Living in a Multilingual World (The One About Words and Their Meanings)

The word “radical” has an interesting history. It’s a term that, in the political sense, is the equivalent of “reform” or “reformist”. Hence when you say “radical reforms”, you’re indulging in a bit of pleonasm. However, whether you’re being redundant or not, “radical” is one of those words we need nowadays, especially to separate the wheat from the chaff at Westminster. Michael Gove’s educational reforms are not radical, whether they are a pleonasm or not, they’re stupid.

The reason why I have been musing over the term “radical” is that it’s one of those words whose meaning used to evoke images of someone advocating deep economic, political and social transformation. Very rarely did it refer to extremists, even if some radicals did make use of non-conventional, unorthodox methods to achieve their aims. I don’t mean to sound conservative (small “c”) or precious about language – English or Spanish, or both. Languages change, that’s what they do. They evolve over time. But sometimes I am puzzled as to how some terms lose some of their meaning.

Take the word “gay”, for instance. No longer does this word mean “having or showing a merry, lively mood”. No, it either means “homosexual”, or – and this is the coup de grâce – “lame, rubbish”. It was former Radio 1 DJ and misogynist-in-chief at the BBC, Chris Moyles, who made use of the latter meaning more often. Why? How do you go from being cheerful to being stupid? At the moment I am about to finish Jerusalem, a wonderful, doorstopper of a book about the history and culture of that beautiful city. One I would like to visit someday. The text is full of quotes and references to times and people gone by. Some of the passages talk about “gay this” and “gay that”, always conveying a sense of joy and happiness. It’s hard to read these sentences without feeling annoyed at the glib use of the word “gay” nowadays.

Of course, sometimes linguistic developments do have a deep social effect. In Cuba the equivalent of the word “millionaire” – “millonario” - was given a revamp after the triumph of the Revolution. It no longer meant a person who had millions stashed away in the bank, but someone who went the extra mile on the sugar cane field and whose labour resulted in "millions" of tonnes of Cuba's former main economic staple. The impact this change had on our collective psyche was that in a very short time we began to see farmers and other country folk in a different light and as a consequence accorded them more respect.

Back to the word “radical” and one of the ways it has been used recently is as an adjective to describe the actions of the two men who killed Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, London a fortnight ago. Whilst I agree with the noun to which the word “radical” has been annexed, “fundamentalist”, I think it’s misleading to think that these two murderers had social, economic and political reforms in mind. To me a radical person is s/he who seeks a thorough reorganisation of society, the wo/man who wants to eliminate privilege and inequality. I am all for linguistic evolution and forward-thinking when it comes to languages. Sometimes, though, it is better to call a spade a spade. What those two men did in the streets of London was not radical. It was savage, cruel and inhuman.

© 2013

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 9^th June at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

According to historical records, El Libertador Simón Bolívar, a military and political leader who played a key role in Latin America’s independence wars against Spain's colonial rule in the early 19^th century, came from a wealthy family. From a similar background sprang John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who, as US president in the early 1960s, oversaw rapid GDP growth in an ailing economy. Equally, Karl Marx, economist and intellectual was born into a well-off middle class family.

Besides their liberal views, the three men mentioned above all shared a common denominator: their rich backgrounds. They, like many other progressive world leaders and historical figures, came from a class that was not meant to give the great unwashed a second thought.

But give it a second thought they did. In the case of Karl Marx, it was his theory on labour, its relation to capital and how the latter affected the proletariat that gave rise to the socialist ideals that culminated in the Russian revolution in 1917.

The story of the middle- (or sometimes upper-) class intellectual who sides with the poor is quite well known. Many have trodden the same path and many more will. Under the belief that everyone in society should be treated equally, well-heeled folk stand up for their working class brothers and sisters.

Do we need them, though? The question is relevant in 21^st century Britain, especially in times when social mobility has stalled and economic stagnation has taken root.

Karl Marx came from a middle-class family but sided with the poor

As a lifestyle to aspire to, the middle-class might occasionally act like a yardstick for those with ambitions and the drive to improve their chances and those of their children’s. But as a measure of the free market theory that suggests that lower taxes for the rich contribute to an increase of living standards for the poor, the middle-class would not be good evidence. For a good example of this, go back to 2008 and see where the economic crisis originated and who caused it.

Of course, the middle-class brings with it a wealth of knowledge and resources in the struggle against the status quo to which the working class has not got much access. Many times it’s the petit bourgeoisie the one with the long-term vision. That this capacity to anticipate future developments and plan responses to them might not be grounded on the same reality lived by Joe and Joanna Public doesn’t take away the contribution that the middle class has made throughout history. They are the ones who have the ideology, who write the theories and who on occasions can see the bigger picture. We do have to take into account, though, that when, for instance, Bolívar emerged as a charismatic military strategist in early 19^th century, the image he had in his mind was Napoleon’s coronation in Paris. That event was a world away from the plight of the indigenous peoples in South America.

However, sometimes when I read articles in newspapers and magazines they seem to convey the message that were it not for the middle-class, working class folk wouldn’t be able to look after themselves. The language in which this type of opinion is usually formulated can be thought of as patronising and insulting. For some the working class has become the perfect excuse to decry the state of Britain today. From tabloids laying into alleged “scroungers” and single mothers from council estates to forward-thinking broadsheets asking covertly: “Why can’t they be more like us?”, everyone has their favourite story to tell about those at the bottom of the ladder. Except for those at the bottom of the ladder.

We live in depressing and exciting times. Depressing because the economy has stalled for a good five years now and the current chancellor’s plan of “cut, cut, cut” is not working. On top of that he hasn’t got a plan B either. Exciting, because I sense a political change in the air. This time, though, this change is coming from the bottom up, as the Los Indignados movement in Spain has shown.

In his famous novel, 1984, Orwell explains how the middle class uses the lower class to topple the upper class and thus become the new ruling class themselves. It happened in Russia (despite Marx’s socialist influence); it happened and continues to happen in Latin America where radical, revolutionary movements usually morph into dictatorial ones with a new and loyal middle-class joined to the government by the hip. It also happens in the UK where the three main parties are mainly made up of members (including the Primer Minister) who have never held blue-collar jobs in their lives and have almost no experience of what living as a working class person is like.

Against this background, the only good outcome of the current economic crisis is a levelling of the playing field in which the middle-class can’t claim to have the upper hand or be the trail-blazer anymore in its struggle against the class system. Whether the working class can fill up that void remains to be seen, but I feel optimistic. I really do.

© 2013

Next Post: “Living in a Multilingual World”, to be published on Wednesday 5^th June at 11:59pm (GMT)