Language Change Flashcards
External language change
External language change - the result of outside influences on speakers e.g. invasions, immigration and media.
Internal language change
Internal language change - happens because of the need for simplification and ease of articulation e.g. the removal of the inflection -eth.
How ‘To Do’ got standardised
In Old and Middle English, the verb ‘to do’ had inflected endings e.g. I doth, he dost.
• In Middle English, poets often added ‘do’ to a main lexical verb often by poets and
playwrights who wanted to add an extra syllable without affecting meaning e.g. ‘And
soonest our best men with thee do go’ by John Donne Death Be Not Proud.
• It peaked in the mid 16th century then declined to become almost obsolete by the
18th century- again only really seen in religious texts or poetry.
• 18th century grammarians dictated its current usage, described as NICE:
• N- negatives: She did not take it well.
• I- interrogatives: Did she take it well? (Inversion of subject and auxiliary.)
• C- code usage: She cried whilst watching the film, but her friend did not. (Avoids repetition of
lexical verb.)
• E- emphasis: She did find it very moving.
Panlectal knowledge of language -
‘panlectal’ knowledge of language, i.e. part of the awareness of inherent variation in a language which people acquire with their particular variety of the language in question.
Pidgins
a language with no native speakers; it’s no one’s 1st language bit it’s a contact language (acts as a lingua franca). Pidgins are a mixture of 2 languages that are spoken in particular social contexts, non-pidgin speakers are unlikely to understand. E.g. Hawaiin Pidgin English was created by immigrant workers who worked for English speakers. A pidgin, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages.
Creole
a pidgin that’s become the 1st language of a new generation of speakers e.g. the Jamaican Creole exists in a range of forms along a continuum from standard Jamaican English (acrolect) to the most colloquial form (basilect) with the mesolect in the middle. People view creoles and pidgins as inferior form of a language or a ‘broken English’. This is an unhelpful deficit view as pidgins and creoles fulfil a communicative need at a given time and change quickly, so they’re a practical and functional form of language.
Diachronic linguistics
Diachronic linguistics - study of language change over time
Synchronic linguistics
Synchronic linguistics - study of linguistic elements and usage of a language
Cameron (1995)
wrote a book entitled ‘Verbal Hygiene’ where she stated that PC language causes anxiety as it challenges majority power groups assumptions; thus the main language system is under attack.
I think it is Halliday- Functional theory
language changes because society does, to suit the needs of its users. So as new words and modes of communication arrive, old words drop-out of use.
Hockertt Random fluctuation theory
Random fluctuation theory- language change isn’t a logical and ordered process. 1958. language changes owing to its instability, because of random errors and events within the language system, as a response of the ever changing context of language use and its users. E.g. Why has “book” become a synonym for “cool” (predictive texting) – a pretty random occurrence.
Debate on Standard English SE
SE is a social dialect associated with the educated middle and upper classes. Prescriptivists see it as the ‘correct’ form of language, whilst other varieties are corruptions of it. In the middle of the 20th century, education became universally and freely available in England. As our world has become increasingly reliant upon literacy, the adult population has become more literate. Children are taught to read and write in SE as it’s the variety of English required for educational purposes and other realms of public life. At one time, variation from SE in regional dialects was considered idiosyncratic, illogical and thus ‘incorrect’. Linguistic investigation into regional accents and dialects has shown hat all varieties of English are rule-governed, so SE is not a linguistically superior variety of English and its prestige lies in the social value, given to it as the language of education.
Fairclough
Changing language is not enough, we must also change society. Cameron agrees, calling non-sexist language a ‘cosmetic change’ which fails to reduce women’s oppression alone.
Kachru’s Circles Theory (1922) -
classified the varieties of English found across the globe in the inner circle (ENL countries e.g. USA and UK), outer circle (ESL countries e.g. India) and expanding circle (EFL countries e.g. China and Russia). Limitations of this model include: there’s a grey area between the inner and expanding circles, bilingual/multilingual speakers aren’t taken into account and the term inner circle implies speakers from ENL countries are central, and may thus be interpreted a superior. Norm providing (the varieties by which others are measured), norm developing (countries’ own varieties become developed), norm dependent (ENGLISH is used for practical purposes rather than for cultural integration). Before rise of internet
Biologist Pagel
Interviewed on the Word of Mouth. There’s a general rule for predicting how fast words will be replaced by unrelated words in the lexicon e.g. dogs were once called hunds. Nouns, verbs and adjectives evolve much faster than numerals.
Phonological change RP
RP was seen as the standard English accent and is referred to as ‘Queen’s English’. It’s a prestigious accent associated with being well-educated, whilst regional accents are seen as socially inferior. RP was adopted as the official accent of the BBC in 1992, so became the accent of authority. RP lost some desirability due to the emergence of celebrities with regional accents that many young speakers wanted to imitate. Some linguists claim that RP is being replaced as the most acceptable accent by Estuary English, as it’s used in the entertainment industry and is seen as commercially acceptable.
Aitchison’s S-Curve
language change often follows an s-curve, where the new form of speech is just 1 of many in existence, competing against others for prominence. The new form is slow to take off at first and then the rate of increase starts to accelerate rapidly. Once the curve flattens out the innovations has become dominant.
Pinker (2003)
wrote a book called ‘The Blank Slate’ where he coined the name ‘euphemism treadmill’, referring to the process whereby words that are introduced to replace offensive words, over time gain pejorative connotations and will need to be replaced.
Thornborough (2004)
Thornborough (2004) - “one of the most fundamental ways we have of establishing our identity and shaping other people’s views of who we are, is through out choice of language.”
Aitchison’s Crumbling Castle Metaphor (1996)
In a series of lectures for the BBC, she proposed the ‘Crumbling Castle’ model, using metaphors to explain how perceptions of decline exist. People with this worldview look upon English as a language that has reached its peak of perfection, from which it’s now in decline. Aitchison, as a descriptivist, attacked this prescriptivist view by stating that the ever-shifting nature of language keeps it flexible, so it can cope with changing social circumstances.
