This weekend sees the return of the Super Bowl. It’s the pinnacle of American sport, American culture and just about anything else that parades itself under that Star Spangled Banner which is so despised throughout many quarters of the world.
The Super Bowl is a massive event which attracts billions of television viewers worldwide. For one Sunday each year, everything Uncle Sam invades the world’s consciousness in order to celebrate the ‘World’ Championship of a sport almost exclusively played in North America. Not all American exports are quite so welcome, though…

There is no doubt that in the age of the internet, American culture is having an impact on those of us living on the right side of the pond more than ever, and with it comes the awful trend towards bastardisation of the language which was so wonderfully crafted by English speaking peoples before the age of colonialism.

Such linguistic terrorism can even be found within the walls of good old Bob Smith itself. We have the ‘Studyzone’. What on earth was wrong with the term ‘library’? Definitively correct and to the point, ‘library’ makes me aware that I am entering a library. On the other hand, ‘Studyzone’ implies some kind of intergalactic mysticism found only in theme parks or films. Is a such a highly decorative term used in order to entice the kind of Marlboro smoking, Burberry loving 50-Cent appreciators who frequent the embankment down by the football pitches of a lunchtime into its confines? Because if so, such a moronic rebranding has failed as spectacularly as Republican foreign policy.

Such blatant Las Vegas-isms as ‘Studyzone’ seek only to alienate the idea that its main purpose is to enhance the learning of those who use its facilities, which in a school of all places is somewhat ironic.

Now, with the recent opening of the ‘Payzone’, what will be next to be swallowed mercilessly by such dictionary defying idiocy. Maybe the ‘Robert H. Smyth Jnr. III Learnzone sponsored by Pepsi’ is seen as a feasible alternative to the current school name by the powers that be?
Surely such lexical treachery, which bears resemblances to Orwellian newspeak, can no longer be used in a place where people are supposed to be taught proper English?

Thanks America, you can keep your Superbowl, I’ll keep my language.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 11:32 pm in the articles column. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Comments

1. Gee
   
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   Surley the whole chnaging of english lexicon is just the eveloution of the language; the next step. We stole our language from Latin, French and many other foreign or archaic languages and they all stole from each other. This resulted in the language eveolving into ‘enlgish’, who knows perpas tehre will be an evoloution into Americanish or perhpas it has already happened.
   On another note, the superbowl is teh stupidest thing in the world “welcome to teh superbowl, teh game has just started, time for a commercial”

2. Dave
   
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   You mean the evolution of language in the sense of swapping letters in the middle of words at random?

3. Matt
   
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   Thats how it makes so many millions. Well, at least one way. Teh frickin advertising!!!11