Good Breeding: The Reproduction of the English Language

Although Henry James titles his sermon against the devolution of spoken English “The Question of Our Speech,” he assumes much to be already answered. James appeals to his audience of collegiate women with flattery, stereotypes, and worst of all, “incontestable truths” (James 11). As a result, his speech becomes a sanctimonious collection of bandwagon fallacies desperately prescribing a tone-standard as the hallmark of a civilized vox Americana; at times, his reactionary harangue becomes so hyperbolic that it approaches a ridiculous quality reminiscent of Jonathan Swifts “A Modest Proposal.” It offends in many ways, from shady rhetorical devices to a pedantically elitist tone. Yet its worst offense by far is its interpretation of the word “civilization,” almost imperialist in its call for the educated to seize hegemony over language and its “traitors” (20).

As it is used in his speech, civilization can be interpreted to reflect a nationalistic purity of culture concerned with the preservation of a nation’s “linguistic position” (40). Initially, this definition appears harmless; and it is true, James’ concern with the status of American English within the scope of the world is not itself malicious. He is merely trying to preserve the constructs of his native language that appeal to him. In fact, many of the more favorable aspects of his speech are centered on autonomy and refer to speaking well as speaking under the “influence of observation—your own” (19). However, it is in his contention against “the forces assembled to make you believe that no form of speech is provably better than another” that is suspect (18). By assigning greater value to one aspect of culture than to another, James’ transforms the initially innocent self-o...

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... certain sounds of English is quaint, but a completely arbitrary process and detrimental to the purpose of language—communication—when emphasized to the degree that James’ has. In his most unabashed appeal to the majority, James’ postulates that “the greater the number of persons speaking well, in given conditions, the more that number will tend to increase” (17). However, this fallacious argument not only assumes that people inherently value the same aspects of English that James’ values but also ignores the deep-rooted cultural significance a dialect may have for a particular demographic of American people. James himself recognized the vox Americana as a “convergence of inscrutable forces (climatic, social, political, theological, moral, “psychic”)” (33). What he did not recognize was that adding his own force to the mix could only ever enrich that voice further.