LANG-The triumph of transnational English

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The triumph of transnational English


Robert McCrum

January 2009

Barack Obama addressing a town hall meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images


I won't refer to this very often, but for the past two years or so I've been working on a book subtitled The Making of Global English for the 21st Century, in which I've been exploring the how and why of the ways in which global English has become a supranational phenomenon. Its working title is Globish [pronounced Globe-ish] and I'm constantly on the look-out for examples of what I think of as contemporary Globish.

Last week, there were two. The first involved Obama, the second (to move from the sublime to the ridiculous) Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Obama first. There's no doubt that the stunning election victory of the junior senator from Illinois was a Globish moment: an African-American of mixed Kenyan and Kansan parentage, following in Abraham Lincoln's footsteps to win the White House for sanity and (we hope) world peace, after a campaign in which his soaring oratory brought hope to millions of ordinary Americans dismayed and demoralised by eight years of Bush. It was cliff-hanging stuff, and we're still in the honeymoon phase.

Now, in the final countdown to Obama's inauguration, there's all kinds of speculation about the content of this historic moment. The most recent New Yorker has a fascinating piece by Jill Lepore about previous inaugural moments, from Washington to Kennedy. But she does not – surprisingly – look at the role played by Robert Frost at an equally momentous occasion: JFK's swearing-in on 20 January 1961.

Here's what happened back then.

Frost, America's greatest living poet, was invited by Kennedy to read a poem at the inauguration, and duly composed some new verse entitled "Dedication". But on the day, the old man, blinded by brilliant sun on a frosty Washington morning, could not see to read his own words. Instead, he turned to lines he knew by heart, his 1942 poem, "The Gift Outright", a lovely patriotic piece that begins…

The land was ours before we were the land's.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people ...

Many older Americans still recall that moving moment. In honour of it, perhaps, Obama has invited Elizabeth Alexander, poet and professor of African American studies at Yale, to read a specially composed poem at his inauguration. Alexander has said that the challenge of the occasion will be to write a poem that "speaks to the occasion" but also has "its own integrity", something that any British poet laureate would understand.

So where does Lloyd Webber fit in ? Well, last week, the musical peer caused a minor brouhaha here when he asked the popular American lyricist Diane Warren to compose a song for the UK's entry into Eurovision. That was a Globish moment, if ever there was one: a telling assertion that English self-expression might find more vigour abroad than at home.

So, why should not Obama, in a similarly Globish spirit, invite an English language poet from somewhere else in the world to read at his inauguration – expressing a Global sensibility alongside Elizabeth Alexander as she plays the Frost role? January 20 is going to be a supremely Globish moment; a swearing-in conducted, in American English, before a worldwide audience of many millions. So who, I wonder, should get the invitation, and what should he or she read ?

One poet who seems to share this view and is ready to rise to the occasion, is the National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke, who has just sent Obama a poem entitled "New Year, 2009". It begins:

Venus in the arc of the young moon
Is a boat the arms of a bay
The sky clear to infinity
But for the trailing gossamer
Of a transatlantic plane.

Tellingly, from a Globish point of view, it's written in English, but closes with "Ie. Gallwn ni". That's Welsh for "Yes, we can."

Source: www.guardian.co.uk