Review: Mother Tongue. Bill Bryson. 1990.

Around the time I was finishing my first degree in politics and sociology, I read Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue (1990). I had read Bryson before; he is the kind of author, despite a certain level of predictability, who can in a sentence induce a belly laugh so deep and a guffaw so voluminous that he is better not read amongst people, and certainly not whilst travelling on public transport. Take my word on this last point. Bryson’s book was for me, then, a fascinating read, and I determined on the back of reading it that I would do postgraduate studies in linguists. My subsequent MA, unsurprisingly, was not always as immediately stimulating as reading Mother Tongue had been. In the study of syntax, I learned about the i-node. I no longer remember what the i-node is, and I couldn’t care less. Challenging the professor on his choice of a turgid semantics textbook, he told me that it was the best book on the market. Imagine the potential suffering had he chosen a less good book. Fortunately, however, there are linguists, and branches of linguistics that, like Bryson, return the study of language to the social realm where it properly belongs.

I want my own students to be turned on to the study of language, and I am frustrated when they don’t find it as endlessly fascinating as I do, or worse, remain uninterested. Recently, I read Creating Tomorrow’s School’s Today (2010). Its author, Richard Gerver, makes the point that today’s schools compete for children’s attention with Disneyland, and since this is so schools should do more to become like Disneyland. I’m not sure I entirely agree with Mr Gerver, but I take his point that school can sometimes fail to stimulate young minds. Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue, a work of ‘popular linguistics’, may be the catalyst that gets Language and Literature students excited about language study.   

Bryson’s book, like his writing generally, is funny. Okay, it’s fatuous funny. But, often, it is this kind of puerile humour that goes down well with teenagers (which isn’t to belittle young people). Bryson, for example claims that in Krio, spoken in Sierra Leone, stomach gas is bad briz; he reports that in Australian English, scona is a meteorological term used in phrases such as scona rain, and dimension is a customary Australian response to thank you; and Bryson cites An Anglo-American Interpreter (1939) which suggests that ‘an American, if suddenly taken ill while on a visit to London, might die in the street through being unable to make himself understood’.

If Bryson stimulates laughter, it isn’t often done at the expense of making more erudite and serious points. His book is a rapid journey through many of the (Part 1) topics that Language and Literature students could study. The history of English, language change, language and community, language and belief, language and taboo, and translation are just some of the many themes Bryson covers. And, Bryson provokes critical reflection, making clear that there are some things about language that we don’t entirely know (an entry into TOK?). For example, what is the etymology of okay? How did American accents emerge? Why is bloody considered objectionable in British English? How many words does a speaker know, and how can this be calculated? Bryson tracks these debates in his well-researched book. Some sources, it may be added, are more widely cited than others. For example, Bryson frequently quotes Otto Jespersen and Randolph Quirk; whilst undoubtedly ‘great’ linguists, both expressed contentious views on language.

Mother Tongue is a little dated; it discusses the accession to the European Community of Spain, Portugal, and Greece (how times have changed). More significantly, developments in linguistic research methods, particularly an increased dependence on corpora data, have revolutionized language study since Mother Tongue was first published. In addition, the reader may often find the sheer volume of anecdote overwhelming, intruding on the development of narrative.

Nevertheless, if Language and Literature students read Mother Tongue, or even parts of it, and develop a sense that language is interesting and matters, then it has served an important purpose. It surely doesn’t matter, although it is somewhat ironic, that one of the most widely sold books on the English language in modern times is written by a non-linguist.