Langauge Change

Question 1

What are the reasons for language change?

Answer 1

• development of technology
• social changes
• the movement and implications of travel, war, slavery and science

Question 2

Points for reforming language change has a positive impact on society

Answer 2

Para 1
- political correctness against Stephen pinkers euphemism treadmill
- Milroy and Milroy
- Norman fairclough
Para 2
- dialect levelling
- Hughes, Trudgill, watts and Malcom petyt both found NS Bradford reduces restricted code

Question 3

What is political correctness and how can it benefit society?

Answer 3

• political correctness means refraining from causing emotional harm
• this impacted language change as we develop new euphemisms into our language to find new ways of communicating with people in a ‘nicer way’ such as ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ when referring to someone who has passed
• can also mean the formation of language behaviour to minimise or avoid discrimination against certain social groups - national, ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, women, people with disabilities, social status’ and even elderly groups etc

Question 4

Stephen Pinker - The Euphemism Treadmill and how does it benefit society

Answer 4

• a concept that explains how words that are used to replace offensive terms over time become offensive themselves
• e.g “retarded” was a kinder alternative to “imbecile” but has since become offensive so is now replaced with “special needs”
• it serves as a prediction of possible offensive terms in the future, perpetuating language change and serving as an example of how the sometimes considered ‘restrictive’ nature of political correctness is in and of itself, unrestrictble and constantly subject to change

Question 5

Watts - dialect levelling (case study in Newcastle)

Answer 5

• he states that the motivation behind ongoing changes comes from young speakers who in an effort to ‘dispel’ the ‘cloth cap and clogs’ images and sound like northerners but modern northerners, thus avoid certain variants or marked features of the dialect, whilst adopting some features which are not liked to thier local dialect
• yet they don’t show a massive variation as this would seem disloyal to their geographical area
• shows that people are aware of old and new dialect features
• these new accents forms become ‘socially attractive’ because of their perceived modernity thus others accommodate towards them