Language Change - AQA A-level English Language

Reasons for language change

Technology, social changes, travel, science

Political correctness

refraining from causing emotional harm

Prescriptivism

Belief that one type of language is acceptable - judgemental

Descriptivism

Belief that all types of language are acceptable - non judgemental

Borrowing

taking words from other languages

example of borrowing

Judge - France, Opera - Latin

Affixation

adding a prefix or suffix to a word

Compouding

two-words combined together

blending

two words moulded together (smog = smoke and fog)

functional shift

the conversion of one word class to another

Neosemic shift

Gaining a new meaning (gay used to mean joyful)

Clipping

clipping part of a word (omnibus to bus)

Pejoration

the process by which a word gains a negative meaning (AWFUL)

Amelioration

a word gains a more positive meaning (pretty - cunning to beautiful)

Euphemism

An indirect, less offensive way of saying something that is considered unpleasant

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary

1755

Samuel Johnson

created the first dictionary of the English language, took 9 years and was written by hand

Haugen

Process of Standardisation

Haugen's Four Stage Process

Selection - This is the choice of a language variety for specific purposes. It is associated with official status or national roles in status planning.

Codification - This step is related to the stabilization of the norm selected. It is also related to the standardization process in corpus planning.

Elaboration - This step involves the expansion of language functions and the assignment of new codes, such as scientific and tecnical. It is also called language modernization by Fishman.

Implementation -This step involves the actions of government agencies, instututions, and writers in adopting and using the selected and codified norm. Adopted by mass media.

Aitchison's metaphors (1996)

three metaphors, crumbling castle, infectious disease, damp spoon syndrome

Aitchison's PIDC model

Potential, implementation, diffusion, codification

Swift

our language is extremely imperfect and suggested we should make rules to follow

Webster

the british spelling system is illogical and inconvenient and made an american english dictionary in 1832

Caxton's Printing Press (1476)

Spelling needed to be accessible to anyone.
Caxton set up a printing press in the vicinity of Westminster Abbey and began to print books, some in Latin as had been traditional, but Caxton also printed books in English. Because there was no standardization in English spelling, Caxton's choices often became the standard.

Griffon

mistakes will always b made with apostrophies

Chen's S-curve model

S-curve is the model based on the idea that language change can occur at a slow pace creating the initial curve of the 'S' and then increases speed as it becomes more common and accepted in the language. No change is 100% effective

Halliday's functional theory

The idea that language changes because society does: So, to take an example, technology.

Linguistic reflectionism

language reflects the needs, views and opinions of society

Bailey's Wave Model

The wave model works on the same basis as a drop of water hitting the surface of a lake - it creates ripples. Essentially, the closer you are to the drop of water the stronger the ripple.

Trudgill

Challenges the wave model
•He believes that change comes from big cities, is passed to big towns and then to smaller towns, missing out country dwellings.
He believes that the core case study of this is Yorkshire, where the archaic 'thee' and 'thou' are still in use in place of 'you'.

David Crystal's tide metaphor

He created his own Tide Metaphor to explain language change. In this, he suggests that language is like a tide - constantly changing. It ebbs and flows, bringing in new words and taking out others in a natural, progressive way. In using this metaphor, Crystal claims that changes are not for the worse, or for the better. "Just changes," he says
In addition, no two tides are exactly the same, therefore describing that all change is different, lasts different amounts of time and will effect different groups of people.
David Crystal 2011

David Crystal 2011

'All living languages change. They have to. Languages have no existence apart from the people who use them. And because people are changing all the time, their language changes too, to keep up with them. The only languages that don't change are dead ones.'

Hockett

Random fluctuation theory - uunpredictable changes in langauge change, compares to fashion.

Kachru's Circles

inner, outer and expanding circle

Synchronic change

The study of language change at a particular moment in time.

Donald Mackinnon

Categorises the attitudes people may have to language use:
1. As incorrect or correct
2. As pleasant or ugly
3. Socially acceptable or socially unacceptable
4. Morally acceptable or morally unacceptable
5. Appropriate in context or inappropriate in context
6. Useful or useless

Substratum Theory

when speakers learn a new language then learn in imperfectly and pass it onto future generations e.g phonetic imperfections

Diachronic change

The historical development of language

Old English

The Anglo-Saxon language spoken from approximately 450 to 1150 A.D. in what is now Great Britain.

Middle English

1066AD when the duke of Normandy invaded and conquered.

Early Modern English

A form of the English language used from 1500 to around 1650 (Shakespeare)

Late Modern English

1800-present
significantly larger vocab

The Inkhorn controversy

During the 16th-17th century there was a growing pride in the mother tongue. A return to English following many years of French rule led to an increased sense of national pride. Writers of the Renaissance began to expand the vocabulary by coining new words, using compounding or affixation, or boring extensively from the classical language Latin and Greek and to the romance languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese.

spelling reform

The attempt by governments or academic institutions to change the spellings of words to more accurately reflect their current pronunciations.

reformists

two types; the current alphabet should be enlarged to reflect sounds and the alphabet should be retrained

Webster

was concerned about the English spelling system and the divide between written language and spoken language.

Webster's differences

English vs American (theatre vs theater) (colour vs color) (centre vs center)

Robert Lowth

1762 - wrote influential grammar book imposing Latin grammatical rules onto the English language

ELF

English as a lingua franca

orthography

the conventional spelling system of a language

Dysphemism

A derogatory or unpleasant term used instead of a pleasant or neutral one

semantic drift

the tendency for words' meanings to morph gradually over time to the point that the distance between the original meaning and the current one can be quite striking: silly used to mean blessed

The great vowel shift (1400-1600AD)

A huge phonological change.
long vowels sifted in pronunciation
-wife=weef
-mouse-moos

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

-the idea that different languages create different ways of thinking
-It came about in 1929. The theory is named after the American anthropological linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf.
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Shakespeare

Invented 2000 words which raised the status of English internationally

The Norman Conquest

1066, William the Conquerer invades

410 AD

Romans leave Britain
Latin becomes less of an influence

British Empire

1583 - English was spoken by 400 million people, causing new varieties to emerge

Global English

1.5 billion speakers
1/4 = native
1/4 = L2
1/2 = functional fluency

Lowth's 7 rules of grammar

- standardisation of who and whom
- should be a difference between will and shall
- prepositions placed before the noun

Murray

Pronuntiation is of great importance - 'h' and 'g' dropping is improper

Aitchison

Critised Lowth and Murray - looking down on the working class

800AD

Vikings invade - over 2000 were claimed

Johnson's Dictionary

1755 - standardised around 40,000 words

Kandiah

They said that the reason for the spread of English was due to colonisation, as a result English gained importance for the administration of the country; serving an official purpose in the country within law, education, and the government.

David Crystal

They said that the reason for the spread of English wasn't just colonisation, this explanation is too simplistic, instead it was because of power.

McArthur

Circle of World English

Circle of World English

This global English theory involved categorising varieties of English geographically; moving outwards from the central concept of "World Standard English". The varieties are split into eight regions which each have their own Standard English variety and many non-standard forms. To evaluate theory, a positive aspect of it is that its a descriptivist ideology, where each variety is equal and there is no hierarchy. However their are too many varieties to categorise, and there is no such thing as "World Standard English".