INTERACTION S 2 Programfag Engelsk 2
richard burgess | magne dypedahl | hilde hasselgård
P R E FAC E © CAPPELEN DAMM AS, Oslo 2022 Materialet i denne publikasjonen
Welcome to Interactions 2, a textbook for the new curriculum (LK20) in Vg3 English!
er omfattet av åndsverklovens bestemmelser. Uten særskilt avtale med CAPPELEN DAMM AS er enhver eksemplarfremstilling og tilgjengeliggjøring bare tillatt i den utstrekning det er hjemlet i lov eller tillatt gjennom avtale med Kopinor, interesseorgan for rettighetshavere til åndsverk. Utnyttelse i strid med lov eller avtale kan medføre erstatningsansvar og inndragning, og kan straffes med bøter eller fengsel. Design og sats: Welt, Erlend Askhov Omslagsdesign: Erlend Askhov Forlagsredaktør/Bilderedaktør: Birger Nicolaysen Repro: Narayana Press, Danmark 2022 Trykk: Livonia Print Sia, Latvia 2022 Utgave 1 Opplag 1 ISBN 978-82-02-74096-2 www.interactions.cdu.no www.cdu.no
In this, your final year at videregående/vidaregåande, you can look back on 12 years of learning English! Much has been achieved. Your English is now at a level where it would be easy to get by using the skills you have already acquired. However, it is important not to rest on your laurels! Interactions 2 aims to challenge you to take your English a step further. Chapter 1 gives you the opportunity to take stock of your language skills, evaluate where there is room for improvement and decide how best to achieve it. You will learn strategies for reading and listening to often complex texts as well as producing your own, both in writing and orally. At the end of every chapter throughout the book there is a sequence called “Exploring English” designed to help you take your English to the required level for further studies. You do not need reminding of the global role played by the English language today. You may, however, be less sure about the historical developments that led to its dominant position. In Chapter 2 we will look at how the two countries that have been driving forces in the spread of English – the UK and the USA – came to have such an influence in shaping the modern world and discuss what their influence is today. The same historical developments figure also in Chapter 3, but here we will be looking at them as reflected in literary texts from the 18th century up to the present day. Using skills in literary analysis that you acquired in Vg2 (and there will be opportunities to refresh these!) you will learn how such themes as colonialism, industrialization, dissent and alienation are expressed in the prose and poetry of some of the foremost writers in the English language. The political landscape and current affairs of the UK and the USA are the focus of Chapter 4. These two countries have much in common – and much that differentiates them. As you work through the chapter it will therefore be useful to bear this in mind and, as you learn about one country, to reflect on how the same issue is expressed in the other. In Chapter 5 our focus shifts to the southern hemisphere as we look at the birth of modern Australia and New Zealand, the price paid by their indigenous populations and the challenges facing these increasingly important Pacific nations. In all these chapters we will invite you to think critically about the texts you encounter. We believe this is a vital skill for dealing with the ever more challenging cacophony of views and voices that the modern world presents. We wish you the best of luck! The authors
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C O N T E N TS Chapter 1: EXPLORING YOUR ENGLISH TE X T
P.
TE X T T YPE
E XPLORE
I Arrive First (Emma Jane Unsworth)
8
Short story
Assessing your Language Skills
16
Factual text
Developing your English Skills: Reading and Listening
19
Factual text
Texts for Developing Reading Strategies
27
1: Tabula Rasa (Ben Okri)
27
Short story
2: Gaming and English Language Skills
30
Article
Texts for Developing Listening Strategies
33
1: Another Day, Another Murder (Jill Leovy)
33
LISTENING: book extract
2: How India’s Smartphone Revolution is Creating a New Generation of Readers and Writers (Chiki Sarkar)
34
LISTENING: TED Talk
Developing your English Skills: Speaking and Writing
37
Factual text
EXPLORING ENGLISH: What Is Academic English?
45
Language course
TE X T
P.
TE X T T YPE
E XPLORE
How Britain Changed the World
50
Factual text
Rudyard Kipling
Shooting an Elephant (George Orwell)
68
Essay
The Last of the Pink Bits
72
LISTENING: article
Striking Back at the Empire
74
1: How Mahatma Gandhi Changed Political Protest (Erin Blakemore)
75
Article
2: How did Kenya Gain Independence?
77
Article
3: Wake up, Britain: Should the Empire Really Be a Source of Pride? (David Olusoga)
79
Opinion piece
4: Africa’s Colonisation of the English Language Continues Apace (Afua Hirsch)
81
Opinion piece
Britain – a Soft Power Superpower
85
Factual text
1: How India Came to Love Cricket
87
LISTENING: article
2: Harry Potter Introduced me to British Culture (Pauline Bock)
87
LISTENING: personal story
Democracy in Britain
90
Factual text
Writing introductions and conclusions
Chapter 2: CHANGING THE WORLD A Empire and Its Legacies
A Matter of Timing (Bernardine Evaristo)
98
Short story
EXPLORING ENGLISH: Writing Academic English – Using a Rich and Precise Vocabulary
104
Language course
British humour
British elections
3
B
Becoming a World Power
TE X T
P.
TE X T T YPE
Hard and Soft American Power
110
Factual text
The New American Dream (Martha Bayles)
127
Article
E XPLORE
Americanization: Three Perspectives
134
1: France is Becoming More Like America. It’s Terrible (Cole Stangler)
134
Opinion piece
American soft power
2: Americanisms are Killing the English Language (Hephzibah Anderson)
136
Opinion piece
3: What’s the Japanese for QAnon?
138
Article
The American System of Government and its Impact
144
Factual text
Sparking Protests
157
LISTENING: four texts
EXPLORING ENGLISH: Writing Academic English – Personal and Impersonal Writing
159
Language course
TE X T
P.
TE X T T YPE
E XPLORE
The Enlightenment – Being Reasonable
164
Factual text
The Declaration of Independence
Mary Wollstonecraft
169
LISTENING: discussion
Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe)
170
Novel extract
Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
175
Novel extract
A Room of one’s Own (Virginia Woolf)
180
LISTENING: essay extract
The Romantic Period – Being Natural
181
Factual text
Three Romantic Poems in Context
185
1: London (William Blake)
185
Poem
2: Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 (William Wordsworth)
186
Poem
3: Song to the Men of England (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
187
Poem
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
189
Novel extract
The Victorian Age – Being Realistic
193
Factual text
Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)
199
Novel extract
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
205
LISTENING: novel extract
Desiree’s Baby (Kate Chopin)
207
Short story
EXPLORING ENGLISH: Complex Sentences and Participle Clauses
213
Language course
TE X T
P.
TE X T T YPE
Modernism and Beyond
216
Factual text
Context 1: Identity and Alienation
218
Introduction
Eveline (James Joyce)
219
Short story
The Pool (H.D.)
224
Poem
American elections
Chapter 3: TEXTS IN CONTEXT A Reason, Romanticism and Realism
B
Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift)
The Tell-Tale Heart (Edgar Allen Poe) The Brontës
Modern Contexts
4
E XPLORE
Mirrors (Elizabeth Jennings)
224
Poem
Love after Love (Derek Walcott)
225
Poem
Sunita (Chibundu Onuzo)
226
Short story
Context 2: Relationships
232
Introduction
The Sea Change (Ernest Hemingway)
233
Short story
Happy Endings (Margaret Atwood)
239
Short story
Watering the Imagination (Dirye Osman)
243
Short story
This Be the Verse (Philip Larkin)
245
Poem
Context 3: Protest
247
Introduction
Freedom or Death (Emmeline Pankhurst)
248
Speech excerpt
The Preacher and the Slave (Joe Hill)
251
Song lyrics
Strange Fruit (Abel Meeropol)
253
Song lyrics
Dulce et Decorum Est (Wilfred Owen)
255
Poem
Ambush (Tim O’Brien)
257
LISTENING: short story
258
Language course
TE X T
p.
TE X T T YPE
EXPLORING ENGLISH: Complex Noun Phrases
Protest songs
Chapter 4: COMPARING SOCIETIES A The Disunited Kingdom E XPLORE
Divisions!
262
Factual text
Our Parents Betrayed us (Selena Drake)
282
LISTENING: opinion piece
“Dear England”: Gareth Southgate’s Letter to the Nation
283
LISTENING: personal text
Black Lives Matter and British sport
“We were meant to be the generation that reaped the spoils of peace” (Lyra McKee)
287
Essay
Michael Collins
The Ugly Game (Alix O’Neill)
294
LISTENING: book extract
Fox News Gets a British Accent (Helen Lewis)
295
Article
Unity in an Age of Division
300
1: What Unites the United Kingdom?
300
Article
2: Ethnic Diversity Makes Britain’s Culture Great (Akram Khan)
303
Opinion piece
EXPLORING ENGLISH: The Language of Textbooks
306
Language course
TE X T
P.
TE X T T YPE
E XPLORE
Us versus them
312
Factual text
Inaugural addresses
B
Megxit
The Grenfell Tower tragedy
One Nation, Divided
Divided by Beliefs
331
1: The Scopes Trial
332
Factual text
2: At the Evangelical Creation Museum (William & Susan L. Trollinger)
333
Article
3: The Antiscience Movement is Escalating (Peter J. Hotez)
335
Opinion piece
The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
338
Novel extract
Divided over Activism
344
Working with the novel Colin in Black and White
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1: Why I’m not Woke (Romy Dolgin)
345
Opinion piece
2: How the Word “Woke” was Weaponised by the Right (Steve Rose)
347
Opinion piece
Ghazal: America the Beautiful (Alicia Ostriker)
350
Poem
EXPLORING ENGLISH: The Language of Popular Science Articles
354
Language course
Chapter 5: PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES A First Nations: Australia and New Zealand TE X T
P.
TE X T T YPE
E XPLORE
Invasion and Survival
360
Factual text
The national day debate
Butterflies (Patricia Grace)
377
Short story LISTENING: article
Cathy Freeman
378
The Haka
380
1: The Haka isn’t yours – Stop Performing it (Morgan Godfery)
380
Opinion piece
2: Christchurch Schoolboys Perform Haka in Show of Respect for Attack Victims (Nick Dole & Mazoe Ford)
382
Article
Māori Resurgence
383
LISTENING: article
EXPLORING ENGLISH: The Language of Research Articles
384
Language course
B
Settler Nations: Australia and New Zealand
TE X T
P.
TE X T T YPE
E XPLORE
From Colonies to Regional Powers Distinguishing Australian and New Zealand English
391
Factual text
2050: Two antipodean scenarios
402
LISTENING: dialogue
Neighbours (Tim Winton)
403
Short story
All about Yves (Yves Rees)
407
Book extract
EXPLORING ENGLISH: Reporting other People’s Speech and Writing
413
Language course
Note: Challenging tasks are marked like this: a At interactions.cdu.no you will find: – interactive comprehension and vocabulary tasks – Explore: learning paths containing texts, videos, interactive tasks and writing tasks – Revise, Review & Research: tasks for revision and self-evaluation, and suggestions for in-depth work – Toolbox: explanations of topics connected to language learning and communication – Audio: recordings of texts and listening tasks
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EXPLORING YOUR ENGLISH
1
I N T H I S C H A P T E R, YO U W I L L : – – – –
reflect on your own skills in English learn about and develop strategies for reading, listening, speaking and writing that are appropriate for different situations and purposes practise reading, listening, speaking and writing in different genres of English gain some knowledge about academic English
Chapter 1: Exploring Your English
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R E F L E CT The following short story takes place in a library and describes how two people are flirting with each other by means of library book titles. Or are they? Before reading, reflect on the following questions:
a How much did you use the school library during your first two years in upper secondary school? What did you do there? Have you been to any other libraries? If so, which one(s) and for what purpose(s)?
b What do you say and/or do if you meet a stranger in a
library, or another public place, and want to get to know them? Join up with a partner and try out your “get-to-knoweach-other” lines on each other. Discuss whether you think they will work.
I Arrive First By Emma Jane Unsworth
spine bokrygg snarly flokete tenuous subtil, raffinert to radiate å spre / å spreie perimeter wall ytre vegg
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That means it is my turn to start. I put my cloth bag down on the table and make my way over to the shelves. I walk past Poetry towards General Fiction and move along the rows, tapping a few spines as I go. I finally settle on Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities. The book is hard-backed, big and heavy. When it comes off the shelf it leaves a wide gap that the surrounding books domino-fall into. I carry it in both hands back across the room. I lost my hairbrush this morning. I turned the bathroom inside out looking for it but it was no good; it’s gone forever. The best I could do was drag my fingers through my hair and scrape it back into a snarly bun. I position the book in the usual place: upside down in the top right corner of the table. It’s a tenuous joke but I know he’ll get it. We’re on the same wavelength. I pull my netbook and papers out of my bag and stand my bottle of water on my left-hand side, lining it up with the exact centre of my netbook. Then I sit back, ready. He won’t be long. It’s got to the point where I can almost sense him approaching, like a cat that knows when its owner’s car will turn into the drive. Other students arrive. They swing through the doors and then whisper and scatter throughout the library. Some of them slip into the clinically lit catacombs that radiate from the central hub. I look up to the bright-stained dome in the roof and watch the shafts of light fall and flash over the cells of the curved perimeter wall, making everything gleam with life. A trolley of returned books waits by the lending desk and a librarian pats the handle and then pushes off in the direction of social sciences, wheeling the trol-
ley across the room like it’s a buggy with a baby in it. The trolley and the librarian disappear amongst the rows of shelves and I tap my fingers on the mousepad of my netbook and type a few words to pass the time. This is what I write: The library is due to close for refurbishment in one week. No sooner have I typed it than a few of the hairs on my right arm rear up off my skin and I know he’s coming through the door. I don’t know what gives it away to my outer senses – whether it’s the way his feet fall or the first scent-flares of his deodorant – but it’s like I’ve got a special kind of radar where he’s concerned. He puts his bag on the desk gently, oh so gently, and then he stands there for a moment, still and softly posed in the full quiet of the library. My eyes flick on him and past him, on him and past him; past him when he looks my way and then on him again when he looks up, and I look up with him for a moment, up to the dome that is now splitting rays of sun through its antique glass, filling the air with buttery light. I see that he is wearing a green shirt and is holding a scrap of paper in his hand. He must have seen it now. As he walks to the shelves he pretends to scrutinise the scrap of paper in his hand but I know this is all part of today’s elaborate faux nonchalance. He’s thinking, considering the options, like I was just a few minutes ago. He takes his time – ten minutes almost – and I tap away at my netbook while I watch him. I don’t know where we’re all going to go. I don’t and that’s the truth. Me and him. The books. The librarians. The birds that drip from the rough ledges outside. Should we scatter to different corners of the city; the world? Or should we meet in condensation-lined coffee-shops and measure out the days in little wooden sticks?
refurbishment renovering, oppussing to scrutinize å granske, å undersøke faux falsk
Chapter 1: Exploring Your English
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1 | R E F L E CT
Form groups of about four students and discuss the following questions:
a Is the narrator really communicating with the boy in
the library or is she just imagining it? Is she a stalker? Point to examples from the text to justify your opinion.
b The narrator says that it’s what’s on the cover of a
book that counts. “The insides of books don’t interest me anymore.” Do you understand this point of view? Do you agree with it? Why? Why not?
c
In the following quote from the text, the word books is written in two different formats. Discuss what the author may have meant by using brackets the first time and capitals the second. “Some people don’t like it – they cover their (book) protectively with their hands, afraid of what it might reveal. Other people proudly hold their BOOKS out in front of them – these are usually the same books: the latest mustread, or Don DeLillo’s Underworld.”
d What do you think will happen after the story ends?
2 | P R ACT I S E : Vocabulary
Combine each word in line a with a word from line b to make phrases that have to do with libraries and reading.
a book – general – lending – library – reading – reference – returned
b books – book – cover – desk – fiction – room – section
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3 | P R ACT I S E : Fixed expressions
Some of the phrases below are fixed expressions (also called idioms) in English and some are metaphors that have been created for this story. Find out which ones are idioms and explain what they mean. (Tip: you can google the phrases to see if they occur elsewhere.) Then explain what the metaphors mean in the context of this story. to read between the lines – to be on the same wavelength – filling the air with buttery light – birds that drip from the rough ledges – time is of the essence – to rack my brain – a scrap of paper – a flurry of notes – the end is nigh
4 | INTERACT: Role play in pairs
Rather than displaying book titles, people who want to get to know each other may use pickup lines such as the ones below. Do you have any favourites among them or are there any that you think are truly terrible? Pick a couple of both good and bad ones and act out a conversation for each of them. Take turns to start the conversation. – Which song would you choose as the soundtrack for your life? – Tell me two truths and a lie about you and I’ll try to guess which one’s fake. – What’s your most controversial opinion? – Tell me about your perfect Sunday. – I want to hear your finest dad joke! Make me laugh or cringe, the cornier the better.
– – – – – – – –
You look just like [a celebrity they look like]. Do you hear that all the time? Choose our date: A movie, a night out, or hiking? How long would you survive without your phone? You’ve travelled loads! Where’s the best place you’ve been? If I made you dinner, what’s a meal that would make you fall in love with me? How long have you lived in [place/city]? What’s your favourite restaurant/bar/day out here? What are your thoughts on pineapple on pizza? What’s your star sign? Do you think we’d be a match?
6 | C R E AT E : Conversation
Work in pairs or small groups. Write a short conversation where you include as many titles of films and TV series as you can. Act out the conversation.
7 | A N A LYS E : “I Arrive First”
You will find a checklist for analysing short stories in Toolbox at interactions.cdu.no. Use it to work with the following questions about “I Arrive First”:
a Plot: Write a short summary of the plot
(about 100 words). What is the main conflict in the story? Is the conflict internal (within the main character) or external (outside the main character)? Are there any surprises? Is there a climax in the story? If so, where do you think it is?
5 | A N A LYS E
“I Arrive First” contains a number of italicised one-line paragraphs that the narrator claims to write in her netbook. All these lines are listed below. Do you think this collection of lines can be read as a poem? If so, do you think the poem tells the same or a different story than the short story itself? The library is due to close for refurbishment in one week. He must have seen it now. I don’t know where we’re all going to go. Will we make some kind of plan, or will that ruin everything? This place will be spooky when it’s empty. Like a church on a weekday. Things have to progress, I suppose. We’re running out. I sense a growing heaviness inside. The end is nigh. three hours remain Doomed.
b Setting: What are the three aspects of
setting in the short story (i.e. where, when and for how long does the story happen)? What role does setting play in the story?
c
Characters: Write a brief presentation of the main character(s). Did your impression of the main character(s) change while you were reading? If so, write a paragraph on how they changed and how you reacted to it.
d Point of view: Who tells the story? Is the
narrator objective and reliable? How does this point of view influence the way we see what happens in the story?
e
Theme(s): What do you take to be the theme(s) of the story? (That is, not only what the story is about, but what readers are supposed to think about when reading it.)
Chapter 1: Exploring Your English
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R E F L ECT How well do you think you will need to know English in your future studies? In your future job? In life more generally? Is your goal to reach level C2 or will a lower level be sufficient? Suggest some reasons why you set your goals at a particular level.
D E V E LO P I N G YO U R E N G L I S H S K I L LS :
Take Mo Salah's advice!
Reading and Listening It can be useful to think of language proficiency as a set of skills that include reading, listening, speaking and writing. The first two have to do with understanding the language, both when it is written and when it is spoken. The last two are concerned with producing language. Speaking (see p. 37) includes both interacting with others and monologues, such as speeches and oral presentations. Writing (see p. 40) at an advanced level includes the ability to write and structure texts on complex topics and to adapt the style to the purpose and the intended readership of the text. However, improving a proficiency level that is already quite high takes a lot of effort. The general advice is simple: do not give up! We become better readers, listeners, speakers and writers if we practise a lot. For example, the more we read texts in English, the easier it will be, even if some of the texts appear difficult at first. In the following, we will look at some strategies that can help us in our work with the English language. Each skill is approached with a set of questions: what, who, why and how. What is the topic of the text or the conversation? Who are the senders and addressees? Why do you want or need to read it, listen to it, write it or engage in it? How can you best read, listen, speak or write to achieve your purpose? Sometimes even more questions can usefully be asked, as discussed below.
to adapt å tilpasse purpose formål, hensikt intended tiltenkt, beregnet / tiltenkt, berekna
Chapter 1: Exploring Your English
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Strategies for reading Not all texts need to be read in the same way. Texts are different, and we read them for different purposes. The table below outlines some questions that can help you become an efficient reader.
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Main question
Detailed questions
Reason(s) for asking
What?
• What kind of text is it? (e.g. poem, novel, news article, science book …) • What topic(s) does the text deal with, and in what ways? • What are the values and beliefs expressed in the text (if any)?
Our ideas about the type of text and its topic will influence the way we read it. It is also useful to be on the lookout for values and beliefs, no matter what type of text it is.
Who?
• Who wrote the text? • Who is the text primarily addressed to?
Some texts are aimed at specific readers, others at a general audience. This matters for how writers present themselves in the text as well as how the readers relate to the writer.
Why?
• Why did the writer produce the text? • Why am I reading the text? (e.g. to find information, to learn something, to be entertained …)
We need to be aware of the writer’s as well as our own purposes in writing/reading the text.
How?
• How do I best read the text to achieve my purpose in reading it?
This question concerns the way we read the text, e.g. how much time we spend, whether we need to look up unfamiliar words, how many times we read it, etc.
– E X PLOR I NG E NGL I S H –
What Is Academic English? The English language is everywhere. We may like or dislike this, but it is a fact. In upper secondary school, it is mainly in the English classes that we need to read and write English. However, in other contexts we may need to use English for particular purposes such as finding out how a technical device works, reading up on a topic we are interested in, carrying out a task at work, or seeking higher education. It is likely that some of the texts that provide such information are written in what we may call academic English. The linguistic style of academic English is often rather formal, and the texts may seem to be packed with information.
In the case of higher education, whatever and wherever you choose to study, you will probably find that not all subjects have textbooks in Norwegian, so that you will have to read books and/or articles in English instead. Many students are surprised at how challenging it can be to read academic English. There are in fact good reasons for this. Most academic texts are highly specialised in terms of their topic as well as the language used. However, “academic texts” are not all the same, and the following questions about communication can highlight important differences: –
What is the message to be communicated?
–
Who are the people involved?
–
Where and when does this communication take place?
–
Why does the communication take place? (What is the purpose of the communication?)
–
How is the communication carried out? (Is it spoken or written, formal or informal?)
The message to be communicated: The topic can vary indefinitely, but it is usually well defined, and signalled in the title of the article, book, lecture etc. The people involved: The writer of an academic text is most typically an expert in the field, but it may also be somebody (a journalist, a textbook writer) who passes on information from experts. Readers of academic texts may be anybody who is seeking information about a topic, but perhaps most often people with Chapter 1: Exploring Your English
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CHANGING THE WORLD
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"A Friendly Power in Egypt", 1906. From Cassell's Illustrated History of England, Vol. VIII.
I N T H I S C H A P T E R, YO U W I L L : – – –
– –
explore and discuss the language, cultural and international political influence of the United Kingdom and the United States explore and compare the system of government and politics in the United Kingdom and the United States based on historical contexts develop independent reflection and critical thinking skills when reading and discussing different texts about the emergence of the United Kingdom and the United States as global powers become more aware of the importance of using a rich and precise vocabulary explore the difference between personal and impersonal styles of writing in different types of texts and for different purposes Chapter 2: Changing the World
49
Empire and Its Legacies
A R E F L ECT
K E Y C O N C E P TS
a What connotations does the term “the
– – – – – – –
b
British Empire” have for you? Where have you got your ideas from, do you think? Think of countries in the world that have at some time in their past been part of the British Empire. In what different ways have they been shaped or influenced by it?
empire verbs: conquer, subjugate, invade, settle, annex transatlantic slave trade the Industrial Revolution Pax Britannica Scramble for Africa colonial mindset
How Britain Changed the World connotation assosiasjon to vow å avlegge løfte, å sverge / å avlegge løfte, å sverje guarantor garantist accessory tilbehør/tilbehøyr to subjugate å erobre justified berettiget, rettferdiggjort / rettkommen, rettferdiggjord invariably alltid, uten unntak / alltid, utan unntak inherently grunnleggende, naturlig / grunnleggande, naturleg legacy arv to annex å annektere, å innlemme
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In the modern world, the word “empire” usually has negative connotations, carrying associations with the bad guys in Star Wars (“The Empire Strikes Back”) or with regimes we do not like. Unsurprisingly, imperial powers themselves have a more positive take on the word. In the UK, for example, Empire Day was celebrated enthusiastically right up until 1958, when the name was changed to Commonwealth Day. And when Winston Churchill gave his famous speech to the nation in the dark days of the Second World War, in which he vowed that “we shall fight on the beaches”, he pointed to “our Empire beyond the seas” as a guarantor of final victory against Nazi Germany. Empire was, of course, not only a British enterprise. Until our post-colonial age, an empire was seen as a necessary accessory for a major European power. Subjugating nations and peoples in distant parts of the globe was regarded as both morally justified and, not least, highly profitable. The moral justification for subjugation was invariably found in the myth of racial and cultural superiority. By defining the conquered as inherently inferior, subjugation could be transformed into something necessary – even positive. Much of the racism that we see played out in conflicts throughout the world today is a legacy of empire. Britain was in fact something of a latecomer to empire-building. By the time Britain had gained its first foothold in America, the Spanish and Portuguese had already annexed huge tracts of South America and most of the islands of the Caribbean, while the Dutch were busy establishing a lucrative spice trade in the East Indies. The French too became empire-builders, at times competing with Britain for dominance.
But it was the British Empire that proved to be the largest and most enduring of them all. At its height – immediately after the First World War – it was the largest the world has ever seen, covering a quarter of the world’s surface and a quarter of its population. It was literally true that it was an empire on which the sun never set: during a 24-hour day there was never a moment at which there was not daylight in some British territory. Building an empire So why was Britain able to outstrip its European neighbours in empire-building? There are several reasons for this. During the 18th century Britain experienced a rapid growth in population and the emergence of a large middle class with an insatiable appetite for overseas goods. At the same time Britain was becoming the world’s first industrialised nation, drawing on many of the scientific innovations of the Enlightenment (see p. 164) to revolutionise production methods in agriculture and industry, including the weapons industry. This Industrial Revolution opened up for a new dynamic form of economy: the free market economy (see p. 194 for more about the consequences of the Industrial Revolution in the UK itself). Another key reason is that, while the early empires of Portugal and Spain were mainly focused on centrally-controlled conquest and plunder, private companies were at the forefront of British expansion. Colonies were encouraged to be self-sufficient, and entrepreneurs were given a free rein and were able to amass huge fortunes. In return they paid taxes to the Crown. In short, it could be said that the chief driving force of empire, and one of its chief legacies, was capitalism itself. As it gained a virtual monopoly in the transatlantic slave trade, Britain was able to supply a growing consumer market back home with cheap cotton, sugar, tea and tobacco.
to outstrip å overgå insatiable umettelig/umetteleg self-sufficient selvforsynt/sjølvforsynt entrepreneur gründer
Map of the British Empire, 1886.
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Background
T H E BR I T I S H E M PI R E : I M PORTA N T DAT E S 1588 : 1600 : 1607 : 1651 :
1655 :
1661:
1664 : 1670 : 1707 : 17 13 :
1756-63: 17 70:
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The English fleet defeats the Spanish Armada and establishes the superiority of English ships and seamanship. England is now ready to enter the race for overseas trade and possessions. Elizabeth I grants a charter to the East India Company, which begins establishing trading posts in India. Jamestown Colony in Virginia is founded – the first permanent English settlement in North America. The great Navigation Act is passed. This and other Navigation Acts eventually create a closed economy between Britain and its colonies. All colonial exports have to be shipped on English ships to the British market, and all colonial imports have to come by way of England. An English expedition wrests control of Jamaica from Spain. English settlers bring in vast numbers of enslaved Africans to work the sugar estates on the island. The first permanent British settlement on the African continent is made at James Island (later Kunta Kinteh Island) in the Gambia River, which becomes a key post in the transatlantic slave trade. The Dutch trade New Amsterdam (New York City) for a British island in Southeast Asia. Maryland colony is established. By this time there are British American colonies in New England, Virginia and Maryland and settlements in Bermuda, Honduras, Antigua, Barbados and Nova Scotia, Canada. By an Act of Union, Great Britain is born as a state. By the Treaty of Utrecht Britain gains territory from France and Spain in the Americas and Mediterranean and a monopoly on importing slaves into Spanish colonies. The Seven Years’ War: Britain defeats France and gains supremacy in mainland North America and India. Spain cedes Florida to the British. Captain James Cook claims New South Wales in Australia for Britain.
The American Revolution takes place. The American colonists prevail in the war, and Britain recognises the United States as an independent nation. 1788: The first ships carrying convicts from England arrive at Botany Bay, Australia. 1801: An Act of Union makes Ireland part of the United Kingdom. 1803-15: The Napoleonic Wars. Britain defeats France and secures its role as the world’s foremost naval power. 1807–33: The slave trade is abolished in British colonial possessions in 1807 and slavery itself in Britain’s dominions by 1833. 1839-42: When China prohibits the trade in opium and destroys any opium found, Britain (who profits by the trade) declares war on China. The Opium Wars that follow end in the Treaty of Nanking in which the port of Hong Kong is ceded to the British. 1840: New Zealand becomes officially British, after which systematic colonisation there follows rapidly. 1857– 59: Widespread but unsuccessful rebellion against British rule in India. The British government takes direct rule of India, beginning the period of the British Raj. The East India Company is dissolved, and India becomes an official British colony. 1884– 85: European nations meet in Berlin to divide Africa. Britain wins the most territory, which stretches from South Africa to Egypt. In 1885 local Indian leaders form the Indian National Congress to promote independence from Great Britain. 1899– 1902: The South African War, or Boer War between British and Boer forces for control of two Boer republics. Great Britain wins the war. 1914-18: The First World War: Britain takes over German colonies in Africa. 1919– 1922: Irish War of Independence ends British rule in most of Ireland and creates the Irish Free State as a self-governing Dominion. Northern Ireland remains within the United Kingdom. 1931: The Statute of Westminster makes Dominions (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Irish Free State, South Africa, Newfoundland) largely sovereign states. 1939-45: The Second World War. Britain mobilises forces across the Empire. 1947: The Mountbatten Plan partitions the subcontinent into Hindu-controlled India and Muslim-controlled Pakistan on June 3. India gains independence on August 15. 1948: British withdrawal from Palestine. 1952: Mau Mau Rebellion breaks out in opposition to British colonial rule in Kenya. 1957: The Gold Coast becomes the first sub-Saharan African colony to reach independence as Ghana. The movement of Britain’s remaining colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean toward self-government gains speed in the years that follow. 1982: Falklands War: Britain defeats Argentina to retain the Falkland Islands. 1997: The last significant British colony, Hong Kong, is returned to Chinese sovereignty. By this time virtually nothing remains of the British Empire. 17 75– 83:
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R E F L E CT Make a list of the attitudes you associate with a “colonial mindset”. The English novelist, journalist and essayist George Orwell (1903–1950) was born in India to a well-to-do family. He grew up in England and returned to the East in 1922 to train as an officer in the Imperial Police in Burma (now Myanmar). Here his socialist views developed, and he returned to England to become a writer, focusing on social injustice. The essay “Shooting an Elephant” was published in 1936 and deals with his time in Burma when his work and political ideals were increasingly at odds.
Shooting an Elephant
mindset tenkemåte petty ubetydelig, liten / ubetydeleg, liten betel juice betelnøtt-juice to bait å erte, å plage
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By George Orwell
In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of
young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans. All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically – and secretly, of course – I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lockups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos – all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty. One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old .44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant’s doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone “must”. It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of “must” is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours’ journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it. […]
to hoot å brøle, å rope oppressor undertrykker/ undertrykkar at close quarters på nært hold / på nært hald to huddle å stue (seg sammen) / å stue (seg saman) cowed kuet/kua buttock rumpeball to supplant å erstatte, å avløse / å erstatte, å avløyse British Raj: a term for British supremacy in India 1858–1947 in saecula saeculorum (latin) for evig og alltid prostrate her: beseiret, knust / overvunne, knuste despotic tyrannisk to ravage å herje, å ødelegge / å herje, å øydelegge in terrorem (latin) her: å skremme, å skape frykt mahout (indisk) elefantfører/ elefantførar pursuit jakt, forfølgelse / jakt, forfølging municipal kommunal
UNDERSTAND a Why was the narrator hated in Burma? b In what way were his feelings about Burma ambiguous? c Why was the narrator called out, and why did he take a gun? d Why couldn’t the Burmese deal with the situation themselves?
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P R ACT I S E : Building vocabulary While reading the four texts in this section, work with the following strategies for building your vocabulary. (The texts do not include a glossary.) See p. 104 for more advice.
a Write a list of words and phrases that you believe are useful to know in
order to understand the text and to be able to talk or write about the topics later on. Try to understand them from the context and look up the ones you are unsure about. Note how the words/phrases are used in the text and whether you think they might have other meanings as well.
b Compare lists with a partner and revise your lists based on your discussion.
Striking Back at the Empire All empires come to an end sooner or later, sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Some overstretch their military resources. Some subjugate native populations too hard for too long, making rebellion inevitable. Some lose faith in the ideology underlying the whole imperial project. Another seed of destruction is often the rise of an educated native administration, created in their colonial masters’ own image to run their empire – but without, of course, the same privileges as their masters. Even the language of the colonisers can be hijacked by the colonised and used against them. While reading the four texts that follow, consider which of these scenarios you can see illustrated.
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How Mahatma Gandhi Changed Political Protest
–
TEXT 1
–
By Erin Blakemore He’s been called the “father of India” and a “great soul in beggar’s garb”. His nonviolent approach to political change helped India gain independence after nearly a century of British colonial rule. A frail man with a will of iron, he provided a blueprint for future social movements around the world. He was Mahatma Gandhi, and he remains one of the most revered figures in modern history. Born Mohandas Gandhi in Gujarat, India in 1869, he was part of an elite family. After a period of teenage rebellion, he left India to study law in London. Before going, he promised his mother he’d again abstain from sex, meat, and alcohol in an attempt to re-adopt strict Hindu morals. In 1893, at the age of 24, the new attorney moved to the British colony of Natal in southeastern Africa to practice law. Natal was home to thousands of Indians whose labor had helped build its wealth, but the colony fostered both formal and informal discrimination against people of Indian descent. Gandhi was shocked when he was thrown out of train cars, roughed up for using public walkways, and segregated from European passengers on a stagecoach. In 1894, Natal stripped all Indians of their ability to vote. Gandhi organized Indian resistance, fought anti-Indian legislation in the courts and led large protests against the colonial government. Along the way, he de-
Mahatma Gandhi in England in 1931, taking part in a conference to decide on the future status of India as the only representative of the Indian National Congress. The conference was a failure, but Gandhi captured the public imagination and was cheered by enthusiastic crowds in Britain.
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R E F L ECT a What do you understand by the terms “left” and “right” in politics? What sort of policies would you associate with one side or the other?
b Share what you know about British politics in pairs or small groups.
Democracy in Britain constitutional monarchy konstitusjonelt kongedømme
90
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to use its full title, is a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. As such, it has a lot in common with Norway. Like Norway, it has a monarch whose role in practice is ceremonial. Its citizens elect representatives to parliament. These representatives belong to different political parties, and governments are formed by the party or a coalition of parties with the most representatives. It is these representatives that choose one of their number to become prime minister and form a government. This differs from the American system where the head of state (the president) is chosen in a
separate election and is not a member of the parliament (or Congress, as it is called there). Unlike Norway and the USA, Britain cannot trace its constitution back to a time when a group of (inevitably) men sat down around a table and said, “Okay, what’s a sensible way of organising this?” The British constitution is not a single document composed at one time, but simply the hundreds of laws and conventions developed over the centuries that, taken together, regulate the system of government and political life in Britain and protect the rights of the individual. Most of the institutions at its core were developed at a time when democracy was still unthinkable. The electoral system This applies not least to the electoral system. It came about at a time when only a tiny proportion of the population was represented in parliament (as one wit put it: Nowadays it’s the votes that count. In the old days, it was the counts that voted!). The aristocracy and the high clergy had their seats in the House of Lords, which to start with was where the real power lay. However, the land-owning gentry were also allowed to have their representatives, in a separate chamber called the House of Commons. In order to ensure that all parts of the realm were represented here, the country was divided up into voting districts, called constituencies, each of which corresponded to, literally, a seat in the Commons. Voting was based on what is called a first-past-the-post system, meaning simply that the candidate with most votes in each constituency wins the seat. So the voting system was in place long before the advent of political parties (the 18th century) and votes for all (the early 20th century). Its survival into the modern age has had a profound effect on the way the political life of the United Kingdom developed. It has strengthened the position of the two largest parties and generally hindered the rise of smaller ones. In doing so, it has encouraged adversarial politics, i.e. politics where two sides oppose each other vigorously. This is reflected in the layout of the House of Commons, where the government and the opposition physically face each other. For the last 100 years, these two sides have been the right-of-centre Conservative Party and the left-of-centre Labour Party. These two parties have generally taken it in turns to govern the country. There are currently 650 constituencies in the UK, giving the same number of Members of Parliament (MPs). These constituencies vary in size. The largest has over 100,000 people who can vote; the smallest has fewer than 30,000. Most, however, have an electorate of between 60,000 and 75,000. On the day of a general election, there is an election in each of these constituencies. These general elections are held every five years on the first Thursday in May. Exceptions are if either the government is given a “no confidence” vote by Parliament or if a 2/3 majority of MPs votes for an earlier election. The Conservative Party Also referred to as the “Tory party”, the Conservative Party was originally the party of Britain’s land-owning class. It extended its appeal as the electorate grew in the transition to democracy, becoming in the 20th century the favoured party of the middle class and of business interests. They were the party of government for two-thirds of that century. Traditional strongholds for the Conservatives are in affluent, rural Southern England. In
constitution grunnlov convention konvensjon House of Lords Overhuset House of Commons Underhuset realm kongerike constituency enmannskrets/ einmannskrins first-past-the-post system «førstemann-i-mål»-system proportional representation mandatfordeling etter forholdstallsvalg / mandatfordeling etter forholdstalsval electorate velgermasse/ veljarmasse general election parlamentsvalg/ parlamentsval affluent velstående/velståande
Proportional representation means that the votes of the electorate are represented proportionately in the elected body. PR voting systems, like the one we have in Norway, ensure that also smaller parties are represented, rather than the first-past-the-post system that favours larger parties and is more likely to deliver parliamentary majorities.
UNDERSTAND a What are some similarities and differences between the political systems in the UK and the USA? b What is the first-past-the post voting system, and how has this system affected British politics? c How do general elections work in the UK?
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B
Becoming a World Power
R E F L ECT
K E Y C O N C E P TS
Write down examples of American movies, TV series or digital games that you have enjoyed over the course of your life. To what extent and how do you think this type of input has influenced your own way of thinking and behaving?
– – – – – – – –
soft power hard power isolationism interventionalism internationalism containment policy the Cold War Americanization
Hard and Soft American Power “If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn’t have declared their independence from it.” stephen colbert, american comedian (Goltz, 2017, p. 88) imperfect uferdig, mangelfull linguistic språklig/språkleg
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Stephen Colbert is being ironic, of course, but what he says illustrates a long history of tension between those who have wanted the United States to stay out of international co-operation and internationalists. Regardless of any initial desire to keep to itself, the U.S. has had a great impact on the world in many areas. The founding of a modern democracy – even as imperfect as it was – was in itself an inspiration for many other nations that wanted democratic rule. Later, much of the influence has been based on military and economic power, often referred to as “hard power.” This has been accompanied by linguistic and cultural influence through “soft power,” which here means how a nation gets others to “want what you have” instead of “forcing others to do what you want” (Wolfley, 2021, p. 16). American soft power is noticeable in, for example, music, film, social media, education and innovative technology. In the following, some aspects of the development of the U.S. into a military, economic and cultural superpower will be described. Other examples
are in the news – and on all kinds of media platforms – every day. The aim of working with this part of the chapter is to become more aware of such influence and reflect on how it affects us as individuals and how it affects other societies. Avoiding alliances The Founding Fathers – people like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin who drafted the American Constitution in 1787 – were committed internationalists who did not want the new nation to turn away from Europe. But they were also tired of being involved in Britain’s wars and other disputes, mostly with France. Therefore, some form of isolationism seemed like a good idea. George Washington – the first American president – famously confirmed this policy towards the end of his presidency by saying that the United States was to “steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world” (Library of Congress, 2017). That was also the dominant policy until after World War II.
George Washington crossing the Delaware during the War of Independence.
expansion utvidelse, ekspansjon / utviding, ekspansjon treaty avtale, traktat, pakt
The beginning of military and economic imperialism Still, it is fair to say that the U.S. has never been truly isolationist, as the building of a military and economic empire started early in the 19th century. The expansion of U.S. territory westward was part of this growth and involved both Native Americans – who were forced to give up their lands – and a number of other nations. Some of the treaties and deals with European nations were signed peacefully. In 1803, for example, President Thomas Chapter 2: Changing the World
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- First, discuss arguments for and against using the
nuclear bomb in 1945. Then discuss the use of the bomb with the perspective of today. In what way do you think that changes the arguments for and against? - It has been claimed that the horror of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has kept nations from using the atomic bomb later. Find arguments both for and against this statement. - In what circumstances would you generally accept the use of military power – if at all?
6 | C R E AT E : Writing a How often do you observe American celebrities in
the media? Write a personal essay where you discuss how and to what extent they influence lifestyle choices, such as fashion and the way people dress around the world.
b The United States has often aimed for the moral high ground, but the aims are not always reached. Write an expository essay discussing current and historical events when the differences between ideals and reality have been particularly obvious.
5 | C O M PA R E
Compare the following quotes and discuss U.S. foreign policy in light of them. Then discuss how the same discussion relates to British foreign policy. –
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse.” (John Stuart Mill)
–
“The truth is that neither British nor American imperialism was or is idealistic. It has always been driven by economic or strategic interests.” (Charley Reese)
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“A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.” (Henry Kissinger)
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“Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it.” (Ta-Nehisi Coates)
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“Good guys don’t always win, especially when they are divided and less determined than their adversaries.” (Madeleine Albright)
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“American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world.” (Michael Mandelbaum)
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“[I]f you think that American imperialism and its globalised, capitalist form is the most dangerous thing in the world, that means you don’t think the Islamic Republic of Iran or North Korea or the Taliban is as bad.” (Christopher Hitchens)
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c
What do you think are the most important “baubles and amusements” for teenagers today, compared to 1959 (see p. 121)? What are the differences between a teenager’s life in the U.S. and a teenager’s life in Norway today? Write a personal text.
R E F L ECT According to a Gallup poll, the U.S. is still the most popular destination for potential migrants, and its colleges and universities attract large numbers of international students. a Give examples of what migrants and students may find attractive about the United States. Are there examples of any features both groups could be attracted to? b Have you changed your own opinion about the U.S. in the last few years? If so, how and why? c While reading the text, consider the what-who-why-how questions on page 20 and write notes to answer them.
The New American Dream By Martha Bayles
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TEXT 3
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What’s the Japanese for QAnon? Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture. Movements like Black Lives Matter have spread as far as Hungary, Nigeria and South Korea.
regional assembly delstatsforsamling to heckle å avbryte, å komme med tilrop prolific produktiv to bash å kritisere (kraftig), å henge ut state deputy delstatsrepresentant to embody å personifisere to obtain å oppnå, å skaffe seg obesity fedme, (sykelig) overvekt / fedme, (sjukeleg) overvekt
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Arthur do Val just wanted to be somebody. A sitting lawmaker in São Paulo’s regional assembly – with, as he boasts in his Twitter bio, the second-largest number of votes of any candidate – Mr do Val rose to fame by heckling lefties at marches. He learned this tactic, he explains, from the documentaries of Michael Moore, an American political film-maker. Mr do Val has since become a talented and prolific producer of web-friendly content. His team pumps out hundreds of images and video clips weekly through social media. People want to be entertained, he argues, so politics must be entertaining, too. Political arguments should be delivered in funny memes and silly videos which, in Mr do Val’s case, tend to focus on promoting economically liberal ideas and bashing the left. “I tried being a rock star; I failed. I tried to be a fighter, an athlete; I failed. I was simply a frustrated businessman. Then, I saw in YouTube an opportunity to exploit my indignation,” he explains. “I just wanted to stand out, and by accident, it took me to a political career.” Mr do Val’s rise from a nobody to a state deputy by the age of 32 was both unlikely and impressive. But he embodies a new transnational class of political entrepreneurs who communicate in memes, videos and slogans. They draw on a global flow of ideas, adapt them to local conditions and return them to the ether. Many are activists or ordinary people. Social media are their most important means of influence – both over their followers and each other. The result is not only a new class of unorthodox politicians, but also the globalisation of political ideas, many from America. America’s films, television and music are loved everywhere. Its consumer brands are world-beating. Its social-media stars have global influence. As the world’s most powerful country, with huge cultural reach, it has always had a hefty impact on political trends and movements. In 1990 Joseph Nye, a political scientist at Harvard, introduced the concept of “soft power”, which he defined as “the ability to affect others and obtain preferred outcomes by attraction and persuasion rather than coercion or payment”. Hollywood, pop music, McDonald’s and Levi’s jeans are all expressions of America’s soft power. For many people beyond its shores, consuming these goods was as close as they could get to sharing the American dream. When the first McDonald’s opened in Mumbai in 1996, Indians queued in their thousands to taste its fabled burger (though made without beef), replicating a scene from Moscow six years earlier. (The opening of a Starbucks in Mumbai a decade ago drew a similar response.) Mumbai’s film industry, the biggest in the world, is called “Bollywood” to mimic its counterpart in Los Angeles. Nigeria has “Nollywood”, Pakistan “Lollywood”. Even if McDonald’s and Hollywood contribute to growing obesity and unrealistic expectations of police forensics, for policymakers the important thing is that, as Mr Nye puts it, “exerting attraction on others often does
allow you to get what you want”. A fondness for American brands is positively correlated with favourable views of the American government. What has changed is that the culture the country exports has expanded to encompass its politics. And in the age of social media, it is memes, not McDonald’s, that are the main vehicle for America’s cultural influence. Take Brazil. Its political scene is full of YouTubers and Facebook influencers. “There is a lot of influence, even unconscious, of the [American] discourse. What’s happening there, comes here,” says Mr do Val, citing debates on face masks or race. This is not as simple as copying and pasting American arguments, he cautions. Rather, America provides the templates that anyone anywhere can apply. According to Whitney Phillips, a media researcher at Syracuse University in New York, America’s role in shaping political debates comes not just from the norms it promotes. It also “flows from its cultural production – the actual stuff of media and memes”, she writes in You Are Here, a new book examining global information flows. One reason America’s influence is greater now, she says, is that “social media is global. And there are way more people outside the United States who use Facebook than in the United States.”
correlated gjensidig forbundet / gjensidig forbunden discourse debatt, samtale template modell, forbilde, mal / modell, førebilete, mal to erupt å bryte ut
Black Lives Matter sweeps Nigeria Consider the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests which erupted in America in 2020. They inspired local versions everywhere from South Korea, where there are very few people of African descent, to Nigeria, where there are very few people who are not. In Britain, where the police typically do not Chapter 2: Changing the World
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M E D I AT E Norwegian media report regularly on political events in the U.S. What was the last big story you can recall? What was it about? Try to explain it to a fellow student and then listen to what they have to say.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. from the pre amble to the united states constitution
The American System of Government and its Impact
constitution statsforfatning, grunnlov federal føderal, forbunds-
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The U.S. Constitution from 1787 has turned out to be one of America’s most important exports by serving as the reference point for virtually every nation in the world. The Constitution could be described as an imperfect union founded on perfect ideas, since at the time it was written, the people who could vote were mostly white men with property. Other groups had to wait, and in many cases fight hard, to get this right. Still, the U.S. Constitution is often classified as the world’s longest-living modern constitution. Before the U.S. adopted the present Constitution, they tried out a confederate system of government under the Articles of Confederation (1781). This was a very loose co-operation between the 13 new states. The problem was that the national government had no power to enforce national laws, and loyalty to each state was more important than the common good of the new nation. For that reason, the most influential men in the states – later referred to as the Founding Fathers – got together in Philadelphia in 1787 to draft a new constitution that established a federal system of government. The Founding Fathers wanted a representative democracy. This system of elected representatives who can be regularly replaced later became the standard for all other modern democracies. Power rests with the people, who elect their representatives for a limited period of time. This sounds obvious for a democracy today, but up to that time no other country had allowed its citizens to choose the form of government or given the power to the “people”.
T I M E L I N E OF VOT I NG R IGH T S 1788: Voting rights are left to the states (mostly white males with property
1868: 1870: 1920: 1924: 1943: 1964: 1965: 197 1: 1975: 1993:
2013:
2021:
Background
were allowed to vote in the beginning, but some states gave women the right to vote in the late 1800s). Citizenship is granted to all U.S.-born apart from Native Americans. African American men get the right to vote (the 15th amendment established that voting rights could not be denied based on race or color). Women in all states are guaranteed the right to vote (the 19th amendment). Native Americans get the right to vote. Chinese Exclusion Act ends (see p. 323), giving Chinese immigrants and their American-born families the right to vote. Poll taxes banned (in some states there had been a fee to vote in national elections). Voting Rights Act (banning literacy tests and enforcing the 15th Amendment on a federal level). Citizens who are 18 and older can vote (lowered from 21). Rights for non-English-speaking voters (assistance in registering and voting). Voter registration made easier (state motor vehicle agencies to offer voter registration opportunities and states to offer mail-in voter registration applications). The Voting Rights Act restricted (The U.S. Supreme Court rules that a section of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional, in effect letting many states enact voting restrictions). 19 states pass laws to make voting harder, such as making mail voting and early voting more difficult and imposing stricter ID requirement.s.
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) was a pioneer in the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. Her work helped pave the way for the 19th Amendment (1920) to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote. The amendment was known as the “Susan B. Anthony Amendment” to honor her work on behalf of women’s rights, and in 1979 she became the first woman to be featured on a circulating coin from the U.S. mint. Anthony was tireless in her efforts, giving speeches around the country to convince others to support a woman’s right to vote. She even took matters into her own hands in 1872 when she voted in the presidential election illegally. Anthony was arrested and tried unsuccessfully to fight the charges. She ended up being fined $100 — a fine she never paid. Chapter 2: Changing the World
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3 | USING SEEM
Copy the table below. Rewrite the sentences in the first column using the verb seem, as shown in the example. Sentence
It seems that
Somebody/something seems
The course is probably very hard.
It seems that the course is very hard.
The course seems to be very hard.
I think teenagers are aware of the problem. I guess they have left. We believe that polarization increased during Trump’s presidency. I feel that U.S. influence is diminishing. Maybe the protesters have changed their minds.
– E X PLOR E & E X PL A I N – 4 | MAKING A TEXT L ES S P E R S O N A L
At interactions.cdu.no you will find a student text on “The Problem of Immigrants in the U.S.” The text has a very personal style. Make it less personal and subjective by removing or replacing words and phrases that refer to the writer and his or her emotions, opinions and attitudes, or to the reader. Write a summary of the kinds of changes that you made.
5 | D E T ECT I N G O P I N I O N S A N D AT T I T U D ES
The listening text about the global impact of #MeToo (p. 157) is more of a report than an opinion piece. Listen to it again: Can you still find traces of the writer’s opinion in the text? Here are some clues as to what you can listen for: 162
– – – –
words that are not neutral (such as problem compared to question or situation) selection of facts to report on selection of people to quote, and what they say use of rhetorical questions
6 | P EO P L E A N D T H I N G S AS S U B J E CTS
Work with the two passages “Avoiding Alliances” (p. 111) and “The Crash on Wall Street” (p. 114). Identify the subjects of the sentences in each text and count how many of them refer to people and how many to things. Do you think the choice of people vs. things as subjects makes a difference for the style of the text?
7 | WRITING PERSONAL AND I M P E R S O N A L T E X TS
Have you ever taken part in a protest? If you have not, imagine yourself as part of a protest that you know about from the media, or one that you have just made up. Work with a partner and write one text each. One person writes a personal account of the protest, suitable for a blog or a post on social media. The other writes a report about the protest, suitable for the news section of a newspaper. Both texts should include the following information: – the purpose of the protest, that is, what it was about and what the protesters hoped to achieve – one or two important reasons for the protest – what type of protest it was (e.g. strike, march, boycott, riots …) – something about the people who took part in the protest
8 | R E F L E CT I N G
Work in the same pairs as for task 7, or in groups of four consisting of two pairs. Read each other’s texts for task 7. Point to expressions and content that make the texts either personal or impersonal and see if you agree with each other whether the personal accounts are suitably subjective and the reports are suitably objective. Also discuss whether (and how) the texts might be improved to be fit for publication online or in a newspaper. (Be critical, but nice!)
TEXTS IN CONTEXT
3
I N T H I S C H A P T E R, YO U W I L L : – – – – –
interpret and discuss fictional texts in English from the Enlightenment to the present, considering their historical and cultural contexts gain insight into society and culture through encounters with literary texts compare and contrast how particular themes are dealt with in different literary genres and in different periods develop your written and oral skills by using appropriate language to reflect on, discuss and respond to literary texts improve your grasp of complex phrases and clauses to be able to read and write more formal texts in English
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A
Reason, Romanticism and Realism R E F L E CT Sit in groups of three or four and discuss what you understand by the following quotations and whether you agree or disagree with them: – “The theist [believer in God] and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances.” (Joseph McCabe) – “Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.” (Richard P. Feynman)
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
– Being Reasonable reason fornuft superstition overtro/overtru volatile flyktig
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To call the time you are living in The Enlightenment requires the sort of confidence and optimism that may seem breath-taking today. But the writers, scientists and philosophers who used the term in the 18th century were just that – confident and optimistic. They felt that they were living in an exciting age, an Age of Reason, as it was also called, when the dark corners of superstition, ignorance and religious extremism were gradually losing ground to the glorious light of science and knowledge. And the origin of this light was not faith, as it had been before, but another, less volatile gift from God – reason. God had made humanity capable of rational thought, they argued, and it was our duty to use this to understand and improve the world around us.
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, literary epochs are not hardand-fast things, starting on one day and finishing on another. They usually overlap. Jane Austen, often considered one of England’s greatest novelists, wrote her novels in the second decade of the 19th century, when the Romantic Movement (see p. 181) was in full swing. But Austen’s temperament, with her candid observations of human behaviour, her plea for balance and common sense and her gently ironic style, marked her out as an author of the Age of Reason. Pride and Prejudice was written in 1813 and remains one of the most widely read novels in the English language. Its popularity has been helped by numerous film and TV versions.
R E F L ECT & C O M PA R E Before reading, write down a list of the five most important qualities you look for in a partner. Then write a new list of the five qualities you detest in a partner. Form groups of three and compare your lists.
JANE AUSTEN (1775–1817) was born, the seventh of eight children, in Hampshire. Like most girls of her class – the lower landed gentry – she was chiefly educated at home, reading extensively in her father’s library, learning to draw and play the piano and otherwise enjoying the social events such as parties and balls that she depicted in her fiction. Her adult life was outwardly uneventful. She never married and remained living with her parents. She wrote all her life, but first had a novel (Sense and Sensibility) published anonymously in 1811.
Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen
Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy in the 2005 film version of the novel.
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R E F L ECT Most literary periods are a reaction to the preceding one. Just as you grow tired of fashions and hairstyles that were the rage earlier and feel the need to try new styles, so too do writers and artists. What do you think would characterise the period that followed the Age of Reason? Consider writing styles, genres and themes.
THE ROMANTIC PERIOD
– Being Natural Being reasonable is all well and good. But we have all experienced at some time in our lives, in moments of either great despair, great enthusiasm or great joy, that being reasonable just does not seem an attractive alternative. This is certainly how a generation of mostly young artists in the first decades of the 19th century felt regarding the established “truths” of the Enlightenment. It was not that they doubted the findings of science itself, but rather than viewing the world through the cool eyes of reason and scientific inquiry, they chose to listen to their inner voices to achieve a truer, fuller understanding of the world. For them it was the individual, not society, that was important. In a world transformed by revolutions – the American Revolution, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution – it was not the head that was the best guide, it was the heart. It was not cool-headed analysis that would uncover the important truths of existence, but imagination. And finally, it was not ordered civilisation that would help us discover who we are, but wild, unruly Nature. It was during the Romantic Age that the word “artificial”, used earlier in the positive sense of applying “art” to tame and improve nature, took on its modern meaning of something manmade and false – the opposite of “being natural”. The Romantic period in England is sometimes defined as a relatively short period, lasting little more than thirty years. It is seen as starting with the publishing of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous collection of Romantic poetry, Lyrical Ballads, in 1798 and ending with the death of Walter Scott, considered the typical Romantic novelist, in 1832. However, no literary period arrives from nowhere, and a poet like William Blake, who wrote poetry in the 1780s and 90s, but was largely ignored by his contemporaries, shares many interests and themes with the later Romantic poets. Similarly, Romantic tendencies carry on after Scott’s death.
inquiry etterforskning/ etterforsking artificial kunstig contemporary samtidig
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John Constable (1776–1837): “The Hay Wain”, 1821.
Romantic ideals Writers of the Romantic age wrote in many literary genres, but it is the poets that are often seen as being the foremost voices of Romanticism. They were concerned with using a language and style that ordinary people used and could understand. Early poets of the Enlightenment had developed an elegant style which the Romantics viewed as too concerned with rules and classical forms. Romantics were individualists who wanted to do things their own way. They saw great value in ordinary people of the countryside and in the innocence of childhood, and they were more interested in misfits and outsiders than in aristocrats and the powerful. This also meant that they tended to be radical in their politics, supporting revolutions and arguing for democracy. Above all they loved nature. For Romantics, nature came to symbolise something more than the sum of its parts and provided a mystical connection with the universe. The wilder and more untamed nature was, the closer it was to truth, to God. So the Romantic poets actively sought nature and solitude. The Gothic While the Enlightenment period had stressed the importance of reason, balance and common sense, the new Romantic sensibilities sparked an interest in the opposite end of human experience. The irrational, the fantastic, the mysterious and the grotesque – these “dark” sides of life came to
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1 | R E F L E CT: Discuss
c
a In describing the man he has created, Frankenstein
d … my nocturnal rambles were an extreme pleasure
says that he had “selected his features as beautiful”. What does he mean by this? What makes his creation horrible nevertheless?
to me.
e
b How does the “monster” relate to nature? How
would you characterise his descriptions of nature in chapter 13? In what way does he embody Romantic ideals?
c
Some critics have seen the story of Frankenstein as an indictment by the Romantics of the belief in progress and science that characterised the Enlightenment. Do you find support for this claim in the excerpts that you have read? Explain your answer.
d In the 18th century the term “noble savage” became
widespread. Go to interactions.cdu.no to find a brief explanation of the term. In what way do you think that the “monster” Frankenstein has created can be characterised as a “noble savage”?
e
Why does the creature say that “sorrow only increased with knowledge”? What has he learned that has created such sorrow in him?
2 | C O M PA R E
In the last excerpt, Frankenstein’s monster philosophises about humanity. Robinson Crusoe does the same in the last paragraph on pp. 171–72. What similarities are there in their thinking, and what differences?
3 | P R ACT I S E : Vocabulary
Older literature often makes demanding reading because of the use of vocabulary not commonly used today in addition to sometimes complex sentence structure. Rewrite the sentences below as you would expect to find them in a modern novel.
a I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. b How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe,
or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form?
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I began to comprehend most of the words uttered by my protectors.
I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow-creatures were high and unsullied descent united with riches.
4 | C R E AT E : Writing a “Frankenstein’s creation is not only a monster – in some ways he is more human than his creator.” Write a personal essay discussing this statement.
b Frankenstein deals with the moral dilemmas of inter-
fering with nature. Write an expository essay discussing how this theme continues to have relevance today.
c
Try your hand at writing a Gothic horror story. Here is a list of features that are often present in such stories. You may use some or all of these in your story if you like: graveyard – ghost – full moon – abandoned mansion – mad relative – locked closet – family secret – unexplained death – dramatic climax
E X PLOR E The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) is a classic Gothic horror story that has delighted (and terrified) readers for generations. Go to interactions.cdu.no to read and listen to the story and work with tasks.
R E F L ECT Brainstorm in class: What do you associate with the term “Victorian values”? Is it a term with mainly positive or mainly negative associations, do you think?
THE VICTORIAN AGE
– Being Realistic Queen Victoria (1819-1901), British monarch from 1837 until her death.
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B
Modern Contexts Modernism and Beyond
provocative provoserende/ provoserande transition overgang comprehensive helt/heilt consciousness bevissthet / medvit, bevisstheit alienation fremmedgjøring/ framandgjering
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When did the modern era begin? Most people would say that it is a rather silly question, or at least one that will have many different answers depending on what aspect of modernity you are talking about. The British novelist Virginia Woolf, however, did not hesitate in giving a clear response: “On or about December 1910 human nature changed,” she declared. We can be fairly sure she was being purposely provocative in her precision, but from a literary point of view there may be something in what she said. It is perhaps an exaggeration to say there was a change in human nature, but at the beginning of the twentieth century there certainly was an explosion of artistic creativity that became known as the Modernist Revolution. Like all revolutions it was fuelled by a desire to break with the past and create new literary traditions that were more suited to an era in transition – to an age of technological breakthroughs, of ever-growing urbanisation and of mechanised warfare. Nineteenth-century culture had been dominated by, first, the Romantics and, later, particularly in literature, realism. Common to both these movements was the wish to present life whole. Reality was seen as being a given, and the artist’s job was to make sense of it and communicate this understanding to his or her audience. In the case of prose literature, for example, this meant a taste for novels that presented an individual’s life chronologically and comprehensively. Modernists, in contrast, saw experience as being essentially fragmentary. Existence is at best unknowable (and at worst meaningless) and the artist’s task is to communicate a subjective experience of it rather than an understanding of it. The “truths” of the previous century – the existence of God, the belief in progress and the superiority of Western culture – could no longer be relied on, and there was nothing to take their place. Modernists experimented with new techniques in writing – breaking up the narrative, changing the order of events, weaving symbolic meaning into descriptions, introducing the reader into the characters’ “stream of consciousness” and much more. The aim was to find ways to convey a new reality. Over a century on from Woolf’s date, we are still in many ways living in the Modernist age. The hyphenated names of more recent artistic periods – such as post-Modernism and post-post-Modernism – are proof enough that the legacy of the early 20th century is still with us. The digitalisation of 21st-century life has simply deepened the experience of fragmentation and alienation that the early Modernists felt, while the loss of given “truths”
that characterised their work has only been compounded by the “fake news” and “alternative facts” of today. What is new is the sheer ubiquity of the innovations the Modernists gave us. A writer like Virginia Woolf was undeniably “high-brow” and, like many of her Modernist colleagues, could be pretty snooty about popular culture. Now many of the experimental techniques mentioned above are commonplace in modern writing, not to mention film and television. What started out as an elitist movement has permeated modern culture to the extent that we take it for granted. In this second half of the chapter, you will be meeting a wide range of texts from the 20th and 21st centuries. They are grouped thematically rather than in chronological order. This means that texts will be rubbing shoulders with other texts that may be decades and continents apart.
to compound å øke, å forverre / å auke, å forverre ubiquity det å være overalt snooty hoven, snobbete to permeate å gjennomsyre
R E F L E CT a Do the films and TV series you
like to watch or the books you like to read have most in common with Victorian realism (e.g. chronological plots, happy endings, etc.) or with modernism (stream of consciousness, fragmentation, etc.)? Explain.
b Think of films or novels you
really enjoyed. Did they have happy or unhappy endings? Would you have enjoyed them as much if they had ended differently? Is there any connection between how realistic a film or book is and whether the ending is happy or unhappy?
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Identity in the modern world is something you must establish or invent yourself. Your appearance, your name, your speech, your attitudes, your social circle – these can all be tools in this process and can be altered according to your own vision of who you want to be. An important part of growing up is deciding which of the aspects of identity you have inherited from your parents and family you choose to hang on to and which you choose to let go or replace. In the story “Sunita” we meet a young Nigerian woman applying for a job in a bank. She is clearly from a privileged background in her home country, since her parents can afford to send her to England to study, first at a private school and then at university. In most people’s eyes, including her parents’, she is a success. But when she goes for an interview for a job, she has to decide who she is going to be.
Sunita CHIBUNDU ONUZO (b. 1999) was born in Nigeria and moved to the UK when she was 14 and wrote her first novel only three years later. She has since written two more novels and been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
seduction forføring follicle hårsekk to snag å bli hengende fast / å bli hengande fast tresses (hår)lokker, fletter / (hår) lokkar, fletter contraption innretning, dings, greie cornrow frisyre med små harde fletter i parallelle rader weave: hair extension rigour hardhet, stivhet / hardheit, stivheit buoyant spenstig clavicle kragebein mongrel bastard 226
By Chibundu Onuzo Dolapo twirled a strand of premium Brazilian hair around her finger, round and round until the dark hair completely covered her nail. It was a tic for white girls, this constant fiddling with hair, flicking pony tails, running hands through locks, tucking strands behind ears, sweeping ringlets aside, tossing manes back, seduction rippling in a million follicles. An ex-boyfriend had tried to run his hand through her afro once. His fingers remained painfully stuck at the roots, his nail snagged on a tight curl. Herbert would have been able to poke his pink fingers into her new tresses, rising until he reached the contraption of cornrows and thread that held it all together. It was a good weave. It was not stiff, proclaiming by its rigour that it was a helmet of synthetic fibres, immoveable in the face of earthquake or hurricane. Her weave bounced, swayed, flew into her mouth at the slightest gust of wind. Her weave was smooth, silken, glossy, a buoyant advert for Pantene and yet she was dissatisfied with her new look. First, there was the unnaturalness of it. Real, human, hair from somebody else’s scalp now framed her face and rested on her clavicles. Then there was the cost of three hundred pounds. There had been cheaper options, hair swept up from the cutting floors of salons and stitched onto a double wafted track. Mongrel hair, her aunties said, assembled from a hundred different heads, coarse strands, smooth strands, blonde strands, red strands, grey strands all dyed a uniform black that hid their imperfections. Get quality, her cousins said. You can reuse quality. Wear it, wash it, use it again. Wear it, wash it, use it again.
There was nothing wrong with her new weave. John, a course-mate in whom she had once harboured a vague interest, had said to her, “Love the new look, Dollop. Very glamorous.” “Actually, I’m calling myself Dolly now,” she had wanted to reply but he was gone, striding away in his Abercrombie shirt, body of a band lead, brains the consistency of hair gel.
dollop klatt consistency konsistens, tykkelse / konsistens, tjukkleik to christen å døpe, å kalle / å døype, å kalle
She had been christened Dollop by the girls in her Wiltshire boarding-school, their slender, Anglo-Saxon tongues unable to wrap themselves round the chunky syllables of Dolapo. Dumpling Dollop, dimpled doughnut. She had been chubby back then, breathless at the sight of a lacrosse stick. She lost weight in the summer before university, sprinting on a treadmill for an hour each day, living on nuts and red berries like a squirrel. She had lost thirty pounds in two months. She would have lost her nickname as well.
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CON T E X T 3 : PROT E ST The idea that art can change the world and not just reflect it predates the modern age. Writers like Jonathan Swift, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Charles Dickens all had “axes to grind”, i.e. opinions about what was wrong with the world and a belief that they were able to make a contribution to changing it through their writing. Protest can be found in all literary genres. The oldest protest genre for speaking out against perceived injustice is precisely that – the public speech, and it is perhaps this genre that can most legitimately lay claim to changing the world. Speeches like Mahatma Gandhi’s Quit India speech in 1942 or Martin Luther King Jr’s I Have a Dream in 1963 are examples of this. So too is the speech often referred to as the Freedom or Death speech by Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst. The Suffragettes were activists who campaigned in the early 20th century for votes for women. Their use of civil disobedience and such direct methods as chaining themselves to railings, smashing windows and interrupting political meetings has inspired protest movements ever since. Another feature of the protest movement is the protest song. The addition of the right
Background
music to a text gives it added impact. If there is a memorable chorus, the impact is further multiplied. The Swedish-American songwriter and activist Joe Hill with his gritty humour, simple tunes and catchy choruses can be seen as the father of the modern protest song. Abel Meeropol’s song “Strange Fruit”, made popular by the jazz singer Billie Holiday, shows a very different side of the protest song genre. Written on the background of racist lynchings in the American South of the 1930s, it combines shocking imagery with an intimate jazz melody. Holiday waited to the end of her concerts to sing it, to great effect. Some of her audience were reduced to tears, others left in protest. War has been a theme of literature since early times, usually in the form of praise for heroism and prowess in battle. The First World War changed all that. The mechanised slaughter of trench warfare made a mockery of ideas of honour and nobility of sacrifice, and produced a body of poetry which instead depicted the horror and senselessness of war. Wilfred Owen was foremost among the war poets and is still widely read today.
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The Suffragettes (see p. 247) were prepared to use direct action to reach their goals and they grabbed the headlines of newspapers by heckling politicians and storming parliament. In a campaign of bombings and arson between 1912–14 they caused widespread damage, serious injuries and even deaths. In this excerpt from a speech in 1913 on a visit to the United States, Emmeline Pankhurst defends their use of the hunger strike.
Freedom or Death EMMELINE PANKHURST (1858–1928) was a British suffragette who championed the cause of women’s voting rights in Great Britain in the early 20th century. Her militant tactics earned her several imprisonments and stirred up controversy among various suffragist groups. Widely credited with bringing women’s issues to the forefront – thus helping them win the vote – Pankhurst is considered one of the most influential women of the 20th century. She died in 1928, only weeks before the vote was extended to all women over 21 years old.
The “Cat and Mouse Act” was the name popularly given to a law that allowed prison authorities to release hunger-striking women when their health was in danger and then imprison them again when they had recovered. The act came as a reaction to a public outcry against force-feeding hunger strikers. Glossary: see p. 249 248
By Emmeline Pankhurst I am here as a soldier who has temporarily left the field of battle in order to explain – it seems strange it should have to be explained – what civil war is like when civil war is waged by women. I am not only here as a soldier temporarily absent from the field at battle; I am here – and that, I think, is the strangest part of my coming – I am here as a person who, according to the law courts of my country, it has been decided, is of no value to the community at all: and I am adjudged because of my life to be a dangerous person, under sentence of penal servitude in a convict prison. So you see there is some special interest in hearing so unusual a person address you. I dare say, in the minds of many of you – you will perhaps forgive me this personal touch – that I do not look either very like a soldier or very like a convict, and yet I am both. […] Women are very slow to rouse, but once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way; it is impossible. And so this “Cat and Mouse Act” which is being used against women today has failed: and the home secretary has taken advantage of the fact that parliament is not sitting, to revive and use alongside of it the forcible feeding. At the present time there are women lying at death’s door, recovering enough strength to undergo operations, who have had both systems applied to them, and have not given in and won’t give in, and who will be prepared, as soon as they get up from their sick beds, to go on as before. There are women who are being carried from their sick beds on stretchers into meetings. They are too weak to speak, but they go amongst their fellow workers just to show that their spirits are unquenched, and that their spirit is alive, and they mean to go on as long as life lasts. Now, I want to say to you who think women cannot succeed, we have brought the government of England to this position, that it has to face this alternative: either women are to be killed or women are to have the vote. I ask American men in this meeting, what would you say if in your state you were faced with that alternative, that you must either kill them or
A N A LYS E a What is the message of the song and how does Hill get this message across?
b How does the text of the song change in verse 5 (“Working folk… ”)?
c
The song borrows its tune from a Salvation Army song. What effect does this have?
d Compare the song with the one you chose in the pre-reading task. What similarities and differences are there in the way they get their messages across?
E X PLOR E Protest songs
Go to interactions.cdu.no to work with lyrics and videos of protest songs from different decades and with different themes.
Woody Guthrie (1912-1967), American folk singer who chronicled the plight of common people, especially during the Great Depression, and used his lyrics to attack fascism, as the sticker on his guitar reveals.
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For African Americans the first half of the 20th century was a time of great upheaval, bringing both hope and frustration. Slavery was history, but still within living memory, and the social structures that had created and defended it had still not disappeared. Industrialisation had brought many African Americans northwards to the major cities to find work and start new lives. In the South, however, the institution of segregation, the legacy of slavery, was still firmly in place. The Ku Klux Klan was ready to punish any threat to white supremacy. Lynchings and burnings were not uncommon as a way of deterring blacks from voicing protest. “Strange Fruit” was inspired by a shocking photograph of a lynching. The song will always be associated with singer Billie Holiday who later remembered her first performance of it: “The first time I sang it, I thought it was a mistake. There wasn’t even a patter of applause when I finished. Then a lone person began to clap nervously. Then suddenly everyone was clapping and cheering.”
Strange Fruit By Abel Meeropol Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant south, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop.
ABEL MEEROPOL (1893–1986) was a songwriter and poet who published under the pseudonym Lewis Allan. He grew up in the Bronx, New York, in a Russian Jewish family. Of all his songs, “Strange Fruit” is most famous.
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1 | A N A LYS E a This poem is based on a metaphor – hang-
ing bodies are fruit. Why is this so effective in expressing disgust? What does it bring to mind – that is, what are its connotations?
b The second stanza is a set of contrasts.
What is being contrasted? What is the poet trying to point out with this contrast, do you think?
c
Read the final stanza aloud. Why do you suppose the poet keeps repeating the phrase “For the …”? What is the effect of this repetition?
2 | R E F L E CT: Discussion
Discuss in small groups:
a This poem was written by a white man
from the Bronx. What audience do you think he was trying to reach with it? What impact did he hope to make on his audience?
b Listen to the song performed by Billie billie holiday (1915-1959) was born in Philadelphia to a poor single mother. She was raised by different relatives and found employment at a brothel running errands. At fourteen she moved to Harlem, New York, to be with her mother who was working as a prostitute. Billie soon followed suit and spent time both in prison and the workhouse. Music became her way out of poverty and degradation. Her unique voice and improvisational talents quickly made her a favourite vocalist for jobbing jazz musicians, bringing her to the notice of record producers. At 18 she made her recording debut and progressed to working with jazz greats such as Count Basie and Artie Shaw. But stardom came with a price. During the 1940s drugs and alcohol, as well as a tendency to attach herself to abusive men, led to a gradual collapse in her private life which also led to a decline in her career. She died at 44, an exhausted alcoholic. 254
Holiday. What impact do the music and her delivery have on the lyrics?
c
Black Lives Matter inspired many songs dealing with the suppression of African Americans. (Go to interactions.cdu.no to find links to some of these.) How does “Strange Fruit” differ from these more modern songs?
Sky News marks Brexit day by projecting a farewell message on the white cliffs of Dover on January 31, 2020.
COMPARING SOCIETIES
4
I N T H I S C H A P T E R, YO U W I L L : – – – –
explore social and political challenges in the United Kingdom and the United States compare divisive and unifying factors in British and American society develop independent reflection and critical thinking skills when reading and discussing different types of texts increase your awareness of the type of language used in textbooks and popular science articles and develop strategies for reading such texts
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Topic 2
devolution desentralisering, maktoverdragelse / desentralisering, maktoverdraging conspicuous tydelig, påfallende / tydeleg, påfallande
Devolution or independence? Nations and nationalism in the UK In the context of the UK, the terms “nation” and “nationalism” are complicated. The four constituent parts of the United Kingdom are sometimes referred to as “the home nations”, particularly in connection with sports where England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compete independently of each other. (An interesting exception here is rugby where Ireland fields a team representing the whole island.) In a political context, however, Northern Ireland is more often referred to as a province or a region. There is no “Northern Irish nation”, as the common identity and history usually associated with nationhood are conspicuously lacking there. As mentioned (p. 93), nationalism in the context of Scotland and Wales implies a desire for independence from the United Kingdom, whereas in Northern Ireland, nationalism is bound up with the struggle for a united Ireland as well as an end to British rule. As a political force English nationalism is a fairly recent arrival on the scene, since the English, as the dominant nation of the union, have tended not to distinguish between their English and British identities. But English nationalism is on the rise and can be seen as a reaction to devolution (see below) and a fear that England is losing out in relation to the smaller nations. Unlike nationalism in the rest of the UK, the English variety tends to be politically right-wing – sometimes extremely so. Scottish independence and Brexit The Brexit referendum of 2016 was not the only referendum of the 2010s to divide the UK. Two years before, Scotland had held one on whether to
Supporters outside Wembley Stadium prior to the match between England and Scotland at the UEFA Euro 2020 in London in June, 2021.
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remain a part of the United Kingdom or become a fully independent country. The months leading up to the vote saw a country split down the middle as politicians, colleagues, families and school friends debated the future of the nation. In the streets, it was the pro-independence Yes side that dominated, drawing the bigger crowds and the more passionate supporters. The blue and white flag of St Andrew far outnumbered the Union Jacks on display in the windows of cars and houses, and as the day of the referendum approached opinion polls showed the pendulum swinging slowly towards a Yes vote. Westminster held its breath, as did the EU and indeed the rest of the world. Was the United Kingdom, one of the world’s oldest democracies, about to come apart at the seams? In the event, the referendum delivered a clear No vote – 55.3% to 44.7%. The silent part of the population – those without stickers or flags in their windows – decided the outcome. Of course, there were sighs of relief from the Scottish pro-UK voters, from Westminster – and from the EU who were worried that a Yes vote would encourage other European separatist movements. But amid the relief there was also a shocking insight: 1.5 million Britons, over a third of the Scottish electorate, had voted to leave the United Kingdom, an institution that Scotland had been an integral part of for over three centuries. For many south of the border, the referendum campaign had been a bewildering and slightly unreal spectacle. Such is the London bias of the UK media that the issue of Scottish independence, while it had dominated the political debate in Scotland for months, had rarely made it to the front pages of the English tabloids. Only when the first opinion poll showed a majority for independence did the realisation dawn that the break-up of the UK was a distinct possibility. “How on earth have we come to this?” was a question on many lips. To answer this, it is necessary to remember how the United Kingdom came about in the first place (see pp. 55-56). Two of the key ingredients that
integral vesentlig/vesentleg bias ensidighet, partiskhet / einsidigskap, partiskheit
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England's Kalvin Philips (left) and Jack Grealish "take the knee" ahead of a match between England and Romania in 2021.
England manager Gareth Southgate.
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1 | A N A LYS E & R E F L E CT
a In the light of these events, and the events that
caused Southgate to write his letter, do you think football has a role to play in fighting racism, or does it simply contribute to the problem?
a Southgate says that what he wants to talk about is “bigger than football”. What does he mean by this?
b Who does Southgate trace his patriotism to? Why do you think he mentions this?
b In his letter, Southgate says “It’s clear to me that
we are heading for a much more tolerant and understanding society”. Do you think there are grounds for his optimism? Why / why not?
c What does Southgate say about how his players feel about playing for England?
d Where does Southgate refer to personal memories,
c The Cambridge Dictionary defines gesture politics as
“any action by a person or organisation done for political reasons and intended to attract public attention but having little real effect”. Read the quotes below and then discuss whether the term “gesture politics” is applicable to any of the actions referred to or the comments made:
and what effect does this have?
e What do you see as being the purpose of this text?
Explain why you think it is successful or unsuccessful in fulfilling its purpose.
2 | R E F L ECT
England’s bid to win the Euros in 2021 was thwarted at the last moment when three young players – Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford – all missed their penalties in a penalty shoot-out with Italy in the final. All three players are black, and afterwards they were targeted by numerous racist social media posts, and a mural of Marcus Rashford in his native Manchester was defaced. This brought condemnation from far and wide, including the prime minister and Prince William, while a crowd of supporters held a vigil at the Rashford mural, taking the knee and repairing the damage.
–
“I just don’t support people participating in that type of gesture politics.” (Home Secretary Priti Patel about footballers taking the knee.)
–
“That’s a choice for them quite frankly.” (Patel on whether England fans had a right to boo England’s national team during the anti-racism gesture)
–
“I am disgusted that England players who have given so much for our country this summer have been subject to vile racist abuse on social media. It has no place in our country and I back the police to hold those responsible accountable.” (Patel on Twitter after England’s defeat to Italy in the Euro 2020 final)
–
“You don’t get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as ‘Gesture Politics’ & then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we’re campaigning against, happens.” (Tweet by England and Aston Villa defender Tyrone Mings in response to Patel’s tweet)
3 | C O M PA R E & R E F L E CT a Compare the following reactions to Gareth
Southgate’s letter. How do they argue in support of or against his message to the nation?
Children from a local primary school next to the mural of Marcus Rashford which was vandalised after the England football team lost the UEFA Euro 2020 final. Chapter 4: Comparing Societies
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to reap å høste / å hauste spoils bytte ceasefire våpenhvile/våpenkvile
Belfast 1988: Children and soldiers in the streets.
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They call my generation the “Ceasefire babies”, though I’ve always hated that name. I hated the mocking tone in which it was usually said, as if growing up in the 90s in Belfast was a stroll. There were still soldiers on the street when I was a kid. I remember them – in uniforms and maroon berets, at checkpoints, on pavements, crouching down on one knee, as if ducking out of sight of an enemy the surrounding civilians couldn’t see. I remember walking past one with my sister, then aged about 16, after she had picked me up from school. “Do they wear hats on their heads to stop them from getting cold?” I’d asked. “Yes,” she’d replied, smiling, and the pale-skinned recruit I’d gestured to had smiled as well. He looked barely older than her, perhaps 18. That was around the time I learned that the toy gun I used for games of cowboys and Indians could not be brought outside, in case a passing patrol saw it and mistook it for a real one. It didn’t matter that it was silver with an orange trumpet-top on the end of the barrel. It had happened, my mother assured me, to a little boy, on the same street where I’d seen the teen soldier. I was never sure if this was urban legend, but the only time I took the gun outside, to the back yard – which was surrounded by a 10ft concrete wall – I’d had the arse smacked off me. The helicopters were out; what if they’d seen it with their cameras, my mother said, and thought it was real? The scenario seemed unlikely to me: that a helicopter, thousands of feet up in the air, would spot a kid playing with a toy and send a patrol to our house. But my mother wasn’t taking any chances.
Things have changed since the ceasefire. I think it’s possible, for the first time – for someone of my generation – to write about the conflict from a historical perspective. And yet, like so much of the recent past, it’s haunting, too. It’s all still there, just underneath the surface of things. A friend, the documentary maker Ali Millar, has an office in south Belfast, at the edge of a district that was battered during the Troubles. At the corner of the street, a mural on the side of a house commemorates William of Orange, who’d landed in the country three centuries before. What was most interesting about the mural was what it had replaced. It had been carefully painted over the top of another, less tourist-friendly image, this one of a man in a balaclava holding a semi-automatic rifle, with the words “YOU ARE NOW ENTERING LOYALIST SANDY ROW HEARTLAND OF SOUTH BELFAST ULSTER FREEDOM FIGHTERS” emblazoned in bold, black type, framed by icons of red fists. One man’s freedom fighter was another man’s terrorist, and to many of the Protestant population and their Catholic neighbours, the freedom fighters who had been commemorated in this memorial were just that – terrorists. The area was a 30-second walk from Great Victoria Street station, the terminus point for visitors arriving from the local airports or Dublin by bus. Sometimes, you’d see them – tourists with cameras, hovering in front of William’s painting, seemingly oblivious to what had been on the wall before it. Throughout the city, murals dedicated to the terror groups who’d once ruled the districts were slowly being erased. It was a whitewashing of the past and it was happening because we were desperate for the world to know us for any reason other than war. Maybe we were trying to erase our own memories, hoping for a collective amnesia by blotting out reminders of what had happened. But all you had to do was scratch the paint and you’d find the city’s past, like a ghost that refused to depart for the other world. When the conflict ended in Northern Ireland, the fight turned from guns to history books. “Ended” was a euphemism, I thought, because it never truly seemed to end, so much as it changed shape, with the gunmen and those in charge of them concluding that violence was not the best way to win a war. Republicans – represented mainly by Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Provisionals, and mainly emanating from the Catholic community – maintained that the British had no right to be in Northern Ireland. The Unionists – represented by numerous warring factions but mainly the
to commemorate å minnes, å være et minnesmerke over / å minnast, å vere eit minnesmerke over emblazoned dekorert oblivious ikke klar over / ikkje klar over amnesia hukommelsestap/ minnetap euphemism omskriving, forskjønning to emanate from å komme fra, å ha sitt utspring i / å komme frå, å ha utspringet sitt i
Mural of William of Orange in Belfast. In 1685 King James II, a Catholic, became the King of England. The English wanted a Protestant king and invited the Protestant Prince William of Orange to take the throne. King James refused to give up his throne, but in 1689 William was crowned. A war broke out which ended when William’s army defeated James's "Jacobites" at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland in 1690. The battle is today commemorated by many Protestants in Northern Ireland on 12 July, also referred to as "the Twelfth", "the Glorious Twelfth" or "Orangemen’s Day". 289
R E F L ECT In every country there are factors that contribute to a common national identity and factors that work against it. What is the “glue” that binds Norwegians together? What divides them?
Unity in an Age of Division The first text in this chapter was called “Divisions!” But there is more to the UK than divisions.
–
TEXT 1
–
What Unites the United Kingdom? While it is true that Brexit revealed fault lines with regard to geography, age, education and wealth, various recent polls in the UK reveal a surprising degree of consensus on a whole range of issues. Tanya Gold, writing in the Times newspaper in 2021, put it like this:
fault line skillelinje/skiljelinje to heckle å avbryte, å komme med tilrop to dehumanize å umenneskeliggjøre, å brutalisere / å umenneskeleggjere, å brutalisere distinctive særegen, egenartet / særeigen, eigenarta moderator megler/meklar chasm dyp kløft, avgrunn / djup kløft, avgrunn advancement framgang, forbedring / framgang, forbetring
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We think we have a culture war in Britain because there is one on Twitter, which is unrepresentative, a false mirror. “Social media literally hands the microphone to those people down the back who heckle all the time,” says Tim Dixon, the cofounder of More in Common, a think tank working in France, Germany, the UK and the US that is devoted to uniting divided societies. “It’s a handful of people – 80 per cent of tweets come from two per cent of the population. It is normal to dehumanise on Twitter. Long-developed strategies for human agreement do not work there, so they do not exist there.” […] We think we have a culture war in Britain because the EU referendum and the election of President Trump in 2016 were five months apart. We look at America with its real culture war and we think we are like them. But we aren’t. “The dynamics in the UK are quite distinctive. Brits aren’t as ideological,” says Dixon, who has sat through “countless hours of focus groups”. His conclusion is that British people are moderators. They look for common ground. They don’t take pride in taking the strongest view. If America has a chasm, we have a kaleidoscope. […] In the UK there is common ground on a huge range of issues: love for the NHS and the countryside; commitment to gender and racial equity; desire for economic equality and action on climate change; desire for a balance on immigration, less centralisation and more compromise between political leaders. A majority dislike both hate speech and political correctness. On average, 79 per cent are proud of our advancements in gender equality, 73 per cent think inequality is a serious problem, while 77 per cent think racism is.
Tribute to the NHS in the form of a mural in Manchester during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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– L A NGUAGE PR ACT IC E –
1 | FORMAL AND INFORMAL L A N G UAG E
The language is more formal in textbooks for older students than for younger students. Study the passages below and decide in each case whether the passage is formal or informal/neutral in style.
a A “hung Parliament” is a Parliament in which no political party wins a majority of seats. The largest party can either form a minority government or enter into a coalition government of two or more parties.
b People are free to vote for whoever they want. That’s
what makes the United States a democracy, a form of government where the people pick who’s in charge.
c The sixteenth century has often been seen as a
period of immense significance for the evolution of Parliament. The Reformation Parliament of 1529–36, which existed longer than any previous Parliament, enacted a series of statutes that transformed the relationship between the English Crown, the English people and the Church, as well as formally incorporating the principality of Wales into the kingdom of England.
d When you think about it, the Middle Ages were a very, very long period of time, and so it’s easier to break up these periods of time into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages.
2 | PA R A P H R AS E F O R K I DS
Rewrite the paragraph starting with “Education, too” on p. 265 so that it can be read and understood by an 11-yearold. (You can expect the 11-year-old to already know about the things that have been presented earlier in the text.) Compare your new version of the paragraph to that of a classmate.
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– E X PLOR E & E X PL A I N –
3 | FORMAL AND INFORMAL F E AT U R ES If you have done task 1, look through your answers and pick out language features that made you decide whether a sentence was formal or informal.
4 | A N A LYS E A T E X T
Go back to the section entitled “What sort of Brexit?” on pp. 263-64 and answer the following questions about the language in it. You should do the exercise individually first and then discuss your answers with one or two classmates.
a Find five words in the passage that you
consider to be formal. Compare your list to that of a classmate and explain to each other what the words mean and why you think they are formal.
b Find words in the passage that presuppose that you know something about politics.
c Are there words in the text that you do
not know – or would not have understood without the explanations in the margin? If so, which ones?
d Which sentence in the passage is the longest? Do you think the length makes the sentence difficult to understand or not? Is the sentence long because it contains dependent clauses or because the phrases in it are long – or both?
e Find the following passive verb phrases in the passage: were addressed, would be answered, was reached, were conducted. In each case, is it clear to you who did the addressing, answering, reaching and conducting?
B
One Nation, Divided
R E F L ECT
K E Y C O N C E P TS
Discuss the illustration and reflect on similarities between polarization and ethnocentrism. You can use examples from politics or from discussions you have with friends.
– – – – – – – –
divisive and unifying factors polarization blue and red states globalization rural-urban divide political tribalism media ecosystems poverty rate
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” abr aham lincoln (1858)
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Us versus them tariff toll(sats) to secede å trekke seg ut, å løsrive seg / å trekke seg ut, å rive seg laus death toll dødstall/dødstal casualties ofre, forulykkede / offer, forulykka
Present day divisions: Trump supporters attend a rally in New York City in July, 2021. The rally called for the release of rioters who were arrested after storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
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When Abraham Lincoln uttered these famous words (p. 311) in 1858, the United States was half slave and half free. For years, there had been tension between the southern slave states and the northern free states over slavery and many related issues, such as states’ rights and economy. Most Southerners wanted to leave the question of slavery to the states and avoid any interference from the federal government. In addition, the North was industrialized and wanted high tariffs on foreign goods to protect the American market. The South, on the other hand, was mainly agricultural and – apart from profiting from slave labor – wanted to be able to buy goods from Europe without high tariffs. To make a long story short, Lincoln – a Northerner and a Republican – was not particularly popular in the South, which was dominated by the Democratic party. After he was elected president in 1860, eleven southern states seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America. That was in turn not particularly popular in the North. As a result, the Civil War (1861-65) broke out. The North won the war and ended slavery, but the cost of preserving the union was high. The traditionally reported death toll of the war was 600,000, but this long-accepted number probably fails to account for many civilian casualties. Another casualty of the war was the economy of the South, and the wounds of the war and its aftermath were slow to heal. It took about a hundred years before the economy in many of the southern states really started to grow and prosper, and equally long before the Republican party became popular in the South.
OF F L AG S A N D F E E L I NG S At the heart of American politics lies the issue of the centralization vs. decentralization of political power. How much power should the federal government have in relation to state and local governments? How should political power be limited to protect citizens from its misuse? Through the years, the political pendulum has swung first one way and then the other on this question. One reflection of this can be found in American flags. On the one hand, there is the Stars and Stripes. Its origins lie in the American Revolution. The thirteen stripes stand for the thirteen original states. The 50 stars represent the states of the Union today. “Old Glory” – as the flag is affectionately called – serves as a rallying point for national unity amid the bewildering variety of the vast American nation. It is the symbol of what some have called a “secular religion” to which all Americans can swear alle-
Background
giance no matter what their ethnicity, politics, place of birth or present home state. That is an important reason for its great popularity within the country compared to many European countries. Its message is not so much one of exclusion aimed at the outside world – “Us and Them” – as a statement of inclusion to one another inside the country – “We Are One.” This mirrors the nation’s motto “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of many, one).
On the other hand, there is the Stars and Bars. Its origins lie in the Civil War (1861–1865). It was the short-lived battle flag of the Confederate States of America. The thirteen stars stand for the states the “rebels” hoped would withdraw from the federal union (in fact, only eleven did). As such, it is the ultimate symbol of decentralization. The South “seceded” because it feared the federal union would abolish slavery, taking away their “states’ right” to it. After their defeat, not a few Southern states incorporated the Stars and Bars into their states’ flags as a symbol of their continued resistance to the power of the federal government. And just as it had stood for the defense of slavery during the Civil War, it came to stand for the defense of racism and segregation in the South one hundred years later during the Civil Rights Movement era. It remains a cause of controversy to the present day, often connected with violence and hostility aimed at the federal government.
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7 | C O M PA R E : Values
a Which of these results do you think would
In a poll about values, Americans were asked whether they personally believe that each of the following issues are morally acceptable or morally wrong. Study the statistics, and then discuss the questions that follow. % Morally acceptable
% Morally wrong
Birth control
92
6
Drinking alcohol
79
19
Divorce
77
20
Sex between unmarried man and woman
71
28
Smoking marijuana
65
33
Having a baby outside marriage
64
34
Gay or lesbian relations
63
35
The death penalty
60
35
Abortion
42
50
Sex between teenagers
38
58
Pornography
37
61
Cloning animals
31
66
Cloning humans
12
85
Married people having an affair
9
89
(Source: Gallup, May 2019 – see p. 419)
Inauguration Day in Washington D.C.
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be very different if the respondents were Norwegian or British?
b How do you explain these differences?
8 | C R E AT E : Writing a Write an expository essay based on one of
the topics in task 2 above. Create a title for your essay.
b Write an argumentative essay where you explain current divisions in the U.S. and give your opinions about the causes of these divisions. Create a title for your essay.
E X PLOR E Inaugural addresses
Go to interactions.cdu.no to find the inaugural addresses of President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. Work with tasks to compare and contrast their messages to the nation and the world.
R E F L ECT a In your experience, what are some important beliefs that many Americans b
share? What are many Americans skeptical about? Have you ever reacted either positively or negatively to any specific American beliefs? Find out what the First Amendment to the Constitution says about religion (see p. 147). Explain why this is an important value in a multicultural country like the U.S.
Divided by Beliefs There is a separation of church and state in the U.S., and public schools can only teach about religion – not “teach religion” or have prayers at graduation. However, about half of adult Americans say that religion plays an important part in their lives. When so many people have such strong personal beliefs, it will also influence society and politics. One consequence is that religion and science can be at odds. The first text (p. 332) describes a famous event of the early 20th century in the U.S. when religion clashed with science in a court of law. More than 40 years later, the Supreme Court ruled that states could not ban the teaching of evolution, but the fight against teaching evolution continues to this day in some states. Conservative Christians have a strong position in many regions of the U.S., especially in rural areas. The second text (p. 333) illustrates this, even though the evangelical Christians behind the Creation Museum are not representative of American Christians in general. The third text (p. 335) warns against the effects of antiscience in the U.S. That such tendencies exist is perhaps a paradox in a nation founded by science enthusiasts such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin – a nation that put a man on the moon! Chapter 4: Comparing Societies
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–
TEXT 1
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trial rettssak evolution utviklingslære, evolusjon(steori) contentious omstridt, kontroversiell / omstridd, kontroversiell to incite å vekke, å framkalle permissiveness toleranse, ettergivenhet / toleranse, ettergivenheit racy pikant, drøy defendant tiltalte, saksøkte curriculum undervisningsplan, pensum literal bokstavelig, ordrett / bokstavleg, ordrett validity (retts)gyldighet/ (retts)gyldigheit indistuinguishable: impossible to judge as being different when compared to another similar thing to violate å bryte
The Scopes Trial The Scopes trial represented a dramatic clash between traditional and modern values in America of the 1920s, and it put the debate over teaching evolution on front pages across the country. But one thing the Scopes “monkey trial” of 1925 did not do was settle the contentious issue of evolution in the schools, which continues to incite strong passions and court actions to this day. Narrowly, the trial was about challenging a newly passed Tennessee state law against teaching evolution or any other theory denying the biblical account of the creation of man. Broadly, the case reflected a collision of traditional views and values with more modern ones: It was a time of evangelism against forces, including jazz, sexual permissiveness, and racy Hollywood movies, which were believed to undermine the authority of the Bible and Christian morals in society. John Scopes, the 24-year-old defendant, taught in the public high school in Dayton, Tennessee, and included evolution in his curriculum. He agreed to be the focus of a test case attacking the new law, and was arrested for teaching evolution and tried with the American Civil Liberties Union backing his defense. His lawyer was the legendary Clarence Darrow, who was an agnostic in religious matters. The state’s attorney was William Jennings Bryan, a Christian who believed that evolution theory led to dangerous social movements. And he believed the Bible should be interpreted literally. The weather was stiflingly hot and the rhetoric equally heated in this “trial of the century” attended by hundreds of reporters and others who crowded the Rhea County Courthouse in July 1925. Rather than the validity of the law under which Scopes was being charged, the authority of the Bible versus the soundness of Darwin’s theory became the focus of the arguments. “Millions of guesses strung together,” is how Bryan characterized evolutionary theory, adding that the theory made man “indistinguishable among the mammals.” Darrow, in his attacks, tried to poke holes in the Genesis story according to modern thinking, calling them “fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes.” The jury found Scopes guilty of violating the law and fined him $100. But the press reported that though Bryan had won the case, he had lost the argument. The verdict did have a chilling effect on teaching evolution in the classroom, however, and not until the 1960s did it reappear in schoolbooks. (Source: see p. 419)
Jock the monkey listens in on the Scopes trial verdict to find out if the allegations are true that he is related to the humans.
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The Garden of Eden, Creation Museum exhibit, Kentucky.
At the Evangelical Creation Museum
–
TEXT 2
–
By William and Susan L. Trollinger Evangelical Christians make up approximately 25% of the U.S. population. A majority of them think the Bible should be read literally and that evolution is false. The Creation Museum promotes a very specific version of this belief, which holds that God made the universe in six 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago. Adam, Eve and the dinosaurs The first four chapters of the book of Genesis tell the story of Adam and Eve, who were created on the sixth day and given two jobs: to obey God and populate the Earth. When they disobeyed God and ate fruit from the tree of knowledge, they were banished from the Garden of Eden and became mortal. Adam and Eve did better on their second assignment, though. Eve gave birth to two sons, Cain and Abel, and, according to the Creation Museum, to a daughter who later became Cain’s wife. According to Genesis, humans eventually became wicked and violent. In response, God sent a global flood that drowned everyone on the planet; the Creation Museum says the dead numbered in the billions. Only righteous
to banish å fordrive, å forvise mortal dødelig/dødeleg righteous rettferdig, rettskaffen
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“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” “The Pledge of Allegiance,” which is recited every morning in schools across the United States as the students stand up in class, put their hands over their hearts and face the American flag.
Ghazal: America the Beautiful By Alicia Ostriker
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Do you remember our earnestness our sincerity in first grade when we learned to sing “America The Beautiful” along with “The Star-Spangled Banner” and say the Pledge of Allegiance to America We put our hands over our first-grade hearts we felt proud to be citizens of America I said One Nation Invisible until corrected maybe I was right about America School days school days dear old Golden Rule Days when we learned how to behave in America What to wear, how to smoke, how to despise our parents who didn’t understand us or America Only later understanding the Banner and the Beautiful lived on opposite sides of the street in America Only later discovering the Nation is divisible by money by power by color by gender by sex America We comprehend it now this land is two lands one triumphant bully one still hopeful America Imagining amber waves of grain blowing in the wind purple mountains and no homeless in America Sometimes I still put my hand tenderly on my heart somehow or other still carried away by America
ghazal a form of poetry composed of a minimum of five couplets to pledge å love allegiance troskap, lydighet / truskap, lydnad indivisible udelelig/udeleleg earnestness oppriktighet/oppriktigheit Golden Rule a rule of ethical conduct referring to Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31: do to others as you would have them do to you amber (rav)gul grain korn Chapter 4: Comparing Societies
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– E X PLOR E & E X PL A I N –
5 | ACT I V E A N D PAS S I V E VO I C E 3
Look again at the sentences in task 4 and think about whether your paraphrased active sentences would fit into the passage where the passive sentences are from. Discuss with one or two classmates why the writer may have chosen to write these sentences in the passive instead of the active.
6 | Q U ES T I O N S A B O U T C O M M U N I CAT I O N
Answer the following questions regarding the textbook passage “Geographic and cultural divisions: blue and red” (pp. 315-18) and “The Brutal History of Anti-Latino Discrimination in America” (interactions.cdu.no). What, in your view, are the main differences between these two types of text?
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Who are the people involved (sender/receiver)?
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What is the message to be communicated?
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7 | F O R M A L L A N G UAG E F E AT U R ES
Study this excerpt from an article called “Humans may have arrived in the Americas 15,000 years earlier than we thought” and identify formal/academic language features such as those described above and on p. 47. Over the millennia, the Coxcatlan Cave, in the Valley of Tehuacan, Mexico has been home to tens of thousands of years of human history. Preserved in layers of dust, rocks, charcoal, and decaying plants are records of the early domestication of corn and the birth of agriculture. But beneath them all is something even more surprising: what might end up being one of the oldest records of humans in the Americas. Based on a new radiocarbon analysis, animal bones found in that deepest layer are between 28,000 and 31,000 years old. Currently, the most popular theory is that humans first arrived in the Americas around 14,000 years ago, walking over a now-drowned continent that connected Alaska and Siberia. If further studies bear out, the findings will help reshape the human history of North America. (Source: see p. 419)
PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES
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I N T H I S C H A P T E R, YO U W I L L : –
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gain insight into the historical processes that led to the British colonization of Australia and New Zealand and its consequences for these countries’ indigenous populations think critically about issues of civil rights and identity in the context of post-colonial societies compare and contrast the development of Australia and New Zealand from “settler nations” to regional powers gain insight into the political, social and environmental challenges facing modern Australia and New Zealand learn about the language and structure of research articles and develop strategies for reading such texts increase your awareness of how and why texts Chapter 5: Pacific represent speech and writing fromPerspectives other sources359
First Nations: Australia and New Zealand
A R E F L ECT
K E Y C O N C E P TS
a In this chapter the aim is to look more closely at
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two English-speaking countries in the southern hemisphere: Australia and New Zealand. The heading of this first text is “Invasion and Survival”. What expectations does this give about what the text will deal with? If the heading had been “Settlement and Development”, how would your expectations have been different?
indigenous Aboriginal Stolen Generations terra nullius Aotearoa Treaty of Waitangi genocide assimilation “White Australia” civil rights movement Native Title Act
Invasion and Survival
musket muskett (stort håndvåpen) / muskett (stort handvåpen) indigenous innfødt, hjemmehørende / innfødd, heimehøyrande indigenous population urbefolkning 360
In 1770 two men met on the coast of south-eastern Australia. One of them held a spear, the other a musket. The meeting ended with the musket being fired and the spear-wielding man retreating into the bush, probably injured (Maynard, n.d.). It says a lot about colonial history that we do not know the name of the first man. In the history books he is referred to as “an Aborigine”. The name of the other musket-toting man, however, is well remembered. He was James Cook of Whitby, England, explorer and captain of the Endeavour. Statues of him can be found both in England and Australia, and many places besides, where he is credited as being “the discoverer of Australia”. The meeting happened at a place that Cook named Botany Bay (although the nameless Aboriginal man would have called it Kamay) and it was the first meeting between the indigenous Australian population and the nation that would soon claim ownership of their continent. The cruel asymmetry of the confrontation – one wielding a spear, the other a musket – would continue to characterise their relationship right up until the present day (National Museum Australia, n.d.).
"Founding of Australia" by Algernon Talmage (1871-1939). Raising the flag when the First Fleet arrived in 1788 carrying convicts and soldiers for the first British settlement.
Invasion, settlement and the myth of terra nullius When Europeans first set foot in Australia and New Zealand, settlement was not foremost in their minds. As discussed in chapter 2, the British in particular were initially on the lookout for business opportunities – trading partners, exotic goods to feed the domestic market. Ideas of settlement came later, and only under particular circumstances: there had to be land for the taking. “Land for the taking” presupposes the concept of terra nullius – a Latin term meaning “nobody’s land”, i.e. land that is unoccupied and uninhabited. The idea that Australia and (to a lesser extent) New Zealand were examples of terra nullius was key to the transformation of these lands into settler colonies. In both countries the idea was a myth that would have tragic consequences for the indigenous population.
domestic market hjemmemarked/ heimemarknad
First encounters – Australia Actually, Captain Cook was not the discoverer of Australia, even from a European perspective: the Dutch had made landfall on the continent more than a century before. And, of course, the real “discoverers” were there long before that. The indigenous population of Australia represents probably the Chapter 5: Pacific Perspectives
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The Haka The haka is a traditional Māori dance involving rhythmic movements, stamping, and slapping the chest and thighs. It is accompanied by chanting and fierce facial expressions. In spite of its frightening aspect, it is used as a welcome or a celebration of a special event. The “Ka Mate” haka is used by the New Zealand rugby team (the “All Blacks”) as a pre-game ritual.
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The Haka isn’t yours – Stop Performing it By Morgan Godfery Ever more non-Māori are doing the haka – but shouldn’t be unless its integrity is preserved.
irresistible uimotståelig/ uimotståeleg
The All Blacks perform the haka before their Rugby Championship test match against South Africa in 2021.
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For a good number of white people, the haka is apparently irresistible. I wonder if any of the French lawyers who were protesting their government’s pension reform with a haka, the Māori dance form, have ever set foot in New Zealand? “Ka Mate”, the Ngāti Toa haka the All Blacks perform pre-match, delights global audiences every year. Contemporary teams take it dead seriously, but in the late-19th and early-20th century the mostly white team would turn to the British crowds, slapping their thighs and hanging their tongues out for “entertainment”.
The earliest footage is excruciating. It’s a piss-take. But the performance caught on, especially after rugby union went professional in the 1990s. Cable television and mass media took Ka Mate to the world and the world loved it. In the past three years alone, non-Māori took “haka” as the name of a Canadian energy drink brand, James Cameron has said he is keen on including a “space haka” in his Avatar sequels, and The Rock and Jason Momoa – Polynesians, yes, but non-Māori – sometimes perform haka as a red-carpet party trick. It’s tempting to write this off as cultural appropriation – taking an indigenous cultural item without permission, usually for a personal or commercial gain. And in one sense it certainly is. But in another sense it seems like an unhelpful idea to reach for. “Western culture”, if it’s possible to confine something spread across millennia and continents in a two-word term, functions best in the spirit of open exchange, critique, imitation and improvement. But cultural appropriation would charge that a “spirit of cultural exchange” is often just a cover for “theft”. Descriptively that’s obviously true. Not only did empires take indigenous people’s land and labour, but they often took assimilated parts of their cultures and languages too. Taboo, the English word, is a borrowing from the Polynesia “tapu”. Yet the former strips the later of its original force and meaning, reducing it to the status of a “no-no” rather than the world-ordering term and idea tapu is and was. This is why I prefer to think about “taking” the haka in Māori terms. The relevant question is: does the performance, whether in New Zealand or France, retain the original haka’s mana and mauri? The easiest way for a non-Māori person to understand those two terms is to ask: does the performance maintain the haka’s integrity? In Rotorua, the tourist hotspot in New Zealand’s central North Island, Te Arawa – the local tribe and perhaps the best haka performers in the country – share their art and coach their visitors in certain haka. It’s an exchange western tourists would recognise as constituting a very public good. Those same tourists take the haka they learn home. They perform it as best they remember. This, of course, isn’t cultural appropriation because the haka retain their mana and mauri. Why? Because Te Arawa were in control. It was up to their tribe’s experts to pick which haka to teach, what history to share and what the instructions for performing were. In a word, the power was still Te Arawa’s. But that isn’t the case with, say, the French lawyers. In their performance the haka is a protest gimmick, a way to jimmy up attention. I appreciate that – at least in the sense haka can take form in a protest. But it isn’t, as some Europeans and North Americans seem to understand it, an act of unrestrained id. It isn’t necessarily just an outlet for anger. To the contrary: the best haka exercise control and consideration in word and motion. It’s a deliberate art like any other, albeit with a force far stronger. Until Europeans and North Americans can drop that (probably racist) idea that haka is all about releasing anger, one general rule applies: don’t perform a haka you were never given permission to. That’s the best way to preserve its mana and mauri. (Source: see p. 419)
excruciating forferdelig, uutholdelig / forferdeleg, uuthaldeleg piss-take latterliggjøring, parodi / latterleggjering, parodi to confine å avgrense, å innskrenke to charge å hevde, å påstå to strip å frata / å ta frå to jimmy up å vekke, å tenne id: in psychoanalysis, the deepest part of the unconscious mind that represents the most basic natural human needs and emotions such as hunger, anger, and the wish for pleasure
UNDERSTAND a How does the writer distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable use of the haka? b Why does he find it acceptable that visitors to the Te Awara take the haka home and perform it? c Why does he object to the French lawyers’ use of the haka?
Chapter 5: Pacific Perspectives
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B
Settler Nations: Australia and New Zealand
R E F L ECT: Which Country? How much do you know about Australia and New Zealand? Take the quiz, and then read the text to find out how many questions you got right. Note that “Both” is also a possible answer. 1 Which country’s inhabitants are known as “Kiwis”? 2 Which country is a federation of states? 3 In which country is rugby a popular sport? 4 Which country is a former British colony? 5 Which country is a “nuclear-free zone”? 6 Which country has a Senate and a House of Representatives? 7 Which country has a small city as its capital? 8 Which country has been severely hit by wildfires in recent years? 9 Which country has been criticised for its immigration policies in recent years? 10 Which country has a female prime minister (as of 2022)?
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antipodean Aussies/Kiwis settler colony dominion unified state vs. federation point-based immigration climate crisis
New Zealand landscape.
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Sydney Harbour Bridge, Australia - also known as the Coathanger.
From Colonies to Regional Powers For many in the northern hemisphere, Australia and New Zealand are seen as being virtually indistinguishable. Both are antipodean, i.e. positioned “down under”, separated only by the Tasman Sea (although “only” means about 1000 miles apart), and both are English-speaking, “western” democracies and former British colonies. Aussies and Kiwis, as they are popularly called, seem to be constantly playing each other in the same sports, notably cricket and rugby, and seem to have much the same accent. We associate both countries with magnificent scenery, wide-open spaces and seemingly endless herds of cattle and sheep. However, as Swedes and Norwegians can vouch for, countries that from the outside seem indistinguishable feel very different from the inside. In the following the aim is to look more closely at these differences – historical, political, cultural – as well as at some of the issues that divide the countries internally.
indistinguishable som ikke kan skjelnes / som ikkje kan skiljast frå kvarandre
From colonies to independence The first part of this chapter focused on the experiences of the indigenous populations as they became marginalised minorities in the new nations of Australia and New Zealand. Their status at the very bottom of the colonial Chapter 5: Pacific Perspectives
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