Do you ever have songs running through your head? Songs that you may not even like but which are lodged (mercifully briefly, for the most part) in your “read only memory” and which remain stubbornly resistant to deletion?
No?
All right, how about this:
When you read, do you “hear” the words in your head as you see them?
No?

Well, I wonder if you realise that there are those of us who experience both of those things and take them very much for granted?

As I understand it, the term, “inner narrative” has two strands. The first is the information we hold in our minds about our own lives and experiences – our own “story”. It consists not only of memories but of our interpretations of events that have occurred to others we know, however tangentially. An example might the popular game of “...where were you when...” in which common matters of human import (of which the best modern example is the destruction of the World Trade Centre towers) are recalled in the context of our own lives.

The second strand concerns the “conversation” we have with ourselves throughout the day – our inner “voice” - that interprets and analyses our experiences and helps us to make sense of and compartmentalise the things that happen during our waking lives. If you talk out loud to yourself, you are also likely to form memories in this narrative manner.

If you were bemused by the first couple of questions in this article, then the idea of an inner voice may be as bizarre and difficult to understand as the lack of one is to me. Although I've long known that I am a slow reader, I had not realised that some people, those who read extremely quickly, can by-pass the inner voice on which others like me rely in order to make sense of what we read. I have often envied those who are able to read quickly with complete understanding and so, I'm somewhat gratified to learn that with this ability, there sometimes comes a lack of “inner narrative”.

Of course, this schadenfreude may well be as misplaced as it is shameful but there is evidence that an inner narrative has been an essential aid to human evolution, allowing the possiblity of abstract thought to develop.

But far more gratifying than this, is that it might indicate that all those people who champion the “stripped down” method of story writing may suffer from the same affliction. For one thing, it would account for their rather peculiar aversion to adjectives. And, if anything even more so, adverbs.

Allow me to explain.

The ancient Egyptians famously had no adjectives to describe colour. They understood that colours existed but had no use for words to differentiate between them. Nor, of course, did their written language which, being pictographic, also made it difficult to express abstract concepts. In fact, I understand the Dani people of New Guinea fall into the same category, understanding only that some hues are light and others dark.  As a society advance, so the theory goes, it develops the abstract thinking necessary for social, cultural, technological and scientific development. 

If, as a writer, you have little use for adjectives, you might want to ask why and don't simply respond by reference to works on technique. Try to explain why you don't particularly like using them.

As for adverbs, I'm going to finish with a theory of my own. Ahem.

The inner voice is essential to reify abstract thought - this is one of the reasons that talking therapies can be so effective.  Adverbs are the way in which we opine about motive and emotive mannerisms. If someone performs an act, it helps to understand it by reference to the manner in which it was performed. I shall take a prosaic example. The verb “to smile”. It can be described in many ways and that description will determine the meaning of that smile. The lack of an adverbial modifier compromises meaning. It also serves my prejudice in these matters to believe that this unwillingness to emote points to a somewhat psychopathic personality.

This will be my new counter to the Swainians et al.

The irony and the hypocrisy are obvious but allow me to indulge myself.

People can and frequently do, say all manner of things to and about one another on the internet – not, necessarily because they value “freedom of expression” but because they usually have a false identity, thereby easily avoiding having to face any consequences for their actions.  In this way, they are not much different from the sleazy sportsman who wants his abuse of two women kept from his adoring public. 

They clamour for identities to be revealed whilst cowering behind an avatar and a stupid name.  But they may not be as safe as they might like to think.

I remember, many years ago, as a student, having the difference between the British and American law on press freedom illustrated to me by means of two headlines.  In one inch caps, one of them proclaimed, “POLICE SHOOTING: MAN HELD”, the other, “AXE MURDERER CAPTURED!”  I can safely leave it up to you to decide which was which. 

So, it may be difficult for American friends to appreciate the furore that has erupted in the U.K. this week, over the naming on Twitter of a footballer, whom the Courts had decreed could not be named in the British press in connection with anything other than his profession.  Briefly, the facts appear to be these:

1.       Footballer has sex with minor “celebrity” whose “talent” appears to be that she is young and pretty.

2.       Minor ”celebrity” convinces herself that footballer will leave wife and children and take up with her.

3.       Footballer, apparently, has no intention of doing so.

4.       Hell hath no fury like a woman done up like a kipper and so minor “celebrity” decides that she can get revenge and make a bob or two into the bargain by selling the story of the encounter to a “News” paper.

5.       Footballer pays out approx £250,000 to secure a “super injunction” forbidding the press not only from reporting the affair but even that an injunction had been sought in the first place!

6.       Naturally, everyone close to the pair knows about it and, pretty soon, by the miracle of Twitter, so do several thousand other people.

7.       Press feigns righteous indignation that it cannot report on something that scores of thousands of people already know about – when, in reality, they see an opportunity to stick it to the legislature.

8.       This muddles along for a few days until, at last, an MP (of whom no-one has heard until now), uses Parliamentary Privilege to name the footballer.

9.       World comes to an end

So what does this have to do with… well, anything, really?

Well, it’s all about freedom, isn’t it?  Freedom of Expression; Freedom of The Press; Freedom of Speech, for God’s sake! Who could be against such things? 

Well, er…me, actually.  Sometimes. 

Most right-thinking people, I think, really should be finding it quite difficult to decide whose side they are on in this matter.  At first sight, the case for “freedom” seems a powerful one.  Let me outline some of the reasons why I would support such a case…

a)      It’s certainly seems extremely distasteful that an act designed to protect  the weak and powerless from the worst excesses of totalitarian government should be used by the wealthy in order to keep their seedy life-choices from the public and, in this particular case, to ensure that the footballer’s “commercial value” was not compromised.

b)      And should not those who use the press to increase their public profile, not be subject to its wrath and indignation when public morals are outraged?

c)       The net of this law seems to be made of very fine mesh, allowing only the slipperiest of eels to slither out of it.  The rich and the powerful are frequently those responsible for matters that are in the public interest (as opposed to those that the public is interested in) That they could be protected from investigation by super injunctions, with a strong possibility that their actions could go unreported and deeds unpunished, sits very uneasily indeed with most people.

d)      Also, the internet being what it is, is it sensible to champion a law whose conditions can so easily be breached?

e)      And should not someone who aspires to be called an author be championing his right to put into words for public consumption anything he wishes? 

Mmm…  

O.K. Let’s have a look at the reasons why I might oppose it.

a)      I support the Human Rights Act.  One of its terms protects the individual's right to privacy.  We all do things, which, were they to be in the public domain, might prove embarrassing to us and to those who care for us and so, one might think we would be in support of at least limited privacy laws where no public interest is served by revealing the truth.  Why should the mere fact that something is true be reason enough to reveal it?

b)      I sort of support the libel laws, which aim to prevent newspapers from printing untruths.  I'd like to be able to trust the veracity of what I read. 

c)       I find the public clamour for so-called “super injunctions” to be abolished a little disturbing.  The “interest” of the public in this case is merely prurient and, of course, whipped up by our holier-than-thou press whose goal is not to right some tremendous wrong but to sell more papers.  

d)      I believe that the affairs of a footballer and his paramour are of no concern to anyone but those close to each party?  Do we not, as a nation, demean ourselves by wishing to learn more about such things?

Yes, I’m sounding pompous.  But that’s what happens when one puts on the fell boots and stomps off towards the moral high ground. 

I don't think it's for self-seeking MPs to flout the law for their own ends and, more seriously, I remain concerned that those who think that the law will need to bend in order to accommodate the internet may be deluding themselves.  It isn’t difficult to pass laws in the U.K. and any time it has felt threatened, the Establishment has acted to diminish that threat and has not baulked at diminishing our freedoms in order to do so.  The case of the super injunctions may well result in changes to our laws but they may well not be the changes that the majority of people will be expecting.  The internet is a wonder that we must never take for granted and which we abuse at our peril.

Although it was certainly in existence, I have no idea whether or not “The Admiral Benbow” pub in Penzance, Cornwall, bore that name in the early 1900s, when a young lad by the name of Robert Newton was growing up there.  I like to think that, had it done so, it might have triggered an association in the actor’s mind as he – in 1948 or thereabouts - was considering a role that had been offered him by the Walt Disney company.  For there can be little else to account for the extraordinary parody of a Cornish accent with which Newton gave voice to Robert Louis Stevenson’s sea-cook pirate, John Silver in the 1950 movie version of “Treasure Island”.

 

Silver and the other members of the crew are signed aboard the HISPANIOLA in Bristol, so readers who, in 1881-2 were hooked on the serialization in “Young Folks” children’s magazine, might well have voiced Silver’s words with their own variant of the West Country twang but none, surely could have imagined what Newton eventually came up with some seventy years afterwards. 

But now, ask anyone what a pirate talks like and you can guarantee that they will offer a passable imitation of Newton’ Long John Silver.  What a marvellous legacy for the man – to have invented a mannerism that is now applied to every character of that ilk, regardless of whether they hail from Cornwall or not. (In fact, I’m told that Robert Newton is the unofficial – being long dead - Patron of “International Talk Like A Pirate Day”, which space prevents me from explaining here.  But if you’re interested, click on the link).  

Sadly, when I first read “Treasure Island” I was already tainted.  Thus, every word from Silver’s lips sounded in my head like Robert Newton was speaking it.  And believe me I’ve tried.  I’ve made Silver a Yorkshireman, a Scotsman and even a West Indian and I simply cannot sustain it.  Yet, there is little in the actual written text that should cause this. 

“Nobody in this here island ever heard of Darby,” he muttered; “not one but us that’s here….Shipmates,” he cried. “I’m here to get that stuff and I’ll not be beat by man nor devil.  I never was feared of Flint in his life and, by the powers, I’ll face him dead.  There’s seven hundred thousand pound not a quarter of a mile from here.  When did ever a gentleman o’ fortune show his stern to that much dollars for a boozy old seaman with a blue mug – and him dead too?”

I’ll bet the ghost of Robert Newton was at your elbow reading that but apart from one dropped “f” (gentleman o’ fortune), who is to say what accent is to be used?

Sometimes, written accents can jar somewhat; others can really get in the way of the story and still others can be downright impenetrable.  Dickens’ version of a Lancashire accent in “Hard Times” makes Dick Van Dyke sound like he was born in Tower Hamlets.

“I ha thowt on ‘t above a bit, sir.  I simply canna coom in. I mun go th’ way as lays afore me. I mun tak my leave o’ aw heer.”

And consider Joseph in “Wuthering Heights”:

“He can girn a laugh as well’s onybody at a raight divil’s jest. Does he niver say nowt of his fine living amang us, when he goes t’Grange?”

It seems to be that once you begin to try to write in an accent, you are always going to come unstuck.  No Yorkshireman worth his salt, even in the nineteenth century, would pronounce his aitches and nor would he have said “goes” or “laugh”. “Guz” and “laff” are the nearest phonetic equivalent I can manage for those words, yet Bronte misses them in favour of “amang”, which is… well it’s not Yorkshire, nor has it ever been.  And the Brontes famously never left Haworth so it wasn’t as if they seldom heard a Yorkshire accent.

This problem is allied to the verbal mannerisms that some fantasy writers give to their characters.  Why do fantasy tales all take place in some sort of ersatz Tudor England?  All those “hithers” and “yons” and “lo, my Lord doth approach”.  Characters in fantasy books seldom say “…let’s go quickly…” preferring instead to “…harrie us away at speed…”  If they want to invoke a Middle Ages feel to their work, wouldn’t it be better to take their lead from Chaucer rather than from Shakespeare?  But I digress.  This is worthy of a post to itself.

So, writers must beware of trying to hand the accent to the reader.  In the first place, it’s very difficult to sustain with any sort of consistency and in the second, it’s rubbish.

Far better to indicate the accent by making it clear from whence the character originates and then write in plain English?  Readers can tolerate the odd “ain’t” and dropped consonant or whatnot but if it’s becoming difficult to write the accent, it’s probably difficult for readers to interpret it.  Writers would be well advised to take their cue from Robert Newton.  He heard Silver’s voice; he didn’t read it.  And thus, he invented it.

That a book entitled “Puta” has been deleted from the writers’ website, Authonomy should surprise only those who still wonder at the ability of some people to become offended by stuff.  However, anyone who is familiar with the power of offendees to impose their beliefs on others, are unlikely to be shocked.  I had heard the term before and, in context, I believed that it meant “whore” in Spanish.  However, I now understand that it is a “Swiss Army Knife” of a word, which can be used in many, many contexts but always to annoy, outrage or, indeed, offend.

Exactly what the complainant found offensive in the word, I have no idea but clearly there must have been something, mustn’t there?   Or maybe not.  Some people really enjoy being offended. 

How can a word be “offensive”?  Now, I can perfectly understand why a group of words, assembled in a particular order might offend someone but I cannot understand why certain people find certain individual words offensive.  

Take Anglo-Saxon, for instance.  When the Normans conquered England in the 11th century, French – a Romance or Latinate language - became the language of power and native tongue came was used only by those subject to the Norman overlords.  Thus, many perfectly serviceable Anglo-Saxon words came to be seen as rather lower class.  Hence, the Latinate translations of many words became “acceptable” for daily use, whilst the Anglo-Saxon words fell out of favour to the point where their use in English today is often confined to terms of abuse.

Yet even so, many are unable to countenance even the Latinate names for bodily functions and the bits that are employed theretofore. Words like fornication; defaecation; urination; masturbation; vagina; penis and anus can offend and so we are obliged to seek euphemisms.  Pick your own. Some families even have words that are uniquely their own for these things.

Imagine if a child in primary school told the teacher that he needed to take a shit.  After a sharp intake of breath and even a slight squeak of horror, the teacher would explain that, “We don’t use that word.” And when the child said, “Alright, then; I need a crap,’ would whisk him from the room and, in the corridor, exhort him to say “poo” or something “less offensive”. 

‘What in the name of boiling hell makes “poo” less offensive than “shit”?’  I hope he would say.  But, no.  He would most likely say, ‘Yes, miss. Sorry miss’.  He would then trot off to do his “Number twos” revelling i that some words have a SECRET POWER.

When, in 1965, theatre critic Ken Tynan said, “fuck” on the BBC, it was headline news and in the days before Channel 4 (a UK terrestrial T.V. channel) films on T.V. would have “offensive” words bleeped out.  (A much more entertaining development was the use of “substitute” words overdubbed.  Among my favourites were “Motherlover” and “Don’t fun with me!”)

Mind you, I am heartily sick of all the swearing on T.V. and in films although it’s not the words themselves I find offensive,  it’s their use by mediocre and unimaginative  writers to inject edgy realism into feeble dialogue that offend me. “Gritty” dramas are full of “strong language” and much of it not that “strong” – just plentiful.  As the BBC might say “...other adjectives are available.” 

So my recommendation is that if you don’t want to be offended by words – as opposed to the ideas that they convey – use them as freely as possible and, like an i-pad battery,  they’ll be drained of power in no time at all.