Language Change (Modern) Flashcards
What is Amelioration?
The process of a word’s meaning changing and picking up more positive connotations over time.
What is Pejoration?
The process of a word’s meaning changing and picking up more negative connotations over time.
What is Broadening?
The process of a word’s meanings becoming generalised over time.
What is Narrowing?
The process of a word’s meanings becoming more specialised over time.
What is Descriptivism?
A way of viewing language as being standard or non-standard, not making judgements about correctness.
What is Prescriptivism?
A way of viewing language as correct or incorrect, prescribing a ‘correct’ way to use language.
What is Declinism?
A tendency noted by Robert Lane Greene for prescriptivists to view language as being in a state of constant decline from a once great peak.
What is a Lexicon?
The vocabulary of language.
What is Linguistic Purism?
A pejorative label used for a view that sees a language as needing preservation from things that might make it change, such as dialect variation and borrowings from other languages.
What is Uptalk?
A way of speaking in which the intonation pattern moves up towards the end of a declarative utterance.
What is a Speech Community?
Any socially or regionally defined group in which its members share a number of linguistic characteristics.
What is an Acronym?
First letters are taken for a series of words to create a new term.
What is Affixation?
One or more free morphemes are combined with one of more bound morphemes.
What is Back Formation?
A verb is created from an existing noun by removing a suffix.
What is Blending?
A combination of clipping and compounding. Words are abbreviated and joined together to form a new word.
What is Borrowing?
The process of taking a word from another language and inserting it into the lexicon of another.
What is Clipping?
Words are shortened and the shortened form becomes the norm.
What is Compounding?
Words are combined together to form new words. These can be open, hyphenated or solid.
What is Functional Shift?
A word shifts from one word class to another, usually from a noun to a verb.
What is an Eponym?
Names of a person or company are used to define particular objects. Often they are the inventors or distributors of the product.
What is Initialism?
The first letters from a series of words form a new term, but each letter is pronounced.
What is a Loan Word?
A word that has been borrowed into a lexicon.
What is a Neologism?
A completely new word
What is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?
This states that the certain thoughts of an individual in one language cannot be understood by those who live in another language. The way people think is strongly effected by their native languages.
What is Linguistic Determinism?
Language determines the way that someone views the world
What is Linguistic Reflectionism?
The language that a person uses, reflects how a person is viewed
What is the Substratum Theory?
The way that different forms of languages come into contact with English. These create imperfections that is then passed down generationally, in turn, altering language forms
Explain Aitchinson’s Damp Spoon Metaphor
Language forms that are lazy stick, like a damp spoon in a sugar bowl
Explain Aitchinson’s Crumbling Castle Metaphor
The beauty of English is crumbling away and decaying like a castle that is worn away over time
Explain Aitchinson’s Infectious Disease Metaphor
Lazy forms of language spread
What is David Crystal’s linguistic economy view? (2001)
The way we communicate online is similar to how we communicate in real life. He believes we are now living in a linguistic economy in which now language is more practical than formal, we shorten words for practicality, this has derived from things like text talk
What does Sharon Goodman explore relating to informalisation? (1996)
Explores two aspects of language change: Firstly, she states that that we are living in a time where language has become informalisation, this the idea that language which was used in close personal relationships is now being used in wider sociological context.
She also talks about supercharged typographic icon- Letters in the English language act as symbols in modern society with meanings behind them. e.g. x meaning incorrect.
What are Donald Mackinnon’s categories of perceptions on language? (1996)
Categorises the attitudes people may have to language use: 1. As incorrect or correct; 2. As pleasant or ugly; 3. Socially acceptable or socially unacceptable; 4.Morally acceptable or morally unacceptable; 5.Appropriate in context or inappropriate in context; 6. Useful or useless.
What is Hockett’s Random Fluctuation Theory?
Charles Hockett, 1958, proposed that random mistakes and events lead to language change. For example, the misspelling of ‘owned’ as ‘pwned’ has become a common term in the online gaming community meaning a rival has been humiliated. Random events, such as the Coronavirus pandemic, may also affect our language.
What is Halliday’s Functional Theory?
Halliday proposed that language changes and adapts according to the needs of its users. Words disappear over time (becoming archaisms) as things change – for example, advances in technology means ‘cassette’ has been replaced with ‘CD’ which may also fall out of usage and be replaced with ‘streaming’. This theory suggests that there’s a certain logic to language change: changes reflect the sociocultural climate we’re living in.
What is Crystal’s Tide Metaphor?
He suggests that language is like a tide – constantly changing.
What is Crystal’s view on Texting?
Texting requires a more knowledgeable understanding of language so is not suggesting that young people are becoming less intelligent. It is an evolutionary strand of linguistics and reinforces language evolving over time
