Theories For Lang Change

Question 1

What is the politeness and political theory?

Answer 1

English got rid of ‘thou’/‘thee’ leaving ‘you’ showing politeness of language. French and Spanish have informal second pronoun use, English got rid of second person ‘you’ not to cause offence.

Question 2

What’s the political correctness?

Answer 2

Remove words/phrases that have negative connotation from language.ie: old ppl=senior citizens, people with disabilities= ‘disabled’

Question 3

What’s a trivialising suffix?

Answer 3

-ess and -ette not used much. Ie: Actor is used for male and female, actress becoming less used. Deborah Cameron- verbal hygiene, cleaning up language

Question 4

What do some people feel about verbal hygiene?

Answer 4

Some people think that it’s positive, removing negative connotation.
Some people think it’s too far when we change to obscure meaning ie ‘sanitation consultant’ used rather than ‘toilet cleaner’.

Question 5

How did technology influence our language?

Answer 5

Technology influenced our lexicon by words referred to hardware use : SMS,video call.

Question 6

How does development of communication affect our language?

Answer 6

Increasing use of acronyms, and initialisms. Can bring word conversion ie:text, not just noun but a verb.

Question 7

How has TV affected our language?

Answer 7

TV + film stars exposed us their dialects. Ie:20th century, America affected our language through music,politics,films

Question 8

What other changes caused language to change?

Answer 8

Changes in society-children left school early and did trading, increased youth culture
Pronouns- ie: they if gender neutral, now pronoun accepted in civil service
Travel and loan words- from other countries ie bangles
Invasions from other countries: Scandinavia- skirt, French-tax, accompany, Greek- catastrophe, pneumonia.