Language Variation Over Time Theorists Flashcards
What reason did Tony Bex give for genres changing over time?
Genres as communicative texts indicate what is regarded as important in society. Genres change over time because society does.
What changes in genre might there be?
There can be:
Change within genre – the way a text is created/presented - e.g. recipes
New sub-genres - e.g. celebrity cook books
New discourse communities develop that are not represented within existing genres – e.g. recipes on the internet.
According to Goodman, what is informalisation?
It is the process whereby language forms that were traditionally reserved for close personal relationships are now used in wider social contexts. Some would argue that increased ‘Informalisation’ in a range of contexts breaks down barriers between ‘them’ and ‘us’. Others would argue that barriers remain but we are more likely to be manipulated if they appear not to be.
According to Fairclough, what is conversationalization?
It is a ‘restructuring of the boundary between public and private orders of discourse…shifting boundaries between written and spoken discourse practices, and a rising prestige and status for spoken language’.
What are the linguistic features of informalisation/conversationalization?
Linguistically, [informalization involves] shortened terms of address, contractions of negatives (don’t) and auxiliary verbs (we’ve), the use of active rather than passive sentence constructions, colloquial language and slang. It can also involve the adoption of regional accents (as opposed to say Standard English) or increased amounts of self-disclosure of private feelings in public contexts (e.g. it can be found in talk shows or in the workplace).
What does Halliday’s functional theory suggest?
Functional theory suggests that language changes according to the needs of its users. This mainly applies to lexical changes e.g. words become archaic because we no longer need them (lamplighters) and these are replaced by new inventions (electric streetlights). This is mainly driven by technological changes & inventions creating new products and new jobs e.g. rag and bone men have been replaced by kerbside recycling collections.
What does Labov’s Martha’s Vineyard Study suggest?
Martha’s Vineyard Study suggests that we subconsciously change our language to identify with one group rather than another (overt and covert prestige).
What is regularisation?
Regularization is a linguistic phenomenon observed in language acquisition & language change typified by the replacement of irregular forms in morphology or syntax by regular ones. Examples are “gooses” instead of “geese” in child speech and replacement of the Middle English plural form for “cow”, “kine”, with “cows”.
What did Liberman and Michel discover about irregular verbs?
Liberman and Michel (2007) found that verbs are more likely to be regularized if they are used infrequently & the most commonly used irregular verbs are more likely to remain irregular as people know them and use them often.
Why do some irregular forms not follow the pattern of regularization?
Newberry and Ahern (2017) discovered, however, that some irregular forms are becoming more common recently, possibly due to their similarity to other irregular forms e.g. the past tense ‘dove’ is becoming more popular than ‘dived’ following the invention of cars and the common use of ‘drove’. They suggest that language change may be driven by chance more often than previously thought.
What are Jean Aitchison’s two broad categories of causes of language change?
There are external sociolinguistic factors — that is, social factors outside the language system. On the other hand, there are internal psycholinguistic ones — that is, linguistic and psychological factors which reside in the structure of the language & the minds of the speakers.” A useful quotation is that ‘The spread of language change is essentially a social phenomenon, which reflects the changing social situation.’
