Response 1:

This extract is an opinion piece written by Michael Hoffman and published in The
Observer, a Sunday newspaper in the UK. His topic is the learning of foreign languages in
Britain. Hoffman complains about the way language lessons have been marginalised in
schools and criticises the reluctance of English people to learn a foreign language. In
order to support his argument, he develops several lines of thoughtful reasoning, presents
some surprising statistics, and writes in a strident, forceful tone. I would argue, though, that
while I enjoyed reading his opinion piece, it is not conventionally entertaining – at least not
for certain readers. I feel that British people who already speak a foreign language would
identify with the arguments he puts forward; whereas people who do not speak a foreign
language may feel overly attacked. Nevertheless, there are elements of style that might
appeal to both of these hypothetical readers, such as the amusing metaphors about the sad
state of British education.

A convincing argument Hoffman makes is when discussing the reasons why people may or
may not learn foreign languages. He discards ‘utilitarian’ (or instrumental) reasons such
as ‘to be able to order a beer in a foreign country.’  He calls economic
reasons ‘vulgar’ and appeals to the notion that the motivation for learning can be
intrinsic: ‘it’s that you are not making enough of your individual potential if you allow
yourself to be enclosed by one language.’  This line is delivered directly to the
reader (‘you’) which is a feature of the whole text. Frequent direct address delivers a
challenge to the reader, and sometimes the tone is forceful, such as ‘if you don’t have
another language you are condemned to occupy the same positions, the same phrases, all
your life.’  The word ‘condemned’ compares to the word ‘enclosed’  in the previous
sentence, as if speaking only one language is a kind of prison sentence. This metaphor is
extended through the whole text and can be seen in choices of words such as ‘cage’,
‘encased’, and ‘narrowness.’

Figurative language is a stylistic feature that Hoffman employs more than once and is part
of what makes his writing somewhat entertaining. He uses metaphor to criticise British
education in strong terms: ‘Education is a field hospital, where the little troops are patched
up and… sent to fight in the great economic war.’  In Hoffman’s mind, schooling is
preparation for an ‘economic war’ in which children are recruited to fight like soldiers.
Anything not directly contributary to the war effort, like learning foreign languages, is
deemed of little value. This time, he doesn’t address the reader but attacks national
government policy instead. The text develops an opposition between economic values
supported by official policy (‘schmooze your foreign boss’; ‘force and market’;
‘international polity’) and the true value of languages; for example, ‘languages are some of
the oldest, deepest, most thoughtful human inventions.’  He speaks of language learning in
terms of ‘joy and richness’ and locates values such as ‘respect… mutuality, courtesy, fair
exchange, good practice.’  An important word is ‘civilised’ – and British readers are put in
the uncomfortable position of having a historic national quality questioned and challenged.

Hoffman uses other stylistic features associated with persuasive texts to convince the
reader. He asks questions such as, ‘How much respect does that allow? How can you hope
to understand others while requiring them to speak to you in their English?’  Chaining
questions together makes him sound frustrated, as if the answer if self-evident to him, but
not to ‘you’, the reader who only speaks English. Tricolons are conventionally persuasive
and Hoffman gives us patterns of three including, ‘It’s harder to outwit yourself, harder to
doubt yourself… It’s harder to play.’  In this example he takes ‘doubt’, something that
might be considered a drawback, and suggests it is actually a strength. The text is
thoughtful and emotional, but towards the end he employs statistics to convince his reader
to abandon an ethnocentric world view when it comes to foreign languages: ‘English is
spoken by just 7% of the world’s inhabitants; 75% of people speak no English.’  These
statistics support his argument that those who only speak English trap themselves in a
much narrower version of life than they might be aware.

So adamant is the writer that his position seems unassailable. Although the column
includes ‘banal’  excuses, he always dismisses or demolishes reasons for not learning
another language. At the end of the piece he says ‘call it what you like,’  as if trying to
bring the reader onside through concession. But, overall, his tone is unforgiving. He
accuses those of disagreeing with him of ‘disdain’, ‘disrespect’, ‘cluelessness’ and of
being ‘wildly irresponsible.’ Although I agree with him, I can see that one drawback of this
text is that it never relents in its attack on the ‘other’ side, never allows any debate. The end
of the text, ‘a terminal and blazingly wrong conceit,’  exemplifies this tendency. ‘Blazingly
wrong’  seems to shut down discussion, as if there’s no alternative to the writer’s vision.
Finally, the word ‘terminal’  means ‘the end,’ as if there is nowhere further to go, and
nothing more to be said

Response 3: