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Re: Historical Connectivity and Indivisibility of

As a linguist, it is very clear to me that people exist within a cultural milieu (sometimes more than one simultaneously), and as a resident in Wales I have every sympathy with those who resent others belittling a particular culture or considering it (unlike their own) unimportant. As a boy in school I was told about the British Bulldog spirit, manifested in the certified pirate Francis Drake playing bowls while the Spanish invaded, about the evacuation from Dunkirk in World War II, etc., as part of a national "myth", and the only time Welsh, Irish, French or Scottish History were mentioned was when they affected England/Britain somehow. As a result, Scots, Irish Welsh were seen as warlike aggressors who were always "rebelling" against English rule: I still have to try and convince fellow English people that their ancestors have been involved in some very shameful activities, and nobody who boasted of the famous English "Sense of Fair Play" ever seemed to raise a voice to try and stop it. The cosy feeling that England/Britain was on the "right side" in World War II of course reinforces a rather smug idea of self-worth: if only they understood that only a fragment of that feeling is rightly felt by other peoples, with their own agendas and priorities. The British media automatically assume that all other systems are wrong and faulty in the measure that they differ from what is done in Britain. Now, the trick is to affirm what is valuable in the English "myth" while at the same time shaking people up enough to realise that everybody else on earth has a national "myth", in however tenuous a form, that it is necessary for them to affirm. That is why I don't take umbrage when Welsh people use the occasion of a rugby game to say unkind things about their eastern neighbours - in fact, I try to join in, as I know that traducing the English is one slender manifestation of national identity among a population who are largely English speaking and immersed in Anglo-American culture.

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Re: Black Egypt? Hardly!
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Re: Black Egypt? Hardly!
Historical Connectivity and Indivisibility of Man
Re: Historical Connectivity and Indivisibility of

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