Plants and the class system
Bill Langland
Do you talk to your plants? A lot of people do, but until recently no one has paid any attention to the best type of conversation for each plant species. At last a team of British sociologists has researched the horticultural effects of communicating with plants in different speech codes. Readers familiar with the works of Basil Bernstein will know of his studies of the cultural properties of speech. His theory is that different speech styles originate in the different psychological and social experiences of the speakers. Membership of a particular class will determine your membership of a particular speech code.
Bernstein defined the 'restricted code' of the lower class as being best able to deal with concrete situations. This is presumably because most building site workers are lower-class. The code usually deals with current events, and its users are incapable of imaginatively defining past or future happenings. 'Restricted' is, in fact, another word for 'thick'.
The elaborated code of the middle class is, of course, far superior. Middle classes are able to think abstractly and use their verbal tools more subtly:Bernstein showed that children are orientated, according to their social environment and class, to use either the restricted or elaborated code. Schools with educational norms tailored for middle-class children, and with communication systems using elaborated speech, will have a negative effect on working-class children. Thus communication and speech 'norms' have a decisive and divisive effect on our social system.
With what appears to be an amazing success, these principles have recently been applied to plant life. Two doctors, Botcher and Stringer, and Professor Cass, aware of the growing tendency of horticulturalists both professional and amateur to talk to their plants, began with the hypothesis that plants from different species will have different linguistic needs. To talk, for example, to a rare variety of rose in a restricted speech code might seriously impede growth, whilst communication in the elaborated code might encourage it.
In 1977, Dr. Botcher et al. took a random sample of cabbages planted in the same field and with a similar growth potential (GP). The cabbages were divided into a control group (A), a group spoken to in the restricted code (B), and a group spoken to in the elaborated code. There were 49 cabbages in each group. Over a two-month period, the cabbages were watered once daily. Group A, the control, was not spoken to at all. Group B was spoken to by field workers with the restricted code, such as 'Watcher, me old fruit, and 'ow's yer onions today, mate?', while Group C was greeted with elaborated phrases such as 'Good day, I trust you are receiving sufficient nourish ment from the soil.'
From the results obtained Botcher et a/. concluded that common vegetables thrived when spoken to in the restricted code. They then carried out a similar experiment, this time with a plot of silver rosebushes. A control group of 49 rosebushes was watered and fed as normal but not spoken to. Group B was addressed in the restricted code (e.g. 'Elio Prickles, me old flower'); Group C in the elaborated code: 'How beautiful your petals are looking — you will make a most exquisite flower'. The results after a twomonth period, showing that group C grew at nine times the rate of group B, proved conclusively the relationship between potential growth and the linguistic code. The researchers then decided to test their hypothesis on plants of immigrant origin. Labov's work in the United States showed that black children were under-achieving in American schools, while British sociologists have demonstrated that West Indian children under-achieve in British schools. This is said to be because of the difference in language and customs. Taking Labov's model sentence 'I ax Alvin do he know how to play basketball', a number of British grown African violets were treated in the same way as the other two experiments — Group B being asked 'lax Alvin do he know to plant African violets', and Group C asked Alvin whether or not he knows how to plant African violets'. As Labov found with the children he interviewed, the use of the non-standard form provided gratifying results: Group B grew 28 times as much as , Group C. Further experiments have shown that French beans prosper when spoken to in their native tongue, Welsh provokes dramatic growth from leeks, and Brussels sprouts have achieved record results when spoken to in either French or Flemish, depending on which part of Belgium they are frail?. The work of Botcher, Cass and Stringer Is of an exciting and vital nature. Its repercussions could be global in their consequences. If we can tap the correct linguistic code for addressing each plant type the agricultural and horticultural output of the world could be trebled by the year 1987. Scarcity, and territorial wars, would be things of the past. Peace and plenty would be realities. An offshoot of these findings is the repudiation of those sociologists who assert that everyone has at least two speech codes which they interchange intuitively, and that everyone of normal intelligence operates, or could operate if he wished to, on a dialect continuum. The thesis of this school is that no sociolect or dialect is inferior, and that few people of any class or culture are really fluent. It is the minority in each class who can express themselves lucidly and precisely. According to this school of thought, fluency and good verbal expression are cross-cultural rarities and it is merely the wealth and influence of the white middle and upper class which ensures access to positions of power. These arguments have been triumphantly uprooted by Dr Botcher and his team.
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