Key Quotes for English Language AQA A level Paper 2

Joanna Thornborrow, 2004

'One of the most fundamental ways we have of establishing our identity, and of shaping other people's views of who we are, is through our use of language'

Jennifer Sclefani

"There are multiple meanings associated with any given linguistic feature, and the connection between form and meaning is a two-way street with a lot of roundabouts"

Accent judgement #1

"People with accents like Yorkshire, Geordie and Glaswegian are considered to be friendly, honest, but not the sharpest tool in the box"

accent judgement #2

"Birmingham, London or Liverpool speakers always get judged as 'thick' or 'untrustworthy' or just plain 'horrible' "

George Bernard Shaw

"It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him" (From the Preface of Pygmalion)

Bill Bryson (Mother Tongue)

"these Creoles... have played their part in enriching English, just as the influence of Old French and Old Norse enriched it in the past"

- Alex Werner, head of history collections at the Museum of London

"For many people, Cockney rhyming slang is intrinsic to the identity of London"

David Crystal (cockney)

"Cockney slang was never very widely known as it started as a secret way for people to talk to each other. As soon as the slang became known the cockney's stopped using it."

Kerswill (core)

"There are two things going on: youth slang, which a lot of people use. But there are [also] core users of MLE and to them it is a dialect and an accent. It doesn't have to have slang in it. It's a new kind of Cockney in a way"

Kerswill (MLE)

"A lot of the core speakers are in the East End of London, where they have low opportunities, and so one of the mechanisms when people find themselves unable to make progress in life or [are] discriminated against is to speak differently, to use that as an exclusionary strategy."

Professor Anne Curzan

"Slang is humans' linguistic creativity at work, not linguistic corruption."

Penelope Eckert (adolescents)

"Adolescents do not all talk alike; on the contrary, differences among adolescents are probably far greater than speech differences among the members of any other age group."

Paul Kerswill (2010)

"Cockney in the East End is now transforming itself into Multicultural London English, a new, melting pot mixture of all those people living here who learnt English as a second language."

Ben Rompton (2010)

"Creole was widely seen as cool, tough and good to use. It was associated with assertiveness, verbal resourcefulness, competence in heterosexual relationships and opposition to authority."

John Pitts (2012)

"resistance identity" , "people endeavouring to be incomprehensible"

Julia Snell

"no such thing as a classless voice"

Penelope Eckert (slang)

"slang is used by younger people to establish a connection to youth culture and to distinguish themselves from the older generation...to signal coolness, toughness, or attitude."

Jenny Chesire (1987)

"it is becoming recognised... that adult language, as well as child language, develops in response to important life events that affect the social relations and social attitudes of individuals"

Dan Clayton (labels)

"Language is used to label and represent individuals and groups of people, but 'ownership' of these labels is often a vexed question"

Paul Baker (professor of English Language at Lancaster University)

"Control language and you control the society"

Cameron and Coates (1985)

"The amount we talk is influenced by who we are with and what we are doing."

Deborah Cameron

"The idea that men and women... use language in very different ways and for very different reasons is one of the great myths of our times."

Dr Enam Al-Wer

"Young women are linguistic innovators"

- Leslie Milroy (2002) on dialect levelling

Increased geographical mobility leads to the "large-scale disruption of close-knit, localised networks that have historically maintained highly systematic and complex sets of socially structured linguistic norms."

a possible cause of dialect levelling - Kerswill

The increase of social mobility has led to "the consequent breakdown of tight knit working class communities" and "the increased interaction with people of other speech varieties"

Peter Trudgill (teach)

"My own response to the question of "why teach RP" is "why not?". After all, we have to teach something."

Peter Trudgill (near RP)

"There are many people who have a so-called "near-RP" accent, but this is by definition not an RP accent. When it comes to employing a codified language variety, a miss is as good as a mile."

Trudgill (accentism)

"Discrimination on the grounds of accent still, unfortunately, occurs in British society... (however) it is no longer permitted in British society to be seen to discriminate against someone on the basis of their accent - it has to masquerade as something else."

Trudgill (south levelling)

"It is therefore undoubtedly the case that lower-middle-class southeastern accents cover a wider geographical area than was formerly the case, and will probably continue to spread for some time to come."

Trudgill (EE as regional)

"It is unlikely that it (Estuary English) will ever become anything more than a regional accent, albeit the accent of a rather large region... The sociolinguistic conditions are not such that it could turn into the new RP."

Trudgill (Disagree with Zimmerman)

"We also know that linguistic innovations are not spread by radio and television"

Trudgill (phonology levelling)

"However, and this is crucial, in terms of phonology they are for the most part currently diverging, not converging."

Argot Bargy article (hostile)

"Young Afro-Caribbean men may have adopted a new style of speech as they sought to forge an identity in an often hostile society. Others were thought to have copied them"

- The rise of Multicultural London English, innit? Article (evolving)

"Language is ever evolving. Even during the relatively short time it has taken for MLE to become established, spread and now studied, it is also becoming redundant."

Sue Fox (Cambridge Study)

"The message is that people are beginning to sound the same regardless of their colour or ethnic background."

Sue Fox (Cambridge Study, location not ethnicity)

"'People say he speaks like a black boy, but he just speaks like a London boy.'"

William of Nassyngton 1325

"unlettered or learned, old or young, all could understand the English tongue"

Caxton (1400s) about his choice of language for printing press

His work is "but onely for a clerke and noble gentylman"

Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall (1604)

How "far journied gentlemen" collect words on their travels and, coming home, "pouder their talke with over-sea language"

Samuel Johnson (1700s) (perfect)

"no dictionary of a living tongue can ever be perfect since while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some falling away"

Samuel Johnson (1700s) (degeneration)

"Tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration"

Steven Pinker (laurels and togas)

"forcing modern speakers of English ... not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas."

Kaplan- Moss

"Think of it as like a nuclear reactor: too much descriptivism and the language will melt down into a radioactive mess; too much prescriptivism and the lights go out."

David Crystal (language change)

"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."

Jean Aitchison (word meanings)

"Word meanings are like stretchy pullovers, whose outline contour is visible, but whose detailed shape varies with use."

Jonathan Swift 1712 (fix)

"What I have most at heart is that some method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our language forever"

David Mitchell 2010

"The truth is I instinctively resent novelty in language, I know it's important and gives English its all-conquering strength... but when language changes, slang becomes correct, mispronunciation is overlooked and American spellings adopted, I feel like I'm a mug for having learnt all the old rules in the first place."

Jean Aitchison (probably better used for a Q4 than Q1/2)

"Naturally language changes all the time; this is a fact of life. In the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer noted that: "in forme of speche is chaunge" (language changes), and the same is true today. "

Aitchison (context)

"Different styles suit different occasions, but that no part of language is ever deformed or bad."

Aitchison (genuine)

"Without these genuine rules, communication would break down. 'Henry ate an octopus' does not mean the same as 'an octopus ate Henry'"

Aitchison (Alice in wonderland)

"But it is pointless to judge one language by the standards of another. Some of these old invented prohibitions remind one of Alice in Wonderland: 'That's not a regular rule. You invented it just now,' Alice complained to the King."

John Simon (writer) (parks)

Language should be treated like "parks, national forests, monuments, and public utilities ... available for properly respectful use but not for defacement or destruction."

Aitchison (wine)

"Yet no year can be found when language achieved some peak of perfection, like a vintage wine."

Aitchison (societal changes)

"The ever-shifting nature of language keeps it flexible, so it can cope with changing social circumstances."

Aitchison (castle)

"Language is not crumbling away. It is maintaining itself pretty efficiently"

Aitchison (adapt)

"people pick up changes because they want to. They want to fit in with social groups ... Adapting to those around is normal human behaviour"

Aitchison (identity)

"Their different accents, like their different clothes, are a mark of individuality."

Aitchison (variation)

"No change can occur without variation, though variation can sometimes exist without change."

Aitchison (context 2)

"Variation in speech is the norm. Our linguistic wardrobe contains a range of speech styles, which we suit to the occasion."

David Crystal (vacuum)

"English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language."

Nicholas Ostler, The last Lingua Franca

"The current status of English is unprecedented... With no challenger comparable to it, it seems almost untouchable..."

Crystal (language death)

"Different languages code the same message in very different ways, and when a language dies, a culture dies. We lose a way of seeing, describing and enjoying the world."

Widdowson 1997

English is a "stabilized and standardized code leased out on a global scale, and controlled by the inventors, not entirely unlike the franchise for Pizza Hut"

Crystal (spread)

The momentum of English's growth has become "so great that there is nothing likely to stop its continued spread as a global lingua franca"

Graddol

"The current global wave of English may lose momentum"

McArthur

"English is going through such radical change around the world that it is fragmenting into a 'family of languages'"

Nicholas Ostler

"English will go the same way as other powerful languages in history." "As American and English power declines around the world, English will lose its pre-eminent role." "Instead of another language taking its place, technology will intervene, allowing us to translate any language into any other language so that 'everyone will speak and write in whatever language they choose, and the world will understand'"

Mario Saraceni (umbilical)

"It's important the psychological umbilical cord linking English to its arbitrary centre in England is cut"

Professor Kofi Agyekum, head of linguistics at the University of Ghana

"There has been a significant change now, away from those who think sounding English is prestigious, towards those who value being multilingual, who would never neglect our mother tongues, and who are happy to sound Ghanaian when we speak English."

Delalorm Semabia, a Ghanaian Blogger

"The idea that intelligence is linked to English pronunciation is a legacy from colonial thinking ... People used to think that if you speak like the British then you are as intelligent as the British. But now we are waking up to the fact that we have great people here who have never stepped outside the borders."

Delalorm Semabia

"For us, English is our language - we want to break away from the old strictures, to personalise it, mix it with our local languages, and have fun with it. The whole point of language is that it's supposed to be flexible and it's meant to be fun."

Rosie Driffill (rules)

"But rules can be learned to be broken, leading to the formation of identities, cultural protests and unique means of expression."

Dr Mario Saraceni, of the University of Portsmouth

He called on native English speakers to "give up their claim to be the guardians of the purest form of the language."

Saraceni (owner)

"The English are not the only legitimate owners of the language."

Saraceni (second best)

"But the myth of the idealised native speaker needs to be abandoned. How it is spoken by others should not be seen as second best."

Saraceni (not about bowing to superiority of inner circles)

"Language use is fundamentally about mutual understanding"

Tony Thorne, curator of Slang and New language archive at King's College London.

"Reclaiming words, when done effectively, is all about power. "

S. Pinker (respect)

"Respect means treating people as they wish to be treated, beginning with names. That is why there is a clear need for guidelines."

R L Green (The Last Taboos)

"Western taboos now respect neither god nor sex, but they do respect individuals. And this is as it should be."

David Crystal (power)

"A language becomes a global language because of the power of the people who speak it."

David Crystal (slang)

"I use slang to show that I'm one of the gang"

Jonathon Green

"slang represents us at our most human"

Gary Nunn (Guardian article)

"Youth slang is one of the most consistently refreshing of argots"

Gary Nunn (fresh)

"As fresh as argot can feel, it can also become redundant, incumbent or mainstream."

Tony Thorne (language change is never apolitical)

"Language isn't just about communication, there is a strong social, political and emotional charge to it."

Kerswill (education)

"Education is essential"

Kerswill (bad and good)

"You can very quickly slip into the perception that there is good language and bad language, and then make the false link between bad language and bad people."

Benjamin Zephaniah

"Whether we like it or not, the way we talk affects the way people see us and this can have very serious consequences. I see slang like martial arts. So long as you have strong foundations, you are free to improvise."

Thorne (groups)

"All groups... always generate to some extent their own language. It's not just to communicate information, it's in order to include people into your group and exclude people out of your group."

Dr Erin Carrie

"It's human nature to try to categorise and characterise others based on any information that is available to us, including language ... it does not seem right that in our ever-improving, accepting society, we class people under a certain group as a result of how they pronounce their vowels."

David Crystal (text speech)

"used by a young generation that doesn't care about standards"

David Crystal (texting rules)

"Although many texters like to be different and enjoy breaking linguistic rules, they also know they need to be understood" (link to Kaplan Moss quote)

David Crystal (illiterate texters)

"They would not be able to use the mobile phone technology at all if they had not been taught to read and write"

David Crystal (fun text)

"The drive to be playful is there when we text, and it is hugely powerful"

David Crystal (texting is...)

"it is the latest manifestation of the human ability to be linguistically creative and to adapt language to suit the demands of diverse settings. In texting, what we are seeing, in a small way, is language in evolution"

Dr Adrian Leeman (Cambridge researcher, map project)

"when it comes to language change in England, our results confirm that there is a clear pattern of levelling towards the English of the south-east."