Unit 62

LA COMMONWEALTH. LA DIVERSIDAD CULTURAL. EL DESARROLLO

DE VARIEDADES LINGÜÍSTICAS. INFLUENCIAS Y

MANIFESTACIONES INTERCULTURALES. LAS NOVELAS DE E.M.

FORSTER, DORIS LESSING Y NADINE GORDIMER.

______________________________________________________________________

1. The Commonwealth

2. Cultural Diversity

3. Linguistic Varieties

4. Manifestations on Literature

 Edward Morgan Forster

 Doris Lessing

 Nadine Gordimer

5. Educational Implications

6. Conclusion

7. Bibliography

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The topic I have chosen for my exposition is topic 62. The

Commonwealth. Cultural diversity. The development of Linguistic Varieties.

Intercultural influences and manifestations. The novels of E.M. Foster, Doris

Lessing and Nadine Gordimer.

In order to provide a clear structure for my essay I have divided it into

seven points. The first point deals with the Commonwealth its origins and its

structure nowadays. This point will bring us to point two, cultural diversity and

to point three, the development of Linguistic Varieties. In point four we will see

how this cultural and linguistic varieties dealt with in points two and three

influence English language and culture, and we will see that reflected in

literature, through the novels of E.M Forster, Doris Lessing and Nadine

Gordimer. Finally, I will connect this topic to the curriculum and see how this

topic can be dealt with in the classroom. In point six, I will make a conclusion

and finally I will offer a list of the bibliography used to prepare this essay,

which will be our last point, point seven.

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And what is the Commonwealth?

The Commonwealth is an organization consisting of the United

Kingdom and most of the countries that used to be part of the British Empire. It

has its roots in the 19th century when the British Empire began to disintegrate.

After the WWII, the United Kingdom was not able to mantain its power on the

colonies, which had been increasing their nationalistic feelings and rebellions.

Some of the colonies gained different degrees of independence from the

motherland and a new form of ruling was establish [deeply studied in topic 49].

However, the British monarch remained the official ‘head of the

Commonwealth’. It has no constitution or charter, but the heads of

governments of its member states hold Commonwealth Heads of Government

Meetings every two years. Nowadays the Commonwealth is an association of

53 independent states consulting and co-operating in the common interests of

their peoples and in the promotion of international understanding and world

peace. The Commonwealth has 2 billion citizens, about 30% of the world’s

population, are drawn from the broadest range of faiths, races, cultures and

traditions, and represent a sixth (1/6) of the world’s land area. The

Commonwealth even holds its own Games every four years, similar to the

Olympic ones, and they have the Commonwealth Day. At the beginning it was

celebrated on 24th May, Queen Victoria’s birthday, but since 1958, it is on the

second Monday of March.

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But how does the Commonwealth affect on the cultural diversity? In a clear

way, for sure.

We should bear in mind the enormous cultural diversity inside the

Commonwealth. Before the colonisation of those territories by the British

people, their peoples had their own language and culture. And although the

Commonwealth countries now share a language and British style institutions –

such as Educational, Legal and Government –the Commonwealth is formed by

countries having very different backgrounds, cultural, religious and economic.

We only have to have a look at its members to realize how apart they are, for

instance Canada, India, Nigeria, Malaysia, Australia, Jamaica or Singapore.

Symbol of the Commonwealth used in its flag.

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With this idea in mind, we are going to study some of the main linguistic

varieties of the English language in the Commonwealth member states.

These linguistic varieties include changes of vocabulary and phonetics

mainly, in the English spoken in Australia and New Zealand, Canada, India

and Africa.

We will leave apart American English (GA) in spite of being the biggest

and most ingfluential variety because of two reasons: this linguistic variety is

studied deeply in topic 66 and the United Stated of America has never been part

of the Commonwealth.

Even though Australia and New Zealand are relatively separated from

each other the English spoken in both islands is quite similar, namely with

cockney accent, especially in the quality of some diphtongs and vowels: on my

own [on mi on], luck [luk], high [hei]. This cockney accent associated with the

urban metropolis of the southeast of England may be explained through the

first settlers came from the lower classes of England. They have slower rhythms

and flatter intonationation than Received Pronunciation (R.P.), studied in topic

9. As far as vocabulary is concerned the settlers had to find names to a new

reality of flora and fauna and sometimes borrowed words from the aborigines

or from Maori in New Zealand: ‘kangaroo, boomerang’. But they preferred

some adaptations, affecting both form and meaning, like ‘ropeable’ that means

‘angry’, originally applied to cattle so wild that they could be only controlled by

roping.

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In India and Pakistan only a small proportion of population speaks

English, and they aim at speaking the RP variety. However, because of the

influence of their own languages, they pronounce an epethetic [e] or [i] before

consonantal clusters beginning with s-, for example ‘sk-, sp-, st-‘, ‘space’

[ispeis]. The consonants ‘t, d, l, r’ suffer a retroflexion and ‘v’ and ‘w’ are not

distinguished. Native culture also influences some usual expressions such as in

greetings ‘bow my forehead’ or ‘fall at your feet’. In vocabulary, English

language has borrowed plenty of words: ‘jungle, nirvana, curry, cashmere,

polo, rupee, bungalow’ and so on.

English in South Africa has acquire elements especially from Dutch and

its South-African development, namely Afrikaans. In pronunciation, South-

African English tends to omit consonants at the end of a word, for instance

‘text’ [teks]; it has also a higher pitch and it modifies some vowels, such as in

`Ben’ [bin], pen [pin], cab [cз:b]. It has contributed with vocabulary such as

‘commando, apartheid, veldt, trek or Boers’. Most of Afrikanderisms are only

understandable in South Africa, being meaningless for other English dialects:

‘bittong’ (strips of dried meat), ‘qogga’ (insect), ‘au’ (fellow, guy).

Finally, Canadian English. This linguistic variety is mostly American

(GA), due to the strong American influence on Canada in many cultural aspects

like cinema, television or literature. Perhaps the most significant difference is

that Canadian English is a non-rhotic accent, i.e. there is no distinction between

long and short vowels and, then, words like ‘shot’ and ‘short’ are identically

pronounced.

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But...how all these cultural, political and linguistic varieties are reflected on

literature? How did they influence upon literature?

Let examine three main authors and their most relevant works: E.M. Forster,

Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer.

Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) was born in London as the

son of an architect, who died before his only child was two years

old. He attended King’s College, Cambridge, where he met

members of the later formed Bloomsbury Group. After he graduated from

Cambridge, he travelled Italy, Greece and spent three years in Alexandria

during WWI working as a civilian officer. Then, he visited India twice, when

Britain’s control over India was complete and some revolts had begun.

Regarding his style, except for A Passage to India –his main novel-, it is

said that his plots are melodramatic and improbable, an omniscient narrator has

full control over the characters, interpreting their motives and actions,

introducing moral judgements and generally guiding the reader to like or

dislike particular characters.

His major works are:

- Howard’s End

- Where Angels Fear to Tread

- The Longest Journey

- A Room with a View

- Maurice: published posthumoustly a year after his death

but written in 1914 with an open homosexual theme.

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A Passage to India differs from Forster’s other major works in its clear

political content, as the novel deals with the political occupation of India by the

British, a colonial domination that ended in 1947, after the publication of

Forster’s text. The novel is an unkind portrayal of the relationship between the

Indians and the Anglo-Indians, the way in which the Anglo-Indians ignored

and mistreated the Indians, and produced a strong impact on general public

opinion at his time. It addresses complex human relations and the tragedy lies

in the breakdown of communication both between races and between

individuals because of what had happened at the Marabar Caves, which is left

unresolved. The passage to India makes reference to the construction of the

Suez Canal connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, Europe to Asia,

Britain to India. Among all the characters it is only Mrs Moore who is capable of

crossing religious and intellectual boundaries, to grasp the truth of human

existence because she becomes a passage of cultures and religions. Even strong

friendships, like that of Fielding and Aziz, break down under the pressure

exerted on both sides. And as Aziz states: “No, not yet... No, not there”.

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Now, let talk about Doris Lessing.

Doris Lessing (1919-) was born in Persia (now Iran), being her

parent both British. Her family moved to Southern Africa where she

spent her childhood on her father’s farm in Southern Rhodesia

(now Zimbawe). She lived in Rhodesia until she was 30 and, when her second

marriage ended, she moved to London and settled there as a full-time writer.

She tried to reflect confusion and puzzlement on British in contact with native

inhabitants.

Among her major works, we can include:

- The Golden Notebook, which identified her with the femenist

movement.

- Going Home

- Under My Skin

- Life in Africa, the last three are autobiographical novels.

But her most important novel when dealing with the British Empire and

the Commonwealth is maybe The Grass is Singing (1950). In it she explores

the complacency and shallowness of the white colonial society in Southern

Africa. The main theme of this novel is the great taboo of colour which

represents the barrier between the black and white races. It deals with the

mistreatment towards the black servants, the superior role of white people, a

hysterical racism that shows us how fragile and shaky is the hold which the

whites insist on having Africa. Moses’ action, the black servant, in

murdering Mary is simply an exhibition of the control which he exerts over

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her and in general which the black native population have in their own

country still.

At the present, Doris Lessing still lives in London and is now widely

regarded as one of the most important post-war writers in English. Some

evidence of that is the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature she won in

2001. Her last book is The Cleft, published in 2007.

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At last, we will focus on Nadine Gordimer.

Nadine Gordimer (1923-) was born into a well-off family in

South Africa outside Johannesburg. As a child, Gordimer

witnessed how the white minority increasingly weakened the

rights of the black majority.

Then, her fiction deals with the damaging effects of oppressive laws upon the

human potential of white South-Africans.

Her major novels and collections of short stories are:

- Face to Face

- The Soft Voice of the Serpent

- The Conservationist

Yet, the novel July’s People depicts the confusion in human relations between

people belonging to different cultures. In this novel a white liberal couple and

their black servant, July, gradually find not only that their psychological roles

are becoming reversed but also that all the confortable assumptions on which

their former lives and relationships had been based on were in fact falsified by

the apartheid political, social and economic system.

In short, Ms. Gordimer rose to world fame for her novels and short stories

that stunned the literary world and made her win the Nobel Prize for Literature

in 1991. She was a founding member of Congress of South African Writers, and

even at the height of the Apartheid Regime, she never considered going into

exile. Her lastest work was Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black, a short story

collection published in 2007.

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And how can we apply all these contents into a classroom?

We, as teachers, should teach our students why English is spread around

the world and encourage them to learn English because of its importance, and

the socio-cultural awareness of English speaking world. We can, for instance,

work on a webquest about the Commonwealth, and motivate them by the use

of computers. We may also watch partially some films related to the subject,

such as “The Constant Gardener”, based on John Le Carré’s novel (2001), and

settled in Kenia. Another way when dealing with literature is reading a book

review, for example that of A Passage to India, or reading the bibliography of

Doris Lessing or Nadine Gordimer and discuss about it. As a cross-curricular

theme we might show the analogy between the British and Spanish Empires

and their consequences, the Commonwealth in the subject of History.

In conclusion, we have just studied the beginning of the British Empire

and its consequences, the Commonwealth and the birth of new linguistic

varieties of the English language. Besides, how these consequences are reflected

on the English literature and to set an example, here we have analysed the

novels of EM Forster, Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer. And finally, we

have provided with some activities to be carried out in the class about this

topic.

The bibliography used to develop this topic is:

www.thecommonwealth.org

English Literature and Thought in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, UNED

The Norton Anthology of English Literature

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