In 1896, William Jennings Bryan, a three-time candidate for the American presidency, gave a speech on a relatively dry financial topic, criticizing the gold standard. But his rhetoric was for the ages: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross gold!”
Just over a hundred years later Sam Brownback, arguing for war against Iraq in a speech to the American Senate, said, “We go at Iraq and it says to countries that support terrorists, there remain six in the world that are as our definition state sponsors of terrorists, you say to those countries: 4 We are serious about terrorism, we are serious about you not supporting terrorism on your own soil.”’
What happened over the 20lh century? Americans no longer expect public figures, whether in oratory or in writing, to command the English language with skill and flair. Nor so they aspire to such command themselves. John McWhorter, a linguist, sees the triumph of 1960s counterculture as responsible for the decline of formal English.
Blaming the permissive 1960s is nothing new, but this is not yet another passage against the decline in education. Mr. McWhorter’s academic specialty is language history and change, and he sees the gradual disappearance of “whom”，for example, to be natural and no more lamentable than the loss of the case-endings of Bcowulf-ear English.
But the cult of the authentic and the personal, “doing our own thing”，has spelt the death of formal speech, writing, poetry and music. While even the modestly educated sought an elevated tone when they put pen to paper before the 1960s, even the most well regarded writing since then has sought to capture spoken English on the page. Equally, in poetry, the highly personal genre is the only form that could claim real vibrancy. In both oral and written English, talking is triumphing over speaking, spontaneity over craft.
Illustrated with an entertaining array of examples from both high and low culture, the trend than Mr. McWhorter documents is unmistakable. But it is less clear, to take the question of his subtitle, why we should care. As a linguist, he acknowledges that formal language is not strictly necessary, and proposes no radical education reforms — he is really bemoaning the loss of something beautiful more than useful. We now take our English “on paper plates instead of china”. A shame, perhaps, but, probably an inevitable.
1.The sentences of William and Sam are quoted in the first two paragraphs to show （ ）.
2.John McWhorter attributes the decline of formal English to （ ）.
3.John McWhorter’s attitude towards the loss “whom” seems to be （ ）.
4.It can be inferred from the passage that （ ）.
5.By “we now take our English ‘on paper plate’ instead of china”，the linguist most probably means that （ ）.
