6.2. The state and political structure of great britain

The outline of the problem discussed

1. Great Britain, its political and state system.

2. Evolution of the English language since the ancient times up to the present

day.

3. The Growth of the influence of the English language in the postwar II

period.

4. Reflection of the state and political system of Great Britain in the

vocabulary.

5. Changes in the language caused by extralinguistic factor, internal

regularities and reinterpretation of the words.

Great Britain is United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern

Ireland.

We also characterize Great Britain as a parliamentary or Constitutional

Monarchy. If we say that it’s a parliamentary monarchy it means that there is a

parliament & the monarch (now it is Queen Elisabeth II (the second) who came to

power after her father’s (George VI) death in 1952 and was crowned in Westminster

Abbey in 1953.

When we say that Great Britain is a constitutional monarchy it means that there

is a Constitution and the monarch. Great Britain is the country where there is no

written constitution. British Constitution is formed partly by statutes, partly by

Common Laws and partly by precepts and practices known as conventions. British

Constitution can be altered by the act of parliament or general agreement to change a

convention.

People’s rights are guaranteed by 3 documents:

1. Magna Carta of 1215;

2. Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 (by the way, this Act stopped its existence in a

century by the P.M. William Pitt).

3. the Bill of Rights of 1689.

Monarch’s power is limited by the Parliament according to the decision of

Glorious Revolution in 1688, according to which the monarch was made to promise

to reign but not rule, i.e. not to interfere with the state affairs. But Great Britain is

governed by her Majesty’s government in the name of the Queen who has a number

of essential rights:

1. to summon and dissolve the Parliament;

2. to have an access to parliamentary papers;

3. the Bill becomes an Act after it has been signed by the Queen;

4. the monarch has the right to declare the war and make peace, to sign peace

treaties;

5. she acts on the advice of her ministers;

6. she presents peerage;

7. she appoints the prime-minister (P.M.) (who is always the leader of the

governing party). By governing parties we mean those which come to power as

a result of elections – they are Conservative (Tory) and Labour; the latter

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came to power in 1929 after the Liberal (Whigs) had lost its governing position

and never came to power any longer.

8. Queen is the Commander-in-Chief of the royal troops;

9. she is the head of the Anglican Church;

10. she opens the parliamentary session making a throne speech in the House of

Lords;

11. she and the P.M. rule the cabinet governing the country.

The system of governing the country is presented by the government itself and

the parliament: it is shown in the table. (See the table below)

Sovereign – the Queen who is

the head of the government

who makes laws with the

Parliament; she is the head of

the courts

Government

Parliament

Cabinet House of

Lords

House of

Commons

Chairman – Prime

Minister (P.M.)

Chairman–

Lord

Chancellor

Chairman–

Speaker

Ministers Lords(ЎЦ1,000) MPs (659)

Treasury

Foreign Office

Home Office

Etc.

Law

Lords

(20)

Spiritual

Lords

(26)

Temporal

(civil)

Lords

There is no ministry of Justice in the U.K. Responsibility for the administration

of the judicial system in England and Wales is divided between the courts, the Lord

Chancellor and the Home Secretary. The Lord Chancellor is responsible for the

composition of the courts, civil law, parts of criminal procedure and law reform in

general; the Home Secretary is responsible for prevention of criminal offences, trial

and treatments of offenders and for the prison service.

The British Parliament. Its residence is Westminster Palace. The Parliament

consists of 2 Chambers (Houses). The Parliament is a law-making body. Its functions

are authorizing taxation, public expenditures and examining the actions of the

government and debating the main issues of the day.

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Parliament

The House of Lords The House of

Commons

The belonging to the House of Lords is hereditary. There were about a 1000

lords or peers, 2 archbishops, 24 bishops, spiritual lords. In 1999 most of the peers

supported Tony Blair’s suggestion for expelling the hereditary peers from the House

as they didn’t do anything except the obstruction of what had been debated

(discussed) by the House of Chambers (the Bill). As the journal “Economist” of

December 1999 points out “only 80 peers, mostly backbenchers, voted against it”.

There are 659 members of the House of Commons (M.Ps.) according to the

number of constituencies. The House of Commons is a lower Chamber, it is an

elective body from 659 constituencies. The term of Office is 5 years.

The organs of the Government.

Its residence is in White-hall. There are 3 bodies in the Government:

I. Legislative: It consists of the Parliament and the Queen.

II. Executive which consists of:

1) the Cabinet of ministers directing the national policy;

2) Government departments staffed by civil servants, responsible for

administrations at the national level. In 1995 the number of civil servants

was reduced to 520,000;

3) Local authorities administering many services at the local level;

4) Public corporations or statutory boards, responsible for the operation

of nationalized industries or public services.

III. Judiciary determines common law and interprets statutes. The head of this

body is Lord Chancellor, who must be an imminent lawyer.

As far as the reflection of the state and political system of Great Britain in the

English vocabulary is concerned it can be seen first of all in the words referring to

government, parliament, royalty and court, as well as the titles and ranks of British

aristocracy, to the art, the army, the navy – these are words which had been borrowed

from French during XI – XIV centuries (at the time of Norman conquest): royal

prerogative, royal troops, royal aircraft, royal family, royal castle, verdict, jury

appeal, arbitration, government, parliament, prince, earl - duchess, marquis –

marchioness, viscount – viscountess, baron – baroness, lord; except the words “king

and queen” which are primordial English (O.E. cwene and cyning).

Speaking about the sea terms, they are mostly English as already in the XVI –

XVII c. Great Britain became the mightiest sea power. Nevertheless there are some

Scandinavian and Spanish borrowings; in the field of art we can find both French and

Italian words (esp. in music).

Thus we can see that being a living language English undergoes constant

changes both borrowing words from the other languages and “exporting” its own

words into the other languages. Within the English language there is reinterpretation

of the words: e.g. the word “ceiling” acquired the meaning “the highest possible

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price”; the word “umbrella” acquired the meaning “a political cover” in the 1980ies

when Korean airplane was hit and exterminated, the word “model” – “mannequin”

and many others.

The borrowed and adopted new words and expressions are registered in the

English language – this is the influence of extralinguistic factor:

to pull a gimmick – сыграть шутку borrowed from

to find the gimmick – найти в чем дело German

orienteering and motorcrass came from Swedish;

ombudsman – from Danish

sputnik and lunic – from Russian

and many other words and expressions can be given to illustrate this phenomenon.

Another event to be mentioned is the effect of internal regularities, when for

example suffix –nic taken from sputnic and lunic is added to the English stem or a

word and new words come into being: knowhownic, nogoodnic, awaitnic, refusenic,

etc.

Then new words of the type “to baby-girl”; “to baby-boy” come into existence

instead of the word combination “to give a birth to a girl/a boy”, etc.

Another phenomenon to be mentioned is abbreviation and contraction while

making new words. Newly made words present abbreviations of 2 types:

1) the word is shortened: doc for doctor, flu for influenza/grippe, pop for

popular, sis for sister, lab for laboratory and many others.

2) Capital letters are used instead of words: VIP – a very important person,

BBC – British Broadcasting Cooperation, GAM – ground to air missile,

UNO - United Nations organization, etc. (Each letter presenting a word is

pronounced as in the alphabet).

a) another type of abbreviation is presented by an acronym. This is a

compound formation consisting of initial letters of a word or there can be a

syllable for a word, e.g.:

radar – radio direction and ranging,

laser – light amplitude stimulates emission of radiation.

b) Another way of making a new word is presented by back formation, e.g.

the word baby-sitter came into the language long ago, later on the verb to

baby-sit came into the language; or there was a word escalator for “moving

stairs”, later on at the time of military actions in Vietnam and Korea the

words escalation meaning “эскалация/расширение военных действий” or

the verb to escalate – “расширять военные действия” – came into being,

etc.

c) The last groups of contractions is presented by the so-called blends: these

are smog, motel, chunnel, Oxbridge, breathalyzer, spaceship, brain-drain,

etc. When 2 words make one, the first one can be presented by a letter or a

syllable or both words can be shortened: sm/og consists of smoke and fog;

ch/unnel – channel and tunnel; Ox/bridge – Oxford + Cambridge,

breath/alyzer – breath + analyzer and many other examples can be given to

illustrate this phenomenon.

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LITERATURE

1. N. Pisarevskaya Great Britain: history, geography, and culture. D, 2001, p.296.

2. N. Pisarevskaya Развитие английского языка в послевоенный период (во

второй половине ХХ в.). Методическое пособие для студентов. Д., 1989, 36.

3. O. Mutt Ten Facets of English, Tartu, 1975, c.136.