The Prime Minister of the UK has a unique way of using language, which shows his privileged upbringing and elite education.
Learn about how he uses language, why he talks in this way, why this appeals to the British people, and what similarities he has with Donald Trump.
Alastair Budge:[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge and today we are going to be talking about The English of Boris Johnson.
[00:00:29] The episode a few weeks ago on The English of Donald Trump proved to be one of the most popular ones we’ve done so far, so, by popular demand, today we are going to be talking about Trump’s British counterpart, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson.
[00:00:48] Before we get right into that though, let me remind you that you can get all of the bonus episodes, plus subtitles, transcripts, and key vocabulary, over on the website, which is leonardoenglish.com.
[00:01:02] This is also where you can check out becoming a member of Leonardo English, and join a community of curious minds from all over the world, doing meetups, exchanging ideas, and generally, improving their English in a more interesting way.
[00:01:18] So if that sounds good to you, and I certainly hope it does, then the place to go to is leonardoenglish.com.
[00:01:27] OK then, let’s get started.
[00:01:30] You probably know a bit about Boris Johnson, and today’s episode isn’t going to be a history lesson about the man, and his rise to power, although we will touch on that.
[00:01:41] We are instead going to focus on how he talks, the language he uses, why he talks this way, why this appeals to British people, and we’ll also talk about how different this is to Donald Trump.
[00:01:58] But we do need a little background before we get right into his language, because it’s first important to understand exactly who Boris Johnson actually is, where he comes from, and to try to get into the mind of the man, before we talk about his language.
[00:02:18] So, the first thing that we need to clarify is that his first name isn’t actually Boris. It’s Alexander.
[00:02:29] Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in 1964, in New York. His family, reportedly, still calls him ‘Al’, short for Alexander.
[00:02:41] He started using the name ‘Boris’ when he began Eton, the most exclusive boarding school in the United Kingdom, and where countless previous prime ministers had gone to school.
[00:02:54] Alexander is a relatively common name in the United Kingdom, but Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson wanted to be anything other than common.
[00:03:06] Boris, on the other hand, is not a common name, and so evidently this suited the 13-year old Boris Johnson much better than Alexander.
[00:03:17] So we can clearly see, from a young age that Boris knew the importance of public image - your name matters, and if you want to stand out, you need to be different.
[00:03:31] Johnson continued his very privileged upbringing, going from Eton to Oxford, being the president of something called the Oxford Union, the debating society that is a sort of stepping stone to British politics, and then had a series of jobs as a journalist before becoming an MP, a member of Parliament, then Mayor of London, an MP again and now Prime Minister.
[00:04:00] We have evidentlysped through his career, we've gone very fast through it, but, the thing to remember is that he had an incredibly good education and seemed to just cruise through life from exclusive school to exclusive university through to his current position as the Prime Minister.
[00:04:21] While it’s easy to put this down to wealthand privilege, Johnson won a scholarship to Eton and Oxford, which you can’t do unless you are very academically talented. Clearly, he was smart, but he was also lazy, and reportedly would wait until the last minute to actually do any work, which seems quite believable if you have seen how his government operates.
[00:04:50] In any case, from a young age, Johnson had a keen interest in language.
[00:04:56] He studied Classics at Oxford, Latin and Greek, which to those of you outside the UK might not seem like the route to financial success and power, however it was for a long time considered the only respectable course for the British ruling class - a gentleman should know how to use Latin and Greek, and shouldn’t be bothered with more practical studies, of mathematics or business, or anything like that.
[00:05:27] His classical education is still very visible when you hear him speak, and he often uses probably some of the most complicated, archaic vocabulary of any English-speaking world leader, the kind of words that even most English speakers would have to look up in a dictionary.
[00:05:48] Just have a listen to this clip and see if you can understand what he’s saying.
[00:05:54] (...) Boris Johnson:[00:05:54] Front row by the way. And why is he, why is Achilles so cheesed off? Because somebody has taken away his prize, his gerass, a girl by the name of Briseis of the lovely cheeks and who has done this to him? A man who cannot run as fast as Achilles. A man who is not as good at fighting as Achilles, who's less clever, less charismatic. And yet who is able to expropriate his girlfriend or slave girl war booty to be exact because he, that man, is set in obscure and supposedly God-given authority because he is a King. And in the wrath of Achilles, we find not just the bruised ego of a proud man. In that first line of Greek literature we find (...)
[00:06:43] Alastair Budge:[00:06:43] if you got that, congratulations.
[00:06:45] This is Boris Johnson taking part in a debate of ancient Rome versus ancient Greece.
[00:06:52] With Boris Johnson, there is almost always a reason for everything. He has cultivated this image as a scruffy, lazy, normal person with the same vices, the same problems as everyone else.
[00:07:09] But this is highly cultivated. His hair is always messy, but he messes it up before he goes in front of a TV camera. He makes sure that the photographers are taking pictures of him when he goes out running dressed in ridiculous clothes, and it is all part of a carefully maintained image.
[00:07:31] As one of his first bosses said, “He is a sly fox, disguised as a teddy bear.”
[00:07:38] So, coming back to the language he uses, we have to think that there is a reason for using this kind of complicated, archaic language.
[00:07:48] On one level, it’s strange, as Johnson knows the power of communicating clearly.
[00:07:54] Here’s him explaining exactly that.
[00:07:57] Boris Johnson:[00:07:57] I think one thing that is.
[00:07:59] Incredibly important is to try to speak. I fail totally in this. I catch myself endlessly on the radio. You're waffling and blurbing and using all sorts of endless Latinate words in exactly that way and that what people listen to are short Anglo Saxon words that readily correspond to some object in the universe that they can identify.
[00:08:23] So. In other words, talk, talk, simply use plain English and talk about stuff in the real world.
[00:08:31] Alastair Budge:[00:08:31] But Johnson can’t resist using this complicated language. He knows that, although it shows his privilege and his elite education, this actually helps him seem more genuine.
[00:08:45] In Britain, and perhaps this comes from the historically highly class-based society, there is this strange tradition of having a educated, upper-class person in a position of power, and everyone just automatically trusting them it seems. Boris’s language screams elite education, as does his accent, and so exactly where he comes from is very clear from the words that come out of his mouth.
[00:09:17] But while other politicians who might have had a similarly privileged upbringing, or indeed Prince William or Prince Harry, they would shy away, they would hide from their elite education by softening their accents, or trying to talk in a more ‘man on the street’ way, Johnson does completely the opposite.
[00:09:40] He makes no apologies for his education, and he makes no apologies for his wealth.
[00:09:46] Indeed, when he was Mayor of London he also wrote a weekly newspaper column for the Daily Telegraph, for which he was paid £250,000 a year.
[00:10:00] When he was questioned about having this very well-paying second job, he dismissed the money as ‘chicken-feed’ - food for chicken. This was in 2009, right after the financial crisis hit, but it didn’t really matter as his persona that he had created, and the language he used, had already positioned him in people’s minds as this intellectual man who had a god-given right to be rich, so what did it matter if he thought that a second job that paid more than 8 times the national average was nothing? He was Boris.
[00:10:40] So, Boris Johnson uses complicated language to impress, to position himself in people’s minds as a member of the intellectual elite, born to lead the country.
[00:10:53] But the rest of his persona, from the messy clothes to the multitude of affairs he has had - he still, interestingly enough, refuses to say exactly how many children he has - all of this ‘unpolitically correct’ behaviour has helped create this strange image of a man who is both elite but also completely normal.
[00:11:19] He has human flaws that people can relate to, and this humanisessomeone who has otherwise lived a life so completely different to 99.99% of people in the UK.
[00:11:35] So, coming back to language again, whatever anyone’s political views on Boris Johnson are, it’s hard to contest the fact that he does have an excellent range of vocabulary, and has the ability to use language to create very memorable images.
[00:11:54] Now, this can be both positive and negative, but in both cases it’s very powerful.
[00:12:00] In 2004, for example, when asked about the fact that the prime minister Tony Blair wasn’t appearing for press interviews, Johnson compared Blair to “a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet”.
[00:12:17] Harry Houdini was the famous escape artist, a pigletis a baby pig, and greased means covered in grease, so it’s very slippery.
[00:12:28] When one of Johnson’s speeches was criticised by Arnold Schwarzenegger, he said "It was a low moment to have myrhetoricalskills denounced by a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg.”
[00:12:43] Monosyllabic, in case you didn’t know that word, means only speaking in monosyllables, short words only consisting of one syllable, and cyborg is a sort of part human, part robot.
[00:12:56] And when he was asked about whether he wanted to become Prime Minister of the UK, he said that he stood as much chance of being prime minister as he did of “being reincarnated as an olive”, of being reborn as an olive.
[00:13:13] These are, for the most part, quite funny, very visual and memorable, and not deeply offensive.
[00:13:21] But he has used the same linguistic style to conjure up images that certainly are divisive and offensive.
[00:13:30] He wrote a column in the Daily Telegraph that compared Muslim women who wear the burqa to "bank robbers and "letter boxes".
[00:13:39] He said that if gay marriage was OK, then he saw no reason in principlewhy three men shouldn’t get married, or two men and a dog.
[00:13:50] And referring to the EU, he said that "Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods."
[00:14:04] Part of the reason that this language is so effective is that it is memorable, it’s the complete opposite of the kind of avoiding, non-committal language that British politicians used before him.
[00:14:18] Like politicians in many countries, British politicians would often avoid actually saying what was going on, instead preferring to just repeat a point that their communications team had told them to say.
[00:14:33] In some cases this was almost comic - just have a listen to this clip of the previous leader of the Labour party, a man called Ed Miliband. Listen to him repeating the same thing over and over.
[00:14:49] Ed Milliband:[00:14:49] These strikes are wrong at a time when negotiations are still going on, but parents and the public have been let down by both sides because the government has acted in a reckless and provocative manner. After today's disruption, I urge both sides to put aside the rhetoric, get around the negotiating table and stop it happening again.
[00:15:09] Interviewer:[00:15:09] Um, I listened to your speech in Wrexham, you talked about the Labour party being a movement, a lot of people in that movement. Uh, are people on strike today and they'll be looking at you and thinking, well, you're describing these strikes as wrong while aren't you giving us more leadership as a leader of the labour movement.
[00:15:23] Ed Milliband:[00:15:23] At a time when negotiations are still going on, I do believe these strikes are wrong.
[00:15:28] And that's why I say both sides should after today's disruption get around the negotiating table, put aside the rhetoric and solve the problem out. Because the public and parents have been let down by both sides. The government's acted in a reckless and provocative manner.
[00:15:43] Alastair Budge:[00:15:43] Ridiculous, right?
[00:15:46] Johnson was abreath of fresh air. He didn’t seem to have a filter, he made offensive statements, and didn’t abide by the status quo.
[00:15:57] It’s probably about now that you are thinking I’m going to make a comparison between another world leader with a strange, blond hairdoand Boris Johnson. Don’t worry, that’s coming in a minute.
[00:16:10] First though, there’s a final point about Boris Johnson that actually puts him in exactly the same category as previous politicians that avoid answering tough questions, like our earlier example of Ed Miliband.
[00:16:25] Instead of avoiding the question or just repeating a previous point, Johnson would use humour to not answer the question or change the subject, often using archaic, complicated language.
[00:16:40] For example, he was asked about rumours that he was having an affairand had got a woman pregnant, he replied with:
[00:16:49] “I have not had an affairwith Petronella. It is completebalderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle.”
[00:16:58] Now, the ‘I have not had an affairwith Petronella’ part you probably understand.
[00:17:03] The next part might be harder. Balderdash is an old, uncommon word meaning something that’s completely made up. An inverted pyramid means a pyramid that is upside down, and piffle is a word meaning nonsense, not true.
[00:17:21] Don’t worry if you didn’t understand it, that isn’t language that you would find many native speakers using.
[00:17:26] The rumours, by the way, turned out to be completely true.
[00:17:31] It’s time now to make a few comparisons between the current residents of 10 Downing Street and The White House, and to think a little bit about how the language of Boris Johnson compares to the language of Donald Trump.
[00:17:47] On one level, they are polar opposites. Johnson uses complicated, intellectual language, thinks of himself as a scholar, writes history books, and wants to be seen as a public intellectual and member of the ruling class, someone who is destined to rule.
[00:18:08] Trump, on the other hand, has no interest in history, a very basic language, positions himself as an outsider, and believes that your bank balance is a sign of how smart you are.
[00:18:21] Yet here they both are, riding populist waves, certainly both ‘elite’ in terms of how rich they are, yet positioning themselves as the saviours of the working class.
[00:18:34] You can think of this as an example of the difference between the UK and the US.
[00:18:39] In the UK a man who demonstrates his privilege through every word that comes out of his mouth canappeal to the poorest in society, partly because of this idea I mentioned earlier where there’s this culture, this tradition, of intellectual upper-class normally men just being accepted as leaders, regardless of any other qualifications they might or rather might not have.
[00:19:06] In the US, on the other hand, Trump’s appeal is through this image he has created of a master businessman, so it almost doesn’t matter what kind of language he uses or whether he is thought to be a keenhistorian.
[00:19:21] No doubt a Boris Johnson type figure in the US, who used classical, complicated language and positioned himself as an intellectual would never work. Certainly it was one of the common criticisms of Obama, that he was too academic, too aloof, and unapproachable, too unlike the man on the street.
[00:19:46] And a Donald Trump-type figure, a brashbusinessman who bragged about how much money he had and spoke in short, basicsentences, would never have any success in the UK.
[00:19:58] Brits have this strange relationship with class, education and privilege, and Boris Johnson is the epitome of it.
[00:20:08] One final interesting point on Boris Johnson and language is something that he has been accused of trying to do, and that is manipulate Google search results for particular word combinations that he has used.
[00:20:23] As you know, if you search for something on Google, it will show you the most popular result for what you type in, it will show you results for what Google thinks you are looking for.
[00:20:34] If you can control what Google thinks is popular, then you can push a result further down the search results, and mean it’s harder to find.
[00:20:44] For example if you remember the Brexit campaign, Boris Johnson had made a series of claims about how much the UK pays to the EU, and he had toured the country in a big red bus.
[00:20:58] A few years after this campaign, in 2019, Boris Johnson gave a really strange interview where he was asked what he did to relax, and he said he painted model buses. Now, this, in the UK at least, would be a really unorthodox hobby.
[00:21:20] Nobody had ever heard of Johnson saying it, so it was a really strange thing to say.
[00:21:27] The theory goes that he was actually trying to manipulate the search results. Before, if you typed in 'Boris Johnson bus’, then you’d see things about him going around the country in the Brexit bus.
[00:21:41] But after this interview, if you typed in 'Boris Johnson bus' then you would see articles about this weird interview, pushing the articles about the Brexit bus down the search results.
[00:21:55] Similarly, there were rumours of him having an affair with a model, and he then used the term 'model of restraint' in parliament, so if you searched for 'Boris Johnson model', you would see links about this quote as opposed to articles about him having an affair.
[00:22:14] Evidently, there is no way of proving this, and it’s not so easy to fool Google, but it certainly does seem very strange.
[00:22:23] So, that is the English of Boris Johnson.
[00:22:26] It’s a strange combination of unfiltered, classical, complicated, upper class, funny, offensive, but most definitely unique.
[00:22:39] OK then, that is it for today’s episode.
[00:22:44] I hope it’s been an interesting one, and you’ve learned something new about this eccentric yet powerful man.
[00:22:52] As always I’d love to know what you thought of today’s episode. You can jump into the discussion on our forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com
[00:23:02] And as a final reminder, if you are looking for access to the transcripts, subtitles, and key vocabulary, and if you’re interested in becoming a member of a growing community of curious minds from 37 different countries, exchanging ideas, doing meetups, and generally improving their English in a more interesting way, then you should definitely check out becoming a member of Leonardo English.
[00:23:27] The place to go for that is leonardoenglish.com.
[00:23:32] You’ve been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:23:37] I’m Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I’ll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF PODCAST]
Alastair Budge:[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge and today we are going to be talking about The English of Boris Johnson.
[00:00:29] The episode a few weeks ago on The English of Donald Trump proved to be one of the most popular ones we’ve done so far, so, by popular demand, today we are going to be talking about Trump’s British counterpart, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson.
[00:00:48] Before we get right into that though, let me remind you that you can get all of the bonus episodes, plus subtitles, transcripts, and key vocabulary, over on the website, which is leonardoenglish.com.
[00:01:02] This is also where you can check out becoming a member of Leonardo English, and join a community of curious minds from all over the world, doing meetups, exchanging ideas, and generally, improving their English in a more interesting way.
[00:01:18] So if that sounds good to you, and I certainly hope it does, then the place to go to is leonardoenglish.com.
[00:01:27] OK then, let’s get started.
[00:01:30] You probably know a bit about Boris Johnson, and today’s episode isn’t going to be a history lesson about the man, and his rise to power, although we will touch on that.
[00:01:41] We are instead going to focus on how he talks, the language he uses, why he talks this way, why this appeals to British people, and we’ll also talk about how different this is to Donald Trump.
[00:01:58] But we do need a little background before we get right into his language, because it’s first important to understand exactly who Boris Johnson actually is, where he comes from, and to try to get into the mind of the man, before we talk about his language.
[00:02:18] So, the first thing that we need to clarify is that his first name isn’t actually Boris. It’s Alexander.
[00:02:29] Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in 1964, in New York. His family, reportedly, still calls him ‘Al’, short for Alexander.
[00:02:41] He started using the name ‘Boris’ when he began Eton, the most exclusive boarding school in the United Kingdom, and where countless previous prime ministers had gone to school.
[00:02:54] Alexander is a relatively common name in the United Kingdom, but Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson wanted to be anything other than common.
[00:03:06] Boris, on the other hand, is not a common name, and so evidently this suited the 13-year old Boris Johnson much better than Alexander.
[00:03:17] So we can clearly see, from a young age that Boris knew the importance of public image - your name matters, and if you want to stand out, you need to be different.
[00:03:31] Johnson continued his very privileged upbringing, going from Eton to Oxford, being the president of something called the Oxford Union, the debating society that is a sort of stepping stone to British politics, and then had a series of jobs as a journalist before becoming an MP, a member of Parliament, then Mayor of London, an MP again and now Prime Minister.
[00:04:00] We have evidentlysped through his career, we've gone very fast through it, but, the thing to remember is that he had an incredibly good education and seemed to just cruise through life from exclusive school to exclusive university through to his current position as the Prime Minister.
[00:04:21] While it’s easy to put this down to wealthand privilege, Johnson won a scholarship to Eton and Oxford, which you can’t do unless you are very academically talented. Clearly, he was smart, but he was also lazy, and reportedly would wait until the last minute to actually do any work, which seems quite believable if you have seen how his government operates.
[00:04:50] In any case, from a young age, Johnson had a keen interest in language.
[00:04:56] He studied Classics at Oxford, Latin and Greek, which to those of you outside the UK might not seem like the route to financial success and power, however it was for a long time considered the only respectable course for the British ruling class - a gentleman should know how to use Latin and Greek, and shouldn’t be bothered with more practical studies, of mathematics or business, or anything like that.
[00:05:27] His classical education is still very visible when you hear him speak, and he often uses probably some of the most complicated, archaic vocabulary of any English-speaking world leader, the kind of words that even most English speakers would have to look up in a dictionary.
[00:05:48] Just have a listen to this clip and see if you can understand what he’s saying.
[00:05:54] (...) Boris Johnson:[00:05:54] Front row by the way. And why is he, why is Achilles so cheesed off? Because somebody has taken away his prize, his gerass, a girl by the name of Briseis of the lovely cheeks and who has done this to him? A man who cannot run as fast as Achilles. A man who is not as good at fighting as Achilles, who's less clever, less charismatic. And yet who is able to expropriate his girlfriend or slave girl war booty to be exact because he, that man, is set in obscure and supposedly God-given authority because he is a King. And in the wrath of Achilles, we find not just the bruised ego of a proud man. In that first line of Greek literature we find (...)
[00:06:43] Alastair Budge:[00:06:43] if you got that, congratulations.
[00:06:45] This is Boris Johnson taking part in a debate of ancient Rome versus ancient Greece.
[00:06:52] With Boris Johnson, there is almost always a reason for everything. He has cultivated this image as a scruffy, lazy, normal person with the same vices, the same problems as everyone else.
[00:07:09] But this is highly cultivated. His hair is always messy, but he messes it up before he goes in front of a TV camera. He makes sure that the photographers are taking pictures of him when he goes out running dressed in ridiculous clothes, and it is all part of a carefully maintained image.
[00:07:31] As one of his first bosses said, “He is a sly fox, disguised as a teddy bear.”
[00:07:38] So, coming back to the language he uses, we have to think that there is a reason for using this kind of complicated, archaic language.
[00:07:48] On one level, it’s strange, as Johnson knows the power of communicating clearly.
[00:07:54] Here’s him explaining exactly that.
[00:07:57] Boris Johnson:[00:07:57] I think one thing that is.
[00:07:59] Incredibly important is to try to speak. I fail totally in this. I catch myself endlessly on the radio. You're waffling and blurbing and using all sorts of endless Latinate words in exactly that way and that what people listen to are short Anglo Saxon words that readily correspond to some object in the universe that they can identify.
[00:08:23] So. In other words, talk, talk, simply use plain English and talk about stuff in the real world.
[00:08:31] Alastair Budge:[00:08:31] But Johnson can’t resist using this complicated language. He knows that, although it shows his privilege and his elite education, this actually helps him seem more genuine.
[00:08:45] In Britain, and perhaps this comes from the historically highly class-based society, there is this strange tradition of having a educated, upper-class person in a position of power, and everyone just automatically trusting them it seems. Boris’s language screams elite education, as does his accent, and so exactly where he comes from is very clear from the words that come out of his mouth.
[00:09:17] But while other politicians who might have had a similarly privileged upbringing, or indeed Prince William or Prince Harry, they would shy away, they would hide from their elite education by softening their accents, or trying to talk in a more ‘man on the street’ way, Johnson does completely the opposite.
[00:09:40] He makes no apologies for his education, and he makes no apologies for his wealth.
[00:09:46] Indeed, when he was Mayor of London he also wrote a weekly newspaper column for the Daily Telegraph, for which he was paid £250,000 a year.
[00:10:00] When he was questioned about having this very well-paying second job, he dismissed the money as ‘chicken-feed’ - food for chicken. This was in 2009, right after the financial crisis hit, but it didn’t really matter as his persona that he had created, and the language he used, had already positioned him in people’s minds as this intellectual man who had a god-given right to be rich, so what did it matter if he thought that a second job that paid more than 8 times the national average was nothing? He was Boris.
[00:10:40] So, Boris Johnson uses complicated language to impress, to position himself in people’s minds as a member of the intellectual elite, born to lead the country.
[00:10:53] But the rest of his persona, from the messy clothes to the multitude of affairs he has had - he still, interestingly enough, refuses to say exactly how many children he has - all of this ‘unpolitically correct’ behaviour has helped create this strange image of a man who is both elite but also completely normal.
[00:11:19] He has human flaws that people can relate to, and this humanisessomeone who has otherwise lived a life so completely different to 99.99% of people in the UK.
[00:11:35] So, coming back to language again, whatever anyone’s political views on Boris Johnson are, it’s hard to contest the fact that he does have an excellent range of vocabulary, and has the ability to use language to create very memorable images.
[00:11:54] Now, this can be both positive and negative, but in both cases it’s very powerful.
[00:12:00] In 2004, for example, when asked about the fact that the prime minister Tony Blair wasn’t appearing for press interviews, Johnson compared Blair to “a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet”.
[00:12:17] Harry Houdini was the famous escape artist, a pigletis a baby pig, and greased means covered in grease, so it’s very slippery.
[00:12:28] When one of Johnson’s speeches was criticised by Arnold Schwarzenegger, he said "It was a low moment to have myrhetoricalskills denounced by a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg.”
[00:12:43] Monosyllabic, in case you didn’t know that word, means only speaking in monosyllables, short words only consisting of one syllable, and cyborg is a sort of part human, part robot.
[00:12:56] And when he was asked about whether he wanted to become Prime Minister of the UK, he said that he stood as much chance of being prime minister as he did of “being reincarnated as an olive”, of being reborn as an olive.
[00:13:13] These are, for the most part, quite funny, very visual and memorable, and not deeply offensive.
[00:13:21] But he has used the same linguistic style to conjure up images that certainly are divisive and offensive.
[00:13:30] He wrote a column in the Daily Telegraph that compared Muslim women who wear the burqa to "bank robbers and "letter boxes".
[00:13:39] He said that if gay marriage was OK, then he saw no reason in principlewhy three men shouldn’t get married, or two men and a dog.
[00:13:50] And referring to the EU, he said that "Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods."
[00:14:04] Part of the reason that this language is so effective is that it is memorable, it’s the complete opposite of the kind of avoiding, non-committal language that British politicians used before him.
[00:14:18] Like politicians in many countries, British politicians would often avoid actually saying what was going on, instead preferring to just repeat a point that their communications team had told them to say.
[00:14:33] In some cases this was almost comic - just have a listen to this clip of the previous leader of the Labour party, a man called Ed Miliband. Listen to him repeating the same thing over and over.
[00:14:49] Ed Milliband:[00:14:49] These strikes are wrong at a time when negotiations are still going on, but parents and the public have been let down by both sides because the government has acted in a reckless and provocative manner. After today's disruption, I urge both sides to put aside the rhetoric, get around the negotiating table and stop it happening again.
[00:15:09] Interviewer:[00:15:09] Um, I listened to your speech in Wrexham, you talked about the Labour party being a movement, a lot of people in that movement. Uh, are people on strike today and they'll be looking at you and thinking, well, you're describing these strikes as wrong while aren't you giving us more leadership as a leader of the labour movement.
[00:15:23] Ed Milliband:[00:15:23] At a time when negotiations are still going on, I do believe these strikes are wrong.
[00:15:28] And that's why I say both sides should after today's disruption get around the negotiating table, put aside the rhetoric and solve the problem out. Because the public and parents have been let down by both sides. The government's acted in a reckless and provocative manner.
[00:15:43] Alastair Budge:[00:15:43] Ridiculous, right?
[00:15:46] Johnson was abreath of fresh air. He didn’t seem to have a filter, he made offensive statements, and didn’t abide by the status quo.
[00:15:57] It’s probably about now that you are thinking I’m going to make a comparison between another world leader with a strange, blond hairdoand Boris Johnson. Don’t worry, that’s coming in a minute.
[00:16:10] First though, there’s a final point about Boris Johnson that actually puts him in exactly the same category as previous politicians that avoid answering tough questions, like our earlier example of Ed Miliband.
[00:16:25] Instead of avoiding the question or just repeating a previous point, Johnson would use humour to not answer the question or change the subject, often using archaic, complicated language.
[00:16:40] For example, he was asked about rumours that he was having an affairand had got a woman pregnant, he replied with:
[00:16:49] “I have not had an affairwith Petronella. It is completebalderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle.”
[00:16:58] Now, the ‘I have not had an affairwith Petronella’ part you probably understand.
[00:17:03] The next part might be harder. Balderdash is an old, uncommon word meaning something that’s completely made up. An inverted pyramid means a pyramid that is upside down, and piffle is a word meaning nonsense, not true.
[00:17:21] Don’t worry if you didn’t understand it, that isn’t language that you would find many native speakers using.
[00:17:26] The rumours, by the way, turned out to be completely true.
[00:17:31] It’s time now to make a few comparisons between the current residents of 10 Downing Street and The White House, and to think a little bit about how the language of Boris Johnson compares to the language of Donald Trump.
[00:17:47] On one level, they are polar opposites. Johnson uses complicated, intellectual language, thinks of himself as a scholar, writes history books, and wants to be seen as a public intellectual and member of the ruling class, someone who is destined to rule.
[00:18:08] Trump, on the other hand, has no interest in history, a very basic language, positions himself as an outsider, and believes that your bank balance is a sign of how smart you are.
[00:18:21] Yet here they both are, riding populist waves, certainly both ‘elite’ in terms of how rich they are, yet positioning themselves as the saviours of the working class.
[00:18:34] You can think of this as an example of the difference between the UK and the US.
[00:18:39] In the UK a man who demonstrates his privilege through every word that comes out of his mouth canappeal to the poorest in society, partly because of this idea I mentioned earlier where there’s this culture, this tradition, of intellectual upper-class normally men just being accepted as leaders, regardless of any other qualifications they might or rather might not have.
[00:19:06] In the US, on the other hand, Trump’s appeal is through this image he has created of a master businessman, so it almost doesn’t matter what kind of language he uses or whether he is thought to be a keenhistorian.
[00:19:21] No doubt a Boris Johnson type figure in the US, who used classical, complicated language and positioned himself as an intellectual would never work. Certainly it was one of the common criticisms of Obama, that he was too academic, too aloof, and unapproachable, too unlike the man on the street.
[00:19:46] And a Donald Trump-type figure, a brashbusinessman who bragged about how much money he had and spoke in short, basicsentences, would never have any success in the UK.
[00:19:58] Brits have this strange relationship with class, education and privilege, and Boris Johnson is the epitome of it.
[00:20:08] One final interesting point on Boris Johnson and language is something that he has been accused of trying to do, and that is manipulate Google search results for particular word combinations that he has used.
[00:20:23] As you know, if you search for something on Google, it will show you the most popular result for what you type in, it will show you results for what Google thinks you are looking for.
[00:20:34] If you can control what Google thinks is popular, then you can push a result further down the search results, and mean it’s harder to find.
[00:20:44] For example if you remember the Brexit campaign, Boris Johnson had made a series of claims about how much the UK pays to the EU, and he had toured the country in a big red bus.
[00:20:58] A few years after this campaign, in 2019, Boris Johnson gave a really strange interview where he was asked what he did to relax, and he said he painted model buses. Now, this, in the UK at least, would be a really unorthodox hobby.
[00:21:20] Nobody had ever heard of Johnson saying it, so it was a really strange thing to say.
[00:21:27] The theory goes that he was actually trying to manipulate the search results. Before, if you typed in 'Boris Johnson bus’, then you’d see things about him going around the country in the Brexit bus.
[00:21:41] But after this interview, if you typed in 'Boris Johnson bus' then you would see articles about this weird interview, pushing the articles about the Brexit bus down the search results.
[00:21:55] Similarly, there were rumours of him having an affair with a model, and he then used the term 'model of restraint' in parliament, so if you searched for 'Boris Johnson model', you would see links about this quote as opposed to articles about him having an affair.
[00:22:14] Evidently, there is no way of proving this, and it’s not so easy to fool Google, but it certainly does seem very strange.
[00:22:23] So, that is the English of Boris Johnson.
[00:22:26] It’s a strange combination of unfiltered, classical, complicated, upper class, funny, offensive, but most definitely unique.
[00:22:39] OK then, that is it for today’s episode.
[00:22:44] I hope it’s been an interesting one, and you’ve learned something new about this eccentric yet powerful man.
[00:22:52] As always I’d love to know what you thought of today’s episode. You can jump into the discussion on our forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com
[00:23:02] And as a final reminder, if you are looking for access to the transcripts, subtitles, and key vocabulary, and if you’re interested in becoming a member of a growing community of curious minds from 37 different countries, exchanging ideas, doing meetups, and generally improving their English in a more interesting way, then you should definitely check out becoming a member of Leonardo English.
[00:23:27] The place to go for that is leonardoenglish.com.
[00:23:32] You’ve been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:23:37] I’m Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I’ll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF PODCAST]
Alastair Budge:[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge and today we are going to be talking about The English of Boris Johnson.
[00:00:29] The episode a few weeks ago on The English of Donald Trump proved to be one of the most popular ones we’ve done so far, so, by popular demand, today we are going to be talking about Trump’s British counterpart, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson.
[00:00:48] Before we get right into that though, let me remind you that you can get all of the bonus episodes, plus subtitles, transcripts, and key vocabulary, over on the website, which is leonardoenglish.com.
[00:01:02] This is also where you can check out becoming a member of Leonardo English, and join a community of curious minds from all over the world, doing meetups, exchanging ideas, and generally, improving their English in a more interesting way.
[00:01:18] So if that sounds good to you, and I certainly hope it does, then the place to go to is leonardoenglish.com.
[00:01:27] OK then, let’s get started.
[00:01:30] You probably know a bit about Boris Johnson, and today’s episode isn’t going to be a history lesson about the man, and his rise to power, although we will touch on that.
[00:01:41] We are instead going to focus on how he talks, the language he uses, why he talks this way, why this appeals to British people, and we’ll also talk about how different this is to Donald Trump.
[00:01:58] But we do need a little background before we get right into his language, because it’s first important to understand exactly who Boris Johnson actually is, where he comes from, and to try to get into the mind of the man, before we talk about his language.
[00:02:18] So, the first thing that we need to clarify is that his first name isn’t actually Boris. It’s Alexander.
[00:02:29] Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in 1964, in New York. His family, reportedly, still calls him ‘Al’, short for Alexander.
[00:02:41] He started using the name ‘Boris’ when he began Eton, the most exclusive boarding school in the United Kingdom, and where countless previous prime ministers had gone to school.
[00:02:54] Alexander is a relatively common name in the United Kingdom, but Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson wanted to be anything other than common.
[00:03:06] Boris, on the other hand, is not a common name, and so evidently this suited the 13-year old Boris Johnson much better than Alexander.
[00:03:17] So we can clearly see, from a young age that Boris knew the importance of public image - your name matters, and if you want to stand out, you need to be different.
[00:03:31] Johnson continued his very privileged upbringing, going from Eton to Oxford, being the president of something called the Oxford Union, the debating society that is a sort of stepping stone to British politics, and then had a series of jobs as a journalist before becoming an MP, a member of Parliament, then Mayor of London, an MP again and now Prime Minister.
[00:04:00] We have evidentlysped through his career, we've gone very fast through it, but, the thing to remember is that he had an incredibly good education and seemed to just cruise through life from exclusive school to exclusive university through to his current position as the Prime Minister.
[00:04:21] While it’s easy to put this down to wealthand privilege, Johnson won a scholarship to Eton and Oxford, which you can’t do unless you are very academically talented. Clearly, he was smart, but he was also lazy, and reportedly would wait until the last minute to actually do any work, which seems quite believable if you have seen how his government operates.
[00:04:50] In any case, from a young age, Johnson had a keen interest in language.
[00:04:56] He studied Classics at Oxford, Latin and Greek, which to those of you outside the UK might not seem like the route to financial success and power, however it was for a long time considered the only respectable course for the British ruling class - a gentleman should know how to use Latin and Greek, and shouldn’t be bothered with more practical studies, of mathematics or business, or anything like that.
[00:05:27] His classical education is still very visible when you hear him speak, and he often uses probably some of the most complicated, archaic vocabulary of any English-speaking world leader, the kind of words that even most English speakers would have to look up in a dictionary.
[00:05:48] Just have a listen to this clip and see if you can understand what he’s saying.
[00:05:54] (...) Boris Johnson:[00:05:54] Front row by the way. And why is he, why is Achilles so cheesed off? Because somebody has taken away his prize, his gerass, a girl by the name of Briseis of the lovely cheeks and who has done this to him? A man who cannot run as fast as Achilles. A man who is not as good at fighting as Achilles, who's less clever, less charismatic. And yet who is able to expropriate his girlfriend or slave girl war booty to be exact because he, that man, is set in obscure and supposedly God-given authority because he is a King. And in the wrath of Achilles, we find not just the bruised ego of a proud man. In that first line of Greek literature we find (...)
[00:06:43] Alastair Budge:[00:06:43] if you got that, congratulations.
[00:06:45] This is Boris Johnson taking part in a debate of ancient Rome versus ancient Greece.
[00:06:52] With Boris Johnson, there is almost always a reason for everything. He has cultivated this image as a scruffy, lazy, normal person with the same vices, the same problems as everyone else.
[00:07:09] But this is highly cultivated. His hair is always messy, but he messes it up before he goes in front of a TV camera. He makes sure that the photographers are taking pictures of him when he goes out running dressed in ridiculous clothes, and it is all part of a carefully maintained image.
[00:07:31] As one of his first bosses said, “He is a sly fox, disguised as a teddy bear.”
[00:07:38] So, coming back to the language he uses, we have to think that there is a reason for using this kind of complicated, archaic language.
[00:07:48] On one level, it’s strange, as Johnson knows the power of communicating clearly.
[00:07:54] Here’s him explaining exactly that.
[00:07:57] Boris Johnson:[00:07:57] I think one thing that is.
[00:07:59] Incredibly important is to try to speak. I fail totally in this. I catch myself endlessly on the radio. You're waffling and blurbing and using all sorts of endless Latinate words in exactly that way and that what people listen to are short Anglo Saxon words that readily correspond to some object in the universe that they can identify.
[00:08:23] So. In other words, talk, talk, simply use plain English and talk about stuff in the real world.
[00:08:31] Alastair Budge:[00:08:31] But Johnson can’t resist using this complicated language. He knows that, although it shows his privilege and his elite education, this actually helps him seem more genuine.
[00:08:45] In Britain, and perhaps this comes from the historically highly class-based society, there is this strange tradition of having a educated, upper-class person in a position of power, and everyone just automatically trusting them it seems. Boris’s language screams elite education, as does his accent, and so exactly where he comes from is very clear from the words that come out of his mouth.
[00:09:17] But while other politicians who might have had a similarly privileged upbringing, or indeed Prince William or Prince Harry, they would shy away, they would hide from their elite education by softening their accents, or trying to talk in a more ‘man on the street’ way, Johnson does completely the opposite.
[00:09:40] He makes no apologies for his education, and he makes no apologies for his wealth.
[00:09:46] Indeed, when he was Mayor of London he also wrote a weekly newspaper column for the Daily Telegraph, for which he was paid £250,000 a year.
[00:10:00] When he was questioned about having this very well-paying second job, he dismissed the money as ‘chicken-feed’ - food for chicken. This was in 2009, right after the financial crisis hit, but it didn’t really matter as his persona that he had created, and the language he used, had already positioned him in people’s minds as this intellectual man who had a god-given right to be rich, so what did it matter if he thought that a second job that paid more than 8 times the national average was nothing? He was Boris.
[00:10:40] So, Boris Johnson uses complicated language to impress, to position himself in people’s minds as a member of the intellectual elite, born to lead the country.
[00:10:53] But the rest of his persona, from the messy clothes to the multitude of affairs he has had - he still, interestingly enough, refuses to say exactly how many children he has - all of this ‘unpolitically correct’ behaviour has helped create this strange image of a man who is both elite but also completely normal.
[00:11:19] He has human flaws that people can relate to, and this humanisessomeone who has otherwise lived a life so completely different to 99.99% of people in the UK.
[00:11:35] So, coming back to language again, whatever anyone’s political views on Boris Johnson are, it’s hard to contest the fact that he does have an excellent range of vocabulary, and has the ability to use language to create very memorable images.
[00:11:54] Now, this can be both positive and negative, but in both cases it’s very powerful.
[00:12:00] In 2004, for example, when asked about the fact that the prime minister Tony Blair wasn’t appearing for press interviews, Johnson compared Blair to “a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet”.
[00:12:17] Harry Houdini was the famous escape artist, a pigletis a baby pig, and greased means covered in grease, so it’s very slippery.
[00:12:28] When one of Johnson’s speeches was criticised by Arnold Schwarzenegger, he said "It was a low moment to have myrhetoricalskills denounced by a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg.”
[00:12:43] Monosyllabic, in case you didn’t know that word, means only speaking in monosyllables, short words only consisting of one syllable, and cyborg is a sort of part human, part robot.
[00:12:56] And when he was asked about whether he wanted to become Prime Minister of the UK, he said that he stood as much chance of being prime minister as he did of “being reincarnated as an olive”, of being reborn as an olive.
[00:13:13] These are, for the most part, quite funny, very visual and memorable, and not deeply offensive.
[00:13:21] But he has used the same linguistic style to conjure up images that certainly are divisive and offensive.
[00:13:30] He wrote a column in the Daily Telegraph that compared Muslim women who wear the burqa to "bank robbers and "letter boxes".
[00:13:39] He said that if gay marriage was OK, then he saw no reason in principlewhy three men shouldn’t get married, or two men and a dog.
[00:13:50] And referring to the EU, he said that "Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods."
[00:14:04] Part of the reason that this language is so effective is that it is memorable, it’s the complete opposite of the kind of avoiding, non-committal language that British politicians used before him.
[00:14:18] Like politicians in many countries, British politicians would often avoid actually saying what was going on, instead preferring to just repeat a point that their communications team had told them to say.
[00:14:33] In some cases this was almost comic - just have a listen to this clip of the previous leader of the Labour party, a man called Ed Miliband. Listen to him repeating the same thing over and over.
[00:14:49] Ed Milliband:[00:14:49] These strikes are wrong at a time when negotiations are still going on, but parents and the public have been let down by both sides because the government has acted in a reckless and provocative manner. After today's disruption, I urge both sides to put aside the rhetoric, get around the negotiating table and stop it happening again.
[00:15:09] Interviewer:[00:15:09] Um, I listened to your speech in Wrexham, you talked about the Labour party being a movement, a lot of people in that movement. Uh, are people on strike today and they'll be looking at you and thinking, well, you're describing these strikes as wrong while aren't you giving us more leadership as a leader of the labour movement.
[00:15:23] Ed Milliband:[00:15:23] At a time when negotiations are still going on, I do believe these strikes are wrong.
[00:15:28] And that's why I say both sides should after today's disruption get around the negotiating table, put aside the rhetoric and solve the problem out. Because the public and parents have been let down by both sides. The government's acted in a reckless and provocative manner.
[00:15:43] Alastair Budge:[00:15:43] Ridiculous, right?
[00:15:46] Johnson was abreath of fresh air. He didn’t seem to have a filter, he made offensive statements, and didn’t abide by the status quo.
[00:15:57] It’s probably about now that you are thinking I’m going to make a comparison between another world leader with a strange, blond hairdoand Boris Johnson. Don’t worry, that’s coming in a minute.
[00:16:10] First though, there’s a final point about Boris Johnson that actually puts him in exactly the same category as previous politicians that avoid answering tough questions, like our earlier example of Ed Miliband.
[00:16:25] Instead of avoiding the question or just repeating a previous point, Johnson would use humour to not answer the question or change the subject, often using archaic, complicated language.
[00:16:40] For example, he was asked about rumours that he was having an affairand had got a woman pregnant, he replied with:
[00:16:49] “I have not had an affairwith Petronella. It is completebalderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle.”
[00:16:58] Now, the ‘I have not had an affairwith Petronella’ part you probably understand.
[00:17:03] The next part might be harder. Balderdash is an old, uncommon word meaning something that’s completely made up. An inverted pyramid means a pyramid that is upside down, and piffle is a word meaning nonsense, not true.
[00:17:21] Don’t worry if you didn’t understand it, that isn’t language that you would find many native speakers using.
[00:17:26] The rumours, by the way, turned out to be completely true.
[00:17:31] It’s time now to make a few comparisons between the current residents of 10 Downing Street and The White House, and to think a little bit about how the language of Boris Johnson compares to the language of Donald Trump.
[00:17:47] On one level, they are polar opposites. Johnson uses complicated, intellectual language, thinks of himself as a scholar, writes history books, and wants to be seen as a public intellectual and member of the ruling class, someone who is destined to rule.
[00:18:08] Trump, on the other hand, has no interest in history, a very basic language, positions himself as an outsider, and believes that your bank balance is a sign of how smart you are.
[00:18:21] Yet here they both are, riding populist waves, certainly both ‘elite’ in terms of how rich they are, yet positioning themselves as the saviours of the working class.
[00:18:34] You can think of this as an example of the difference between the UK and the US.
[00:18:39] In the UK a man who demonstrates his privilege through every word that comes out of his mouth canappeal to the poorest in society, partly because of this idea I mentioned earlier where there’s this culture, this tradition, of intellectual upper-class normally men just being accepted as leaders, regardless of any other qualifications they might or rather might not have.
[00:19:06] In the US, on the other hand, Trump’s appeal is through this image he has created of a master businessman, so it almost doesn’t matter what kind of language he uses or whether he is thought to be a keenhistorian.
[00:19:21] No doubt a Boris Johnson type figure in the US, who used classical, complicated language and positioned himself as an intellectual would never work. Certainly it was one of the common criticisms of Obama, that he was too academic, too aloof, and unapproachable, too unlike the man on the street.
[00:19:46] And a Donald Trump-type figure, a brashbusinessman who bragged about how much money he had and spoke in short, basicsentences, would never have any success in the UK.
[00:19:58] Brits have this strange relationship with class, education and privilege, and Boris Johnson is the epitome of it.
[00:20:08] One final interesting point on Boris Johnson and language is something that he has been accused of trying to do, and that is manipulate Google search results for particular word combinations that he has used.
[00:20:23] As you know, if you search for something on Google, it will show you the most popular result for what you type in, it will show you results for what Google thinks you are looking for.
[00:20:34] If you can control what Google thinks is popular, then you can push a result further down the search results, and mean it’s harder to find.
[00:20:44] For example if you remember the Brexit campaign, Boris Johnson had made a series of claims about how much the UK pays to the EU, and he had toured the country in a big red bus.
[00:20:58] A few years after this campaign, in 2019, Boris Johnson gave a really strange interview where he was asked what he did to relax, and he said he painted model buses. Now, this, in the UK at least, would be a really unorthodox hobby.
[00:21:20] Nobody had ever heard of Johnson saying it, so it was a really strange thing to say.
[00:21:27] The theory goes that he was actually trying to manipulate the search results. Before, if you typed in 'Boris Johnson bus’, then you’d see things about him going around the country in the Brexit bus.
[00:21:41] But after this interview, if you typed in 'Boris Johnson bus' then you would see articles about this weird interview, pushing the articles about the Brexit bus down the search results.
[00:21:55] Similarly, there were rumours of him having an affair with a model, and he then used the term 'model of restraint' in parliament, so if you searched for 'Boris Johnson model', you would see links about this quote as opposed to articles about him having an affair.
[00:22:14] Evidently, there is no way of proving this, and it’s not so easy to fool Google, but it certainly does seem very strange.
[00:22:23] So, that is the English of Boris Johnson.
[00:22:26] It’s a strange combination of unfiltered, classical, complicated, upper class, funny, offensive, but most definitely unique.
[00:22:39] OK then, that is it for today’s episode.
[00:22:44] I hope it’s been an interesting one, and you’ve learned something new about this eccentric yet powerful man.
[00:22:52] As always I’d love to know what you thought of today’s episode. You can jump into the discussion on our forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com
[00:23:02] And as a final reminder, if you are looking for access to the transcripts, subtitles, and key vocabulary, and if you’re interested in becoming a member of a growing community of curious minds from 37 different countries, exchanging ideas, doing meetups, and generally improving their English in a more interesting way, then you should definitely check out becoming a member of Leonardo English.
[00:23:27] The place to go for that is leonardoenglish.com.
[00:23:32] You’ve been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:23:37] I’m Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I’ll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF PODCAST]
