary of Americanisms, Engel gets down to business. What does (Americanism alert!) the takeover mean?

Is it simply that we are scooping up loan words, as the English language always has done? We love Babel; revel in it. Ponder a recent headline in the online Independent: Has Scandi-noir become too hygge for its own good? The wonderful thing about the English language is its sponge-like ability to absorb, use and discard un-English verbiage and still be vitally itself. Or is this Americanisation what Orwell describes in Nineteen Eighty-Four as Newspeak? Totalitarian powers routinely control independent thinking and resistance to their power by programmatic impoverishment of language. Engel has come round to believing the latter. Big time.

In its last pages, the book gets mad as hell on the subject. Forget Europe. Britain, and young Britain in particular, has handed over control of its culture and vocabulary to Washington, New York and Los Angeles. It is, Engel argues, self-imposed serfdom:

A country that outsources the development of its language the language it developed over hundreds of years is a nation that has lost the will to live.

Britain in 2017AD is, to borrow an Americanism, brainwashed, and doesnt know it or, worse, doesnt care. How was American slavery enforced? Not only with the whip and chain but by taking away the slaves native language. It works.

Recall the front-page headlines of 9 June. Theresa on ropes, shouted the Daily Mail. She was hung out to dry, said the London Evening Standard. Stormin Corbyn, proclaimed the Metro. These are manifest Americanisms, from the metaphor hanging out to dry to the use of Stormin the epithet applied to Norman Schwarzkopf, the victorious US Gulf War commander of Operation Desert Storm.

These headlines on Theresa Mays failure fit the bill. Her campaign was framed, by others, as American presidential, not English prime ministerial. But the lady herself ispure Jane Austen: a vicars daughter whose naughtiest act was to run through a field of wheat. She simply couldnt do the hail to the chief stuff. Boris, the bookies odds predict, will show her how that presidential stuff should be strut. He was, ofcourse, born American.

Engels book, short-tempered but consistently witty, does a useful thing. It makes us listen to what is coming out of our mouths and think seriously about it. Have a nice day.

John Sutherlands How Good Is Your Grammar? is published by Short Books

Thats the Way It Crumbles: the American Conquest of English Matthew Engel Profile Books, 279pp, 16.99

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The Evolution of Beauty reveals the true power of sexual attraction - New Statesman