Diagram of the ‘radial definition routes’ of Panoptic Conjugation (Ogden 1930: 12)
A fascinating turn in recent Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) scholarship is the development of ‘Minimal English’, an international auxiliary language combining the best of Standard English and NSM. One of the earliest published mentions of this project is in Anna Wierzbicka’s 2014 Imprisoned in English, where she states that Minimal English ‘is, essentially, the English version of “Basic Human”‘ (Wierzbicka 2014: 195), the rendering in English exponents of the set of primitive concepts uncovered by NSM research. An example of Covid-19-related messages in Minimal English can be found here.
The idea of a simplified engineered language for international communication is by no means new, as Wierzbicka and her colleagues freely acknowledge. The specific proposal of creating a reduced form of English for this purpose has also found many advocates in the past.
The special characteristic of Minimal English that is supposed to set it apart from all prior projects is its culturally neutral standpoint. The use of Minimal English should preserve the existing investment of the millions of second-language learners of English in acquiring the formal shell of that language – its phonology, word forms, grammar and so on – while leaving the baggage of ‘Anglo’ culture behind. Any other language could be reduced in this way to serve as the medium for ‘Basic Human’, argues Wierzbicka, but in the context of present-day globalisation English is indisputably the best host:
[G]iven the realities of today’s globalizing world, at this point it is obviously a mini-English that is the most practical way out (or down) from the conceptual tower of Babel that the cultural evolution of humankind has erected, for better or worse. (Wierzbicka 2014: 194)
Wierzbicka (2014: 194) tells us that Minimal English ‘is not another simplified version of English analogous to Ogden’s […] “Basic English” or Jean-Paul Nerrière’s “Globish”‘ (cf. Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018: 8). But if we look at the particular case of Ogden’s Basic English we may notice many striking parallels to Minimal English. These parallels warrant closer inspection.
In the most detailed published treatment of Minimal English to date, the 2018 edited volume Minimal English for a Global World, Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka dedicate a section of their co-authored chapter to comparing Minimal English and Basic English (as well as ‘Plain English’; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018: 18–22). Goddard and Wierzbicka (ibid.: 19) note ‘enormous’ differences across ‘structure (words and grammar), intended range of functions, and in “spirit”‘ between Basic and Minimal English.
However, the comparison misses many significant points of contact between the two endeavours.
In terms of the differences in ‘structure’, Goddard and Wierzbicka point out that Ogden’s core vocabulary of 850 ‘Basic Words’ (see Ogden 1933 [1930]) does not respect the cross-linguistic primitives proposed within the NSM framework. In addition, a central grammatical feature of Basic English was the elimination of verbs from the language, a goal foreign to NSM thinking. These two differences between Basic and Minimal English are quite real, but focusing on them misses the more profound philosophical and methodological similarity between the projects: that both NSM and Basic English are centred around reductive paraphrase. Although not identical to NSM procedure, Ogden’s (1930) method of ‘panoptic conjugation’ sought, in very similar fashion to NSM reductive paraphrase, to strip down meaning to its fundamentals. From Goddard and Wierzbicka’s commentary we may get the impression that Ogden’s method was not much more than an ad hoc heuristic, but this is by no means the case: his method was grounded in contemporary analytic philosophy and even received monograph-length exposition in the 1931 Word Economy by Leonora Wilhelmina Lockhart, one of his close collaborators.
The ‘intended range of functions’ of Basic English is perhaps also not as far from NSM and Minimal English as Goddard and Wierzbicka suggest. Ogden and his collaborators of course indulged in very off-putting Anglo chauvinism, but this was in many ways an expression of a kind of universalism current in analytic philosophy of the time. While NSM explicitly rejects any claims of cultural superiority, it shares many of the same sources. The historiography of NSM typically looks much further back and conceives of the approach as a continuation of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’ (1646–1716) characteristica universalis (see, e.g. Wierzbicka 1992: 216–218; Wierzbicka 1996: 11–13), but NSM – like Basic – also has clear proximal predecessors in the language-critical thought of early analytic philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. These connections are something that I have explored at length in my 2018 Language and Meaning in the Age of Modernism (see also McElvenny 2014).
Finally, the difference in ‘spirit’ that Goddard and Wierzbicka highlight is another aspect of the comparison between Basic English and Minimal English that deserves deeper scrutiny. It is indeed true that Ogden and many of his collaborators – although by no means all – were quite hostile to multilingualism and saw Basic English as a means to the linguistic homogenisation of the world. By contrast, practitioners of NSM and Minimal English celebrate linguistic and cultural diversity and see their project as a means for facilitating cross-cultural communication.
However, the historical contexts of Basic English and Minimal English are very different in this respect. Ogden and his collaborators were working in a world that was much more multilingual than ours today: in Ogden’s day, many languages were used equally in science, business and international relations. At the same time, this world was deeply fractured, having endured by the middle of the twentieth century two World Wars. Whether right or wrong, many scholars of the first half of the twentieth century imagined a connection between competing national languages and international friction.
Minimal English, on the other hand, has been born into a world where Ogden’s dream has essentially come true: international co-operation in science, business and politics is today overwhelmingly mediated in English (see Piller 2016 for incisive discussion of how this plays out in present-day language scholarship). With the end of the Cold War, most people around the world live in an often uneasy but enduring peace – and let’s hope that there will never be a World War III. In this environment, Minimal English has the opposite mission of overcoming the de facto hegemony of English, which has brought with it a different set of problems.
The ahistorical juxtaposition of Basic English and Minimal English ignores these important points of intellectual and political context, which shape the outlook and design of the two projects. There is no shortage of current secondary literature that would help to illuminate this context. My own Language and Meaning in the Age of Modernism, mentioned above, deals with this, as does Michael Gordin’s 2015 Scientific Babel.
This blog post is intended as a plea for greater engagement with intellectual history on the part of linguists. On the example of Minimal English, we can immediately see that there are significant parallels between this project and efforts pursued by scholars of only a few generations ago. Greater awareness of their work and the context in which it was undertaken may cast new light on our own assumptions and practices, and in the process enrich our own thinking and alert us to potential pitfalls.
References
Goddard, Cliff and Anna Wierzbicka (2018), ‘Minimal English and how it can add to Global English, in Minimal English for a Global World: Improved communication using fewer words, ed. Cliff Goddard, Cham: Palgrave McMillan, pp. 5–28.
Gordin, Michael D. (2015), Scientific Babel: How science was done before and after Global English, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lockhart, Leonora Wilhelmina (1931), Word Economy, London: Kegan Paul.
McElvenny, James (2014), ‘Ogden and Richards’ The Meaning of Meaning and early analytic philosophy’, Language Sciences 41, 212–221. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2013.10.001
McElvenny, Jame (2018), Language and Meaning in the Age of Modernism: C. K. Ogden and his contemporaries, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Ogden, Charles Kay (1930), ‘Penultima (editorial)’, Psyche 10:3, 1-29.
Ogden, Charles Kay (1933 [1930]), Basic English: a general introduction with rules and grammar, London: Kegan Paul.
Piller, Ingrid (2016), ‘Monolingual ways of seeing multilingualism’, Journal of Multicultural Discourses 11.1, pp. 25–33. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2015.1102921
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992), ‘The search for universal semantic primitives’, in Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution, ed. Martin Pütz, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 215-242.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1996), Semantics: primes and universals, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2014), Imprisoned in English: the hazards of English as a default language, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This work is licensed under a
I am grateful to James McElvenny for engaging with my post and for giving me a chance to clarify some point by means of an illustration for which there was no room in the post itself.
First, a point of agreement: McElvenny insists, in the title of his piece, that the linguist needs the historian, that is, that linguistic work needs a historical perspective. I couldn’t agree more. I think anyone familiar with publications based on the NSM approach will know that NSM researchers have consistently taken a historical perspective, and that we have given a great deal of serious and detailed attention to the work of past thinkers who engaged with the same questions, including Leibniz, Locke, Bentham, C.S Peirce, Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle, and also Ogden. But there are also many other thinkers in the European intellectual tradition that we have deeply engaged in, including Descartes, Arnauld, Vico, Herder, Humboldt, and Baudouin de Courtenay.(See, e.g, Wierzbicka 2001).
And now to the disagreement. McElvenny alleges that Minimal English is far closer to Ogden’s Basic English than I and my NSM colleagues allow. In particular, he objects to the statement made by Cliff Goddard and myself in our joint chapter in the volume Minimal English for a Global World (Goddard ed. 2018): “The differences [between Minimal English and Ogden’s Basic] are actually enormous, in nearly every dimension: structure (words and grammar), intended range of functions, and in ’spirit’.” (p. 19)
I stand by this statement. I think the differences are indeed enormous. What seems to have rendered them invisible to McElvenny is his narrowly academic perspective, without interest in the potential of a given approach as a tool with which one can actually do something that is urgently needed in the world.
A key point which seems to have escaped McElvenny’s attention is that Minimal English is “convertible” into any other Minimal Language built on the foundation of NSM. The reason is that Minimal English is a form of English pruned of anything that is specifically ‘Anglo’. It is de-Anglified English. For example, seemingly plain English words like “fair” and “unfair”, or “right” and “wrong” and expressions like “what can we do about it?” have no place in Minimal English (see e.g. Wierzbicka 2006, 2014).
Ogden’s “Basic English” is not convertible English; it is a form of ‘Anglo’ English. The whole NSM approach and the Minimal English program derived from it are a massive onslaught on the Anglocentrism pervasive in the modern world, including in international relations, philosophy, science, the humanities (linguistics and anthropology included), and almost every other facet of modern life. (See e.g. Wierzbicka 1997, 1999, 2014).
In his introduction to the forthcoming volume Minimal Languages in Action (Palgrave), Cliff Goddard has illustrated the radical difference between Minimal English and Ogden’s Basic with two different renderings of the same story — a story that matters to millions of people in all parts of the Earth: the biblical story of an angel visiting Mary, Jesus’ mother, in Luke’s Gospel (1:28–31)
‘An Angel visits Mary’ in BASIC
And the angel came in to her and said, Peace be with you, to whom special grace has been given; the Lord is with you.
But she was greatly troubled at his words, and said to herself, What may be the purpose of these words?
And the angel said to her, Have no fear, Mary, for you have God’s approval. And see, you will give birth to a son, and his name will be Jesus.
‘An Angel visits Mary (Mariam)’ in Minimal English
The angel said: “I want to say something very good to you, Mariam. God is with you, God feels something very good towards you.” Mary didn’t know why this was happening to her. She didn’t know what she could think about it.
Then the angel said: “Don’t think like this, Mariam: ‘something bad can happen to me now’. Think like this: ‘something very good is happening to me now.’
In a very short time, something will happen to you; it will happen because God wants it to happen. Because of this, after some time you will give birth to a child (a son). You will call him Jesus.
As Goddard notes in his commentary on these two parallel passages, Ogden’s Basic is not particularly simple, if only because it brims with abstract nouns such as “grace”, “purpose”, “fear” and “approval”. Such words are very complex in meaning, are not used by English-speaking children, and are not cross-translatable into most languages of the world (many languages don’t have abstract nouns at all). By contrast, all the words used in the parallel passage in Minimal English are very simple in meaning, are used by English-speaking children, and as evidence suggests, are cross-translatable into all the languages of the world.
These are indeed enormous differences, which illustrate the main point of my post: Minimal English is the first ever reduced form of English in which global messages can actually be formulated. At some times and for some purposes such messages are badly needed. For example, they are badly needed when devising a charter of global ethics. They are also badly needed at a time of global crisis such as the time of the coronavirus.
McElvenny calls our comparisons of Minimal English and Ogden’s “Basic” ahistorical and accuses NSM researchers of ignoring differences between the intellectual and political context which shaped these two projects. But we were not seeking to pass judgment on Ogden’s “Basic”, or to assess its merits in the context in which it was created. Rather, we were seeking to clarify the main differences between these two projects for the benefit of those readers of our work who mistake Minimal English for something similar to Ogden’s Basic.
In fact the two projects are radically different and have fundamentally different goals. “Essential Messages for Our Time” couldn’t possibly be formulated in “Basic English”, and Ogden never envisaged such a possibility.
It is sad and ironic that in his extended response to my post on “Essential Messages”, McElvenny doesn’t even look at these messages and instead talks about something else altogether. To repeat the main point, and my main claim: for the first time in history, we can now have global messages formulated in simple and cross-translatable words, without Anglocentrism and Eurocentrism. This is not a small claim; and it is not a claim about the history of academic ideas. It is a claim about how people on earth can talk to one another and understand each other. It is a claim about Minimal Languages in action.
In the conclusion to my “Charter of Global Ethic” (2018) I wrote: “The globalized world needs a global ethic. But to be globally shared, this global ethic needs to be formulated in words and phrases that are cross-translatable. The ‘Charter’ proposed here may not be perfect, but at least it offers a possible platform for a global discussion, without excluding anyone and without privileging Anglo English. While it is formulated in words of Minimal English, it is at the same time expressed in what might be described as the vocabulary of ‘Common Human.’”
The same applies to “Essential Messages for our Time”. Their purpose is not to settle academic accounts, but to respond to the needs of the world that we live in, and to the special needs of our present time, the time of the pandemic.
References
Goddard, C. (ed.) (forthcoming/2021). Minimal Languages in Action. Cham: Palgrave.
Goddard C. (ed.) (2018) . Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication with Fewer Words.
Goddard, C. & Wierzbicka, A. (2018). Minimal English and how it can add to global English. In Goddard (ed.), pp. 5-27.
Wierzbicka, A, 1997. Understanding Cultures Through their Key Words. NY: Oxford University Press
Wierzbicka, A. 1999. Emotions Across Languages and Culture: Diversity and Universals. Cambridge University Press
Wierzbicka, A. 2002. “Leibnizian Linguistics. In Istvan Kenesei & Robert Harnish, (eds.) A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer. Pp.229-253
Wierzbicka, A. 2006. English: Meaning and Culture. NY: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, A, 2014. Imprisoned in English. NY: Oxford University Press
Wierzbicka, A. (2019). What Christians Believe. The Story of God and People in Minimal English. NY: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (2018). “A Charter of Global Ethic.” In Goddard (ed.) pp. 113-141. https://www.academia.edu/43993017/Charter_of_Global_Ethic_in_Minimal_English
Note
The BASIC text is from Luke 1:28-31 [http://ogden.basic-english.org/bbe/bbeluke1.html#2]. The Minimal English text is from What Christians Believe (Wierzbicka 2019: 84).
As a Baha’i Esperantist I’m in favour of what James McElvenny highlights in his A1 essay for I feel that the main thing at this time is to advance the concept or the principle of a universal auxlang. Everyone interested in promoting world peace, pedagogy in general and-or the dismal long-term outcomes of foreign language tuition should pay attention to James’ work. (BTW, though, I doubt that anyone reading these lines, or composing them, would be aggrieved at seeing English or any variant thereof as the world auxlang!) Imagine the savings and the benefits were the UN to really get behind the idea of a universal auxiliary language This begs the question of how best to approach influential UN administrators whose careers hinge on their command of six different languages. I mean, just because English is number one today in the UN bureaucracy is no guarantee that Mandarin won’t catch up. Wouldn’t it take Christ returned in the Glory of the Father for world leaders today to seriously contemplate full steam ahead with an international auxiliary language, whatever it may be, given that FDR and Churchill’s entire ministry were unable to get Basic English aloft notwithstanding the popularity in academe of the fully fledged version of English then and now in aviation, commerce, science etc?
About 75 years ago when the Capitalist and Communist nations had reached a modicum of unity in their joint struggles against Hitler and Hirohito and when Basic English had a real chance at a really global tilt as a result of collaboration between PM Churchill and President F D Roosevelt, as famously voiced by the former in his WW2 speech at Harvard, it eventually became clear to a zillion students of Basic that they might as well be studying the real McCoy in order to really succeed in business or to enhance their careers and for avoiding prejudice based on one’s vocab range, to reference just one issue of justice.
Courtesy of the Churchill Centre, extracted in continuity from PM Churchill’s famous ‘malice to none and goodwill to all’ speech (official title of speech: ‘The Gift of a common Tongue’ delivered mid war to a rapt audience of anglophiles at Harvard University:
‘The Gift of a Common Tongue’ https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1941-1945-war-leader/the-price-of-greatness-is-responsibility/
September 6, 1943. Harvard.
By Winston S. Churchill
“The great Bismarck – for there were once great men in Germany – is said to have observed towards the close of his life that the most potent factor in human society at the end of the nineteenth century was the fact that the British and American peoples spoke the same language.
That was a pregnant saying. Certainly it has enabled us to wage war together with an intimacy and harmony never before achieved among allies.
This gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance, and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship. I like to think of British and Americans moving about freely over each other’s wide estates with hardly a sense of being foreigners to one another. But I do not see why we should not try to spread our common language even more widely throughout the globe and, without seeking selfish advantage over any, possess ourselves of this invaluable amenity and birthright.
Some months ago I persuaded the British Cabinet to set up a committee of Ministers to study and report upon Basic English. Here you have a plan. There are others, but here you have a very carefully wrought plan for an international language capable of a very wide transaction of practical business and interchange of ideas. The whole of it is comprised in about 650 nouns and 200 verbs or other parts of speech – no more indeed than can be written on one side of a single sheet of paper.
What was my delight when, the other evening, quite unexpectedly, I heard the President of the United States suddenly speak of the merits of Basic English, and is it not a coincidence that, with all this in mind, I should arrive at Harvard, in fulfilment of the long-dated invitations to receive this degree, with which president Conant has honoured me? For Harvard has done more than any other American university to promote the extension of Basic English. The first work on Basic English was written by two Englishmen, Ivor Richards, now of Harvard, and C.K. Ogden, of Cambridge University, England, working in association.
The Harvard Commission on English Language Studies is distinguished both for its research and its practical work, particularly in introducing the use of Basic English in Latin America; and this Commission, your Commission, is now, I am told, working with secondary schools in Boston on the use of Basic English in teaching the main language to American children and in teaching it to foreigners preparing for citizenship.
Gentlemen, I make you my compliments. I do not wish to exaggerate, but you are the head-stream of what might well be a mighty fertilising and health-giving river. It would certainly be a grand convenience for us all to be able to move freely about the world – as we shall be able to do more freely than ever before as the science of the world develops – be able to move freely about the world, and be able to find everywhere a medium, albeit primitive, of intercourse and understanding. Might it not also be an advantage to many races, and an aid to the building-up of our new structure for preserving peace?
All these are great possibilities, and I say: “Let us go into this together. Let us have another Boston Tea Party about it.”
Let us go forward as with other matters and other measures similar in aim and effect – let us go forward in malice to none and good will to all. Such plans offer far better prizes than taking away other people’s provinces or lands or grinding them down in exploitation. The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”
This is fascinating. It sounds similar to the goals of English as a Lingua Franca. I suspect that the concept of Minimal English is supported by theories of second language acquisition. That is why some speakers communicate using a limited grammar and vocab.