Linguistic chauvinism was rampant in Britain in the years before and after the War: patriotism found it easy to preen itself upon that sentiment.
It was common for English writers to claim a privileged sense of the character of the English language, on the assumption that its character was clearly identifiable. In literary criticism, especially: Leavis’s notion of what it means to be English and to speak the English language as a native was regularly summoned to testify to blindnesses and other incapacities, congenital by definition, in the work of Joyce, Eliot, Pound and Yeats.
Empson’s essay ‘The English Way of Thinking’ said that a decent English style ‘gives great resilience to the thinker, never blurs a point by too wide a focus, is itself a confession of how much always must be left undealt with, and is beautifully free from verbiage: to an enemy it looks like sheer cheating.’
It was common for English writers to claim a privileged sense of the character of the English language, on the assumption that its character was clearly identifiable. In literary criticism, especially: Leavis’s notion of what it means to be English and to speak the English language as a native was regularly summoned to testify to blindnesses and other incapacities, congenital by definition, in the work of Joyce, Eliot, Pound and Yeats.
Empson’s essay ‘The English Way of Thinking’ said that a decent English style ‘gives great resilience to the thinker, never blurs a point by too wide a focus, is itself a confession of how much always must be left undealt with, and is beautifully free from verbiage: to an enemy it looks like sheer cheating.’
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