Language Change

Question 1

Jean Aitchison

Answer 1

descriptivist

• Crumbling castle view
• infectious disease
• Damp spoon syndrome

Question 2

Fairclough

Answer 2

Noticed advertisements and marketing texts are increasingly attempting to mimic speech. He labelled this ‘conversationalisation’

Question 3

Sharon Goodman

Answer 3

Said we are living in a time of increased informalization. Language forms that were traditionally reserved for close personal relationships are now used in wider social contexts.

Question 4

Bollinger

Answer 4

Highlighted the increasing use of euphemism in advertising.

Question 5

Charles Locket

Answer 5

Random fluctuation theory - belief that random events and errors lead to language change.

Question 6

Suzanne romaine

Answer 6

believed language change may occur in two ways:

• Internal changes - the factors within the language.
• External changes - changing social contexts ideologies, technology and inventions

Question 7

Halliday

Answer 7

Functional theory- language changes according to the needs of its users.

Can be used to explain archaisms and the use of slang.

Question 8

David Crystal

Answer 8

Tide metaphor - language is constantly changing like the tide.

he says that if changes don’t hinder communication then surely change is good.

Question 9

Damp spoon syndrome

Answer 9

Prescriptivist view: view that language use has become lazy.

Question 10

Crumbling Castle

Answer 10

Prescriptivist view: language is like a a perfect castle that must be preserved

Aitchisons criticism: language has never been at a pinnacle, it is in constant state of flux. Also, a rigid system is not

Question 11

Infectious disease assumption

Answer 11

• Language is contagious, bad habits spread to others.*
• Aitchisons criticism: people adopt new language habits because they like them and want to- it is not done to people against their will.*

Question 12

Gradddol, Leith and Swann four key processes in the standardisation of a language

Answer 12

1. Selection- east midlands dialect (dialect spoken in seats of power- London, Oxford, Cambridge)
2. Elaboration- writers produce a growing body of written work in many different fields using this form of English
3. Codification- with English growing in prestige, many attempts are made to draw up a set of rules to codify its use, especially in its written form
4. Implementation- this ideology about

Question 13

Johnathon Swift

Answer 13

dislike of Vagueness in language: the ‘poverty of conversation’, Shortened words, Unnecessary contractions, Unnecessary polysyllabic words

Question 14

Robert Lowth

Answer 14

Leading figure in the establishment of grammatical rules

Question 15

Joseph Priestley

Answer 15

He had grammatical biases, but liked the idea of simplicity and strove to pare English down to its English roots.

He particularly disliked what he called ‘Gallicisms’ (words recently adopted from French)

Question 16

Inkhorn controversy

Answer 16

Writers of the Renaissance began to expand the vocabulary by coining new words, using compounding or affixation, or borrowing extensively from the classical languages Latin and Greek and from the romance language French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.

Question 17

Robert Lane Green

Answer 17

writes about Caxton’s frustration at finding so many dialect words for the same thing Certainly it is hard to please every man by cause of diversity and change of language.

Question 18

Sapir Whorf

Answer 18

sums up the concept of linguistic determinism. Linguistic determinism is the idea that language and its structures limit and determine human knowledge or thought, as well as thought processes such as categorisation, memory and perception.