[Bêthberry]

I think it's wise to remember that some posters here hail from the land that still gives more than lip service to "The Queen's English," a land that is still riddled with class distinctions and rigid hierarchy, and a land that has a complex history of dialect and verbal eloquence layered upon those cultural and social assumptions.

Think in terms of Her Current Majesty, who not many years ago actually used a Latin term in her Christmas address to her subjects and that term was (apparently) well received. I can't recall that she has ever used Cockney slang in a public speech, though, or Mersyside lingo, or broad Yorkshire--at least in her speeches that are carried pondside, where I suppose Cockney, Mersy and Yorkshire wouldn't be understood.

What the state of The Queen's English is in Kiwiland I don't know but it's probably true that PJ and his writers share an assumption about art prevalent amongst post modernists and advertisers: that to make a mark one must transgress (slightly in the case of adverts), that is, slightly confound and distress taste in order to offend. Only when the audience is offended are they provoked enough, apparently, to have a satisfactory aesthetic experience.

It's an aesthetic theory roughly akin to--and this will undoubtedly offend PC standards--seriously developmentally delayed people who engage in repeated head banging in order to feel something. It is an art of violence and as such far and away different from Tolkien's aesthetic.

Under such conditions, nuances of language style, tone, subtlty are lost.

Lyra speaks with a definite kind of class language at times in Pullman-a form of language which Asriel and Coulter never utter. It's a Brit thing.