“Are you City in disguise?”, rang the cry from the away section at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday. Frankly, had Arsenal successful masqueraded as City, they would have put on a better show than this shambolic performance.

For the second successive home game against their closest rivals Arsenal not so much wilted as capitulated. United were excellent, but their quality was in the simple execution of footballing basics, the bare minimum to be expected from a tie of this nature. They pressed Arsenal hard in midfield, and went narrow when defending their own box, forcing wasteful cross after wasteful cross to be hopefully punted into the United area.

The performance was one typical of United this season; built around some solid foundations (Carrick and Fletcher were particularly excellent) and driven forward by the cutting-edge brilliance of Wayne Rooney. What is most worrying for the hosts is that such an approach forged not a tight single-goal victory, but a dominant humiliation of a side credited just a week earlier for finally possessing a backbone.

It would seem fair to suggest that neither of these sides have the mettle to challenge Chelsea, but on this evidence one side is still criminally behind the other.

Wenger was tactically outclassed, but his team’s attitude was most disturbing. The passing was so poor in the second half that it failed to elicit groans of disappointment. Each loose ball was met with a depressing, accepting silence.

Arsenal’s defending was especially woeful as, much like in the Chelsea game, they went two goals down having faced little pressure. Indeed this time only one shot on goal was required; Manuel Almunia helping Nani’s cross into his own top corner. Certainly, the cross was bound for Park at the back post, but for a Premier League goalkeeper to be unable to get a firm touch on a ball no higher than the crossbar is criminal. Almunia’s position has long been under question for his inability to command his area or make meaningful saves, but if he starts making such serious errors, his days in an Arsenal shirt should be numbered.

Of even greater worry were the abject performances of Gael Clichy, and especially Denilson. The former can at least claim rustiness for his part in all three goals, but he was beaten far too easily by Nani for the first, whilst his failure to at least try and cut out Park’s open run from the half way line for the third was just baffling.

Yet it was the latter in receipt of the fans’ ire. Demoralising it must be to have your substitution cheered, but Denilson deserved it. He was breezed by for the first and gave the ball away for the third, but it was his attitude for the second that really summed up his performance. When Rooney played the ball wide to Nani he was thirty yards from his own goal. Denilson was on his own half way line yet he simply jogged gently back, blissfully unaware that Rooney was storming past him. A fabulous break; shocking defending.

Denilson is supposed to be a defensive minded midfielder, yet he doesn’t tackle, can’t pass over more than five yards and brings no energy to the game. Rooney stormed by his lazy jogging as easily as Sidibe had done for Stoke the week before. An embarrassment to Fletcher and Carrick’s work rate. Scholes was able to pull the strings unmolested, by comparison Fabregas gave the ball away repeatedly, Song alone insufficient to shield him without a willing partner.

In a game which may well do no more than decide second place, Arsenal allowed their limitations to cripple them. United on the other hand, turned theirs into positives. A typical winning mentality, and of course the peerless Wayne Rooney, will at least keep them in the race ’till the death. 

I was walking to Sainsbury’s recently, and overheard a young woman asking a question to a man, who was presumably her boyfriend, while pointing in the direction of an expensive-looking shop-window pen. The question was common enough — “Do you think it costs much?” – but there was something peculiar in her way of speaking this phrase, something that immediately marked it in my mind as distinctively British. The way it dipped in the middle, and rose at the end, with the middle syllable elongated, was not unfamiliar to me. But I realized something: the way she spoke this sentence (perhaps you can picture it in your mind), combined with the meanings it is likely to have had, would simply have been impossible in American English.

There are at least two possible implications of this phrase, when said in this way. Firstly, we have the serious interpretation, which suggests 1) that the couple should investigate the true price, and 2) that the woman in question wants to buy it. Secondly, we have the sarcastic interpretation, in which 1) The woman is pointing out the sheer ridiculousness of a pen shop and 2) is implying that the pens are likely to be outrageously overpriced. Tellingly, I can think of no way to convey these meanings, much less this ambiguity, in standard American English.

So far, in our investigation of British and American English differences, we’ve looked at the historical evolution of the American speech and the differences in the style of politeness. This week, we focus on prosody.

It’s time for a bit of definition. Prosody is the study word segments that can be as large as a whole phrase or as small as a syllable. Prosody includes, most basically, intonation, stress, and quantity. Its role is to emphasize words, change the meaning of an utterance, and resolve disambiguity. Prosody can also be used to convey the mood of a speaker. Interestingly, prosody comes before proper human speech—babies can speak nonsense with correct intonation.

Intonation can be explained in terms of variation in pitch(the frequency of a sound—high or low) over segments. Intonation marks the difference between a statement and a question, and can signify attitude and emotion. Stress, on the other hand, refers to prominence due to effort. One can stress either a syllable, as we do in distinguishing the noun DIgest and the verb diGEST, or a word, as we see in Neither HERE nor THERE. Finally, we have quantity, which is also known as “contrastive duration”—think of this in terms of the “short” i in “bit” versus the “long” i in “bite”.

What does this have to do with British and American English? As Baugh and Cable have noted in their History of the English Language, “There can be no gain-saying the fact that American speech is a bit more monotonous, is uttered with less variety in the intonation, than that of Britain.” This statement came as a bit of a surprise to me at first, but when confronted with questions like those in front of the pen shop, I began to wonder if it may be true after all.

Let’s look at the linguistic facts.

To get an idea of the scale of the prosody differences, we turn to a 2002 study on computer speech recognition, which has a number of interesting conclusions. In terms of duration, the study attributes the differences between British and American prosody to a tendency in British English to pronounce vowels at the beginning and end of the sentence in shorter time, and to pronounce last syllable of a sentence quickly. In pitch, the study found that British speakers pronounced vowels with lower pitch than Americans. Further, British speakers, the study concludes, have a steeper rise and fall than American speakers, though this range narrows toward the end of an utterance.

More whimsically, though perhaps infinitely more offensively, another study (though admittedly dated 1977) sought to find an explanation for the reason that Americans often find the speech of British men effeminate. The conclusion rested on the function of tone groups, which are groups of words over which intonation is distributed. Briefly, a tone group possesses a head, a nucleus (the strongest syllable in the accented word), and a tail, denoting its place in the group.

The British linguist Halliday has created a hierarchy of prosodic tones, each denoting differing degrees of rising and falling. His rising tone is the one that is relevant here. This is the tone used in asking simple yes/no questions, such as “Are you coming?,”  in the sense of “I don’t know if you are coming but want to know”. 

The study found that “the British rising head is interpreted by Americans as a tone used with children, while the rising head in American speech is used to show doubt, and is used mostly by women.” Further, the study notes, what is called “an upglided (here, rising) nucleus” is rare in American male speech, but more common in American female speech. Rising nuclei are common in both men’s and women’s speech in British English, and that could account for the fact that British men often sound effeminate to Americans”.

As pointed out in the last post, such generalizations are both inaccurate and outdated in linguistic circles, and in this case, somewhat offensive. But they might just give us insight into cross-linguistic, and by extension, cross-cultural differences. And they shouldn’t discredit the general theory of prosody as a means of investigating linguistic differences.

Through the lens of prosodic differences, we can take a look at complex semantic phenomena, as we see with the vexing question the pen at the beginning of this post. Subtle changes in intonation can spell the difference between different modes of speech both within a single language, and, in our case, across languages. That’s it for this week, but to see more on the general intonation differences in British and American English, take a look at this book, complete with cool diagrams!: http://books.google.com/books?id=xFuUFtDyqJsC&lpg=PA28&ots=n7Z32b9V_k&dq=intonation%20differences%20british%20american%20speech&pg=PA28#v=onepage&q=intonation%20differences%20british%20american%20speech&f=false

I don’t understand the Union sometimes. Deathly dull debate on Afghanistan with only one speaker, and the chamber’s packed, standing room only. Potentially brilliant debate on women, that perennial Oxford topic, and there’s maybe sixty people in the audience.  Was it because there was another debate the next day? Anyway, all those absent audience members missed some great speeches. So did I, for that matter, because I arrived twenty minutes late (I’m just that devoted a journalist), and so missed Alex Worsnip’s opening speech, which is a shame because Alex is always a fantastic speaker. What I did notice is that he has a new beard, which makes him look alternately like a youthful Lord Palmerston (Google him, all you non-historians) and like a peculiarly well-groomed paedophile. The first speech I did get to see was by Sharon Hodgson, continuing the proposition that ‘This House supports all-women shortlists.’ I say continuing the proposition, but really Hodgson, elected on an all-women shortlist herself, made the case for the opposition simply by turning up – she was dire. Her entire speech was a succession of trite clichés and sanctimonious drivel about male MPs not understanding women’s issues.  According to Hodgson, ‘Male MPs sit drinking on the Terrace of the House of Commons while their secretaries answer the phone.’ Isn’t that what secretaries are for? ‘If you want something said, ask a man,’ she advised us, ‘but if you want something done, ask a woman.’ Well, maybe, (although, at the risk of coming over all OUCA-ey, a man would of course never get away with saying the reverse), but it would be nice if our legislators could make a decent speech too.

To be honest, though, the next opposition speaker was hardly any better, despite having been selected as Tory Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for somewhere dreary by the usual methods. This was Annesley Abercorn, Chairman of that creepy assembly of right-wing teenagers the Bow Group. He made all the usual anti-AWS arguments, including the predictable and almost ritualistic obeisance to Margaret Thatcher (‘she didn’t need any all-women shortlists to become the greatest prime minister in living memory etc’). There was one good joke: ‘some people say this was because she wasn’t a woman. I can confirm this is true: she was, in actual fact, a lady.’ But then, just as he was beginning to do well, he screwed the whole thing up by claiming, as if it lend him some kind of credibility, that ‘I have been talking to lots of women recently…’ Well bully for you, Annesley – I do hope you’re proud.  Then Madeleine Moon, another Labour MP, though one selected on an open shortlist, who was mostly quite good apart from her dire opening line: ‘I’m sure there are many people here who would make the same type of speech as was made in the House of Commons Debate on Women’s enfranchisement – ‘ “women are too frail and stupid to vote.”’  Darling, if you want to win over an audience, best not to start by accusing them of being chauvinist pigs. Also, apparently Pakistan’s old military dictatorship was more democratic than neighbouring India, because, while the Indian people saw fit to only elect women to 9% of parliamentary seats, the Pakistani Generals were enlightened enough to choose women to fill 24% of the seats in the token parliament. This makes military dictatorship better than democracy, apparently. If only someone had leaked that to the nationals.

James Gray, tall, military-bearing, ex-Christ Church, came across as a typical upper class Tory, and made the decent argument that AWS were patronising and condescending to women, by virtue of their implicit acceptance that women wouldn’t get selected by the normal method. Then Edwina Currie rose and blew them all out of the water. ‘We strive against discrimination, so we should hesitate before discriminating in turn,’ she argued passionately. It was wonderful stuff: Currie was a brilliant refutation both of the bigots who claim women don’t make good politicians, still sadly prevalent in some parts of the western world as well as much of the non-western, and simultaneously of the argument that women need a special leg-up if they’re to stand any chance of competing against a cruel political patriarchy. Smiles all round then, especially on the face of Stuart Cullen, who was told by Currie that he could one day rise to become leader of the free world. And isn’t that a happy thought.

President Obama gave the performance of his presidency this week, in a 90-minute appearance which has energised the democratic base, wowed the commentariat, and will likely reshape the White House’s political strategy. And here’s the twist: it wasn’t the State of the Union.

The latter was well-executed. State of the Union speeches are a tough thing to pull off, and Wednesday’s effort was pretty good, but not stellar. It had real energy at times, especially the passage on healthcare. The overarching focus was jobs, and in this sense the message was targeted squarely at improving middle America’s shaky economic confidence, which drives the President’s low approval ratings and underpins the GOP’s chances in this year’s midterm elections. He got some important messages out there loud and clear: the stimulus is working; we’ve cut taxes, not raised them. It was also a pretty diverse speech — he had some overtures to moderates and Republicans, for example on nuclear power and tax cuts for small businesses. As a political instrument, it probably will turn out to have been effective, albeit quietly — this speech won’t have turned many people into Obama-ites, but it will have cut through some of the negative chatter out there about him and his administration. Solid, but no fireworks. The speech did its job.

The main event came on Friday. Obama had been invited to make an appearance at the House Republican retreat in Baltimore. He made a twenty-minute speech which was a bit run-of-the-mill. But what followed was deeply impressive. Obama took roughly an hour of policy questions from Republican congressmen. And the President, in answering, was extraordinary. He showed a deep and nuanced awareness of the issues, and a clear understanding of Republican proposals. He provided a strong critique of some of his opponents positions, but was also quick to note the areas on which he agreed or felt there was room for cooperation. He was combative and very effective in debate, but also made a point of being courteous. In short, he looked and sounded like a statesman, and this made the Republicans, too often using the session to peddle talking points, look like small politicians. The President came across as better informed, more intellectually agile, and less outwardly political than his questioners. It was a terrific performance.

Hopefully this will prove to be a teachable moment for the White House. This innovative format was perfect for the President, but it was the change in tone which made the difference. Too often in the first year of the administration, Obama was too far above the fray. This made him appear divorced from the low politics of partisan bile, which was a good thing, but it also prevented him from displaying the considerable skills of debate he possesses, and it left many of his opponents’ charges unanswered. Quite by mistake, the White House may have stumbled upon an excellent insight into how they should change their approach — the President should ditch the above-the-fray “Rose Garden strategy” (as one commentator dubbed it) which has perpetuated the perception of disconnection and aloofness, and get stuck in.

He can start by doing events identical to Friday’s every month, on TV, live. It would improve political discourse, and it would help him reconnect with the masses he’s in danger of losing. The Republicans will have to agree or be painted as running scared.