Teach Secondary Issue 14.2

DICTIONARY DEEP DIVE Join David Voisin on a rich, and sometimes surprising journey through the points at which literacy, language and vocabulary intersect... SAME ROOT, DIFFERENTWORDS PARDON MY FRENCH Michelin-starred chef TomAikens once congratulated a contestant’s creation on a TV cooking show by saying, with a tinge of humour, “ Le bonbon est très bon ”. He could have added ‘ bon appétit ’, But the root ‘bon’ also exists outside the culinary world. ‘ Bonhomie ’ is a friendly feeling, felt in good company. It stems from‘ bonhomme ’, the French for ‘goodman’. If you want to describe a confident person displaying a certain sense of charm and sophistication, you may choose to employ the term‘debonair’,meaning literally ‘of good air’. LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS In his book, The Unfolding of Language , linguist Guy Deutscher reminds us that the English language is replete with metaphors – many of which have latterly evolved into ‘dead metaphors’. In addition to being a useful literary tool, metaphors often bear witness to our linguistic and biological evolution. Thus,many of them are evocative of the three-dimensional world we all inhabit (see ‘rise’, ‘grow’, ‘descend’) or its physical elements (‘pour’, ‘erupt’, ‘wave’, ‘blow’). They can also reflect various social and cultural constructions (‘to save’, ‘bank on’, ‘capitalise’, ‘espouse’, ‘adopt’), as well as illustrate how our intellect and language have grown together co-independently. The use of metaphors is often linked to the expression of abstract concepts. The complexity of the words involved – when it comes to memorisation, for instance – isn’t usually predicated on said words’ length or orthographic intricacies, but rather on the level of abstraction we’re presented with. As Deutscher puts it, “ The concrete to abstract did not happen on home turf. ” It transpires that this transfer from abstract to concrete terms was first enabled by the borrowing of French or Latin terms. Indeed, ‘transpire’means ‘sweat’ in French, while ‘metaphor’ literallymeans ‘transfer’ or ‘carry across’. In this way,metaphors help us to both complexify language, and alleviate our understanding of abstract concepts. TEACHING TIP: ‘I THINK, THEREFORE I SPEAK’ With the arrival new governments come new initiatives and new foci.When it comes to education, the current government’s focus on oracy is generating quite a bit of ...talk. Notwithstanding that rather facile pun, it’s ironic that we educators can sometimes struggle to articulate what ‘oracy’ actuallymeans, and whether schools should impose prescriptions, such as ‘Answer in full sentences’. Anyone familiar with the work of the great linguist David Crystal will know that spoken language verymuch differs fromwritten language – and that ‘standard’ doesn’t necessarilymean ‘good’. Because when it comes to spoken language, the consensus among linguists is that there’s no such thing a thing as ‘standard’ spoken English. Language performs both a cognitive and social purpose. Dialogic isn’t just about what students say, but also how and when they ought to speak, based on the relevant context, audience, purpose and societal conventions (in the ‘school context’, for instance). If you need any further convincing that language deviating from formal parlance can be just as intellectually demanding (or even more so), then watch the British freestyle rapper Chris Turner. Rap’s prescriptive use of rhymes imposes huge demands on the brain, so there’s a lesson to be learnt here. Norms and prescriptions, when used meaningfully, can be good for language. Purposeful, well-directed use of connectives (originally intended for philosophical purposes) can help students better sequence and articulate their thoughts. Language thus becomes a form of thinking; not just an expression of it. David Voisin is a head of MFL A tri pod is a contraption with three legs (‘pod’ here meaning ‘foot’) A tri dent is a three- pronged spear The Godfather tri logy comprises three films 11 teachwire.net/secondary