Language Discourses - English Language

Language change

a process of decay, collapse or evolution

Language diversity

a disease, a kind of pollution, a beautiful cross-pollination of varieties of English  

The language use of young people

a war between old and young

The language between women and men

a battle of the sexes

American English

a threat, an invading army or an unwelcome intruder

Language discourse

A way of discussing and arguing about language. Language discourses are the ways in which people describe issues such as  language change and diversity and argue about the language around us. Can also be treated as a way of thinking about, talking about and describing language.

Evolution

Flexibility of language in aspects such as lexical borrowing and grammatical change. Descriptive - shows power of ability to change.

Purity

English was a pure language but now corrupted by other forms of English. Prescriptive.

Aitchison’s Three Metaphors (1997)

Encapsulate people’s anxieties about what they perceive to be language ‘decay’ and ‘erosion’, which she believes to be false.

Crumbling Castle Metaphor

Tendency of people to treat language as an ornate building that had a peak of perfection but is now falling apart. Aitchison disagrees with this claim based on the fact that there has never been a time when English had reached its ultimate “peak of perfection”, implying it is not possible to preserve something that is constantly changing.

Damp Spoon Syndrome

‘Damp Spoon Syndrome’ implies people have become lazy with language, “precisely the kind of distaste I feel at seeing a damp spoon dipped in the sugar bowl…”. Aitchison criticised this point stating, “\[t\]he only truly lazy speech is drunken speech… and English is not getting like drunken speech”

Infectious Disease Consumption

View that people pick up language change by trying to fit in with what is new within language and society. Summarised assumption implying it is normal behaviour, claiming “\[p\]eople pick up changes because they want to. They want to fit in with social groups, and they want to adapt their hairstyle, clothes, and language to those of people they admire.”