george zipf's theory of least effort (1949)

Question 1

(1) what did zipf theorise in his book ‘Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least Effort’?

Answer 1

• the distribution of word use was due to the tendency to communicate efficiently with least effort.
• he states that it’s human nature to want the greatest outcome at the least amount of work. if we can get the same outcome by putting in less effort we can do so.
• a part of human nature “to work smarter and not harder.”

Question 2

(2) what does zipf outline?

Answer 2

he outlined his ‘queasy distaste’ for the ‘vulgarity of some current language usages’ which is driven by sloppiness/laziness - speakers are simplifying their speech to save effort.

Question 3

(3) examples of observations he made:

Answer 3

• clipping of words: saying maths instead mathematics, plane instead of airplane.
• ‘gonna’ instead of ‘going to’ because the latter has two fewer phonemes to articulate (less phonological effort).
• on the morphological level: speakers used ‘showed’ instead of ‘shown’ as the past participle of ‘show’ so that they have one less irregular verb form to remember - reinforcing their laziness to remember the correct grammar rule.

Question 4

EVALUATION: Damp Spoon Metaphor

Answer 4

• some prescriptivists believe that language change is caused by sloppiness/laziness. (argues against george zipf)
• this suggests that ‘bad english’ sticks to people who are lazy/passive.
• she says the only time that our speech is incorrect because of laziness, is due to people being drunk or under the influence of drugs (poor muscular coordination).
• when it comes to people using glottal stops/omission, she says that isn’t a sign of laziness instead it’s a sign of accents and dialects.

Question 5

does Zipf believe language change can be controlled/directed?

Answer 5

no: he argues that no amount of rules could control language, as to deny change would be to deny human nature (put at end of paragraph).