Dr. Frank's What's-it

On the language of love and other shameless caricatures

Harry's Place rocks: there has been a slew of great posts with interesting comments threads over the last couple of days. Rather than link to each of them and say "indeed," I'll just recommend starting from the top and working down.

One of the less weighty topics is a link to Fistful of Euro's summary of national stereotypes from a 19th Century British school geography textbook. In this book, the Dutch are "slow and heavy but remarkable for their cleanliness, frugality and industry;" the Italians "discreet and polite people but extremely effeminate." And the French are a "gay, active and lively people, graceful in their deportment and very polite; posessing however not an inconsiderable share of vanity." Fascinating.

Matthew Turner says this bears a "remarkable similarity to how the British tabloid press views Europe and Europeans today." I'm not sure that these particular reductive national stereotypes are all that similar to those of the present day (contemporary blanket denunciations of The French emphasize cowardice and duplicitousness over vanity, for example.) That the habit of using national caricatures in attack polemics persists to this day strikes me, indeed, as distinctly unremarkable. That this sort of thing was once seen as appropriate pedagogical material is, of course, the remarkable part: nowadays, we favor different sorts of reductionism, which will, no doubt, make our textbooks every bit as risible and arguably revealing a hundred years from now. (In some respects, of course, there's no need to wait quite that long in re: risibility, since we bowdlerize on a different basis as well; and the fruits of this can be enjoyed right now.) Anyway, it makes you wonder what the 19th century French or Dutch textbooks said about the English national character.

Once, while poking around in somebody's attic or basement somewhere or other, I came across a joke book For Young People from the first quarter of this century. I opened the book at random and found myself in the middle of several pages of Polish jokes, which had not been what I had expected. Even more astonishing, it turned out that the publishers had helpfully divided all the jokes into chapters with the headings Polish, Irish, Oriental, Swedish (yes), Catholic, Negro, etc. (I can't remember all the categories, but I do recall that, strangely perhaps, there was no Jewish chapter.) The Negro section had a particularly shocking effect, for obvious reasons. But with regard to the ethnic stuff for the most part it wasn't the content per se that produced the sensation of viewing a document from an alien out-of-whack world; the jokes were typical, pedestrian, entirely conventional ethnic joke fare (and rather insipid, too, as the sex was bowdlerized out of them.) I don't remember reading even one I hadn't heard before. No, the strangest thing about it was the very fact that it was organized in such a way for easy reference, edited for content (to satisfy the demands of their puritanism, if not ours), and presented to children for lighthearted amusement, something that would never happen nowadays.

The material (Polack jokes, Pat and Mike dialogues, etc.) still exists, of course, and everybody pretty much knows it backwards and forwards. Some of it isn't all that funny, though quite a lot of it still can be, for some reason. But we have redrawn the line between appropriateness and bad taste (or worse) where ethnic jokes are concerned, and including such humor in books for children is no longer on the same side of that line. Clearly at one time such books fell on the "appropriate" side of the line, which seems unfathomable. Equally hard to fathom is the fact that, evidently, no distinction has been drawn between the mild ethnic slurs and the (to us) far more disturbing racist ones: the "Negro jokes" are just one chapter among many. At any rate, even when you're not particularly bothered by the jokes themselves, it really is mildly disorienting and rather hard to try to imagine what it might be like to live in a cultural environment where taste and decorum are so differently defined. (There has been some attempt to "clean up" even the milder sort of joke, if I'm not mistaken. I once had a conversation with someone's kid who told me a handful of well-known Polish jokes, except that instead of "Polack," she said "silly person." I'm guessing the chain of successively discredited euphemisms sanctioned by the joke-arbiters went something like Polack-moron-silly person.)

So the national caricatures in the geography textbook are rather mild, as such things go. But in the pedagogic context, they seem utterly bizarre. And that's why they are so fascinating.

I've quoted from my copy of the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1768-1771) before. It's one of my favorite books, and one of the most interesting things about it is that it includes material that we would never think to include in an Encyclopedia. It has a lot more "attitude" than the current edition, that's for sure.

Reading that Fistful of Euros post, I was reminded of the entry for "Language." Excerpt:

It will perhaps, by some, be thought an unpardonable insult, if we do not allow the French the preference of all modern languages in many respects. But so far must we pay a deference to truth, as to be obliged to rank it among the poorest languages in Europe. -- Every other language has some sounds which can be uttered clearly by the voice: even the Italian, although it wants energy, still possesses distinctness of articulation. But the French is almost incapable of either of these beauties; for in that language the vowels are so much curtailed in the pronunciation, and the words run into one another in such a manner, as of necessity to produce an indistinctness which renders it incapable of measure or harmony...

But notwithstanding the French language labours under all these inconveniences; -- although it can neither equal the dignity or genuine politeness of the Spanish, the nervous boldness of the English, nor the melting softness of the Italian; -- although it is destitute of poetic harmony, and so much cramped in sound as to be absolutely unfit for almost every species of musical composition; -- yet the sprightly genius of that volatile people has been able to surmount all these difficulties, and render it the language most generally esteemed, and most universally spoken, of any in Europe: for this people, naturally gay and loquacious, and fond to excess of those superficial accomplishments which engage the attention of the fair sex, have invented such an infinity of words capable of expressing vague and unmeaning compliment, now dignified by the name of politeness, that, in this strain, one who uses the French can never be at a loss; and as it is easy to converse more, and really say less, in this than in any other language, a man of very moderate talents may distinguish himself much more by using this than any other that has ever yet been invented...

On these accounts the French now is, and probably will continue to be reckoned the most polite language in Europe, and therefore the most generally studied and known: nor should we envy them this distinction, if our own countrymen would not weaken and enervate their own manly language, by adopting too many of their meaningless phrases.

Practical advice, clearly, at least for the time; I'm not sure how it compares to how the British tabloid press views the French language today, though.

Posted by Dr. Frank at November 22, 2003 03:18 AM | TrackBack