Language change - THEORIES

David Crystals Tide Metaphor

Explains the idea of language evolution being continuous by drawing parallels with consistency of tides.

Language change similar to a tide by:

• New and old: New things washed up on shore, while tide takes other things away

• Permanence: Some things stay on beach permanently, others there for short time

• Uniqueness: No two tides are the same

• Impact: Some tides only affect certain parts of beach

• Unpredictability: Language change is unpredictable, like tides

Illustrates all change is different, affects different groups of people, lasts for different amount of time

Lexical gap theory

New lexemes coined through necessity to fill ‘lexical gaps’. Those neologisms will not already be in use, but will fit the current patterns in the language.

Eg. git, get, gut already exist so ‘gat’ could fill a lexical gap

Random fluctuation theory (Postal & Hockett)

Language is as unpredictable as fashion; hard to forsee future trends. Hockett also believed change to be unpredictable due to the errors which occur by chance and are then transmitted through contact.

Eg. typo ‘pwned’ for ‘owned’ has spread in online gaming

*synthesises with tide metaphor*

Functional theory (Halliday)

Language alters as the needs of its users alter.

New lexemes appear as they are required for new inventions, ideas etc

Other lexemes become archaic once they are necessary in real life: garments such as the doublet and kirtle are no longer worn, so we stop using the words.

Rob Drummond’s theory

Language change is natural, and allows for identity enacting and performativity. You can’t say language is declining just because you fear/don’t understand new words.

Joseph and Hock

‘Languages…do not exist in a vacuum’ there is always linguistic contact between groups, influencing changes in the lexicon.

Donald Mackinnon

Claims people tend towards polarised attitudes when it comes to language, adopting extreme views, considering linguistic forms to be:

• correct or incorrect, pleasant or ugly, socially acceptable or unacceptable, morally acceptable or unacceptable, appropriate or inappropriate in context, useful or useless

*synthesise with Dennis Freeborn Regional Variation*

Jean Aitchison

Suggested there are three ways of viewing the phenomena of language change: as progress, as decay or simply as being inevitable and free of value judgement.

Prescriptivists have usually viewed change as decay, whereas descriptivists largely adopt the more neutral position of inevitability.

Decay theory

Aitchison proposes 3 metaphorical models for the attitude that language change is a slow decay.

• damp spoon syndrome: that slovenliness and laziness are leading to change and variation in language, like placing a damp spoon in the sugar bowl

• Crumbling castle: that the English language is a beautiful old building that needs to be preserved, but has long passed its pinnacle

• Infectious disease: that changes are ‘caught’ through contact with dangerous/inferior varieties

Progress theory

became popular among some descriptivists during the second half of the 19th century.

Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species had been published in 1859, introducing wider society to the concepts of human evolution and natural selection.

Similar notions began to be applied to language; if certain language features survive and thrive, whereas others die out as archaisms, then the remaining linguistic variety must be best suited to its environment.

Otto Jespersen

Considered language change as progressive when it creates more economical structures; change is progress when we can ‘express the greatest amount of meaning with the simplest mechanism’

*synthesis with Halliday*

Inevitability theory

Today, descriptive linguists largely adopt the neutral attitude that language change is neither positive nor negative; it is inevitable occurrence and therefore needs to be described.

One potential contemporary challenge to this view concerns language preservation. Language death is often viewed as a cultural tragedy, and so measures to preserve are taken, such as the 2024 welsh language education bill

*synthesise with tide metaphor*