Our brains will always try to make sense of anything which is fed to it, be that by visual or
auditory input. And this is particularly true when people think they are in a learning situation
and the lecturer has some standing.
I am talking about the Dr Fox Phenomenon. In the early 70s, an actor was hired for the purpose
of some research undertaken in California. The actor was called Dr Fox and held, on three occasions, a lecture which made no sense at all. It was persuasively called “Mathematical game theory as applied to physician education”. The audience were psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, social workers and administrators – 55 in all. When questioned afterwards, they all agreed that it was an intelligible and thought-provoking lecture.
The lecture was a deliberate nonsense, similar of the kind you may find in the talk of
non-native speakers of English, although in the latter case, it is of course unintentional and
occurs quite naturally.
What I am driving at is this: when you encounter the new breed of non-native Basic Simple English (BSE) speakers as advocated by Joachim Grzega and you cannot attribute any sense at all to their gibberish, the first thing you’ll need to learn is to say “yes” or nod your approval in the right places
even though you have no idea, what’s really being said. Just pretend to understand.
Display empathy, compassion, and understanding and tolerance and kindness.
This seems more important than conveying information.
Eight year old children may for instance say: He go. And this non-contextual statement is, according
to the rules laid down in The Good Book by the followers of BGE, to be greeted with unbridled enthusiasm and adulation and encouragement.
Incidentally, your more complex brain may begin to supply the missing information and you may also wonder, why eight year olds cannot understand natural sentences and are taught the same way children with special needs are taught.
Teaching Basic Global English (BGE) is an example of neo-pidginicity, the artificially accelerated and manipulated process of attempting to engineer and oversimplify the English language. Other instances of this kind of linguistic genetic engineering are machine translations, unedited documents of international validity written by non-native speakers, the acceptance of “Local Englishes”, and non-native speakers teaching Local English.
It appears that this grossly negligent or even calculated corruption of the English language is allowed to persist unchallenged, the main reason being that many native speakers are unaware of this development. If they are aware of this they may underestimate the impact this may have on Standard English, while others may even aid and abet this engineering process or condone it with their silence.
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