BBC World Research Articles

In search of English: a traveller's guide

This contribution derives from a lecture broadcast on the BBC World Service in October 1993 as the second Oxford University Press/BBC Lecture. David Crystal takes the reader on a journey to visit selected features of contemporary English in use, with the intent of pointing out to the traveller some implications for the presentation of language in textbooks and other curriculum documents. ELT Journal is pleased to complete the cycle of lecture, broadcast, and publication.

Our Wanton Abuse of the Technology

This study, based on in depth interviews with 40 television news journalists, analyses the changing face of location based crisis news gathering in the age of globally and internationally available twenty-four hour news services such as CNN, Sky News, the BBC World Service and Euronews

Reflections on a genocide

I had only to be escorted a few yards from the floor on which we spent our initial night in Rwanda to see my first massacre site. The languid senior information officer whom I had interrupted listening to the BBC World Service news at 6 am swung open the door, still holding the large receiver under his free arm, on to a small room where 17 Jesuit priests had been shot. Blood had sprayed on the walls and ceiling and there were empty cartridge cases among the blood soaked blankets on the floor. When, in my ignorance of equatorial Africa, I suggested that the adjacent burial pit looked too overgrown to be contemporary he shrugged and walked off. Within days we learnt to relax our usual caution over the veracity of allegations. The nature of what has happened in Rwanda, the sheer numbers, and the brazen openness of the atrocities mean that no one has any need to manufacture stories. Reports of massacres soon began to seem commonplace and it became the bizarre that continued to have an impact. We were told of the member of a death squad killer who refused to kill a little Tutsi girl. Why? Had this man not set himself the task of filling his latrine pit with bodies? Apparently once he had fulfilled his self imposed quota he lost interest in killing any more. The massacres in Rwanda began after the presidents of both Rwanda and Burundi were assassinated when their plane was hit by a missile as it was landing at Kigali airport. By 5 …

The Order of Things

THE ORDER OF THINGS / Ranbir Sidhu IT'S ONLY A GAME, his voice fading on the wind. That's what he said. I could stiU feel the grip of his fingers where he had held my chUd's arm, his hand, large, engulfing it, fingers touching at the tips. There was already a Une of grey in his beard, though he was a young man, even then, already retired, a national name. His beard tied back into a second, scruffy chin, a pink turban, his eyes on me, Watch the baU, not me, and again his voice, Watch the baU! But I always looked back into his eyes. Why was he here, why wasn't he out there, where the newspapermen attacked each other for his photograph, where the radio sang his praises, where all India looked to the holy dirt his feet walked on? It's only a game, he shouted. They said he had walked with Gandhiji to the sea. They said that he never, not even as a baby, wore anything but homespun. They said that on every corner he passed, an assassin waited—why?—but that divine forces always protected him. I launched the cricket baU into the air, but it feU thudding in the hot dirt only a few feet away, a red, undistinguished baU, and he looked at me as though I, personally, had lost Pakistan. Over thirty years later they found his body in one of the smaU aUeys suffocating the dark streets around the Golden Temple of the Sikhs, the shops crowding into it, the hands of beggars having stripped most possessions from his body, a kirpan, a holy knife in his gut. I heard this on the BBC World Service, sitting alone— my wife had taken our daughter shopping for a prom dress— in our Berkeley home with its false EngUsh countryside facade. Outside, the automated sprinklers silent—there was a drought and the lawn slowly died as summer aged. Three days ago and only now had the news squeezed out of a Punjab under martial law. A month before, Indira Gandhi's own Sikh bodyguards had murdered her, claiming it as vengeance for the attack she had ordered some months previous on the Golden Temple. Thousands had been küled in that original attack, and thousands more died after the assassination. AnU was Kirpal's son and my business partner and he celebrated both events, because both, he said, would show the Sikhs how important it was to have a separate country, to finally rise up and forge KhaUstan from the aUoys of the Punjab. The Missouri Review · 295 But why hadn't Anil told me of his father's death? I had spoken to him two days before and he had said nothing. I pressed the button on my phone with his name on it. AnU? AnU, I heard, I ... I don't know what to say___ His voice, clear, strong, Yes, yes, I know, the faUing sari prices in Pakistan. Have you seen The Wall Street Journal? What? I said, confused. No, AnU bhai, I heard about your father. Kirpalji. Your father. It is terrible news. I am so sorry. And then, my voice revealing a strained but rising frustration, Why didn't you caU and teU me, why did I have to hear this on the radio? AnU was süent, and I could imagine him looking into the telephone, annoyed. He was never one to talk about things Uke this, never one to give reasons, root out explanations. Finally he said, The funeral was yesterday. They took his ashes and they dumped them in the Ganges. His wish, and not the Sutlej as we wanted. For aU he did, he was at least a hero of the Punjab, and not one of India. They should have thrown his ashes in the Sutlej. Then he added, his voice crisp unaffected, We are stiU on for the auction tomorrow? It is important with aU that has happened. But I protested, Anil, we don't have to do this, we don't you know. But he insisted, adding, You know Papaji and I, we had our differences. The dead...

History of international broadcasting

Part 1 Birth of a medium: from entertainment and commercial to propaganda broadcasting. Part 2 A weapon of war: British WWII propaganda Nazi broadcasting US wartime broadcasting Japanese broadcasting in the Pacific the Cold War the voice of America. Part 3 Radio as an instrument of foreign policy: high power transmission jamming the BBC World Service the CIA the collapse of communism the Arab world religious broadcasting future of international AM broadcasting.

Citizen 2000: Emotional warming

‘Scientists are convinced that…’ No, it wasn't part of a cosmetics commercial, but a much repeated phrase in a book for youngsters by a very well known science journalist, warning of the dangers of global warming and the Greenhouse Effect. I was irritated by the book's dogmatic approach, so much so that an interview involving myself and the author was arranged for the BBC World Service—but more of that later.

BBC English Dictionary

This dictionary is the result of a major partnership between BBC English and Collins Cobuild, reflecting the spoken language as used on the BBC World Service. The dictionary includes over 60,000 references, 70,000 examples, explanations in full sentences using simple and natural English and 1000 encyclopaedic entries giving information on the countries, capital cities and political leaders in the news.

BBC World Service glossary of current affairs

Journal Article BBC World Service glossary of current affairs Get access BBC World Service glossary of current affairs. ByBBC Monitoring. Harlow: Longman. 1991. 813pp. Index. £95.00. ISBN 0 582 06847 9. Lis Parcell Lis Parcell 1Library, Royal Institute of International Affairs Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 68, Issue 4, October 1992, Page 734, https://doi.org/10.2307/2622749 Published: 01 October 1992

REVIEW ARTICLE: ERITREA: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND MYTHOLOGY

Journal Article REVIEW ARTICLE: ERITREA: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND MYTHOLOGY Get access PATRICK GILKES PATRICK GILKES The author works for the BBC World Service Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 90, Issue 361, October 1991, Pages 623–628, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a098473 Published: 01 October 1991

China and Indonesia Make up: Reflections on a Troubled Relationship

In February 1989 I was in Jakarta covering JIM II, the second Jakarta informal meeting on Cambodia, for the BBC World Service. Like so many other peace initiatives on that troubled country in recent years, the meeting ended in dismal failure on the night of February 22. Feeling weary and despondent I retired to my hotel. To my surprise, there was a message to telephone a long-standing contact in the foreign ministry. We spoke about the failure of the peace talks, my contact ending the conversation by saying cryptically, Be prepared for a big story tomorrow. In the morning, before an early flight to Singapore, I rang a friend on Suara Pembaruan. After coaxing, she told me that President Suharto would meet that day in Tokyo with Qian Qichen, the Chinese foreign minister. On reaching Singapore, I filed the story, pleasing editors in London when the BBC was the first to break the news that Indonesia and China had agreed to normalize their relations after a break of almost a quarter of a century.

Climate and Climate Change

A report based on a press briefing organised by The Association of British Science Writers and The Royal Society by Martin Redfern BBC World Service Science Unit

Czechoslovakia: crossroads and crises, 1918–88

Journal Article Czechoslovakia: crossroads and crises, 1918–88 Get access Czechoslovakia: crossroads and crises, 1918–88. Edited by Norman Stoneand Eduard Strouhal. London: Macmillan for BBC World Service. 1989. 336pp. £45.00; ISBN 0 333 48507 6. Judy Batt Judy Batt 1Chatham House Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 66, Issue 4, October 1990, Page 824, https://doi.org/10.2307/2620407 Published: 01 October 1990

Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation

At the Vancouver Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1983, the WCC undertook a process of making issues of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation more central to the belief and practice of the member churches. A major step in that process was taken at a Convocation held in Seoul, Korea from March 5–12, 1990. Delegates from all the member churches, with advisers, and also observers from the Roman Catholic Church met to prepare a covenant to present to the churches on these topics. The covenant will be discussed among member churches and finally come to the next WCC assembly in Vancouver in February 1991 for its final acceptance. Three of the editorial team of Transformation were present at Seoul: Tokunboh Adeyemo and Ronald Sider as participants representing the World Evangelical Fellowship and Chris Sugden as a journalist for BBC World Service, the Sunday Correspondent and the Church of England Newspaper. The three of us met regularly together and with other evangelicals (we could identify about 20 out of an attendance of about 500) at the convocation to reflect on the issues together. In this feature we share the message from the Seoul Convocation. (The three major documents of preamble, affirmations and covenant will be published and available through the WCC networks.) We reproduce a covenant that evangelicals prepared in a process where people were invited to make their own covenants and commitments together. And in two articles we share reflections that we had at the close of the convocation.

Computer misuse: Fact or invention

Computer misuse, and in particular computer hacking, has gripped the public imagination of late. A rash of US media reports crossed the Atlantic late last Autumn and gained briefer reprints in the British national press alongside tantalisingly short excerpts from European Community national dailies commenting on and reporting incidents in Belgium, France and Scandinavia. At the same time The Sunday Times identified computer pornography and children as an area of social concern while the computer security trade journals continued to highlight in some detail industrial and commercial vulnerability from disaffected computer staff or malicious or naive Outsiders. As winter wore on stories of computer hacking surfaced, with The Observer's Victor Smart taking the lead in charting the largeness of the threat that hackers posed not just to industry and the financial world but to the Government (and to any Government irrespective of Party colouring) and to the private citizen whose visage, warts and all, is now so finely-documented on a variety of computer systems. I wrote an article in The Times giving examples without company or individual names, and a riposte in The Guardian to a challenger supporting hacking. The television and radio came alive in April and subsequently, with Channel 4~and ITN leading 'The Money Programme' by a nose. The 'Today' programme, 'The World Tonight' and BBC World Service each treated the topic with ingenuity and responsibility. Channel 4 and three days later 'The Money Programme' took hacking in the round, talking to mainframe manufacturers, users and to hackers while ITN boldly eavesdropped electronically, tO the dismay of their legal advisers. As a commentator, I pointed out their action was wholly within the law, but even knowing this did not make the scrutiny of others' personal data seem a healthy or a socially acceptable pastime.

Afghanistan.

A primary health education programme broadcast to refugees in Afghanistan and Pakistan has won a major award for the BBC World Service.

Writing short stories for the BBC world service

Extensive authentic writing is a difficult thing to achieve in ELT situations. It is argued here that authenticity lies, not in (the formal features of) a sample of language plucked from its context, but in the social situation of an instance of language use, and therefore that authentic writing above all requires an authentic reader —or listener. Writing for the BBC World Service “Short Story” programme is one way of providing students with an “authentic audience” and thereby with the necessary conditions for extensive authentic writing. Such writing has three main advantages: it is both authentic and communicative, it encourages acquisition (partly through related activities such as reading and listening to short stories) and it also improves the learner-teacher relationship. The advantages of writing stories on a computer with a word-processor are considered.

Is There a Catholic Social Ethic?

In the May local council elections in the borough of Congleton, Cheshire, I stood as a Labour Party candidate in one of the wards. It consisted of rich Cheshire farmland and the result was quite predictable. I received 106 votes to the Tory 432. If Labour had won in the ward of Brereton, it would have signalled “the end of civilization as we know it”, and, to employ the phrase of Caspar Weinburger, U.S. defence spokesman, when interviewed on BBC World Service, the capitulation of the west to “Soviet hordes”. That, however, is not the point of this article. I am a “practising Catholic”, by which is meant a Catholic holding to the teaching of the Church and attending the sacraments. Now, a little down the road on which I live there happen to be a number of Catholic families, also “practising”, indeed pillars of the local Church. But in contrast to me two of these families supplied the bulk of the ten signatures the local Tory candidate required for his nomination. That is quite a public commitment because their names went up in print on the town hall and local parish notice boards, where I spotted them. As a political commitment it is second only to standing as a candidate. It was this which set me thinking if in fact we can talk about a Catholic social ethic.

“People of the pacific century” produced by tom read and presented by mary goldring,BBC world service, London, 1 October 1983 to 7 November 1983

[Extract] The old world of the Atlantic seaboard is attrophying and the countries of the Pacific rim signal the dynamics of the future. That is the qualified hypothesis underlying People of the Pacific Century, a series of six programmes originally broadcast by the BBC on its domestic Radio 4 and later in the World Service. The first programme begins with former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, alleging a lack of understanding by Europe of his part of the world whereupon Mary Goldring, the series presenter, informs listeners that the six programmes "attempt to do something about that lack of understanding; to face the real possibility that the world's axis has shifted from the old west centred on the Atlantic to the new world centred on the Pacific." Lest there be doubts of the shift, listeners are told by Singapore's Trade and Industry Minister that the old world looks "tired" and "directionless", by an American aircraft salesman that the former beneficent "Dad" of Europe is "a little senile now" and by a Harvard Business School don that the Japanese believe "Europe is dead" and see the United States as less vigorous now that Japan sells the most and best automobiles. Thus, through the series, does Mary Goldring alternate with the edited contributions of public and not-so-public Pacific people to develop the theme of the first programme, aptly titled "Seeds of Change".

The Projection of Britain: British Overseas Publicity and Propaganda, 1919-1939

This book traces the origins and early development of what are today loosely termed Britain's Overseas Information Services. It examines how, at the end of the First World War, the British government came to forfeit the considerable lead it had established in propaganda since 1914, and the reasons why it had gradually to re-enter the field during the inter-war years as a direct response to totalitarianism. It surveys the pioneering work of the Foreign Office News Department and its important press office, the commercial propaganda conducted by the Empire Marketing Board and the Travel Association, the foundation and rapid peacetime growth of the British Council to conduct 'cultural diplomacy', and the beginning of the BBC's World Service with the inauguration of foreign-language broadcasts in 1938.

LIFE WITHOUT THE TIMES

The Political QuarterlyVolume 50, Issue 3 p. 296-301 LIFE WITHOUT THE TIMES JOHN TUSA, JOHN TUSA *The author works principally for the BBC. He has been a regular presenter and writer of programmes on Radio 4 and for the BBC World Service, and now presents “Newsweek” on BBC 2.Search for more papers by this author JOHN TUSA, JOHN TUSA *The author works principally for the BBC. He has been a regular presenter and writer of programmes on Radio 4 and for the BBC World Service, and now presents “Newsweek” on BBC 2.Search for more papers by this author First published: July 1979 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-923X.1979.tb02461.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume50, Issue3July 1979Pages 296-301 RelatedInformation