The Language of Balnibarbi

Lemuel Gulliver finds that the people of Balnibarbi just don’t appreciate their hardworking academics.

1726

Introduction

Lemuel Gulliver is visiting the distinguished Academy in Balnibarbi, where absent-minded professors pursue countless schemes for bettering society. In the School of Languages, for example, some experts plan to do away with verbs, participles and words of more than one syllable, but their colleagues are far bolder.

by Jonathan Swift 1667-1745

THE other project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health, as well as brevity. For it is plain, that every word we speak is, in some degree, a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and, consequently, contributes to the shortening of our lives.

An expedient was therefore offered, “that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express a particular business they are to discourse on.”

And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people.

by Jonathan Swift 1667-1745

From ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ (1726), by Jonathan Swift.

Précis

Jonathan Swift took a swipe at progressive academics, sending Lemuel Gulliver to interview radical linguists who advocated doing away with all words for communication, instead brandishing objects to communicate ideas. Gulliver noted that women and the working classes had objected, and that the scholars blamed such people for repeatedly standing in the way of scientific advance.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Sevens

Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.

What did the most radical professors in Balnibarbi’s School of Languages propose?

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

Balnibarbi had an Academy. Some linguists there wanted to abolish verbs. Other linguistics wanted to abolish all words entirely.