Jean Aitchison: A Web of Worries. Flashcards
Give me the context about ‘A Web of Worries’
This was a podcast done by Jean Aitchison taken from her Reith lecture ‘Jean Aitchison: The Language Web’ in 1996 to address the outdated perceptions about English language. She uses 3 metaphors to describe and evaluate these perceptions.
What is first metaphor, it’s origin and what does it imply?
The metaphor originates from a newspaper article that complained about how ‘damp soon’ dipped in sugar.
What does this metaphor imply? It implies sloppiness and laziness is the case for language change.
If we look back at perceptions of Language Change, Laziness is a view that is most thought of when it comes to Language Change.
What is first argument against this metaphor?
- Linguist Mac Miller argues that people becoming lazier due to not using all their muscles within the mouth to produce the correct sound. He said that sound should be produced in the front of the mouth, not the back. However, this has been proved wrong.
What can example can you support that with?
An example is the concrete noun ‘butter’ which can be produced in the front of the mouth pronouncing the stop consonants ‘t’ or at the back with glottal consonants. In the song ‘Betty had a bit of butter’ contains many glottal consonants such as ‘h’ & ‘t’ this requires a lot of muscular tension as your glottis located your throat is responsible for controlling your breathing. This disapproves the notion of ‘lazy’ yet to prescriptivists having this accent has been labelled not good English.
What is the second argument that is against the first metaphor?
- Stickerlists are also angered by the omission of past tense ending such as in the simple clause ‘Peter jump’d carefully down’ instead of ‘Peter jumped’ carefully down. However, this omission is only for speech for users to talk faster. This omission doesn’t change the denotation
Lastly what is the last argument?
Fast or informal speech will have more shortened forms. However, unlikely formal speech. This is not suggesting informal speech is Bad English. But it’s all about adapting speech to fit the need of the situation. In addition to the last point. Shortening forms will creep into all types of speech. An example is actors pronouncing full words. Whilst in the past they would, now we’re seeing omission. An example is ‘handbag’ -> ‘hadbag’
What is first metaphor, it’s origin and what does it imply?
This originates from the critic John Simon who said that language should be treated like ‘parks, monuments, national forests and public services available to use but to be respected, not for destruction or defacement’
This views the English language as this sacred, high-class, rich-building that needs to be preserved in order to keep it alive and known to its visitors and users.
Jean Aitchison uses this metaphor against him by describe this view ‘in itself crumbles’
What is the argument against this second argument?
- Looking closely at the language choice ‘castle’ a concrete noun, can be fixed with structures and rules - so is language with its rules that need to be followed. We’ve seen this with language change and within our daily social situations – we can’t always use the same language rules for every situation. A formal tone with a group of friends would be inappropriate, vice versa an informal tone within a job interview.
What other linguist does this argument link in with?
This links with David Crystal’s metaphor for language change with clothing. He uses ‘clothing’ as a metaphor for different language choices to fit the occasion. Let’s say a suite is a metaphor for formal tone, if we ‘wore’ it within a social situation we would be regarded as pretentious or a show off.
What is the first argument for this second metaphor?
- New words can be used and replaced by old words if those old forms are sustained.
How can the previous for argument be disapproved?
due to the loss of forms of past tense forms such as ‘gelded’ and ‘gurded’ to replace ‘get’ and ‘gurd’. Additionally, old forms acquire regular endings an example being ‘shoot up of drugs’ -> ‘shouted up’. To add to that, new forms also require regular inflections such as ‘bland out’ to ‘blanded out’ according to a newspaper article for the New Musical Express
What is the second argument for this metaphor?
- Language needs to be, as Jean Aitchison describes it ‘neated up’ because of the unexpectedness in Language. Change is inevitable and the forms that are once regularly used become replaced due to a different society
And the example?
An example is the concrete countable noun ‘houssen’ that became ‘houses’ Similarly to ‘oxen’ that become ‘ox’. This was because children preserve the suffix ‘en’. Or another example is the neologism ‘graffiti’ which is a borrowed word from the Italian ‘graffito’ became anglicised. Additionally, graffiti which was once treated as a singular noun is now treated as a plural non-countable noun.
What is second metaphor, it’s origin and what does it imply?
This originates from the view that language was once this supposed clean version of ‘Bad English’. Now, we are catching bad English forms and spreading it to other people identical to a disease epidemic.
Jean Aitchison says that language is due to social context, this ‘catch notion is not wrong but the disease notion shouldn’t be acknowledged’
What is the first argument for this third metaphor?
- People choose to pick up changes because they want to, ultimately to fit in. For whatever instance that may be. And so, they adapt their language use.
