高级英语PubTalkandtheKing的简要介绍.doc

The Summary of Pub Talk and the King’s English
The article describes the conversation is the most sociable of all human activities and it is an activity only of humans. The charm of conversation is that it doesn’t really start from anywhere, and no one has any idea where it will go. Conversation is not for making a point. There is no winning in conversation.
Bar conversation has its special charm. Bar friends are not deeply involved in each other’s lives, but they can have any kinds of conversation freely. One night in the bar, when the author and his companions have a conversation desultorily here and there, one of them says that the King’s English is laid down as English is a term of criticism, which becomes a focus between them and becomes a focal subject. There would be resistance in the lower classes to any attempt by an upper class to lay down rules for “English as it should be spoken.” There are language barriers between the Saxon churls and their Norman conquerors and there is a deep class rift in the culture of England after the Norman Conquest. By building their French against the Saxon peasants’ own language, the new ruling class has built a cultural barrier against him. King’s English comes into use in the 16th century, and after five centuries of growth, of tussling with the French and absorbing it, English has come into their own and become a universal language in England. Words are not themselves a reality, but only representations of it, and the King’s English is a class representation of reality. The King’s English is a model, but it shouldn’t be an ultimatum. In fact, even the most educated and literate people do not use Standard English all the time in their conversation. The bother about teaching chimpanzees how to talk is that they will probably try to talk sense and so ruin conversion.