Language change theories Flashcards
What is Standardisation?
the process in which rules of a language are established and maintained
What are Haugen’s 4 stages to standardisation?
1- selection= language is selected
2- elaboration= selected lang is developed
3- codification= reduction of internal variability
4- implementation= variation is discouraged
What were Jean Aitchinson’s language change prescriptivism criticisms?
- Crumbling castle: ‘language should be preserved’, change is constant
- Damp Spoon Syndrome: ‘new forms arise from laziness’, only true lazy speech is drunken
- Infectious Disease: ‘change is contagious’, people adopt changes because they are liked
What is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?
- sums up concept of determinism
- language & structures limit human knowledge & thought
- implies people of different languages have different thoughts
- Language precedes thought & controls it
What was David Crystal’s theory?
- The Tide Metaphor
- language is constantly changing, like the tides, naturally and progressively
- change is good
What is Charles Hockett’s theory?
- Random Fluctuation Theory
- the belief that random events & errors lead to language change
- language changes from contextual factors
What is Suzanne Romaine’s theory?
Language change happens in 2 ways:
1-internal: factors within a language
2- external: changing social contexts
What is Halliday’s Functional Theory?
Change happens according to the needs of its users.
Explains new words & slang
What is Goodman’s theory?
- We are living in a time of increased informalisation
- Media is attempting to mimic speech
What are the social reasons for change?
- Functional theory
- lexical gap theory
- changing attitudes
- changing social contexts
- political correctness
What are the technological reasons for change?
- mass printing
- social media
- informalisation
- economisation
- lexical gap theory
What is economisation?
writing has condensed to be more efficient
