Inarticulacy in the Land of

Shakespeare
Jean-Claude Junkers aside was intended
partly in jest, and partly as a provocation:
why indeed has English lost its
transformative force in the Brexit campaign
and the 2017 British election?

At the root of the answer is a lack of

awareness of the purposes language is
meant to fulfill. This in turn stems from
insufficient close analysis of how it is in fact
used in the nitty-gritty of daily life.

There are two possibilities, broadly: one, to

speak words which you have downloaded
from your memory bank of the meanings
those words have; or, second, to use words
creatively, to set up new possibilities in
thought which can then be mirrored in new
realities which are imagined.

Of the two, the first is used for routine

speaking and writing; the second is more
privileged and unusual. People habitually
pass between these two registers although
they are more than that: perhaps meta-
registers would be a better term without
noticing that they are doing so.

A political speech at the level of Junkers

certainly rearranges facts in new ways and,
although probably treading well-worn
linguistic paths, albeit (as we saw) in
French, does attempt to come up with
something just a little new.

On the British side, however, the

government, in its figurehead of the Prime
Minister, speaks in clichs and worn-out
phrases, with much repetition. It is not so
much meaningless, as denying the
possibility of all meaning. If this is not
Kafka-esque, I do not know what is.

How did we as a nation get to such a point

where we do not find this odd? Has public
speaking become so rare that we can no
longer recognize and cherish it? Worse
have we developed a view of life so
nihilistic that we are no longer looking for
any meaning in it beyond what is necessary
to satisfy our material wants?

All the bluster of Brexit is tuned to that

frequency: when, eventually, it delivers
whatever it is supposed to (people have
long ago lost track of that) even then it will
do nothing for our spiritual morale and our
inner life. The Prime Minister would not
know what these were if they jumped out of
the pew; in spite of her much-publicized
membership of that most hypocritical and
linguistically compromised of all bodies,
saving perhaps the North Korean
parliament the Anglican Church.

Mr Junker can be entitled to his little joke;

and while there is still time, we can reflect
on the shallow, meaningless folly of our
impoverished semantic life, and in the
name of the great literature for which these
isles are famous: Nu sculon herigean
heofonrices weard (Now we must praise the
guardian of the heaven-kingdom).

A little recognition of the fantastic heritage

which we have lost or are in danger of
losing and forgetting might bring us to our
senses, and save us from an even more
empty and meaningless future than that
which without an audible murmur of
well-articulated protest from anyone
significant seems to be throttling the
vibrancy and inner life of United kingdom
PLC.