Chunderban Desai responding to Tatiana Thane's complaint about her interrogation by his Intelligence Corps:
"'The officers merely assumed you would cooperate, as a law-abiding - citizen.' Desai had barely checked himself from saying 'subject of His Majesty.'" (7, p. 121)
Later in Technic History and in the same volume of The Technic Civilization Saga, Dominic Flandry addressing Oleg Yesukai, Kha Khan of all the Tribes on Altai:
"'At the very least, I bring you [the Emperor's] brotherly greetings.' (That was subversive. It should have been 'fatherly.' But Oleg Khan would not take kindly to being patronized.)"
-Poul Anderson, "A Message in Secret" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 341-397 AT III, p. 350.
So Flandry pretends to fraternize.
Diplomatic language is often necessary and sometimes life-saving. I advised someone at school, when answering a question, to say not "God, no!" but "Not quite..."
In a British TV program offering advice to immigrants:
when an Asian factory worker tells his supervisor, "You MUST let me have time off work to meet my mother at the airport!" the supervisor explains that he, the supervisor, should not be told what he MUST do as if he were an inferior but instead must be asked politely for time off work...;
when the Asian factory worker enters the canteen with an English work mate, the Englishman exclaims, "There is Brown Windsor soup on the menu - you MUST have Brown Windsor soup with your lunch!"
We must allow for different uses of language in different circumstances. When an elderly Englishman referred to "American subjects," I pointed out that Americans prefer the word "citizens." (They not only prefer the word. They are not anyone's subjects! Their head of state is a commoner - except that, when everyone is a commoner, the word loses any significance.)
The British are regarded as diplomatic or duplicitous, depending on which word you prefer to use. The Terran Empire was inspired by the Roman Empire but sometimes resembles the British Empire.
Poul Anderson's texts are so rich that, when I reread a passage searching for remembered details to post about, I find other postable points in the process, in this case Desai's and Flandry's careful uses of language.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And I do remember Desai and Flandry's careful use of language! And the word "MUST" also has to be used with care. I'm reminded of how, when the dying Elizabeth I was told by Lord Burghley that she MUST do something, the old Queen had enough strength to reprimand her too forward minister: "Little man, you don't use the word MUST with princes!"
And Her Majesty of Great Britain does have American subjects, if you define that to mean "North America." I mean her Canadian subjects.
And even in the US there are shades of nuance and status about the word "citizen." Respectable law abiding citizens, legal resident aliens who have all the privileges of citizens except the right to vote and hold office, and lowest of all foreigners unlawfully in the US.
Ad astra! Sean
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