#Culture » There's nothing wrong with Americanisms: it's management-speak that is the enemy of English Comments Feed [p?c1=2&c2=6035736&cv=2.0&cj=1] Culture RSS Feed -- [ImageHandler.ashx_.jpeg] There's nothing wrong with Americanisms: it's management-speak that is the enemy of English By Allan Massie Literature Last updated: May 29th, 2012 -- Cupcakes? Or fairy-cakes? Who cares? A study of childrenâs writing by the Oxford University Press suggests that our language is being Americanised. Of course English as spoken here and as spoken in the USA have always played off each other â understandably â and the influence of American films and, in the case of children and adolescents, American comics has been noticed for a long time. Orwell was writing about it in the 1930s. Sometimes of course what is regarded â with disapproval? â as American usage turns out to be something once usual in English as spoken or written here. One example is the American habit of saying âI guessâ where we might say âI thinkâ. To anyone who objects to this, you should quote Chaucer, who used âI guessâ in the American style. The examples of Americanisation culled by the researchers from OUP look pretty thin. Children apparently now write about cupcakes rather than fairy-cakes. Well, apart from the fact that cupcakes (or cup-cakes, as Chambers English Dictionary has it) are nothing new, I donât think they are the same as fairy-cakes, which, as I remember, are little sponge-cakes which have a butter-cream topping with a slice of sponge inserted in it at an angle. If children write about a âtuxedoâ rather than a âdinner jacketâ (and presumably think of a DJ as a disc-jockey rather than a garment), one may concede that this is an example of an American usage replacing a British one, and the only surprise is that they should be writing about the article of clothing in the first place. Actually I think some of us would reserve the word âtuxedoâ â more commonly âtuxâ â for a white dinner jacket. It comes incidentally from âa fashionable club at Tuxedo Park in New York". Again one may concede that writing âsidewalkâ rather than âpavementâ represents the adoption of an American usage â though surely an unobjectionable one â but some of the other examples they give are not really American at all. A âgarbage truckâ may be an American term, but âgarbageâ as an alternative to ârubbishâ or ârefuseâ is not exclusively American, any more than âtruckâ for âlorryâ is, even if more common in the States. Chambers English Dictionary is a good guide, because Chambers has always taken an interest in American English. The 1872 edition included an eight-page appendix of Americanisms, printed in small type, three columns to the page. Nowadays it notes âU.S.â or âesp. U.S.â, if a word is more commonly found in American rather than English usage. However, quite often you find âdial.â â that is, dialect â âand U.S.â. This suggests that a word found in some British dialect has been carried across the Atlantic and become standard usage there. This is the case with âsnuckâ, used as the past tense of âsneakâ, and cited by the OUP researchers as an example of American infiltration. It would be equally true to say the word has been repatriated. Two other examples they offer as âsmartâ in the sense of âcleverâ and âcrankyâ meaning âirritableâ. I should have thought that âsmartâ has always been used in this sense here, as in âsmartyâ, âsmart-alecâ and âsmarty-pantsâ, while Chambers offers âcrossâ as one of the meanings of âcrankyâ. Be that as it may, there is nothing that should worry us about this sort of American infiltration of the language. Not only is a colloquial Americanism likely to be lively, useful and agreeable; it is often an English word or expression that has fallen out of use here and is now restored to us. The American language we really should guard against is the management-speak promoted by business schools to baffle outsiders. Unfortunately this has been seized on so enthusiastically by bankers, businessmen and bureaucrats here that we donât question its origins. Colloquial American is splendidly alive; management-speak is an abomination, an offence against the first purpose of language, which is to communicate meaning. Tags: americanisms, chambers english dictionary, English, language Harry Mount Harry Mount's latest book is How England Made the English: From Hedgerows to Heathrow. He is also the author of Amo, Amas, Amat and All That: How to Become a Latin Lover and A Lust for Windowsills - a Guide to British Buildings from Portcullis to Pebbledash. A former leader writer for the Telegraph, he writes about politics, buildings and language for lots of British and American newspapers and magazines. [harr.jpg] -- The average number of baths per person has gone down from nine a month, a decade ago, to five this year. Developers are increasingly squeezing showers into tiny spaces into new flats and houses. And people modernising their homes are ripping out baths to produce acres of new tiled flooring to pad around in. I sense an American influence here. When I lived in New York, four years ago, new apartments were being built that not only didn't have baths; they didn't even have kitchens - their young owners ate out for every meal. For a long time now, Americans have been amazed at the concept of a bath without a shower attached – why wallow around in your own dirt, they ask. Well, actually, most of the dirt ends up in the bath. And, in any case, a long contemplative bath is one of life's great pleasures. It's not just Archimedes who thought up extraordinary ideas in the bath. There's something about lying in hot water, staring into space, that somehow seems more worthwhile than hanging around doing nothing outside a bath. #News » Is the Internet Americanising (or Americanizing) British English? Comments Feed [p?c1=2&c2=6035736&cv=2.0&cj=1] News RSS Feed -- [daniel_hannan_140_small.jpg] Is the Internet Americanising (or Americanizing) British English? By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: March 13th, 2011 -- The Internet â much to the consternation of Euro-integrationists â is drawing the English-speaking peoples into a common conversation. And a good thing, too: it was always fatuous to pretend that geographical proximity was more important than history or sentiment, blood or speech. Where the EU is united by government decree, the Anglosphere is united by organic ties, by language and law, by shared habits of thought. Here, though, is a question, posed to mark the centenary of the Commonwealth. Is the common online dialogue also leading to a more direct harmonization of the English language? This blog, in a typical week, attracts 80,000 readers from the UK, 30,000 from the US and 10,000 from elsewhere, mainly from other Anglosphere nations: a proportion that is fairly representative of British websites. In consequence, British bloggers and readers are far more familiar with the American Weltanschauung. But are we also starting to write like Americans? Is the combination of the Internet and US-designed spell-check programmes (or programs) hastening the Americanization of British English? We all have our personal bêtes noires. Damian Thompson, the Blogs Editor, deplores the increasingly common use of double spacing. Others rage at the use of upper case letters after colons. My own particular bugbear is the employment of American sporting metaphors (âstepping up to the plateâ, âgetting to first baseâ etc). I mean, we invented practically every team game on Earth: it seems perverse in the extreme to plunder the vocabulary of one of the very few we donât play. Then again, there is quite a lot of evidence that baseball was, in fact, invented in England: itâs mentioned in one of Jane Austenâs novels, for example. Which only goes to show how difficult it is to disentangle our idioms, to identify an expression that has genuinely evolved in North America without roots in the mother country. Take âI guessâ, in the American sense of âI supposeâ. One occasionally hears the phrase used that way in Britain, but always with the aura of a foreign import, like âsureâ, to mean âyesâ. But hereâs the thing: go back to Chaucer, and you will find âI gesseâ used exactly as the cousins now use it. You will, likewise, still hear âgottenâ in parts of Lancashire and even, in some Dorset and Somerset villages, âfallâ to mean autumn. Now âfallâ, on any measure, is far prettier than âautumnâ. It is descriptive and, like the names of the other three seasons, it is of Anglo-Saxon origin. I should be very happy to see it return and displace the French interloper. By the same token, but the other way around, âliftâ is far prettier than âelevatorâ. If the Internet means a more efficient market in vocabulary, we should expect the more useful, more expressive and more attractive phrases to spread. I mean âattractiveâ here in the literal sense of attracting people. In recent years, for example, I have noticed some Americans taking up that undeniably expressive, but hardly pretty, British epithet âwankerâ. There is nothing new in this process. In his 1908 magnum opus, H W Fowler inveighs against such American imports as âplacateâ, âtranspireâ, âhoney-colouredâ, âantagonizeâ, âjust how muchâ and âdo you have?â (instead of âhave you got?â) Hardly anyone these days thinks of these phrases as Americanisms. Yet âsidewalkâ, âback ofâ (for behind) and âexcuse me?â (if you havenât heard someone) have failed to penetrate at all. âMadâ still means insane rather than angry, âsmartâ means well turned-out rather than clever, "pissed" means drunk rather than cross, and âsuspendersâ hold up a womanâs stockings rather than a manâs trousers. Nor has there been much approximation of pronunciation. A major survey by the British Library lists a lengthy series of words that almost everyone in the British Isles pronounces differently from Americans: advertisement, buoy, era, glacier, nuclear, research, schedule, vase, Z and so on. What weâre seeing, I think, is what we see everywhere as a result of the web: a more perfect market, in which innovation spreads more swiftly, and memes travel further. Let me finish on a positive note. In my own lifetime, there has been a comprehensive shift in Britain towards âiseâ instead of âizeâ in such words as, well, Americanize. You can see why it has happened: using both forms means having to remember which words can only be written with âiseâ; but using âiseâ is never wrong. None the less, it can be clumsy, and the OED has always preferred to maintain the distinction. The movement towards âiseâ seems now to have reached its limit and, under the influence of American software, we are starting to return to the form that our grandparents regarded as correct. If we can do so with language, why not with politics? Letâs bring back elected sheriffs, local control of welfare, proper parliamentary control of the executive and the rest of the Direct Democracy agenda. Itâs not Americanization; itâs repatriation. Tags: Americanisms, Anglosphere, British Library, dialect, English language, internet #News » Top 10 most annoying Americanisms Comments Feed Top 10 most annoying Americanisms But I don't mean simple Americanisms like stroller (pushchair), diaper (nappy), ladybug (ladybird), Mom (Mum), entrée (main course), Santa (Father Christmas), takeout (takeaway), pre-owned (secondhand), mad (angry), chill (calm down), Santa (Father Christmas) etc etc but the phrases that really make you want to go postal. * American Way: The Luck of Mitt Romney * American Way: Prepare for a Republican war of attrition in 2012 #BBC NEWS | Americas Low Graphics Americas 'Death to US': Anti-Americanism examined He argues anti-Americanism is often a cover for hatreds with little Caracas and Washington but it begins where anti-Americanism began - in Protests against nuclear weapons often focus on American weapons American weapons. The anti-war rallies were against American-led wars. of willingness to condemn America for the tiniest indiscretion - or to And if anti-Americanism is alive and well among surprisingly Criticism of American power and American life lives on in Paris Anti-Americanism was born in France. And here's a fascinating fact: it nor does most of America. vision didn't fit the rest of the nation. America is ordinary. Go on say it out loud on the streets of Paris: "America is ordinary". It communities - and that is what the anti-Americans can't stand. with him. The source of anti-Americanism is plain they say. As one America that anti-Americanism is way more than that, that it's not simply reasonable opposition to the things America does. The kind of anti-Americanism fostered by French intellectuals down the centuries revolves around intense dislike of what America is - not Bernard-Henri Levy puts it like this: America became the nightmare there, American Vertigo, is a balanced and thoughtful piece of work. political debate on American power and American life. He describes a (just weeks before American GIs landed on the beaches of Normandy), mouthpiece of the right - wrote this: "The Americans represent a real with which the Russians may - in time - threaten us. The Americans may anti-Americanism we see in the world today. "Death to America": Anti-Americanism examined will be broadcast on Anti-Americanism 'feels like racism' TOP AMERICAS STORIES Americas Is globalisation Americanisation? views on whether globalisation is simply exporting the American American business model as the benchmark besides which all other Globalisation needs to be de-Americanised - and genuinely globalised American conservatism in the US which has become the so-called Globalisation needs to be de-Americanised - and genuinely globalised! developing countries (and non-American developed ones) by financial American version of globalisation has swept all before it. have the Americans swept all before them? Or am I wrong in thinking Globalisation has been primarily shaped by American conservatism Globalisation has been primarily shaped by American conservatism. The American model has seemed charismatic, job-generating and What The World Thinks of America was broadcast in the UK on BBC Two on World on America America Answers Back Your greatest American What do you think of America? News Front Page | Africa | Americas | Asia-Pacific | Europe | Middle Americas The hit American TV show, The Sopranos, has given us "bada bing" while Erstwhile American children's TV show The Muppets has also helped the Sopranos, but is now used in America in a similar way to how 'hey The research also confirms the Americanisation of English continues News Front Page | Africa | Americas | Asia-Pacific | Europe | Middle Americas Anti-Americanism 'feels like racism' She says the level of anti-Americanism she has experienced "feels like "I don't want anyone to feel sorry for Americans, or me, I just want "pure hatred" she says is directed at her for being American is really American critic "People would make jokes about Americans but I didn't experience the it's as if they had been waiting to run into an American all day to American. I am American and have lived in the UK since 1988. I have not because the best time to witness the British (or Americans) at their I'm an American who has lived in London for over 6 years and suffered American politics or behaviour. A large percentage of the time individuals are more interested in finding out about life in America. As a Hispanic American I have felt more welcomed and respected living and helped me to see a much larger picture that most Americans will Hatred against Americans is not rife here. I've worked with and know personally many Americans and I know them to be charming, courteous I'm an African-American who has been living in London for a year now. I am an American living in Bradford (Muslim population 300,000, American Population 1) So perhaps I'm in a good position to comment. I have noticed anger towards America increasing over the last few years, representative of disastrous American foreign policy. Anti-American sentiment clearly runs high in the UK, but there can be I had no idea that the British people felt that way about Americans. I think the English also love America and feel connection with it also love America and feel connection with it. I can't say the Bush or America. Many British comedians that should know better are There are millions of Americans who are disgusted by the actions of I would agree that in general Americans are a loathsome, naive, If you suspect your 'Canadian' is actually American, ask them to name usually defuse the situation by saying "Yes, I'm an American - and I'd However, I think Americans need to be educated in such a way that insensitive comments made by American tourists who are tarnishing the I'm an American living in Belgium and it shocks me to see that Americans probably receive more "racist" comments in Europe than the offer the same courtesy to Americans in England. always be friendly and welcoming to Americans in our country. Any Americans who are feeling offended in the UK are welcome round my How about interviewing an American that supports our president instead of making a point of interviewing two Americans that apparently feel story makes it seem as if the anti-American anger is justified but Is it any surprise that Americans get held to account for their American I have met in this country have been perfectly nice but your just think, if Americans are hated this much in the UK what do you of Americans and American foreign policy when you consider the thread of anti-Americanism that runs through almost every related story that few occasions when people thought I was American. It got to the point personally. Americans are easy targets right now and thanks, not in national for the others' actions. But it's not just Americans who get My American relatives visit the UK frequently. When here they go to this reported abuse of Americans a London phenomenon?" American. I didn't vote for Bush and I don't support the Iraq war and I feel American foreign policy is abhorrent. But I also find that people who express such anti-American remarks with the contempt they that she is American and proud of it, and walk away. Arguing with I feel no pity for Americans working abroad - they get to see first Cry me a river. How much American tolerance and openness do Iranian sort of thing which gives Americans such a bad name. America they are the most welcoming of hosts and very friendly towards us Brits. Furthermore when America follows isolationist policies the Muslims would like to thank America for pushing NATO to take action in 'America' is doing that you yourselves are not? We invaded Iraq. So least qualified nation on earth to condemn 'American' foreign policy. Craig Eastman's comment "that in general Americans are a loathsome, naive, petulant bunch", ironically indicates the very thing Americans I think some Americans intentionally mis-read negative comments about Bush as being anti-American and then whine about it. I love my country and am as pro-American as one can get, but I hate Bush and what he has anti-American, they are anti-Bush and that is NOT the same thing. I honestly think its all about the tone and volume. Americans are everyone else. What I would advise Americans to do is to talk less, Americans, I never generalise, but I have met many arrogant ones and Canada. Chin up all you Americans in the UK. Maybe you are just In depth: What the world thinks of America Americas Town film treatment with a cast including the American superstars Tom Colditz escapes: Britain 109, America 0 Few Americans were held at the top security camp and, more Though latecomers to the global conflict, America has long portrayed Playstation generation that America overcame Germany and Japan Navy even before America's entry into the war. studied America's self-image in war films, says Hollywood's take on scepticism and caution. Exploring American myths and narratives is Conflicts such as in the Balkans are difficult for American audiences American "heroes" have had it tough since Vietnam heroic American which that war put on ice for a long time." American male a welcome respite. "They're getting quite a good press. In the past 25 years American Hollywood Americanisation of World War II. "I'd put it down to insular American audiences. Americans want to see films about Americans. That's where the money is." balance for America's wartime allies would probably make few inroads "To get made at all, most British films need at least one American Not all Hitler's enemies were American in American schools. It's quite possible that Saving Private Ryan is 20 Aug 99 | Americas News Front Page | Africa | Americas | Asia-Pacific | Europe | Middle Americas replaced by American spellings. which offers English instead of American definitions. and not the American spelling." But often popular web sites utilise American English. Comparison of British and American usage News Front Page | Africa | Americas | Asia-Pacific | Europe | Middle Americas Anti-Americanism 'dangerous' Britain is America's closest ally Continued anti-Americanism could result in the US disengaging from the Relations between America and France reached an all time low following anti-Americanism" in the UK, arguing it had "become fashionable". much British anti-Americanism there is. Lord Robertson, a former UK defence secretary, said: "Anti-Americanism "It is a generic attack on America and American standards and American "I'm very worried about anti-Americanism because I think it is deeply dangerous to all of us than American involvement or interventionism." "I am worried about trite anti-Americanism in this country," he told this kind of anti-Americanism, and it's a convenient parody. lives happier and healthier, it's to America that we owe a huge News Front Page | Africa | Americas | Asia-Pacific | Europe | Middle « Previous | Main | Next » The American in Australia Nick Bryant | 07:34 UK time, Monday, 7 December 2009 -- For the first time in its history, Australia's most populous state has a female premier, a photogenic 40-year-old called Kristina Keneally, who is trying to become the acceptable face of what many voters in New South Wales look upon as an ugly and repellent political machine. More so than her gender, it is the criticism that she merely is a puppet of the two backroom powerbrokers who installed her as Labor leader that has been attracting the most comment. That, and the fact that she was born in Las Vegas, raised in Ohio and speaks still with a distinctive American accent, even though she is married to an Australian, has an Aussie mother, and became a naturalised Australian citizen in 2000, the year that she joined the Australian Labor Party. By strange coincidence, last week was a good one for foreign-born political leaders in Australia. Tony Abbott, who could declare himself a Londoner if ever he so desired, became the Liberal leader. In Kevin Rudd's absence, Julia Gillard, a product of Barry in South Wales, filled in as acting prime minister. In the immediate aftermath of the rejection of the emissions trading scheme, it was the Senate leader, the British-born Chris Evans, who led the attack on the opposition. And he was quickly joined by the climate change minister, Penny Wong, who was born in Malaysia. But while Australians have long been used to European-born politicians, and are getting increasingly used to Asian-born leaders - the Hong Kong-born John So served for over seven years as the Mayor of Melbourne - will they countenance an American-born leader? To pre-empt some of your comments, Kristina Keneally is perhaps a special case because she speaks in the accent of her homeland. To many, it sounds like pure American Pie. But could there also be an anti-Americanism at work in much of the US-focussed commentary? Like virtually every country in the world, Australia has fallen prey to America's rampant post-war cultural imperialism. And, often, willingly and happily so. The Australian box office is dominated by Hollywood movies. Cormac McCarthy is perhaps as popular these days as Thomas Keneally, Kristina's Booker prize-winning uncle. Channel Nine claims in its on-air promotions to be "Proudly Australian", but its schedules are packed with US imports, while its flagship news programme, Sixty Minutes, is a replica of the US original, right down to the tick, tock, tick of its iconic stopwatch. Likewise, Channel Seven's successful Sunrise programme breakfast show is modelled on NBC's Today show, with Martin Place in Sydney substituting for New York's Rockefeller plaza for the out-of-studio walkabouts. The thumping theme music of its evening news was composed by the American film composer John Williams, and is heard in America each night at the start of NBC's primetime bulletin. The two most headline-making visitors to Australia this year were both Americans, Britney Spears and Tiger Woods, while the country has recently said farewell to one of its most-loved entertainers, the New Yorker Don Lane. Yet for all that, the American influence is by no means overwhelming. Not even close. My ears tend to prick up whenever I hear an American accent in Australia, because it happens so infrequently. If you look at the 20 most popular television programmes this year in Australia, no American show even makes the list (nor does a UK programme, for that matter). On the ABC, the national broadcaster, the preference is for the UK- rather than US-made. Even its finest US import, the mesmerising detective series The Wire, is buried away on ABC 2, while lesser British-made programmes, like say Spooks, are given better primetime slots on ABC 1. Listening to talk-back radio, so many of the comedic references are British rather than American, whether they come from Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, The Goons, The Goodies, The Office or Yes Minister. Last week, Malcolm Turnbull's attempts to cling on to the Liberal leadership were commonly compared to the decapitated Black Knight in Monty Python's The Holy Grail. In sport, despite Frank Packer's confident post-war assertion that baseball was the coming thing, cricket remains dominant. And while Kerry Packer might have borrowed some US-style razzmatazz when he launched World Series cricket, it was still an emphatically Australian product - popularised by the ringing anthem, "Come on Aussie, Come on". Basketball has failed to take off in Australia's most populous cities, and American Football does not have much of a following. Sporting colloquialisms also have an Aussie and British ring. Occasionally, you will hear a "that's out of left field", but rarely a "go the whole nine yards" or a "full court press". More commonly in Australia you will find yourself on "a sticky wicket" or suffering the humiliation of being "bowled a googly". In politics, Australia has a Senate and a House of Representatives, but that's pretty much the extent of the "Wash" contribution to the "Washminster model" of government. That said, Labor politics in New South Wales does a pretty good imitation of Tammany Hall. We've noted before that Australians do not tend to warm to the grand and flashy trappings of US presidential politics - a point driven home on Friday afternoon when I bumped into Kevin Rudd on a pedestrian crossing in central Sydney, while he was out doing what looked like some Christmas shopping. Happily, the roads were not shut, sharp-shooters did not peer down on him from roof-top vantage points and he, like the rest of us, had to wait for the light to turn green. And just look what happened to Starbucks, which was forced to lighten its Australian footprint, largely because the local competition was way too hot and Australians rejected this American transplant. Now the American coffee giant has largely been reduced to operating in Australian tourist traps, where it plays on its familiarity with overseas visitors. Starbucks has never managed to build up a really big, loyal, local clientele, partly because it was seen as an unwelcome intrusion from the US. Will Kristina Keneally give it a better shot? -- * 1. At 08:35am on 07 Dec 2009, Whitlamite wrote: Let's summarise: * Australians wary of Americans * Australians accepting of British and Asian born leaders * Australians embrace American Culture * Australians reject American business * Australian system of government still mostly British * Americans are rare in Australia * Australians are lax in securing the personal safety and security of their Prime Minister * Kristina Keneally = Starbucks Blimey. What sort of schizophrenic country are you living in, Nick? Because it can't be Australia. The Australia I know embraces Americans and the United States more generally. I know an enormous number of Americans who live in Australia, and countless more whom I encounter whilst visiting. Australia's system of government has always had a strong American influence, dating back to the early parliamentarian (American) King O'Malley, the man who put the 'Labor' in Australian Labor Party. Indeed the sensational visits to Australia by Mark Twain left us with some incredible insights into the trans-pacific relationship. During the US election in 2008 Republican Candidate John McCain wrote an article for the Australian press detailing the impact the visit of the 'Great White Fleet' of the US Navy had both on the servicemen and on the Australians who greeted it in 1908. On the one hand you indeed note the popularity of someone like Don Lane, but you also suggest that Australians are wary of Kristina Keneally. I am confused. I disagree with you on several counts. I find Americans and their accents commonplace in Australia, I along with millions of my countrymen embrace the arrival of starbucks, Ben & Jerry's, and Krispy Kreme; I believe that despite protestations by antiques to the contrary Australian politics is becoming more Americanised - and a good thing too. I am a democrat, and not a born-to-rule Imperialist like our traitorous Opposition Leader. I believe the Prime Minister of Australia is far more like the President of the United States than he is like the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. As Australia (unlike the United Kingdom) does not have a resident native head of state, the head of government assumes a role similar to that in a popular sense. So again, I am confused about the actual point you're trying to make, Nick. Are you saying that Australians embrace Americans whilst rejecting them simultaneously? Are you saying that the British really are still in charge of Australian culture? Are you saying that... What are you saying? Are you perhaps trying to tell us that the British in Australia are wary of Americans in Australia? Tea thrown overboard into Sydney harbour perhaps? W. Complain about this comment * 2. At 09:14am on 07 Dec 2009, cryogyny wrote: @Whitlamite - just what are you trying to say? I am not sure where you come from but being born and bred in Sydney I certainly wasn't surrounded by American accents (besides those coming from the 'idiot box'). And please speak for yourself about Starbucks. And the Australian PM being more like the US President? That really has me stumped. Complain about this comment * 3. At 09:34am on 07 Dec 2009, 11pete11 wrote: 1 Whitlamite: Yes there are some very 'British' aspect to Nick's post that confirm what I have said in many of my posts. Namely that Brits still believe Australia is 'their' country. Take for example: "the fact that she was born in Las Vegas, raised in Ohio and speaks still with a distinctive American accent," Yet no mention of the accents of the ex Brits that were mentioned. Julia Gillard has a very Aussie accent, as does Tony Abbott. However, Chris Evans and a few others on both sides of Parliament, have made no attempt to speak 'Australian'...Have you ever heard Rupert Murdoch's mother speak...straight out of Buckingham Palace. Walk down any street in Australia and you're bound to bump into a 'pommy' accent more than an Aussie one. As so far as the American thing, yes there is some schitzoid aspects to what Nick is trying to say here. Complain about this comment * 4. At 10:46am on 07 Dec 2009, Ellis Turrell wrote: -- Complain about this comment * 7. At 12:52pm on 07 Dec 2009, Oz Dave in London wrote: On the issue of Kristina Keneally, I don't care that she is American-born or a female, I find the bigger issue is what you noted about Kristina being the puppet of the Eddie & Joe show. Twice now, NSW Labor has dumped a Premier on NSW that we have not voted for, I feel Kristina is a lame duck who will suffer the indignity of a wallopping if the Libs can bring out a policy to go against the ALP. On the American issue, I think some of us don't realise the infiltration the American culture has in Aussie as well as other Western nations. If we banned all American product then pickings of entertainment, food and recreation would be reduced significantally but we'd find a way around it. I love the USA for visits and friendships I have there but I am proud Aussie is influenced not just by American culture, but as you pointed out Nick, by British, by European, by parts of Asia and by internal Aussie culture; it's what makes us Aussie :-) Complain about this comment * 8. At 12:54pm on 07 Dec 2009, jnhk201 wrote: I think on the whole, Australia embraces American culture wholeheartedly...just as it warmly welcomes nearly every other culture that comes to its shores! We're an open and progressive country. Complain about this comment * 9. At 7:20pm on 07 Dec 2009, Chinook wrote: I'm in a similar position as the Premier, a dual citizen spending most of my life in the States but a notable amount in Oz as well. The above comments sum it up nicely, Australia has a dynamic identity that not everyone agrees on. American culture inevitably leaves its mark, as it does in many places around the world. At the same time, despite their idealistic philanthropy, white Australians are generally less willing to accept Americans as 'Aussie' than other migrants. I have my own theories regarding tall poppy syndrome and an understandable concern for the blurring of identity. In the end, this tempest in a teacup gives us something to talk about and they get to take the mickey out of me. Complain about this comment * 10. At 9:59pm on 07 Dec 2009, pciii wrote: Gosh! Whitlamite and Pete, you really do need to try and be a little thicker skinned, you guys seem to find some kind of hidden colonial agenda in everyone of Nick's posts. Redhotgreen summarises very nicely the point Nick was raising. As for the assertion that "that Brits still believe Australia is 'their' country" because Nick does not detail which of the Brits or Malaysians still have their 'native' accents misses the point rather - this is about Americans (besides, it's pretty hard to miss Gillard's accent isn't it?) As for the issue in hand, there's undoubtedly a lot of US influence on culture here Australia. There's the obvious TV programmes/films and in my profession at least, legislation and techniques are often borrowed from over the (big) pond. Even some aspects of the school system here seem more American to these European eyes. But Crygyny is right, you don't hear an American accent all that often - even at the major tourist sites there's more Europeans and Asians milling about (do they know what they are missing?). For this reason, I suspect that Australians will be naturally less trustful of an American politician, at least until she's proved herself. Complain about this comment * 11. At 10:00pm on 07 Dec 2009, Treaclebeak wrote: Nick, Kristina's Keneally's accent doesn't sound like "pure American pie" to me, some sentences are completely Oz ,however she still uses the very distinctive American "r" sound. Most Australians are probably pro and anti-American culture at the same time,it's all very quantum really.We do seem to have a genius for rejecting some of America's best ideas, such as a Bill of Rights or simplified spelling,instead we adopted Starbucks and Halloween. Complain about this comment * 12. At 10:21pm on 07 Dec 2009, Agent 00Soul wrote: Why is it that whenever an article is written about possible anti-Americanism, their accent is inevitably one of the first things mentioned? Sometimes I read or watch the BBC and it seems like they want one standard for American citizens and one standard for the entire rest of the world. As for Australia, it's a nation of immigrants and, as far as I can tell, is pretty used to people from all over the world in important positions. Complain about this comment * 13. At 11:11pm on 07 Dec 2009, wollemi wrote: -- Complain about this comment * 14. At 01:56am on 08 Dec 2009, David wrote: One reason that Australians find so few Americans in Australia, is .. That it is so far away and so expensive to travel to. Airplane fare is sooo expensive for an American wanting to go to Australia. And most Americans, are, of course, not rich. But, funnily enough, we think of Australia as a paradise of beaches and coral reefs. So, we all want to go there. :) Complain about this comment * 15. At 03:55am on 08 Dec 2009, GaffaOz wrote: @ Whitlamite I think Nick is closer to the mark than you think. It's not so much that Australia is schizophrenic than a lot of countries are similar when it's comes to American culture. Certainly UK and France lap up American culture and yet freely sneer at it as much as, if not more so, than Australia. And although the Queen may live in the UK - her role is pretty much ceremonial - in that the country is for all practical purposes is run by the government. So I would say Australian politics is far closer in style to UK than US - because there is a recognisable formal opposition with the Punch and Judy style of Westminster politics and that elections don't run for a year with all the razzmatazz of US elections. What the Australia shares with the US is a federal system. @Pete111 Still with the bias BBC? I don't see how you can equate Nick's post somehow means that the Brits believe Australia is their country. Fact is - Keneally heritage gets more coverage by Australians reporters in Australia media than other Australian politicians of a British heritage. And due to Australia's heritage - Australians do speak within a range from distinctive Aussie accents to softer - even dare I say, more British accents. That's your heritage. To expect everyone to speak with a typical accent is silly and unpractical. Because I come from Somerset in the UK - do I have to speak like a rustic farmer? Complain about this comment -- * 18. At 7:20pm on 08 Dec 2009, bryson wrote: Australia is a beautiful country and on my many visits, I have found the Australian people to be friendly, salt of the earth, patriotic, and proud of their history. As a Brit living in the USA that makes frequent visits to family living Australia, I was struck by the outward appearances at least, just how like America Australia is. The American influence is obvious in its buildings, shopping malls; even the colour’s that they are painted. You could be anywhere in the USA with the same buildings, colour schemes etc. The Australian TV is definitely American influenced. Which I’m guessing translates in to the use of American words such as “cookies, chips” etc. I think it is a great shame and something every culture needs to be mindful of not loosing its own national identity whilst embracing other cultures. It is possible to live side by side and retain your own identity but I believe when you have been given the compliment of living in someone else’s country you should become a citizen of that country and not try to change it in to the country you have just left Australia is great, its people are the best, I’d live there tomorrow if I had the money. Sadly it costs far to much to migrate there with fees in the high thousands or a ten year waiting list for the likes of parents that would like to be close to their children. So the Aussies don’t have to be concerned about any more bloody pommes moving to Aus or that they still think it’s their country as one writer wrote. That is why immigration is down from Europe and up from China there is only the Chinese and Americans that can afford the high fees that the Australian government charges for visa applications etc. Complain about this comment * 19. At 8:51pm on 08 Dec 2009, pciii wrote: -- Complain about this comment * 20. At 8:55pm on 08 Dec 2009, DCHeretic wrote: Nick makes it seem like the US - Australian relationship is a one-way street. Americans in general have a lot of affection for the Aussies and Australian entertainers have made their mark on the US. Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Olivia Newton John, Dame Edna, and the late Heath Ledger are beloved by legions of US fans. Australian singer/actress Helen Reddy served as California Parks and Recreation Commissioner for three years. When I ask my friends and family to name the overseas destinations that they dream about, Australia is often at the top of the list. I myself hope to visit in a year or two. America and Australia are bound together by their common cultural heritage, frontier spirit, shared language, and as nations built by immigrants. Complain about this comment * 21. At 9:01pm on 08 Dec 2009, Jordan Cook wrote: the real distinction between the US and Australia is the influence of British culture. Nick's blog looks at American culture, which is relatively new in it's global hegemony. perhaps this discussion is better left to the future, when the pressure of world culture will drown out that of America on the Australian psyche. it's interesting how vehemently people get when they feel their "culture" is under attack; as if this abstract, human invention is all that defines us as an human being. Australia's culture is whatever the people there choose to absorb. Complain about this comment * 22. At 9:54pm on 08 Dec 2009, 11pete11 wrote: -- Complain about this comment * 23. At 11:25pm on 08 Dec 2009, redhotgreen wrote: Kristina Keneally has a much bigger fight on her hands than the idea of her being an American. As Nick correctly points out, the NSW Labor government is seen as an 'ugly and repellent political machine' rather than a servant of the people. Back room political deals at the hands of factional interests have long been a feature of Australian politics, regardless of their ideological orientation. The difference now is that the back room has spilled over to the front lawn and the ugliness, in all its sordid splendor, is now for all to see. As for the American cultural imperialism, I suspect it is more to do with the size of the respective populations that determines the extent of Australian TV's content composition. America is, after all, around 15 times the size of Australia (population and economy wise that is). It is not unreasonable to expect the amount of American TV content in Australia to be around the same ratio. I don't suppose you could find out Nick? I think Australian culture is more British than American. I think the Australian 'tall poppy syndrome' is due to entrenched English reserve railing against perceived American brashness. Australian's love a winner, so long as you don't appear boastful, like an American. So perhaps Kristina Keneally will be fine, so long as she is humble. Complain about this comment -- Complain about this comment * 25. At 02:28am on 09 Dec 2009, LenDaHand wrote: It isnt because she is American - its because she is a puppet of the same people who have controlled NSW for last 15 years. Oh im nobodys puppet eh? ok your a wind up doll the Kristina. Nick we have been welcoming Americans here since the gold rush - even had a US President working here in early 1900's. We are about to see the death throws of a government - well we have for last 2 years. Kristina will be just the pig on the spit! Complain about this comment * 26. At 10:29am on 09 Dec 2009, Mick wrote: I think Nick makes a good point about whether Australia will accept an American-Australian politician as readily as they have accepted say Italian or Chinese Australian politicians. Kristina doesn't sound pure American Pie to my ears, in fact she veers quite weirdly between Yank and Strine. I've found that Australians get on well with Americans on a personal level (we have quite a few US-Australians in our office) but many seem to have that patronising Jeremy Clarkson-style antipathy towards "Americans". This is all rather academic for Kenneally, however. She is seen a a puppet of the hated Labor-right faction in NSW and unless she can persuade us otherwise she will get the boot at the next election, regardless of whether she is accepted as a fair dinkum Aussie. Complain about this comment * 27. At 10:43pm on 09 Dec 2009, Floyd wrote: The only part I found to criticise was the bit about Starbucks. McDonalds, every bit as much of an American import and much slagged-off on that account, has flourished like cown-of-thorns starfish. For ine, Starbucks has had to draw back a bit because we already had what they offered; ie really good coffee in cute atmospheric surroundings. I loved Starbucks when it arrived in Japan (where the alternative was the sort of coffee you'd serve your mates in a student house, but at six bucks a cup and in a smokey room) but would never darken their doors here - not out of anti-Americanism but because, well, what would be the point? Complain about this comment * 28. At 11:04am on 12 Dec 2009, Evan wrote: -- * 29. At 00:13am on 15 Dec 2009, David wrote: I like Austalians without regard to observational generalizing stuff--let people be people. And she IS right wing, so dislike of her is not based on anti-Americanism--it is only *helped* by anti-Americanism--in my center/left bent thinking. Complain about this comment * Latin America Viewpoint: Why do some Americanisms irritate people? British people are used to the stream of Americanisms entering the language. But some are worse than others, argues Matthew Engel. The Americans imported English wholesale, forged it to meet their own needs, then exported their own words back across the Atlantic to be incorporated in the way we speak over here. Those seemingly innocuous words caused fury at the time. * Listen to Matthew Engel discuss 'Americanisms' on Four Thought on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 13 July at 2045 BST But what the world is speaking - even on levels more sophisticated than basic Globish - is not necessarily our English. According to the Oxford Guide to World English, "American English has a global role at the beginning of the 21st Century comparable to that of British English at the start of the 20th". The alarming part is that this is starting to show in the language we speak in Britain. American usages no longer swim to our shores as single spies, as "reliable" and "talented" did. They come in battalions. In the 1930s, the talkies took hold and represented the first overwhelming manifestation of American cultural power. This was reinforced in the 1940s by the presence of large numbers of US servicemen in Britain and the 1950s marked the heyday of the western. The first class I call Americanisms, by which I understand an use of phrases or terms, or a construction of sentences, even among persons of rank and education, different from the use of the same terms or phrases, or the construction of similar sentences, in Great Britain. The word Americanism, which I have coined for the purpose, is exactly similar in its formation and signification to the word Scotticism. American culture is ubiquitous in Britain on TV and the web. As our computers talk to us in American, I keep having to agree to a license spelt with an s. I am invited to print something in color without the u. I am told "you ghat mail". It is, of course, always e-mail - never our own more natural usage, e-post. As an ex-American resident, I remain a big fan of baseball. But I sit over here and listen to people who know nothing of the games talk about ideas coming out of "left field". They speak about "three strikes and you're out" or "stepping up to the plate" without the foggiest idea what these phrases mean. I think the country has started to lose its own sense of itself. In many respects, English and American are not coming together. When it comes to new technology, we often go our separate ways. They have cellphones - we have mobiles. We go to cash points or cash machines - they use ATMs. We have still never linked hands on motoring terminology - petrol, the boot, the bonnet, known in the US as gas, the trunk, the hood. Yet in the course of my own lifetime, countless routine British usages have either been superseded or are being challenged by their American equivalents. We no longer watch a film, we go to the movies. We increasingly have trucks not lorries. A hike is now a wage or price rise not a walk in the country. I accept that sometimes American phrases have a vigour and vivacity. A relative of mine told me recently he went to a business meeting chaired by a Californian woman who wanted everyone to speak frankly. It was "open kimono". How's that for a vivid expression? * Latin America Most people can probably remember the moment when they first realised the seductive power and global pervasiveness of American culture. It is an extraordinary form of soft power which will endure even if the looming powerhouses of China, India and Brazil come to overshadow America's global economic dominance. Next time you see television pictures of an anti-American demonstration anywhere on earth look closely at the crowd. Among the flag-burners you'll almost certainly see someone wearing an LA Lakers shirt or a Yankees baseball cap. My first exposure to American culture came back in the Doris Days of the early 1960s, growing up in a Britain that was still shaking off the lingering effects of rationing and the costs of post-war reconstruction. We had Elvis, of course, and Hollywood but the world was a lot less global then. It was still possible, for example, for British recording artists to have hit records by simply recording their own versions of songs that were already hits for American stars on the far side of the Atlantic. But the flagship of American influence in my own life was Spam, the bright-pink pork luncheon meat that was a staple of the British working-class diet for several decades. So when the time came to find a way to round off my three years as the BBC's North America correspondent, it seemed somehow fitting to head not for the bright lights of New York or Chicago but for the less showy charms of Austin, Minnesota, home of the Hormel Food Company. Spam Central, in short. And it turns out that it's not fanciful at all to see Spam as a symbol of the spread of American influence. "It was World War II that made Spam international because American GIs brought it all over the world," he says. "And when there was food rationing in Britain and continental Europe, Spam was versatile, delicious, easy to transport and it kept a long time. Those are important qualities." It conjures up a strange new perspective on World War II - GIs struggling to get over the beaches of Normandy and across the sands of Iwo Jima before their arteries clogged up. But it makes you wonder if this is the reason why they put Spam in brick-shaped tins, because America used it to build its influence in a hungry post-war world. You are perhaps unlikely to stumble across the home of Spam unless you find yourself driving from Minneapolis to Des Moines but it's genuinely worth a visit as a case study in how an iconic brand helped to introduce a wider world to American brands and ideas. It is not much use as a nation-building tool in America's modern wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for example (pork, remember) but these are tough times in America and domestic sales are going rather well. * Latin America Viewpoint: American English is getting on well, thanks British and American flags hang in London in a May file photo American and British English are siblings from the same parentage. Neither is the parent of the other There's been much debate on these pages in recent days about the spread of Americanisms - outside the US. Here, American lexicographer and broadcaster Grant Barrett offers a riposte. When Matthew Engel wrote here earlier this month about the impact of American English on British English, he restarted a debate about the changing nature of language which ended in dozens of suggestions from readers of their own loathed Americanisms. Most of those submitted were neither particularly American nor original to American English. But the point that Americans are ruining English is enough to puff a Yank up with pride. We Americans lead at least two staggeringly expensive wars elsewhere in the world, but with a few cost-free changes to the lexis we apparently have the British running in fear in the High Street. English is, in truth, a family: American English and British English are siblings from the same parentage, neither is the parent of the other. They are two siblings among many modern-day varieties. A sign at Geno's in Philadelphia advises customers to speak English Many Americans are proud - some defiantly so - of the English language the British imparted them A protest More than 16% of the US claims Hispanic origin, and American English resounds with Spanish words If people submitting Americanisms had done this, they would have found that in some cases the terms they warned against predated Americans and American influence. In others the history is so muddled that it can only be said that both Englishes conspired. Grant Barrett is a radio announcer, editor and lexicographer. He co-hosts an American public radio show about language, A Way with Words. * Why do some Americanisms irritate people? 13 JULY 2011, MAGAZINE * 50 of your noted Americanisms 20 JULY 2011, MAGAZINE I have loads of fun with this discussion, but I get annoyed when Latin Americans bring up the term "American" and say it's an example of US arrogance. The nerve of those people is astounding. Shall we change our name because they don't like what we've called ourselves since the 1770s? It also shows an ignorance of history and linguistics. United Statesian is not proper English it's Spanglish! I am an "American" and I lament the destruction of the English language. I am not concerned with "aeroplane" being spelled as "airplane," but I am frightened by the most basic of words being abbreviated. "U" instead of "you," for instance. What's so hard about adding two more letters? Even our advertisements cater to the progressively illiterate. The beauty of language is disappearing quickly. Your gentle note compels me to admit that you've busted me. I lived for 2 years in England & by a shame-faced process of moving my beans ever nearer to my morning toast, came to LOVE beans on toast. For the rest, I adjusted my vocabulary to the foreign tongue but didn't supress my American accent--that's when I realized that I'm a patriot. Take care! Say no to the get-go! Americanisms swamping English, so wake up and smell It's an ugly Americanism, meaning 'from the start' or 'from the off'. The British have been borrowing words from America for at least two America for at least two centuries. My dictionary (a mere 12 years old) defines 'geek' as an American Nowadays, people have no idea where American ends and English begins. American billion (a thousand million) to replace our old hardly used names in America, yet there is no sign of hood replacing bonnet, or do things the American way in media reports of court cases, though - It also used to be understood that, while American politicians 'ran' from those of the Americans. I happen to belong to the .0001 per cent witless Americanism introduced into British discourse. hate Americanisms to englishincrisis@gmail.com. I visit the USA a lot. I also have American family members, so I am Americanisms, some of which are creeping in over here Taps=faucets, a few, there are hundreds more! I also have to wonder why Americans American is there for good. If anyone can tell me a reliable way to English without me realising it! As an American, my favourite Brit Americanisation of the English language but most of our traditions. Actually one can not blame it all on the Americans... We have the new Americans though, it's a nice country and American people are really together 'off' & 'of' !! The combination is a necessity in American Harry Styles leads the way as One Direction touch down in America just days after he called America's obsession with celebrity lives first flight just days after he called America's obsession with America's Got Talent 'for one more season' 'I am very excited': Howard Stern announces his return to America's Got Talent 'for one Marlon Brando revealed in stunning new book Dennis Stock: American someone attractive! New room rental site in America connects assassination attempts on American presidents and candidates over Unstoppable rise of American English: Study shows young Britons copying US littered with Americanisms, exclamation marks and references to they were increasingly using American words such as garbage, trash Americanisms: Children's work was littered with words such as garbage, Americanisms: Children's work was littered with words such as garbage, thought to be fuelling the increasing use of American vocabulary and thought to be fuelling the increasing use of American vocabulary and thought to be fuelling the increasing use of American vocabulary and AMERICAN WORD OCCURRENCES problem is the spelling system (American English or English English) American English beats the hell out of German, doesn't it? America and Mexico are one country! - Fed Up, England, 29/5/2012. Fed invaded British North America (Canada) where promptly sent back with Canada, America and Mexico are one country! - Fed Up, England, out of Hindi films where English and American words are sprinkled Harry Styles leads the way as One Direction touch down in America just days after he called America's obsession with celebrity lives first flight just days after he called America's obsession with America's Got Talent 'for one more season' 'I am very excited': Howard Stern announces his return to America's Got Talent 'for one Marlon Brando revealed in stunning new book Dennis Stock: American someone attractive! New room rental site in America connects assassination attempts on American presidents and candidates over avoided a relocation to America by studio bosses who wanted to turn it into turn the story of the boy wizard into an American teenage drama that of an American teenage drama that of an American teenage drama 'In some of the first talks with writers in America there was talk of some American touches added including cheerleaders if film bosses had some American touches added including cheerleaders if film bosses had American viewers, Heyman - who subsequently produced all of the films gothic structures to be set in America.' converting Hogwarts into an American-style high school would have Americanise the film adaption had gone ahead. least creative place on earth. American television is becoming 5/8/2012 8:48. --- Historical fact: it was a B-17 with an American "House" partly because a caster thought he was american (but mainly half America my parents from Elmbridge,Surrey. i just love The Twelve and many many more shows. thank you BBC AMERICA. TAKE THE Stop bashing the Americans- this is a problem with the Hollywood film industry, not America or Americans. Hollywood is so scared of loosing plays to the largest cinema audience in the world, which is America. would be American, same with TV shows, so stop being so harsh just that it won't credit them with the intellegence to enjoy non-American Harry Styles leads the way as One Direction touch down in America just days after he called America's obsession with celebrity lives first flight just days after he called America's obsession with America's Got Talent 'for one more season' 'I am very excited': Howard Stern announces his return to America's Got Talent 'for one Marlon Brando revealed in stunning new book Dennis Stock: American someone attractive! New room rental site in America connects assassination attempts on American presidents and candidates over o Study Abroad o Teach First o Teach for America o Teach for Australia o Teacher Bashing -- * Social Enterprise + Teach for Australia + Teach for America + CfBT + Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation -- * ESOL Continuing Americanisation of UK Education Posted by Editors Charter Schools, Education Reform, In The News, Politics, Teach First, Tuition Fees Saturday, December 11th, 2010 -- Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic. With the narrow victory for the Coalition of One over tuition fees and the rise of Teach First, it seems that the UK is moving ever closer to becoming the newest addition to the United States of America. The Special Relationship Teach First is modelled on Teach For America and tuition fees are commonplace in the USA where they can reach over $30K per year. But that’s not all. In the US the poorer (or smarter?) kids go to local community colleges where it is much cheaper (£3000 a year) and live at home. This is also increasingly the trend in the UK. Another trend in the UK is the creation of academies and free schools just like charter schools in the US. The Tories wish to create more private universities. And No Child Left Behind (2001) provided the model for standards-based education reform in the UK. This Americanisation is no surprise. Wikileaks has revealed just how much Tories have been looking to cement the special relationship. This poodling was also Thatcher’s policy. And just like Thatcher, Tory Boy and Chums have savagely cut education funding, and they’re well-known Europhobes. NuLab were no different, however. They looked westward to cowboy Bush for inspiration too. -- * What Makes Daniel Willingham A Scientist? * Where’s Wally? How To Spot A Corporate Education Reformer * A Teach First Primer: The American Experience * Is ‘Good Will Hunting’ A Film About The Purpose Of Education? * US & UK Education Privatisation: The Differences -- STAY UPDATED A Levels Academies Alfie Kohn Andreas Schleicher Apprenticeships ARK ASCL ATL Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Cambridge Assessment Campbell Collaboration CfBT Charter Schools Common Core Daniel Willingham Demos Diane Ravitch Education Business Education Reform Educationalists EMA ESOL Events Exams FE Free Schools GCSEs HE HE Review ICT IfL In The News Internships Labour League Tables Management Consultants Managerialism McKinsey & Co. Media Watch Merit Pay MetLife Michael Barber NASUWT National Curriculum NCLB New College of the Humanities NUS NUT OECD Ofsted Pasi Sahlberg PISA Policy Politics Pre-School Primary Education Private Schools Private Tuition Research Russell Group Schools Secondary Education Social Enterprise Special Schools Standards Student Finance Study Abroad Teach First Teach for America Teach for Australia Teacher Bashing Teaching Teaching Resource s Testing Tories TUC Tuition Fees UCU UFT Unions UNISON Working Conditions ENGLAND in the shadow of AMERICA I've now decided. Daft questions are good. One day in 1888 a little American magazine called the Critic asked a really good daft question. It printed it on a card and sent it to a handful of American novelists. would drop tear after tear into his river of words. The American and the Scot met soon after. (Twain had admired Kidnapped; Stevenson adored Huckleberry Finn, and read it four times.) They sat for an hour on a bench in Washington Square. I fancy they discussed what you could do in a novel. What you could say. What unsay. And something of that concern has come down to us. In this century the American novel has cast a long and perplexing shadow over British fiction. Manly tears and American big rivers could be seen to swell the oily backwaters of the English novel, and in their large, political, plain-speakingness, those same waters might be seen to have irrigated the fictive soils of the Irish, the Scottish. The Atlantic roar - Moby Dick, Gravity's Rainbow - has broken smartly on Scotland's west coast, and been absorbed inland with ease. The English make much of it too. But where a Scottish novelist, such as Duncan McLean who appears in this special issue, can see the open-hearted good in Texan swing, and like James Kelman fairly revel in the sparse melody of the American southern voice, their contemporaries in England can seem overwhelmed, breathless, dispirited, when confronted with American voices, and big, fat, American novels. Norman Mailer, never shy of an unslender volume himself, has just given us The Time of Our Time (Little Brown, #25), a veritable doorstep of a book, one which tries to wrap a whole republic in its covers, and a whole ego. Once upon a time, Mailer had something to say to British readers. Maybe he still has. But he also had something to say to British writers. ''Has not the time come for the British writer to face the disagreeable notion that, compared to us in America, he has been slack, fought his battles with too little, and surrendered too often to those peculiar betrayals which are worked in the name of good taste, caution, and the public trust?'' Well maybe. But you don't want to go too far on that. Before the fight for William Burroughs and Henry Miller there was the problem of D H Lawrence. And Messrs Stevenson and Twain, on their park bench, may have admitted the possibility of learning something from one another. No literary culture can be unidirectional: Melville, and Hawthorne, and Henry James learned much from Flaubert, George Eliot, and Scott; and the American novel has always been interested in Europe, in being there, or not being there. ''America is my country,'' said Gertrude Stein, ''but Paris is my home.'' Last year I asked Mailer what he thought of Iris Murdoch. ''She's the novelist I'd most like to have been,'' he said. ''I wished I'd written A Severed Head.'' I think he excepted Murdoch from his put-down of British writers, not because she's not British (she's actually Irish), but because she's a philosopher, and her novels are risky. And he had a point there. Who could deny that America is the place where the business of Modernism is now mainly being carried on? Last year saw the publication of Underworld by Don DeLillo, a serious (and seriously complex) song of the American Cold War years; and Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, a massive, elliptical journey into American history and imagination. These are books which take the subject of America itself. Nothing came out in England last year which had any similar power or dimension. We had a novel about a girl, Bridget Jones's Diary. Or About a Boy. We had novels so interested in reassurance, so prosaic and timid, so historically inert, they could not be seen to be part of any novelistic tradition at all, only as an offshoot of some panting magazine culture, some deleterious riff from the centre of English banality. There was American and Irish and Scottish banality too - but nothing so empty as those feature-written novels, busted with their own nonsense. There is something about America. It gives itself to large gestures. From Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman to Rick Moody and Robert Pinsky, it was never going to be the sort of culture where boring men were content to boast about their ordinariness, or if they did it was going to be Herzog, and not The Little Book of Calm. The virtue of America is that it respects its extremes: it may produce some of the worst best-selling, self-help dross in the whole of the known universe, but when it decides to publish literature it does so, and it calls it that, and it can find an audience for it, and know the difference. America gets all the stick going for enjoying its own superficialities. But at least it takes an interest in what junk means. Britain just laughs at them for being so vacuous, and then buys it all up for Channel 4. Britain's critical culture is so lame at present: full of rubbish and rave; you can sometimes feel there's a conspiracy of lazy tripe-mongers; a critical condition in critical condition: Britain (and France) are among the easiest places for bad books to be called good. That is true now. You see it week after week on the book pages: miserable guff as ''masterpiece''. I would say the literary culture in Britain now is the least robust it has been this century. People laugh at America, unthinkingly. But it was in America, not here, that a strange and large book like Underworld could go to number one. It's in America, not here, that someone like Oprah Winfrey could hoist Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon on to the bestseller list, just by discussing it on her show, saying: ''This is an important book. Read it.'' Imagine Vanessa Feltz discussing Julian Barnes's new novel, England, England, on her very English show. Barnes's novel, a bright disquisition on islandness, is about a tycoon's attempt to turn the Isle of Wight into a mini-England. It's the sort of book which could trouble the typical, heritage-loving Anglophile. But you won't hear it discussed in that way. You won't hear the book discussed as if it actually mattered to the way people live their lives here. What is often called the Americanisation of British culture is actually the Britishisation of American cultural output. Vanessa Feltz is much worse than Oprah. The Sunday Times book pages are much worse than the New York Times Book Review. The Spectator is a load of mince next to the New Yorker. The BBC is threatening to cut Bookmark, which means there will soon be more places to watch the intelligent discussion of literary topics in America than here. At least when Oprah discusses books she will discuss them as if they made some sort of difference. Here - eye off the ball, snout in the air - the only chance Iris Murdoch has of getting on to a popular discussion programme is if she were to allow herself to be featured as a writer with Alzheimer's! The Americans might love garbage, but less thoroughly do they mistake it for art. The American novel has often shown what it has been like to be alive in America this past 40 years. Britain has not. Where are the British novelists of supermarkets, nuclear reactors, local politics, middle-class gardens, advertising frauds, new town planning, food scares, de-islanding, new religions, computer components factories? Where are the political satires? The Joycean turns through provincial cities? The breath of Birmingham? People who love Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield and Gogol and Maupassant, who grew up reading these things, now lie in wait for the latest from their offspring, Richard Ford, or Cormac McCarthy, or Alice Munro, or Claire Messud. Americans all. English fiction is sunk in critical laxity and cultural bad faith. It grows pleased with its small ambitions; its proud emptiness. The Indian novel has made it look poky. The Irish and Scottish has made it seem moribund. Having said all this, I would say, for my part, that the trouble with the English novel seems mainly political. You very seldom read an English sentence, about the land, about a face, about a turn of language and mind, a crack-up, and think: ''This is about the whole country. This is something that can stand for the nation itself.'' There is very little political energy. There are English novelists now, whose interest in popular culture, in political effects, has caused them to be called very English - Jonathan Coe, Will Self - but that is not true. It makes them American. It makes them very American. After I wrote that last sentence there was a knock at the door. It was a man in a crash helmet, holding two towers of paper, a veritable World Trade Centre of manuscript. This was the last instalment of Tom Wolfe's new novel A Man in Full. His previous novel, Bonfire of the Vanities, left you in no doubt about those carrying on the tradition established by Thackeray and Trollope. It was a political thriller, an account of the moneyed classes, a view of the Bronx, a breath of society high and low, a long look at how materialism and news entertainment had doused the Manhattan of the 1980s. The first parts of A Man in Full promise another medley of contemporary literary effects: big-time realism; satirical miniatures; Dickensian brio; a superabundance of Nineties manners and follies. It is the sort of book that has become nearly impossible to imagine in a British context. The English novel has largely become a silly conceit of minor affections, devoid of political realities, or indeed possibilities. The founding fathers (and mothers) of American writing loved Stendhal. It was he who put the matter most plainly: ''Politics in a work of literature,'' he wrote, ''is like a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert, something loud and vulgar, and yet a thing to which it is not possible to refuse one's attention.'' The best of the Americans make us nervous. They can give us novels that enter, with prescience, with heart, into the political system of the day, in the manner they learned from Europe's finest. They can give us a stylish novel on Bill Clinton. We will look in vain for such a book about Tony Blair. Who would write it? Jeffrey Archer? The best American writers are political in a more important way. They are open to the politics of everyday life. They can show you power in a handful of dust. And the people who taught them have forgotten how. PM faces fight over TV fears of American invasion A POWERFUL group of MPs and peers this week will launch a severe attack on Tony Blair's ambitions to open up Britain's airwaves to American conglomerates - a move which look set to benefit media moguls like Rupert Murdoch. A joint committee of the House of Commons and House of Lords, chaired by Lord Puttnam, the Labour peer and film producer, will express deep concern on Wednesday at the ''creeping Americanisation'' of British television, which they fear will become much worse if US companies are allowed to snap up parts of the ITN network. It has been suggested the prime minister is keen to placate Mr Murdoch, the owner of BSkyB and newspapers such as the Sun and the Times, in the hope that his media stable will be less hostile during any euro referendum. Whitehall sources already have indicated that Mr Blair is prepared to take on the committee over the contentious issue of foreign ownership and is willing to personally sanction overturning its findings - a move described by one government insider as ''extremely rare''. Mr Blair's position appears to be that it is untenable for the British media to be liable for takeover by European firms and individuals, but not American ones. However, last night, one member of the committee told The Herald: ''There is concern. The committee did not support the government's position on foreign ownership. It felt very strongly about the lack of reciprocation as well.'' This latter point is a reference to the fact that while parts of British radio and television could be opened up to takeover by US companies, UK firms are barred from taking over American stations. The joint committee on the draft communications bill claims the government's arguments on the issue of opening up the British media ''lack force'' and are based on ''an untested aspiration''. It will say if Mr Blair does not do a U-turn on his plans, then British television and radio will be placed in serious jeopardy. The MPs and peers, who include Lord Hussey, a former chairman of the BBC, argue that American media giants such as Disney and AOL/Time Warner would engage in a ''determined and sophisticated attempt'' to move away from UK-based programmes and concentrate on US Search Americanisation or Globalisation? By David Ellwood | Published in History Today Volume: 52 Issue: 9 2002 Print this article Email this article USA David Ellwood argues that the attempts of British politicians to copy an American ‘role model’ are likely to fail. Within the next five years the United Kingdom will almost certainly be obliged to decide whether or not to abandon the pound sterling and embrace the Euro. The closer this milestone approaches, the more intense becomes the debate on the meaning of Britain’s experience in the twentieth century, the factor more than any other which is likely to decide her fate in the twenty-first. In February 2001, Timothy Garton Ash asked ‘Is Britain European?’ He argued that Britain had long since abandoned the national perspective of a self-satisfied little island at the heart of a great empire: ‘But it is not clear whether what has replaced it is Europeanisation, Americanisation or just globalisation.’ Quite so. A leading political philosopher, John Gray, has attacked Labour’s commitment to the United States as ‘the paradigmatic modern country, which Britain should take as a model’. In contrast Jonathan Freedland, a Guardian journalist, has written an entire volume dedicated to teaching Britons how to ‘live the American dream’, first by eliminating the monarchy and then by installing a republic based on the US Constitution. [padlock.png] This article is available to History Today online subscribers only. If you are a subscriber, please log in. -- * The Special Relationship * The Special Relationship * The American Impact On Postwar Germany; & The American Occupation of Britain 1942-1945. * Location -- o Syria o Yemen + North America o Canada o Mexico o USA + South America o Argentina o Paraguay -- o Chile o Peru + Central America * Period + Prehistory -- o Glorious Revolution o French Revolution o American Revolution o Enlightenment o Stuart -- o Victorian o Industrial Revolution o American Civil War + 20th Century o Edwardian #alternate publisher HuffPost Search Tax Returns And The Americanisation Of British Politics Tax Returns And The Americanisation Of British Politics + Lauren Razavi Lauren Razavi :Is 'De-Americanization' The Way Forward? Tax Returns And The Americanisation Of British Politics The snap agreement by the four leading candidates to be London mayor to publish how much they pay in tax points to the increasing Americanisation of British politics. Their agreement came during a mayoral debate on BBC Newsnight on Wednesday, itself something of an American procedure, is likely to increase pressure on members of the Cabinet to do the same. Sunday 30 September 2012 American influence on the Middle East is past its peak â someone should tell them World View: Is the US now in the same position as the Soviet Union in 1989, when it had to allow its satellites to collapse around it? -- Share Are the days of American predominance in the Middle East coming to an end or is US influence simply taking a new shape? How far is Washington, after refusing to try to keep Hosni Mubarak in power in Egypt, facing the same situation as the Soviet Union in 1989, when the police states it had sustained in Eastern Europe were allowed to collapse? The US is obviously weaker than it was between 1979, when the then Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, signed the Camp David agreement and allied Egypt with the US, and 2004/05, when it became obvious to the outside world that the Iraq war was a disaster for America. At the time, General William Odom, a former head of the National Security Agency, the biggest US intelligence agency, rightly called it "the greatest strategic disaster in American history". Since then, the verdict of the Iraq war has been confirmed in Afghanistan, where another vastly expensive US expeditionary force has failed to crush an insurgency. In the last few weeks alone, Taliban fighters have succeeded in storming Camp Bastion in Helmand province and destroying $200m worth of aircraft. So many American and allied soldiers have now been shot by Afghan soldiers and police that US advisers are under orders to wear full body armour when having tea with their local allies. The Arab Spring uprisings posed a new threat to the US, but also opened up new options. Support for Mubarak was decisively withdrawn at an early stage, to the dismay of Saudi Arabia and Israel. But the Muslim Brotherhood had long been considering how it could reach an accommodation with the US that would safeguard it against military coups, and enable it to chop back the power of the Egyptian security forces. This was very much the successful strategy of the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development (AKP) party, explaining why it was prepared to join the US in invading Iraq in 2003 and why it has become the chief instrument of American policy towards Syria in the past year. This alliance with Islamic but democratic and pro-capitalist parties in Egypt and Turkey is obviously in the interests of the US and the Atlantic powers. But their support for democratic change in North Africa and West Asia is determined by self-interest. It does not, for instance, extend to Bahrain where the Sunni al-Khalifa monarchy has been busily locking up its Shia opponents and retreating from promises of meaningful reform. But new allies must at some point mean fresh policies. In sharp contrast to the Mubarak regime, a new government in Egypt is unlikely to support covertly Israeli military action such as the bombardment of Lebanon in 2006 and of Gaza in 2008. A problem for the White House is that American voters have not taken on board the extent to which US influence has been reduced. For all the rhetoric about the Iraq war being a strategic disaster, the American political and military elite has also failed to appreciate the extent and consequences of failure. It is extraordinary to discover, according to recent revelations, that as late as 2010 Vice-President Joe Biden was under the impression that he could blithely decide who would be president of Iraq. Biden's grip on Iraqi geography appears to be as shaky as his understanding of its politics. On one occasion in Baghdad, he lauded all the good things the US had done for Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, having apparently mistaken it for Basra in southern Iraq. The killing of the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and the burning of the US Consulate in Benghazi could have been a worse political disaster for President Barack Obama than it turned out to be. It highlighted that the rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi were not quite as they had been presented by the US government and media during the war past year. The US State Department appears to have had an unhealthy belief in its own propaganda, not seeing that its consulate in Benghazi was in one of the most dangerous places in the world. The assault did not come out of a blue sky. Fighters had shot at the convoy of the British ambassador, Sir Dominic Asquith, in Benghazi a few weeks earlier. In July last year, the rebels' own commander, Abdel Fatah Younis, was abducted and murdered by men nominally under his command in revenge for repressive actions he had carried out before he defected from Gaddafi's forces. Diplomats and soldiers are often curiously blind to dangers facing them. It may be that both live in very inward-looking communities and somehow cannot internalise how somebody outside may think and act. I remember in 1983 in Lebanon talking to the highly intelligent US marine commander whose soldiers were based near Beirut airport. In theoretical terms, he could see very clearly that American forces had some very dangerous enemies and were vulnerable to attack, but he unaccountably failed to take effective measures that might have stopped a truck packed with explosives killing 241 marines when their base was destroyed. Likewise, the Green Zone in Baghdad from 2003 on had elaborate fortifications, but its outer defences were manned at one moment by former Peruvian policemen from Lima and, at another, by ex-soldiers from Uganda hired on the cheap by a security company. A more effective political opponent than Mitt Romney could surely have inflicted damage on Obama over the Benghazi debacle. A measure of Romney's ineptitude is that he failed to do so and, instead of scoring points, he came across as opportunistic and ignorant. After all, Obama has been conducting a policy of retreat in Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt without quite coming clean about it. Romney's denunciation of Obama for "apologising" for America was shallow demagoguery, though rhetoric on the American right should not be dismissed too casually. George W Bush's supporters used to spout similar nonsense, but only after 9/11 did it become appallingly clear that they believed a lot of what they were saying. Supposing Obama is re-elected in November, will the US stance change at all? The endlessly repeated Israeli threats to launch air strikes on Iran have always struck me as being most likely highly successful bluff, since threats alone have served Israeli purposes so well, isolating Iran economically and diverting attention from the Palestinians. #NewsBiscuit RSS Feed NewsBiscuit » Rioters denounce ‘Americanisation’ of British way of rioting Comments Feed NewsBiscuit Ofsted report slams School of Hard Knocks Red faces as George Michael wins Daily Mail’s ‘Dream Cottage’ Betting firms collapse as Indian cricketers retire on winnings NewsBiscuit -- * Rioters denounce ‘Americanisation’ of British way of rioting 'Big ass New York cop don't know jack sheet bout nuthin,' says Simon from Bromley British rioters have hit out at what they see as an unwelcome transatlantic influence on the traditional English way of looting and causing affray. ‘It’s another deplorable Americanisation of our traditional British way of doing stuff – especially free stuff,’ says fourteen-year-old Tottenham rioter Zac (two Sony flat screens and a bag of trainers). ‘Innit.’ And Zac’s fellow rioter Jed,12, (two laptops and a crate of Stella), agreed. ’This American super cop Bill Bratton knows nothing about our way of shopping,’ he said. ‘American cops just don’t know how to behave. You’d think a Tory government would have more respect for the traditional British Bobby. I’m well disgusted.’ But the Prime Minister defended the decision to take advice from Mr Bratton. ’He’s a sort of American Dixon of Dock Green,’ he said. ”Except he uses CS gas, water cannon and rocket launchers against riots and gangs. I think they may well approve of that in Tunbridge Wells.’ Meanwhile David Cameron has ordered 16000 police onto the streets outside secondary schools in readiness for Thursday’s A Level results. ‘Those teenage girls contemplating uncontrolled histrionics when they receive their A Level results, should think again,’ the Prime Minister said after chairing a meeting of COBRA. ‘Police will be ready to deal robustly with excessive screaming or hugging – it’s self- dramatisation, pure and simple and will not be tolerated.’ -- * IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2011/08/15/rioters-denounce-americanisation-of-british-way-of-rioting/&send=false&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&action=like&colorscheme=light&font * * What links here The Americanisation of Turkey Dimitar Bechev 18 March 2012 -- Turkey's international profile and domestic politics have long been oriented towards the European Union. Now, both the Arab awakening and the internal momentum of AKP rule are pushing Ankara closer to the United States, says Dimitar Bechev. There was a time when people in Turkey wishfully called their country küçük Amerika ("the little America"). The phrase reflected a strong, even intimate relationship between the two countries. During the cold-war years, Turkey's centre-right leaders - from Adnan Menderes in the 1950s to Turgut Özal in the 1980s - extolled the virtues of the American dream to a receptive public; the Nato alliance was the alpha and omega of Ankara’s security doctrine; Turkey's elite sent its offspring to colleges across the United States; and Turkish audiences lapped up the latest pop-culture imports such as the TV soap Dallas. Then, for much of the two subsequent decades, it looked as if Turkey was following a predominantly European path. It has turned out, however, that this was but a detour. In post-Kemalist Turkey, the earlier American vision is coming to full fruition. Europe’s evident failure to accomplish its transformative mission means that Turkish politics is coming under the sway, not of Europeanisation but of Americanisation. There are many manifestations of the trend. Perhaps the clearest is Turkey's foreign relations. Before the Arab spring of 2011, Turkey had confidently pursued what it called a "zero-problems" regional approach (its own version of Brussels's "European neighbourhood policy" that promotes functional integration with states on the European Union's periphery). -- A domestic dynamic But the connection runs much deeper than the convergence of strategic interests at a critical juncture - for Turkey is also Americanising domestically. The ruling Justice & Development Party (AKP) may have responded to the weakening of the EU's reformist pressure by succumbing further to an authoritarian temptation in the wake of its third successive electoral victory in June 2011. But even before then, the accommodation of religious conservatism that underpins the AKP's democratic imaginaire closely mirrors a US-style framework while being at increasing variance with Europe’s post-Christian polities. Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his followers, in seeking to bolster the case for Turkey’s accession to the EU, used to cite European-style Christian democracy as a source of inspiration for their moderate form of Islamic politics. In 2012, however, the AKP's social-conservative line on "family values" or the teaching of Darwinian evolution in schools if far more in harmony with attitudes in America’s "red" (Republican) states than in European metropoles. Turkey has its own "culture wars" which are surely intelligible to the median US citizen. A controversy over proposed reforms that would introduce a middle-school level for 10-14 year-olds who can be enrolled in an imam hatip (religious institution) or be taught at home is a case in point. The AKP maintains that this would broaden girls' access to schooling; critics see it as perpetuating social conservatism. -- The influential religious thinker Fethullah Gülen may have a conflictual relationship with Erdoğan, but he remains an influential fellow-traveller of the AKP - and significantly, he resides in Pennsylvania. None other than the New York Times portrayed the "Gülenists" as "the Islamic equivalent of Christian movements appealing to business and the professions." Both Gülen's movement and the pious entrepreneurs supporting the AKP have embraced the fusion of market-friendly (or neo-liberal) economics and God once popularised by Turgut Özal, perhaps Turkey’s most distinguished Americaniser. Some critics would argue that the religious worldview shared by the AKP and the Gülenists dismisses social rights and redistribution and sees welfare (again similarly to US conservatives) in paternalistic terms as a matter of charity, though in fairness social reforms in key areas such as healthcare have greatly expanded opportunities for Turkey's lower-income groups. In institutional terms, the AKP’s decade-long ascendancy has resulted in a transition from coalition rule to majoritarian politics. The party governs alone, unimpeded either by the need to share power with other political forces (as its predecessors in the 1990s faced) or by Turkey's so-called "deep state". -- An international lodestar But if Turkey is embracing Americanisation rather than Europeanisation, could this process provide a (better) answer to Turkey's burning questions of citizenship and national identity? Again, the European Union long thought that it had the competence and leverage to make a difference in Turkey. But it now appears that Brussels’s standards tended to reinforce Turkey's post-1920s Kemalist order, which was already informed by the French republican ideal of a single and indivisible political community (and often cast, as also in Germany and much of central and eastern Europe, in exclusively ethno-cultural terms). The retreat of EU influence in Turkey increasingly makes the alternative to Kemalism not one of EU-inspired minority rights, let alone ethnic power-sharing as demanded by Kurdish nationalists, but rather the AKP brand of identity politics which (unlike Kemalism) recognises the multiplicity of ethnic identities while embracing nationalism and the cult of the state. Here, (Sunni) Islam is the overarching, supra-ethnic glue that reconciles the commitment to a strong, sovereign and fiercely patriotic Turkey with cultural-linguistic particularisms. Again, this is a pattern recognisable in the US. -- True, this effort to recast nationhood along the mildly Islamist worldview to which Turkey’s current rulers subscribe is but a "project in the making", and it is contested from multiple quarters, not least by nationalist Kurds. Its chances of completion hinge on the possibility that civic norms can be enshrined as the core of citizenship. And as long as the new civilian constitution promised by the authorities is nowhere in sight, the project remains out of sync with crude political realities. So there are also obstacles to Turkey's Americanisation. Turkey’s new establishment has very few knee-jerk Americanophiles (similar to the old secular one, whose attitude to the US was highly instrumental). Turkey's public opinion has traditionally been, as elsewhere in southern Europe, a hotbed of anti-Americanism. The German Marshall Fund’s "transatlantic trends" poll in 2011 finds out that 62% of Turks hold negative views of the US, the highest percentage of all countries surveyed. There is no causal relationship between Turkey’s internal Americanisation and the country’s behaviour vis-à-vis the US, which is essentially a balancing act between the pursuit of security in a turbulent environment and the quest for autonomy. The EU remains by far the most important trade and investment partner for Turkey, even if membership talks have ground to a halt. If the extensive human links between the two are factored in, it becomes clear that the union will remain the biggest external stakeholder in Turkey’s internal transformation for the foreseeable future - whatever the weather. -- It is also true, however, that the US offers a more intelligible and eye-catching model for a country and society that views itself as rising and believes tomorrow will be better than today. Neither the Europe of supranational institutions and liberal values nor the populist Europe of Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen is a credible or attractive competitor. Europhilia seems to survive in Turkey only in a handful of enclaves in downtown Istanbul and along the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts - as well as in Anatolia’s farthest corners inhabited by Kurds. The majority of Turks, having cast in their lot with the AKP, watch Europe’s eurozone crisis with Schadenfreude. Europe's loss of symbolic capital in Turkey is a significant development in a longer chain of events. The Tanzimat reforms of the 19th century sought to transplant European modernity onto Ottoman soil. The Kemalists’ quest to bring "contemporary civilisation" to Turkey was equally informed by Eurocentric ideas. To a great degree, Turkey's semi-integration into the EU (even without full membership) has made the country increasingly prosperous and, despite more recent backsliding, more democratic. But it is by looking to America rather than Europe that the new Turkey might obtain a clearer sense of direction. View the discussion thread. About the author -- A battle for memory - Mohamed Mahmoud Beloved Doris Lessing The fight for the fourth power in Latin America The word 'author' loses its meaning * What links here Say 'no' to a Senate, the Americanisation of the UK has gone far enough, an OK competition Anthony Barnett 2 December 2010 -- Peter Carty and I tried to make this obvious point in our book The Athenian Option. No, we actually did make it, more than once. Established thinking, however, prevents it from being registered. And Tim goes along with this received failure of wisdom. For example, you have to empower the Commons to be the legislative chamber, so that the second one can scrutinise it. But today, we have two legislative chambers. Retain this structure and it follows that the upper house has to be controlled by party whips. If it is taken in isolation from the Commons, there can be no democratic reform of the House of Lords Calling it a 'Senate' is a classic, spin doctors way of evading this. New Labour always wanted Britain to become like America without having to have a constitutional revolution. What could be 'more radical' than 'replacing' the Lords with a Senate? But what a betrayal of the English tradition - that we have to reach across the Atlantic to bring back a term consciously modeled on Rome so that no one mistook the new republic as looking to Greece and democracy? Surely, whatever it is, we can call it something that is rooted in our own traditions? -- Subscribe Donate Accepted credit/debit cards: Mastercard, Visa, American Express Highlights * What links here The British Election Debates, the Lib Dem Surge and the Americanisation of Our Politics Gerry Hassan 22 April 2010 -- Then there is the issue of liberty. What kind of country has 5.4 million people on its DNA database? This is over one in ten of the adult population – and the demographics of this group reveal that they are a snapshot of a more marginal, disconnected Britain: more poor, young and black, less educated and politically engaged. The Americanisation of British Politics: Living in a Fantasy, Liberal World The kind of country the UK is geo-politically; whether it is a ‘normal’ European country or an offshore extension of the United States, is another central issue the two big parties don’t want to go near. Labour and the Tories both clearly want us to be the latter, and prevent us discussing the potential of the former. The Americanisation of British politics can be illustrated in how our political and media elites see much of the public life of our nation, a good example of which is the Prime Ministerial debates. Our political and media classes inhabit a mythical, imagined Camelot – a fantasy land of ‘Anglo-America’ – where all their references to politics are either British or American ‘real’ politics, or the make believe of the TV series ‘The West Wing’. It is as partial a view of the US as it a distortion of the UK: a world of brave, crusading liberals taking on the forces of darkness and prejudice, ‘the New Deal’, ‘New Frontier’, ‘Great Society’ and so on, and never the Goldwater, Nixon or Reagan versions, and certainly not the mad hatter Tea Partyiers. Therefore, our political and media discourse about the UK debates nearly exclusively engages in a comparison with the US Presidential debates. Thus we are endlessly told the stories of Kennedy’s clean cut look on TV, Nixon’s five o’clock shadow, Gerald Ford saying that Poland was not under Soviet dominance, Reagan’s ‘there you go again’ refrain to Carter, Lloyd Bentsen’s ‘Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine’ rebuke to Dan Quayle, and Clinton’s folksy charm on the recession against the first George Bush. -- These have been running for several elections now; in 2005 after Schroder prematurely called a national election, and trailing massively in the polls to the CDU/CSU, he turned around his party’s fortunes in the debate, being seen as winning the argument against Angela Merkel, the CDU/CSU leader. This produced a very close election result and a ‘Grand Coalition’ between the two big parties. As you can see our obsession with the US debates is not even an issue with the English language, as Australia, New Zealand and Canada all have leader debates. This points to this being about the fact that our political and media elites see British and American politics as umbilically linked and interwoven. The stories of some of these other countries are similar to ours and more relevant than the US given American exceptionalism. The journey of parties of the centre-left: the French Socialists, German SPD, Australian Labor and New Zealand Labour, have many lessons for British Labour. All of these have undergone crises of what they stand for, what they do in office, and who they represent in recent years, which they have not adequately answered. Australia’s and New Zealand’s debates about privatisation, deregulation and the marketisation of society, and concerns over the pitfalls which result from these, in terms of concerns over health and well-being (and thus the exclusion of the economy from progressive debate), would seem very familiar to British audiences. These deep issues about the future direction and nature of the United Kingdom are ones our mainstream political classes do not want to bring into the public domain in a general election or any other time. Most of our mainstream debate seems to want to exclude talking about the limitations of the society and kind of country Thatcherism and Blairism has bequeathed us: one of the most unequal societies in the developed world, a place where eight million adults (21%) of the population are economically inactive, and where huge parts of the UK – in places like Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester – have whole communities and several generations permanently excluded from society. And our language of talking about the problems of an ‘underclass’ – now used across the political landscape – shows that our politicians have given up thinking about how we abolish relative poverty. -- Subscribe Donate Accepted credit/debit cards: Mastercard, Visa, American Express Highlights #Polari Magazine RSS2 Feed publisher Polari Magazine » Villains: How British Christians are being Americanised Comments Feed * Send us Mail -- Exploring art & culture from a uniquely queer perspective You are here: Polari Magazine / Heroes & Villains / Villains: How British Christians are being Americanised Villains: How British Christians are being Americanised * -- 21 Jan 2012 / 0 Comments / in Heroes & Villains/by Rebel Scum It is a truth universally acknowledged that the 21^st century British take their lead from Americans. Look at the war in Iraq, and the failed attempts of the BBC at US-style sci-fi. And look at how the formerly mild-mannered British Christians are starting to ape the politics of their more aggressive North American counterparts. The Christian Institute, an organisation previously featured in Rebel Scum for their support of the dread Lillian Ladele, runs a propaganda website that feeds stories to unquestioning outlets such as the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, who then re-run said content without questioning it. The stated aim of the Institute’s work is to show how Christians are being persecuted and their rights taken away. What this means in effect is that Christians should be free to persecute others based on whatever random quote from the Bible they can drudge up to support them. Traditionally, the Americans have been the pit-bull terriers of Christ, tearing up everything in their path and crapping over the aftermath. The British have been the fluffy bunnies of Christ, hopping around the field and leaving behind little hard pellets in the form of sermons. The latest round of religious fervor in response to an uncertain world post-9/11 has seen British Christian organisations taking point from the Americans. The Christian Right in the US has perfected the art of recasting itself as a victim. It is the passive-aggressive in extremis. The rantings and ravings of Linda Harvey, the subject of last month’s Rebel Scum, are founded on this cynical use of marketing tactics. The real key is to make an unsupportable claim and then bolster it with a quotation, or ‘truth’, from the Bible. Any Scripture will do, even if the letter does contradict the later teachings of Christ. The intricacies of theology do not concern them. The unsupportable generalisation is the way at The Christian Institute. Take this example from the About Us page: “The Christian Institute is a nondenominational Christian charity committed to upholding the truths of the Bible. We believe that the Bible is the supreme authority for all of life and we hold to the inerrancy of Scripture. We are committed to upholding the sanctity of life from conception.” Inerrancy? In other words, nothing in the Bible is wrong. So what truths do they follow? Do they love their neighbour, or do they support the idea of mass genocide when it’s perceived to be for the greater good, i.e. as their God did when he drowned everything that wasn’t sanctioned to fit into Noah’s boat. Incidentally, I find it shocking that this is a story they are happy to tell to children. It’s far more twisted than post-watershed ITV crime dramas, or all the gay storylines on soaps that gets the Institute into such a lather. So, what do they believe? Country Living Glasgow Christmas Fair THERE’S a long history of the guardians of the English language battling bravely against creeping Americanisms, but the reality is that it’s a two-way process, writes Stephen McGinty “Cops?” My wife’s lip curled up into a smug little sneer. “Where do you think we are? Boston.” I could, at that moment, have pointed out that Glasgow does share a grid system of streets which makes it a convenient stand-in for the average American city, but figure this would only delay chastisement for a linguistic dalliance with my current “Americanism” of choice. For I’m shamed to admit that I have an unconscious habit of referring to the police by an American slang. Still, it is preferable to referring to them as the police “service” which has replaced the word “force”, probably on the grounds that it sounds friendlier. However, to my mind, a service is optional, you can either choose to make use of a service or not, and yet the role of the police is to enforce the law, obedience to which is not at all optional. Why I refer to them as “cops” is the same reason that I say, and typing this makes me cringe a little, that I will “touch base” with someone or agree that an idea “came out of left field”. Now I’m reasonably comfortable with the use of American baseball terms, for in my youth I played short stop for the Dalriada Demons (no smirking at the back, please) which was set up in Lanarkshire once the locals discovered baseball bats had an alternative use to the one to which they were usually, and vigorously, applied. In fact, I was chosen to represent my country against England, but the promise of an international (baseball) cap floated away with the mound when the game was rained off. I don’t mind certain Americanisms, those words and phrases that wheedle their way into everyday usage such as “talented” and “reliable”. You weren’t aware that both words originally hailed from across the Atlantic? OK. Neither did I before I researched this column, but, apparently William Coleridge cast his disdain on “talented” which he described as a barbarous word in 1832, but Gladstone didn’t seem to mind as he was using it in speeches a few years later. The letter writers to the Times, like their counterparts in corresponding to The Scotsman, have always sought to protect the English language, with one writing in 1857 to describe the new American word “reliable” as vile. It was a Scot who first coined the term “Americanism”. John Witherspoon, the president of Princeton College, first used it in an article published in the Pennsylvania Journal, in which he wrote: “The first class I call Americanisms, by which I understand a use of phrases or terms, or a construction of sentences, even among persons of rank and education, different from the use of the same terms or phrases or construction of similar sentences in Great Britain. The word Americanism, which I have coined for the purpose, is exactly similar in its formation and signification to the word Scotticism.” When the Founding Fathers set sail for America, the English they spoke upon landing would have been identical to that spoken in Plymouth, but over the decades and centuries subtle differences have emerged. They were first codified by Noah Webster, a linguist from Connecticut who familiarised himself with 26 languages, and wrote An American Dictionary of English Language in 1828. It was he who struck out the “u” from colour and the extra “l” from travelled and sneakily swopped a “c” for an “s” in defence. But they wouldn’t let him have his way with women, which he wished to spell “wimmen”. If the appearance of American words caused mild consternation to poets and letter writers to the Times in the early 19th century, it was probably just as well that they were long dead when the marshalled forces of the American English began to lay siege to our nation during our darkest hour. When movies (yes, that could be described as an Americanism, but is also, I would argue, accurate when used to describe an American film) developed sound and recorded dialogue in the 1930s American words and phrases poured from the cinema screen into British ears. Then, when hundreds of thousands of American GIs descended into English towns and villages the frottage between words was heated. There are those who cannot stand “Americanisms”. A few years ago the BBC encouraged listeners to write in with their foulest examples which included “bi-weekly” instead of fortnightly (surely bi-weekly should be used for any occurrence whose frequency is twice a week?); “eaterie”, “hike” as in to raise prices, “going forward” and “you do the math” which, to my mind, is particularly callous, bullying the letter ‘s’ away from his friends m, a, t and little h. Others were enraged by the insertion of redundant words, as in “I got it for free” or the counter-intuitive “I could care less”, which in its literal meaning indicates that you do care a reasonable amount but that this could be lowered, when what the person actually meant to say is: “I couldn’t care less.” Clearly British people do not wish to have “an issue” but prefer to have “a problem” and then we come to aural and linguistic atrocities such as “my bad” for “my fault”. The utterances of a repentant three-year-old should never form the basis of an adult’s vocabulary. (A small aside which indicates that we, in Britain, are equally capable of mugging the English language and leaving it stunned in a ditch: since when did the cloying, saccharine phrase “little ones” become synonymous with “children” or “toddlers”? And, please, can anyone who uses it go immediately to the “naughty step”.) Yet if I have a current pet hate among “Americanisms” it is the phrase “reaching out”. I recently sent an e-mail to a company in Los Angeles who said they could not be of assistance but thanked me for “reaching out”. Have you ever heard a more belittling collision of two words? To ask, in which both parties are on equal footing, has been usurped by a phrase which elevates one and reduces the other. I was the pitiful party drowning in a quicksand of my own ignorance but bravely “reaching out” as if towards the security of a branch or vine. I accept, however, that there is nothing to be done about “Americanisms” other than to make a personal choice about which ones, if any, you are prepared to admit into your everyday vocabulary. Personally, I’m happy to take the lift over the elevator, but would prefer to live in an apartment rather than a flat. When it comes to my car, which is an American Chrysler, I’ll still remain British and swerve around the gas tank, hood and trunk, in favour of petrol, bonnet and boot. The English language will continue to evolve and it is impossible to build a fence around what has, over centuries, blended German, French, Dutch and Latin into its own rich stew of letters. It is, however, important to remember that words and phrases, like little linguistic cargo vessels, are constantly bobbing back and forth across the Atlantic. This week Kory Stamper, associate editor for Merriam-Webster, whose dictionaries are used by the majority of American publishers, said more words were finding their way into American vocabulary. So while we shake our heads over people who use the term “the fall” instead of “autumn”, our opposite number, who happens in this case to be Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at Berkeley, is curling his lip with disdain as a friend says that something is “spot on”. As he said this week: “ ‘will do’ – I hear that from Americans [as well]. That should be put into quarantine.” There is even a blog, run by Ben Yagoda, professor of English at the University of Delaware, which tracks the appearance of British words in American English and highlights words and phrases such as “cheeky”, “sell by date” and “the long game”, which, according to the BBC, was used by Barack Obama in a recent speech and is derived from the British card game, whist. Among the most prominent figures leading the fight back for British English is JK Rowling who bestowed upon that great nation the word “ginger” as a means to describe a redhead. While many words in her first Harry Potter novel were given an American substitute, a few “snuck” through including the quintessentially British word “snog”. Hopefully her latest book, The Casual Vacancy, with its portrait of an English parish council, will help redress the balance. MORE STORIES 4. BBC BBC criticised for creeping ‘Americanisms’ The BBC has been criticised for an increased use of ‘Americanisms’ and slang terms by its presenters. Martha Kearney, newly appointed presenter of The World at One on BBC Radio 4 -- Mr Smith responded: “I don’t think anyone will be regarded as credible until they ‘fess up’ to the terrible truth that some of the services will have to go, in terms of jobs and projects.” The exchange sparked a furious debate on the BBC messageboards about whether this was the latest example of an Americanism creeping into accepted use by BBC presenters. One post asked whether Kearney, 52, was “born in Compton?” – an area of Los Angeles known for gang warfare. The message added: “When has it become acceptable for radio journalists, politicians (I've heard David Cameron use the same phrase) and serious individuals in general to use this American slang? It's lazy, and not very clever. “This is just slack lazy language, which should not be coming from the mouth of anyone who has a reasonable level of education; Even when that 'someone went' to a private school." -- “We're stuck with most of this, but we don't have to lie down prone, supplicate and accept our inevitable crushing by the juggernaut.” Nick Seaton, Campaign for Real Education, said: “It is not a surprise that a few expressions have crept in but the BBC should be setting an example for people and not indulging any slopping Americanised slang.” “BBC bosses should remind their broadcasters what they have to be careful and they have a duty to protect the high standards which we expect from the BBC.” Some commentators have warned that an increase of imported American children’s shows, such as High School Musical, Arthur and Ben Ten, had led to slang being incorporated into every day language. The corporation was forced to monitor the use of slang on its children's CBBC channel following complaints about poor language and declining standards of spoken English on programmes such as Dick and Dom show. -- A BBC spokeman said: "We are not aware of there being any issues with use of language and believe that the public enjoy our presenters' turn of phrase." A list of Americanisms that have annoyed BBC listeners: * 'Fess up' instead of 'confess' * The Americanisation of dates - July the fifth is now 'July fifth' or January the fifth becomes 'January five' * 'Take a look' instead of ‘have a look’ 3. UK News Scottish festival bans 'American' Hallowe'en A pumpkin, yesterday -- A Scottish Hallowe'en festival is banning "consumerist" pumpkins in favour of turnips. The spooky celebration, at Scone Palace, Perthshire, is being organised by Scottish firm Herald Events as a riposte to the Americanisation of the traditional autumn festival, based on the ancient Celtic ritual of Samhain and co-opted by the Church. Speaking to the BBC, Jock Ferguson from the company said: "We will be having none of that pumpkin or trick-or-treat rubbish. -- 12 Apr 2008 Instead of Jack O'Lanterns and trick-or-treating, which organisers condemned as representative of "American big business and rampant consumerism", the festival will offer traditional Scottish activities such as "dooking for apples" and turnip-carving. In "De'il Tak the Hindmost", children will be lead around the grounds of the Scone Palace by the ghost of a Jacobite soldier, Dougal Murray, telling of the dark history of the old building. * Africa * Nelson Mandela * South America * Central Asia -- 2. News» 3. World News» 4. North America» 5. USA British anti-Americanism 'based on misconceptions' British attitudes towards the United States are governed by ignorance of the facts on key issues such as crime, health care and foreign policy, according to a new survey. -- A poll of nearly 2,000 Britons by YouGov/PHI found that 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly said it was true that the US had done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000. More than 50 per cent presumed that polygamy was legal in the US, when it is illegal in all 50 states. The poll was commissioned by America In The World , an independent pressure group that launches on Monday and aims to improve understanding and appreciation of the US in Britain and around the world. Tim Montgomerie, its director, said factual inaccuracies and mistaken assumptions have contributed to Britons and Europeans taking a hostile stance towards their most powerful ally, which often acted against national interests. "We wanted to find out how British people understood America and found that there was an unbalanced view. Maybe there are good reasons but if we cleared a lot of that factual ignorance we would have a better understanding of what America really is," said Mr Montgomerie, who also founded the influential ConservativeHome website three years ago. The survey showed that a majority agreed with the false statement that since the Second World War the US had more often sided with non-Muslims when they had come into conflict with Muslims. In fact in 11 out of 12 major conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims, Muslims and secular forces, or Arabs and non-Arabs, the US has sided with the former group. Those conflicts included Turkey and Greece, Bosnia and Yugoslavia, and and Kosovo and Yugoslavia. -- Asked if it was true that "from 1973 to 1990 the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons," 80 per cent of British respondents said yes. However the US sold just 0.46 per cent of Saddam's arsenal to him, compared to Russia's 57 per cent, France's 13 per cent and China's 12 per cent. "Ideas get around. Perhaps it's that old picture of Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam," suggested Mr Montgomerie, whose website includes a petition against anti-Americanism. "Hollywood and all its violence has something to do with it, and the awful Bush diplomacy," he added. Almost a third of Britons believe that "Americans who have not paid their hospitals fees or insurance premiums are not entitled to emergency medical care"; by law such treatment must be provided. More than half the respondents believed that polygamy is legal in some US states, while it is illegal in all US states. -- Apart from US-bashing being a favourite topic around European dinner tables, it has serious affects on national policy. The controversial missile defence shield in eastern Europe might have happened sooner with a more favourable climate, while public opinion helped Turkey's leaders deny the Americans an invasion route into Iraq from its territory, aiding the northward flight of elements of the Saddam regime.