The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Oh my word!
I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son. I’m only plucking pheasants ’til the pheasant plucker comes.
That old tongue twister is graven upon my memory. So is: I saw a ship in sight (repeat 10 times, fast).
When I was but a lad some older boys were teaching my brother and me these rhymes, with their close-to-swearing dangers.
Goody two-shoes here had been trying hard to avoid saying what they’d wanted us to say. My rebel brother, on the other hand, relished the opportunity to swear like the proverbial trooper.
Then, horror of horrors, we were overheard by my mother. The guilty fled – a literal example of “a big boy did it and ran away”. The wrath visited upon we who had nowhere to run is what I think of when I see the word “apocalyptic”.
I mention this painful recollection in an effort to explore where it is that we get our standards of English usage from, and why we have standards in the first place.
Not only did my mother vigorously object to her seven-year-old son using the curses of the gutter (as she put it), she was at pains to correct my speech at all times – butter, not buh-urr.
It was 1960s Scotland; all mothers did this. We were working-class urchins but she demanded we speak like lah-di-dah BBC newsreaders.
For most of the 1970s, I didn’t feel comfortable with this. I believed that using street words in my native accent was a truer representation of who I was.
But as I aged, and became a parent myself, I came to appreciate what my mother was striving to achieve.
Having left school at 14 herself, she was keen that her sons take advantage of all opportunities available. She wanted us to make the very best of ourselves. Insisting we use language politely and precisely was just one symptom of this.
People have lost this attitude. As standards of social behaviour, respect for elders, and basic good manners have dwindled, respect for language is fading too.
I’m going to sound like a prissy 1950s schoolmaster, but I have come to believe that sloppy use of language, over-reliance on swearing, and the adoption of meaningless slang is an indicator of a disrespectful, vulgar and lazy personality.
Speak with whatever accent is natural to you. But never demean yourself with the words you use. If you bark like a mangy cur you will be regarded as a mangy cur.
If you can do one thing for a child, correct their speech when it needs corrected. Don’t stand for swearing, bad pronunciation, or coarse slang. Good English usage will take them far.