Preamble
Please allow me to preface my talk with a few explanatory and precautionary
remarks. I know that I am addressing an assembly of English- language teachers,
and my credentials may not quite fit in with the occasion: I served as Professor of
German at Silpakorn University until my retirement, (although I may have taught
English at certain points of my professional career.) But to seek leave to resort to an
autobiographical approach is not necessarily a kind of self-indulgence, and you will
soon find out how this relates to the topic of my address. Although I took a Ph.D. from
a German University, it was the British who first taught me German. Most of the
professors and lecturers in German at Cambridge University, where I studied for my
first degree in Modern Languages, had served in the Second World War. They had
fought the Germans. But I never heard a single nasty word about the Germans. On
the contrary they were doing their best to convince their students of the value of
studying German language, culture and literature. For me, I was convinced, and did
not take long to make up my mind to cross over to Germany for my graduate studies.
Conviction is the key word, and I consider it worthwhile to share that conviction with
my colleagues in the field of English-language teaching in the hope that crosscultural
experiences of this kind are transferable. The present speech is an extension
* Professor Dr.Chetana Nagavajara
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and an elaboration of an earlier paper in German, which I delivered at the GoetheInstitut
in Munich on 9 May 2006, of which an English version is also available under
the title 4On the Power, Powerlessness and Omnipotence of Language: From Oral
Culture through Written Culture to Media Domination5.1
The paper has been
distributed to the members of the audience, and I shall refer to it occasionally. It
contains memorable quotations which I have found convincing and which I would like
to share with you.
Football as a Paradigm of Change
While dwelling on my British apprentice years, I recall my first reading of
Shakespeare7s King Lear and how I was flabbergasted by one particular passage
from Act I, scene iv, when Kent, Lear7s loyal courtier, lashed out at Oswald, Goneril7s
steward, for being disrespectful to Lear, by calling the latter : 4You base football
player!5 . I did play football at school, and even in the late 1950s, football had already
become a well-recognized international game. By chance I was at that time preparing
for my university entrance at a tutorial college in Manchester, and the two football
teams, which are both world-famous today, were already among the leading clubs of
Europe. Football players were enjoying some kind of national status, far removed
from their abject conditions in the Shakespearean age. Then came an event that
heightened the status of football players even more: they moved from the status of
sport heroes to tragic heroes. On their way back home from a match in Belgrade, the
Manchester United team made a brief stopover in Munich, and their plane crashed
1
Silpakorn University International Journal, Vol.7, 2007, pp. 89-111.
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on taking off from Munich Airport. Altogether 21 passengers perished, 7 of them were
Manchester United players. Many players were severely injured. It looked as though
the team would never rise again.
But that was not to be. The surviving players were determined to continue to
play further matches. And a wonder happened. They reached the English final that
year, and though they lost, they were celebrated as national heroes. Who would have
believed that they should have come that far? The Mancunian legend has since
impressed itself upon the memory of many people, including foreigners like myself.
Manchester for us stands for honour, dignity and willpower. That tragic day was 6
February 1958, and that day has become a remembrance day, on which people
would pay tribute to those heroes A both those who died and those who survived.
One particular tribute is most touching: 4I7m a grown man of nearly 70, but it still
brings tears to my eyes when the 6th February comes round each year.5 2
Even we outsiders should not hesitate to ask the question as to what has
happened to international football in the meantime. Can we hold those involved in the
football business (for it has become a business) in high esteem as we do with those
heroes of 1958? Manchester is a good test case. In the age of globalization in which
we can watch live matches on television any time and any place and in which football
players can become millionaires who, alas, can be bought and sold like commodities,
has Manchester lived up to its heroic stature of 1958? Has Manchester (in this case,
Manchester City) not stooped so low as to consort with a foreign politician-cum-
2
)1958 : ,This was the cream of our crop.1 2
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/february/6/newsid_2705000/27051...24/01/2007
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tycoon with a dubious record? The immortal Shakespeare does not date, for we can
amend the denunciation a little by saying : 4You base football club owner!5
The Confidence of the Artificial
The 1950s were also a landmark in sound technology. Recording as well as
sound engineering had been making great advances, including stereophony and
particularly 4high fidelity5, which was becoming a household word for music-lovers.
Hi-Fi technology was supportive of the promotion of classical music, for recorded
music was considered to be highly faithful to the original, almost an equal of a live
performance. There was an element of modesty inherent in this wonderful technology,
for it recognized the primacy of the original, and its ambition was not to supplant the
original. People with Hi-Fi equipment at home still went to live concerts and regarded
recorded music as a supplement to, and an enhancement of, live performances.
Things may have changed in the meantime. Our society has since become spoiled
with all kinds of gadgetry and most of us have become just smug consumers. (I have,
in another paper entitled 4Music-Making versus the Commodification of Music: A Call
to Enlightened Amateurs5, drawn attention to the danger of unproductive
consumerism that has no more room for amateur music-making, which in the old days
constituted the foundation of music, both from the performer7s and listener7s points of
view.)3
3
Chetana Nagavajara, )Music-Making versus the Commodification of Music: A Call to Enlightened
Amateurs2. Manusya : Journal of Humanities, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2008.
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The changes have gone very far, and I have known people who refuse to go
to a live concert or to enjoy a real performance, who do not even go to a football
match anymore, but would rather sit in front of the television and feed themselves on
the pleasure of second-hand experiences. In terms of music, their preference for
recorded music is based on the belief that one hears better, and that all the details
can be captured much more clearly than in a concert hall, (which may be or may not
be true). The same applies to football matches : in a vast stadium one can hardly see
the prowess of the individual players, whereas on television one can even spot the
most subtle tricks by a player (including dirty tricks) that sometimes escape the
watchful eye of the referee. In summary, the sense of the original has been lost. Many
people do not care anymore about primary experiences. The age of virtual reality has
come, and it is an age full of confidence, because one does not have to care
anymore about originality, nor first-hand experience. We can create a new reality
which can do away with real reality. The etymology of the word 4virtual5, according to
the Oxford Dictionary, is rather revelatory because originally 4virtual5 was also related
to 4virtue5. In that case, virtual reality is linked to something virtuous, and by and by it
has usurped the primary human experience altogether. We live in a world in which it
is no longer necessary to distinguish between direct experience and mediated
experience. The media have overpowered us in such a way that we no longer attach
much importance in real-life experience. Face-to-face contact has been replaced by
telephone conversation, as it saves time, and most people do not think that there is
any difference between an actual conversation and an mediated conversation. The
implications for linguistic communication are immense.
Should we consider this a weakness in our everyday life as it diminishes real
human contact? On the other hand, IT has helped us to bridge geographical and
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cultural divides, but it has to be admitted the full potential and the constructive side of
the media has yet to be fully exploited, for we often fall prey to propaganda in an age
which consumerism and commercialism reign supreme. We like to see things move
very fast, and speed is usually regarded as power and progress. Culture has
changed with the new IT revolution. We value immediacy. We have high regard for
simultaneity. In Thailand, telegraph service was terminated by the Thai Post Office
some months ago, because it took too long for a telegram to be printed out and
delivered to the addressee. When most people communicate via cellular phones,
telegram has become anachronistic. Speed is all.
Speed versus Reflection
In the Thai language, we have a word 4Chuk-Kid5 which cannot be
translated exactly into a western language, but can approximately be expressed