AQA A-Level English Language Paper 2

Diversity - Social Groups : Bernstein's Codes

Focuses on how language is used, rather than what language is used (though, certain dialects may be associated with one code more than the other).

Diversity - Social Groups : Elaborate Code Definition

Arises when there is a gap or boundary between the speaker and listener which can only be crossed by explicit speech. It is typically used to communicate facts and abstract ideas. Has a more formally correct syntax.

Diversity - Social Groups : Restricted Code Definition

Arises when speech is exchanged against a background of shared experience and shared definitions of that experience. It is typically used to convey feelings and attitudes. Has a looser syntax and more implicit references.

Diversity - Ethnicity : Bucholtz’s Super Standard English

Diversity - Social Groups & Gender : Cheshire's Reading Study

A study to gain data about the relationship between between use of grammatical variables and adherence to peer group culture by boys and girls in Reading. Girls who approved of minor crimes were more likely to use non-standard language than those who didn't.

Diversity - Occupation, Location, & Ethnicity : Dixon, Mahoney, & Cocks' Police Study

119 participants listened to an exchange between a British male criminal suspect and a British male policeman. The results suggested that the suspect was rated significantly more guilty when he employed a Birmingham accent rather than an RP accent and attributions of guilt were associated with the suspect's perceived superiority and social attractiveness.

Diversity - Occupation : Drew & Heritage's Institutional Talk

Premised on the idea that communication in institutional settings is significantly more structured than everyday conversation. Words, expressions, pauses, and other elements of communication are used purposefully to hint at specific roles and responsibilities. Examines how power structures are reflected and reproduced through language in these institutional encounters.

Diversity - Occupation : Institutional Talk Features

Turn taking, Structural Organisation of Information, Lexical choices and jargon, Power Asymmetry

Diversity - Occupation & Gender : Eakin's & Eakin's Turns in the Workplace

In seven university faculty meetings, the men spoke for longer. The men's turns ranged from 11 to 17 seconds, the women's from 3 to 10 seconds.

Diversity - Social Groups : Eckert's Jocks and Burnouts

The parents' socioeconomic class does not affect teens' speech patterns as much as the groups they hang out with, classified as "Jocks" (school-authority-centred) and "Burnouts" (blue collar job seekers seeking autonomy). Jocks value upward mobility, while Burnouts value freedom. Burnouts don't get enough vocational training and don't pick up skills that would help them in finding blue collar jobs, so the deference to authority is useless.

Diversity - Occupation & Gender : Edelsky's Meeting Structure

In a series of meetings of a university department faculty committee, men took more and longer turns and did more joking, arguing, directing, and soliciting of responses during the more structured segments of meetings. During the 'free-for-all' parts of the meetings, women and men talked equally, and women joked, argued, directed, and solicited responses more than men.

Diversity and Change : Giles' Accommodation Theory

People tend to adjust their behaviour while interacting to control the social differences between the conversation partner, or to get approval and set a positive image in front of the conversation partner.

Diversity and Change : Convergence Definition

Changing language to match and accommodate the language of a conversation partner

Diversity and Change : Divergence Definition

Changing language to exaggerate the difference from a conversation partner

Diversity - Occupation, Location, & Ethnicity : Giles' Matched Guise Technique

Four different accents (RP, Birmingham, Somerset, South Wales) performed the same speech. RP was considered to be the 'most impressive', but regional accents were considered 'more persuasive'. The Birmingham accent was considered the 'least impressive'.

Diversity - Occupation : Herbet & Straight's Compliments

Compliments tend to flow from those of higher rank to those of lower rank.

Diversity - Occupation & Gender : Herring's Emails

In an email discussion which took place on a linguistics 'distribution list', 5 women and 30 men took part, even though women make up nearly half the members. Men's messages were, on average, twice as long as women's. Women tended to use a personal voice, whereas the tone adopted by the men who dominated the discussion was assertive.

Diversity - Occupation and Gender : Holmes & Marra's Humour

Contrary to popular belief, women use just as much humour as men, and use it for the same functions, to control discourse and subordinates and to contest superiors, although they are more likely to encourage supportive and collaborative humour.

Diversity - Occupation and Gender : Holmes' Negotiation

Female managers seem to be more likely to negotiate consensus than male managers, they are less likely to just 'plough through the agenda', taking time to make sure everyone genuinely agrees with what has been decided.

Diversity - Occupation : Hornyak's Shift

The shift from work talk to personal talk is always initiated by the highest-ranking person in the room.

Diversity and Change : Labov's Social Stratification

A small part of a population begins to pronounce certain words that have, for example, the same vowel, differently from the rest of the population. At some later point in time, for some reason, this difference in pronunciation starts to become a signal for social and cultural identity. Others of the population who wish to be identified with the group either consciously or unknowingly adopt this difference, exaggerate it, and apply it to change the pronunciation of other words.

Diversity and Change : Martha's Vineyard

Among the younger (31-45 years) speakers a movement seemed to be taking place: diverging from the pronunciations associated with the standard New England norms, and converging towards a pronunciation associated with conservative and characteristically Vineyard speakers. These speakers seem to be exploiting the resources of the non-standard accent.

Diversity - Location : Milroy's Belfast Study

The variations of language use in working-class communities in Belfast could be explained by the residents' social networks. Where people had a high-density score (due to working together, socialising with each other, etc.) their accents were reinforced and stayed strong. Where people had a low-density score (due to being unemployed, looking after children at home, etc.) their accents were less strong.

Diversity and Change : Rosewarne's Estuary English

Estuary English is overtaking RP as the accent used to disguise origins, as it obscures sociolinguistic backgrounds to appear more middle-class, and is often viewed as 'less hostile' than RP.

Diversity - Occupation : Swale's Discourse Communities

Work is a professional community, which has a set of professional practices and shares specialist knowledge and certain values. Language plays a key role here, as people working together in the same organization or field have mechanisms of intercommunication and use professional genres and jargon.

Diversity - Occupation & Gender : Tracy and Eisenberg's Criticisms

When role-playing delivering criticism to a co-worker about errors in a business letter, men showed more concern for the feelings of the person they were criticizing when in the subordinate role, while women showed more concern when in the superior role.

Diversity - Social Groups, Location, & Gender : Trudgill's Norwich Study

Found that class is more of a determiner of non-standard usage than gender, though women in all social classes are more likely to use the overt prestige or RP form. Men over-reported their non-standard usage - implying that they wished to sound more non-standard. Women over-reported their standard usage - implying that they wished to sound more standard. Concluded that women are more susceptible to overt prestige than men (and men more susceptible to covert prestige)

Diversity - Location : Watson's Liverpool Study

Considers how Liverpudlian accents are not affected by dialect levelling, as research shows a marked increase in the use of regionally restrictive features by younger speakers. This divergence from standard variant forms could be to do with covert prestige: the pronunciation is a marker of association, a badge of identity which distinguishes them from others.

Diversity - Occupation & Social Groups : Wenger's Communities of Practice

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

Change - Prescriptivism : Aitchson's Metaphors

Suggested that prescriptivists usually allude to language change with one of three metaphors: damp spoon, crumbling castle, or infectious disease.

Change - Prescriptivism : Damp Spoon Metaphor Definition

Language changes through laziness - like sugar becoming lumpy after using a wet spoon to get some from the packet.

Change - Prescriptivism : Crumbling Castle Metaphor Definition

Language changes with time - but older versions have more prestige and must be preserved and maintained instead of degraded and changed.

Change - Prescriptivism : Infectious Disease Metaphor Definition

Language changes with exposure - newer language corrupts and kills old language.

Change - How & Why : Aitchson's Stages

Suggests that there are four stages a word needs to progress through to properly integrate into a language: potential stage, implementation stage, diffusion stage, and codification stage.

Change - How & Why : Potential Stage Definition

The first stage : A need for a new word arises due to something new in the world

Change - How & Why : Implementation Stage Definition

The second stage : A few people start to incorporate the new word into their idiolects

Change - How & Why : Diffusion Stage Definition

The third stage : The word spreads and is used more widely

Change - How & Why : Codification Stage Definition

The fourth stage : The new word enters the dictionary and is used as a standard for language

Change - How & Why : Chen's S-Curve Model

Change starts in a limited way before getting faster as more users adopt the change. Language changes when people are willing to welcome new forms.

Change - How & Why : Crystal's Tide Metaphor

Language is like a tide; it takes a while for complete change. With each 'tide', some words stay, whilst others fall out of use.

Change - How & Why : Cultural Transmission Theory

Language is passed on from generations through socialisation (cultural learning). Language changes when individuals/groups feel a benefit in change (for status or belonging).

Change - How & Why : Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language

Language changes to adhere to three basic principles : economy, expressiveness, and analogy.

Change - How & Why : Economy Definition

The tendency to save effort in language, leading to 'short-cuts' in pronunciation and writing.

Change - How & Why : Expressiveness Definition

The desire to achieve greater effect through an utterance, leading to hyperbole.

Change - How & Why : Analogy Definition

The craving for order, the instinctive need to find regularity in language, leading to regularising irregularities in language.

Change - Prescriptivism : Goodman's Informalisation

Language forms traditionally considered to be exclusive for close relationships are being used more frequently in wider social contexts. Language use is becoming increasingly more informal across society.

Change - How & Why : Group-to-Group Theory

Suggests that language originates from one group and spreads slowly to other groups when members interact in different group settings.

Change - How & Why : Halliday's Functional Theory

Language changes according to the needs of its users, with words being invented or adapted for new developments. Words that are no longer needed - due to being replaced or archaic - either die out or undergo semantic change.

Change - Prescriptivism : Haugen's Schizoglossia

The fear of using the wrong form of language in a particular setting. E.g., using formal lexis in a situation where informality is expected.

Change - How & Why : Hockett's Random Fluctuation Theory

Language is inherently unstable and thus change is unpredictable. Random events and errors lead to language change as a context of ever-changing factors.

Change - Prescriptivism & Descriptivism : Johnson's Dictionary

Created the first dictionary in 1755 to "embalm his language and secure it from corruption and decay" and standardised spelling. However, he found that it was impossible to 'fix' language, as it is always changing.

Change - How & Why : Labov's Substratum Theory

Language changes through contact with other dialects and languages. This change used to occur through trading and invasion but now occurs through social media and immigration.

Change - How & Why, Prescriptivism, & Descriptivism: Sapir & Whorf's Determinism

Language and its structures limit and determine human thought, as well as other thinking processes such as categorisation, memory, and perception. This dangerously implies that people who speak one language inherently think differently to people who speak another. However, this could be positive in terms of political correctness.

Change - How & Why : Schmidt's Wave Model

A new word evolves from an original geographic centre and 'ripples' out, becoming slower to or less adopted as it expands away from the centre.

Change - How & Why : Style-to-Style Theory

Suggests that language changes as a style or register of language shifts and borrows language from another.

Change - Prescriptivism : Swift's Decay

Believed that language 'decays' as a result of more 'simplistic' language features such as contractions. Wanted English to return to its Shakespearean form, which he saw as prestigious.

Change - How & Why : Word-to-Word Theory

Suggests that individual words will change within a language and the change will then spread to other languages, in what is known as lexical diffusion. It is also common when two languages interact through mutually changing each other pronunciation.