jean aitchison (1996)

Question 1

(1) what does jean aitchison do and what is she famous for?

Answer 1

• a descriptivist who tries to debunk myths surrounding language changing (e.g. golden age).
• she is famous for her speech in 1996 where she proposed 3 metaphors to describe the prescriptivist attitudes towards language change.
• she also challenges the anxieties of the complaint tradition, and saying that the concern for correctness in language use is over reactive.

Question 2

DAMP SPOON metaphor:

Answer 2

• 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 3

CRUMBLING CASTLE metaphor:

Answer 3

• some prescriptivists see the EL as a beautiful, old building which needs to be preserved because it’s “crumbling away” (arguing against the golden myth and william labov).
• they consider the EL to have been carefully created until it reached the pinnacle of splendour and is now at risk.
• argues language can’t be controlled + supports james milroy: there was never a ‘golden age’ of language and there was no evidence from history of people using standard english all the time.

Question 4

INFECTIOUS DISEASE metaphor:

Answer 4

• some prescriptivists believe that we “catch” change from those around, as if language is “contagious” (argues against bailey/william labov).
• she argues people have more agency than that, they consciously pick up change/dialectal terms because they want to and choose appropriate language use for their context (convergence).
• example: brat summer, demure.