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Let's Talk: How English Conversation Works by David Crystal - Review
Let's Talk: How English Conversation Works by David Crystal - Review
Let's Talk: How English Conversation Works by David Crystal - Review
TEXTO COMPLETO
One of the most striking, and lowering, aspects of lockdown has been the deprivation of human exchange, and
especially conversation. We can talk to our immediate families but not properly to a wider range of humanity. The
Zoom chat, with so many ordinary conversational features removed, is not the same thing at all. Conversation is
fundamental to what we think of as our being, and I don’t believe we could go on long without it.
In view of how vital it seems to be, it’s strange that we rarely consider it seriously. About its main substance —the
words used —we make all sorts of assumptions, many of which turn out to be wrong. I teach creative writing, and
one of the first things novelists have to learn is that much of the dialogue in fiction rests on absurd and unfounded
beliefs. People in life, unlike in books, don’t generally use each other’s names in speech unless they’re trying to sell
them something. Nor do they change the subject with sentences beginning ‘Anyway…’ The word is usually reserved
to cover a momentary embarrassment.
Some novelists have a naturalistic ear for dialogue, such as Henry Green in the 1930s:
‘Them girls is terrible I reckon,’ he said. ‘Trouble enough many of us ’ave had to get here without they refuse to
serve you.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s quite all right now, thank you.’ Others, such as his contemporary George Orwell, believed that
people might talk like this:
‘My dear Dorothy,’ said Mr Warburton, ‘your mind, if you’ll excuse my saying so, is in a morbid condition. No, dash it!
It’s worse than morbid; it’s downright septic. You’ve a sort of mental gangrene hanging over from your Christian
upbringing.’
People’s theories about conversational style are so impregnable, and often so entirely mistaken, that the real
substance of talk is an extraordinarily interesting subject. Someone ought to write a good book about it.
David Crystal’s study of ‘how English conversation works’ immediately demonstrates that false ideas about
English conversation aren’t limited to inept or debut novelists; they can belong to professors of linguistics too. He
begins with the belief that when people meet they say ‘Good morning’, or, later in the day, ‘Good afternoon’ or ‘Good
evening’. But they don’t. No one now says ‘Good morning’ outside a very rigidly professional context. At most you
might say ‘Morning’, but otherwise use a rich variety of greetings —‘Hey!’ ‘Darling!’ ‘Hi!’ ‘Dude!’ ‘Wotcher’ (ironic)!
‘Look at you! ‘Y’all right babe?’ (my lovely neighbour, just now) and so on. You might say ‘Good evening’ to the
maître d’ showing you to your table, but to the friends already sitting there, never.
It’s curious to make this confident point about English conversational usage without having some evidential basis.
Crystal’s main piece of support is the first chapter of The Hobbit. But even if novelists’ renderings are to be
accepted as evidence, Tolkien could not be regarded as any kind of guide to English speech (‘You are a lady
beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the Elven-tongue to tell’).
There are some very curious claims about conversational style presented here as universal or standard in English.
The ‘tag question’ —as in ‘They are revolting, aren’t they?’ —and the intensifying adverb —‘It can get fearfully dull’
—both derive from a very particular dialect in English, and may (unsuspected by Crystal) be getting rarer. It’s
surprising to read that the idea that conversations are ‘full of questions’ is ‘a myth’. Of course conversation isn’t a
catechism, but it is very common indeed to hear a series of questions answered with other questions. A sequence
DETALLES
Materia: Books
Título: Let’s Talk: How English Conversation Works by David Crystal - review
ISSN: 00386952
e-ISSN: 20596499
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