Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

Activity 9.1
Unit 9 Language and society
Section 2 Language variation

1 Read the following passage from Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1854-5). The central character, Margaret Hale, has recently moved from the south of England to Manchester (one of the main centres of industrial development in the nineteenth century) and is discussing an impending strike at a local mill with a poverty-stricken leader of the union, Nicholas Higgins (’to clem’ is a dialect term for ’to starve’):

’Why do you strike?’ asked Margaret. ’Striking is leaving off work till you get your own rate of wages, is it not? You must not wonder at my ignorance; where I come from I never heard of a strike.’ ...

’Why yo’ see, there’s five or six masters who have set themselves again paying the wages they’ve been paying these two years past, and flourishing upon, and getting richer upon. And now they come to us, and say we’re to take less. And we won’t. We’ll just clem to death first; and see who’ll work for ’em then.’

...

’And so you plan dying, in order to be revenged upon them!’

’No,’ said he, ’I dunnot. I just look forward to the chance of dying at my post sooner than yield. That’s what folk call fine and honourable in a soldier, and why not in a poor weaver-chap?’

’But,’ said Margaret, ’a soldier dies in the cause of the Nation - in the cause of others.’

’. . . Dun yo’ think it’s for mysel’ I’m striking work at this time? It’s just as much in the cause of others as yon soldier . . . I take up John Boucher’s cause, as lives next door but one, wi’ a sickly wife, and eight childer, . . . I take up th’ cause o’ justice ...’

...

’But,’ said Margaret, . . . ’the state of trade may be such as not to enable them to give you the same remuneration.’

’State o’ trade! That’s just a piece o’ masters’ humbug. It’s rate o’ wages I was talking of. Th’ masters keep th’ state o’ trade in their own hands; and just walk it forward like a black bug-a-boo, to frighten naughty children with into being good.’

(from Chapter 17, ’What is a Strike?’)

2 Make a list of all the words and phrases that Higgins uses to describe: (a) the mill owners; (b) the workers; (c) himself; (d) the mill owners’ actions; (e) the workers’ actions; and (f) his own actions. From this evidence, try to describe Higgins’s view of the strike (for example, by considering who does what to whom).

3 Make a list of all the words and phrases that Margaret uses to describe: (a) the mill owners’ possible actions; (b) Higgins’s description of his own role; and (c) the actions of workers in a strike. From this evidence, try to describe Margaret’s view of the strike.

4 What is the difference between Margaret’s suggestion that ’the state of trade’ might not allow the owners to give the workers the same ’remuneration’, and Higgins’s response that he is not talking about the state of trade but ’rate o’ wages’? How, in Higgins’s view, do the owners use the term ’state of trade’?

5 What is the effect of the fact that Higgins speaks in a working-class northern dialect, while Margaret speaks in Standard English? Does it make his view of the strike more credible? less credible? more authentic? less authoritative?

Reading

Burton, D. (1982) ’Through Glass Darkly: Through Dark Glasses’, in R. Carter (ed.) Language and Literature: An Introductory Reader in Stylistics, London: George Allen & Unwin, pp. 195-214.

Fabb, N. (1997) Linguistics and Literature, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 173-92 on transitivity.

Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and Social Change, London: Polity Press.

Montgomery, M. (1995) An Introduction to Language and Society, 2nd edn, London: Routledge.

Simpson, P. (1993) Language, Ideology and Point of View, London: Routledge.

Williams, R. (1988) Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, London: Collins.