Americans taking offence on behalf of poor ‘victimised’ foreigners is offensive — to me
Oh dear. I may have to write a book called How to Lose More Friends and Alienate More People. In a recent episode of Top Chef, the American cooking show I appear on, I complained about the other judges’ insistence on pronouncing ‘paella’ as ‘py-ay-a’. ‘You don’t say “Bar-the-lona” or “Me-hi-co”,’ I pointed out. ‘So why say ‘py-ay-a’?’
I thought this was fairly uncontroversial, but it was as if I had just produced a white hood and a burning cross. After the other judges had picked their jaws up off the floor, one of them raised herself to her full height and said, ‘Actually, Toby, I do say “Bar-the-lona”.’ Now I know how Nick Griffin felt on Question Time. The reaction in the blogosphere was instantaneous. ‘Toby displayed no respect for either Spanish culture or cuisine on tonight’s episode,’ wrote a typical blogger.
The irony, of course, is that Johnny Foreigner doesn’t give a fig about any of this. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Spain and my pronunciation has never once been corrected. On the contrary, Spanish waiters are usually quite amused by Anglophone pronunciations of the dishes on their menus. Spaniards would no more expect me to say ‘py-ay-a’ than I would expect them to say ‘London’ instead of ‘Londres’.
No, the only people who take offence if you Anglicise foreign words are upper-middle-class Caucasian Americans. They imagine that other, less fortunate people will be insulted by your ‘imperialist’ attitude and they get offended on their behalf. In fact, to imagine that non-English-speakers are a poor, victimised group, requiring the protection of the American elite, is far more condescending than mispronouncing non-English words.
It’s also a form of snobbery. In the States, pronouncing foreign words ‘correctly’ is a high-status indicator. It’s not just about demonstrating your racial sensitivity. It’s a way of advertising your membership of the elite. Saying ‘py-el-a’ rather than ‘py-ay-a’ is to risk being thought of as lower class.
I don’t mean that they’re concerned about appearing not very well travelled, though that comes into it. It’s more a question of manners. Not tiptoeing around other cultures is considered impolite. To make a ‘racially insensitive’ remark is to reveal a lack of familiarity with the code. They’re worried about appearing ignorant, but not of other cultures. What concerns them is that people might think they don’t know the form. Being politically correct is also socially correct — which helps explain its ubiquity. When a political trend is reinforced by snobbery it becomes an irresistible force, which helps explain the success of the environmental movement.
As a general rule in America, the higher a person’s status, the more liberal their politics. The blue states are more affluent than the red states — and political correctness is more ubiquitous in New York and Los Angeles than it is in ‘the flyover states’. The reason the media is liberal is because it’s a high-status profession. The same goes for medicine and law. At the very top of American society, expressing a rightwing opinion is virtually a form of sedition. You can count the number of Republican celebrities on one hand.
The same isn’t true of England, at least not yet. I was in New York at the time of the 1997 general election and when I saw the television pictures of all the luvvies linking arms and singing ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ I thought we were heading in the same direction. For a long period it became very unfashionable among the elite to support the Conservative party. But that trend has now been reversed, thanks to a combination of David Cameron’s ‘progressive’ agenda and Gordon Brown’s incompetence. Then again, my complacency about this may be misplaced. No doubt James Delingpole would argue that Britain’s ruling class is just as liberal as its American counterpart and the only way Cameron has been able to win them round is by abandoning his Conservative principles.
A world in which all ethnic groups speak slightly differently, following their own idiosyncratic rules when it comes to pronouncing words not in their language, is preferable to one in which everyone is forced to pronounce things ‘correctly’ by a bunch of guilty white people. In the end, that’s more ‘imperialist’ than saying ‘py-el-a’.
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