The Adventure of English

The Adventure of English

Author: Melvyn Bragg

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

Published: 2011-04-01

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 1611450071

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A history of the English language traces its evolution from a Germanic dialect around 500 A.D. to its modern form, noting the influence of such groups and individuals as early Anglo-Saxon tribes, Alfred the Great, and William Shakespeare.


Dictating to the Mob

Dictating to the Mob

Author: Jürg R. Schwyter

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-05-20

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0191056405

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The BBC's Advisory Committee on Spoken English was set up to provide an authoritative guide to pronunciation and the use of language for BBC announcers. The results of its deliberations were published for general consumption in a series of pamphlets called Broadcast English. Based on primary sources, the compelling story of the Advisory Board during its crucial first 13 years is told here for the first time. It reveals how board members, including George Bernard Shaw and A. Lloyd James, soon discovered that standardization and regulation of spoken language is extremely challenging and highly controversial. The first two chapters describe the linguistic aspects of its work, particularly after it had taken on the role of standardizing spoken English, a task well beyond its mandate and the BBC Charter. The third and fourth chapters look at the challenges the Committee encountered in assuming their prescriptive role, the structural crisis which ensued, and the changes to linguistic policies which then followed. Chapter 5 and 6 document the final years of the Committee, explore the reasons for its failure in its role as guardian of 'properly' spoken English, and consider the legacy of the Committee in today's broadcasting. The book will appeal to linguists and historians generally, especially those interested in the English language and language policy.


BBC World Service

BBC World Service

Author: Gordon Johnston

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-11-14

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1137318554

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is the first full-length history of the BBC World Service: from its interwar launch as short-wave radio broadcasts for the British Empire, to its twenty-first-century incarnation as the multi-media global platform of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The book provides insights into the BBC’s working relationship with the Foreign Office, the early years of the Empire Service, and the role of the BBC during the Second World War. In following the voice of the BBC through the Cold War and the contraction of the British empire, the book argues that debates about the work and purposes of the World Service have always involved deliberations about the future of the UK and its place in the world. In current times, these debates have been shaped by the British government’s commitment to leave the European Union and the centrifugal currents in British politics which in the longer term threaten the integrity of the United Kingdom. Through a detailed exploration of its past, the book poses questions about the World Service’s possible future and argues that, for the BBC, the question is not only what it means to be a global broadcaster as we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, but what it means to be a national broadcaster in a divided kingdom.


Varieties of English

Varieties of English

Author: Alexander Bergs

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-10-23

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 3110523043

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume is one of the first detailed expositions of the history of different varieties of English. It explores language variation and varieties of English from an historical perspective, covering theoretical topics such as diffusion and supraregionalization as well as concrete descriptions of the internal and external historical developments of more than a dozen varieties of English.


This is the BBC

This is the BBC

Author: Simon J. Potter

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-04-14

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 0192653652

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the hundredth year of the British Broadcasting Corporation, historian Simon J. Potter looks back over the hundred year history, asking if the BBC is really the 'voice of Britain', and what comes next for British public broadcasting. 2022 marks the centenary year of the British Broadcasting Corporation. As Britain's most famous and influential broadcaster, the BBC faces a range of significant challenges to the way it operates, and perhaps to its existence, from the government but also from a rapidly changing media environment. Historian Simon J. Potter explores the hundred year history of this corporation, drawing out the roots of these challenges and understanding how similar threats - hostile politicians and prime ministers, the advent of television - were met and overcome in the past. Potter poses the question 'Is the BBC the voice of Britain?', exploring its role in changing wider culture and society, promoting particular versions of British national identity, both at home and overseas. The BBC has long claimed to speak for the British people, to the British people, and with a British accent, and Potter explores how far these claims have been justified with this exciting new study which covers the establishment of the BBC Empire Service and the World Service, and focuses on people, programmes, and politics to understand the Corporation's engagement with changing ideas about culture and society in Britain, including issues of class, gender, and race.


Around the World in 80 Words

Around the World in 80 Words

Author: Paul Anthony Jones

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 022668279X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What makes a place so memorable that it survives forever in a word? In this captivating round-the-world tour, Paul Anthony Jones acts as your guide through the intriguing stories of how eighty places became immortalized in the English language. You’ll discover why the origins of turkeys, limericks, Brazil nuts, and Panama hats aren’t quite as straightforward as you might presume. If you’ve never heard of the tiny Czech mining town of Jáchymov—or Joachimsthal, as it was known until the late 1800s—you’re not alone, which makes its claim to fame as the origin of the word “dollar” all the more extraordinary. The story of how the Great Dane isn’t all that Danish makes the list, as does the Jordanian mountain whose name has become a byword for a tantalizing glimpse. We’ll also find out what the Philippines has given to your office inbox, what Alaska has given to your liquor cabinet, and how a speech given by a bumbling North Carolinian gave us a word for impenetrable nonsense. Surprising, entertaining, and illuminating, this is essential reading for armchair travelers and word nerds. Our dictionaries are full of hidden histories, tales, and adventures from all over the world—if you know where to look.


Persian Service

Persian Service

Author: Annabelle Sreberny

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-01-16

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0857736612

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Rumour and speculation in Iran have been rife for generations that the BBC has had a hand in every political upheaval in the country. In this vein the BBC has become a notable element in the complex and tortured narrative of Anglo-Iranian relations. The BBC Persian Service was initially developed in 1940 to prepare and broadcast British war-time propaganda. And it has since been seen by many in Iran as an integral part of British policy-making in the region. Thirty years ago, the Shah of Iran regarded the BBC Persian Service radio as his 'enemy number one' and held it responsible for promoting the revolution of 1979. Only a couple decades earlier, the BBC Persian Service was widely accused for having been complicit in the CIA-led 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Musaddiq. And a decade earlier, the BBC Persian Service was strongly linked to the British-planned removal of Reza Shah in 1941. The BBC Persian service has frequently been perceived as an entity which was not simply a vehicle to record the changes occurring in Iran and throughout the Middle East, but rather an active agent of change. In this book, Annabelle Sreberny and Massoumeh Torfeh track the history of the BBC Persian Service, critically analysing both the assumptions that the BBC is a standard bearer for objective reporting and representations of it as a simple tool of Western interests. Also examining the history of relations between the Foreign Office and the BBC Persian Service, they demonstrate that these have never been pre-defined or rigid. Instead, they explore how both institutions have moved from an interest in what can crudely be called state-orchestrated 'propaganda' to a more subtle advocacy of fair and balanced journalism as the best agent of British values and influence.


If Only They Didn't Speak English

If Only They Didn't Speak English

Author: Jon Sopel

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2017-09-07

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 147353075X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

'You see, if only they didn’t speak English in America, then we’d treat it as a foreign country – and probably understand it a lot better’ ‘the sanest man in America’ – Bill Bryson ‘Jon Sopel nails it’ – Emily Maitlis **With a brand new chapter, charting Trump's first year in power** As the BBC’s North America Editor, Jon Sopel has had a pretty busy time of it lately. In the time it’s taken for a reality star to go from laughing stock to leader of the free world, Jon has travelled the length and breadth of the United States, experiencing it from a perspective that most of us could only dream of: he has flown aboard Air Force One, interviewed President Obama and has even been described as ‘a beauty’ by none other than Donald Trump. Through music, film, literature, TV and even through the food we eat and the clothes that we wear we all have a highly developed sense of what America is and through our shared, tangled history we claim a special relationship. But America today feels about as alien a country as you could imagine. It is fearful, angry and impatient for change. In this fascinating, insightful portrait of American life and politics, Jon Sopel sets out to answer our questions about a country that once stood for the grandest of dreams, but which is now mired in a storm of political extremism, racial division and increasingly perverse beliefs.


The Teacher Who Couldn't Read

The Teacher Who Couldn't Read

Author: John Corcoran

Publisher: Brehon Publishing Company

Published: 2017-12-29

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9781938620515

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"The Teacher Who Couldn't Read" is John Corcoran's life story of how he struggled through school without the basic skills of how to read or write and went on to become a college graduate and a high school teacher, still without these basic skills. National literacy advocate John Corcoran continues to help bring illiteracy out of the shadows with this autobiography, "The Teacher Who Couldn't Read." It is the amazing true story of a man who triumphed over his illiteracy and who has become one of the nation's leading literacy advocates. His shocking and emotionally moving story-from being a child who was failed by the system, to an angry adolescent, a desperate college student, and finally an emerging adult reader-touched audiences of such national television shows as the Oprah Winfrey Show, 20/20, the Phil Donahue Show, and Larry King Live. His story was also featured in national magazines such as Esquire, Biography, Reader's Digest, and People. "The Teacher Who Couldn't Read" is a gripping tale of triumph over America's national literacy crisis-- a story you'll thoroughly enjoy while being enlightened to a national tragedy.