Topical Issues * Flashcards
Technology has, and always has had a malign influence on our language.
1) Proven by the British linguist David Crystal in his book ‘Txtng The Gr8 Db8’ that texting has mostly stolen linguistic methods of communication from the past
2) Initialisms
a) words redux ted to their initial letters,
e.g. No Problem to NP
b) 19th century, RIP was created
c) 1600s Latin Initialism pm (post meridiem)
meaning after midday
3) Abbreviations
a) Eric Partridge Dictionary of Abbreviations
(1942) - list contained archaic words
e. g. obdt, obedient, your obedient servant
b) technology will develop new abbreviations
4) Everyone has had a grounding in the standard
english writing system which is needed to
understand and write abbreviations and initialisms
5) Technology/Texting helps shy people to
communicate
The English Language is biased against women.
1) Honorifics
a) Mr / Mrs / Ms / Miss
2) Dysphemisms
a) Promiscuity: slut / slag
there are over 200 terms that refer to a sexually
active woman and only 20 that refer to men
b) Linking women with animals - dog, cow, bitch
3) Make as the norm
a) pronouns ‘he’ / man
‘all men are created equal’ (laws, bible,
workplace rule book’
b) Occupations doctor, CEO, firefighter, football
player, president (high profile, powerful,
physical, high paying)
c) Marked language in affixes - hostess,
stewardess, manageress, mayoress
Language can be used to gain power.
1) Politicians
a) instrumental power
b) influential power - rhetoric - hypophora (creates unity / emphasises point)
c) voters: personal power
2) Advertisers
a) emotive language of charitable organisations
3) Teachers
a) conditionals ‘if you don’t do your homework, you’ll get a detention’
b) imperative ‘take out your books’ ‘revise these’
4) Businesses
a) letters of apology for overcharging customer
b) passive sentences ‘mistakes were made’
c) 2ndpp ‘you’ creates synthetic personalisation
The English Language can be dangerous in the wrong hands.
1) Advertisers
a) Pronouns “we” “you” synthetic
personalisation
b) Danger = influence people to purchase things
they might not really want or need
2) Media
a) Linguistic field of war to describe politicians
“leadership battle”,
“Civil War”, and “stormed to victory”
b) Danger = shows bias, news should be objective
3) Politicians
a) Use rhetoric - repetition / hypophora
b) Used to engage audience, create a sense of
excitement, ultimately to get votes
c) Trump - personification ‘the jobs have left’;
metaphors and emotive language ‘American
carnage’; colloquial language “folks’
4) Those who don’t believe in political correctness
a) The continued use of insulting terms for women
slut, slag, dog, cow, bitch, pig, hen, bird -
the danger of this is women will continue to be
oppressed and not equal.
b) Continued use of pejorative terms linked to
disabilities to insult others: ‘retard’ and
“‘spastic’ - danger is that it perpetuates the
idea that people who have mental illnesses are
inferior and laughable.
The English Language should always be adapting.
1) We should stop using sexist language
that separates women from men
a) pronouns ‘he’/man
‘all men are created equal’
(Laws, the bible, workplace rule books)
b) Marked language in affixes - hostess, mayoress
c) honorifics - Mr, Miss, Ms, Mrs
2) The language should reflect our changing views
about gender and sexuality
a) binary pronouns he/she are restrictive and there
should be gender neutral pronouns to avoid the
clumsy and grammatically incorrect ‘they’
b) Ideas are now that sexuality is on a continuum
- neologisms should be accepted to
accommodate this - transgender, cisgender,
demisexual
We should all strive to be politically correct.
1) we should stop using sexist language
that separates women from men.
a) pronouns ‘he’/man
‘all men are created equal’
(Laws, the bible, workplace rule books)
b) Marked language in affixes - hostess, mayoress
c) honorifics - Mr, Miss, Ms, Mrs
2) Ableism
a) using pejorative terms to insult others
‘retard’ , ‘spastic’
b) Should use differently abler instead on disabled
- we shouldn’t be focusing on what they can’t
do
c) people should not be identified by one thing
about them - therefore we should say ‘person
with autism’ not ‘he is autistic’ - a person with
dyslexia not dyslexic
3) The language should reflect our changing views
about gender and sexuality
a) binary pronouns he/she are restrictive and there
should be gender neutral pronouns to avoid the
clumsy and grammatically incorrect ‘they’
- Sweden have done this (new honorific Mx)
b) Ideas are now that sexuality is on a continuum
- neologisms should be accepted to
accommodate this - transgender etc
c) we should never use gay as an insult
synonymous with ‘wrong’ or ‘weird’
Some ways of speaking are better than others.
1) the calculated language of politicians
a) instrumental power
b) influential power - rhetoric
(creates unity / emphasises point)
c) voters: personal power
2) The persuasive power of language in advertising
a) emotive language of charitable organisations
b) oxfam/unicef ‘poverty’, ‘innocent’, ‘starving’,
‘face death’
3) Political Correctness
a) pronouns ‘he’/man
‘all men are created equal’
(Laws, the bible, workplace rule
books)
b) Marked language in affixes - hostess, mayoress
c) honorifics - Mr, Miss, Ms, Mrs
4) Standard English
a) prescriptivism - ‘proper’ English
- interviews, academic essays, in professional
environments
b) non-standard - with friends, family, in casual
situations
When we use language, we are mostly just copying other people.
1) English was built on other languages
a) Germanic in origin
b) loan words
‘bizarre’ - Arabic
‘Tea’ - China
‘Pizza’ - Italy
c) spellings: knight (silent k from french)
flight (silent h from Latin)
2) Advertisements use of slang
a) Trying to converge a sound like teenagers
Pot noodle advert ‘everything else is just pants’
b) Fairclough - synthetic personalisation
3) The language we use jn technology copies our
spoken language
a) ellipsis, elision and contractions
b) capitalisation (emphasis)/ punctuation reflects
tone
4) Babies and children
a) skinner - conditioning / copying adults
b) children learns in blocks of language such as
‘dunno’ and ‘lemme do it’ suggesting they are
memorising common phrases
All language change is good.
- Dangerous language change: the
continued and growing use of
pejoratives against minority groups.
a) The pejoration of “lady’ (dinner lady, lunch lady,
lollipop lady) - gentlemen and lord has not
pejorated. The pejoration of ‘mistress’ (now it
means the woman who cheats with a
married man) - master has not diminished in
definition. ‘Tart’ started as sweetheart, but
now means a female of immoral character.b) Continued use of pejorative terms linked to
disabilities to insult others: ‘retard’ and
‘spastic’ - danger is that it perpetuates the idea
that people who have mental illnesses are
inferior and laughable. - Language change inspired by technology is great
for creativity.
a) Neologisms - portmanteau (facebook), libfixes
(unfriend), coinages (Google), Broadening
/ Conversion (Twitter)
b) Twitter - hashtags / punctuation maximalism /
overuse of ellipsis
c) Hashtags - relates to topics, engages others,
quickly identifies beliefs or feelings - creates
a commentary on what was said / punctuation -
emphasises feelings or beliefs - Crystal -
full stop gains new connotations in CMC -
ellipsis linked with word count rules - Language change often improves literacy rates
a) Caxton’s printing press: helped in
standardization, cheaper process aided in mass
production helping the distribution of English,
aided in literacy
b) Broadcasting in 20th century: helped in
standardization and introduced new speech
patterns.
c) Texting Ruining literacy levels in children?
Initialisms / abbreviations / poor spelling /
numerical homophones. David Crystal -
improves literacy rates in children / spelling -
they have to know how to spell in order to spell
it wrong / only 10% of texts are abbreviated
initialisms and abbreviations were in English
long before texting
AO5 tips
Make it engaging/interactive with the audience
1) Rhetorical questions
2) Humour
3) Exaggeration
4) Direct Address
5) Say hi and goodbye (greeting)
We need to self-censor our public discourse in order to protect people.
1) Poluca correctness - an awareness of
how this movement began c.1970s
and has continued in light of
liberation of protected characteristics such
as gender, gender identity, race, sexual
orientation, disability, religion, etc. Students may
comment on simplified, tabloid responses to this
concept with notions that PC has ‘gone too far’
2) Linguistic determinism/relativity
- students can bring in knowledge on the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis to bear on this statement
evaluating how hegemonic discourse influences
people’s thoughts
3) Censorship vs. freedom of speech argument.
central to this statement is the debate between
these to concens and the boundaries betweer
having freedom of speech and offending
somebody without intention
4) Reclamation of language - students can also
develop arguments regarding the controversial
issue of different minority groups reclaiming words
that were used previously against them and how it
is only acceptable for certain speech communities
5) Influence of social media - students can bring in
relevant contextual information/case studies on
the influence of platforms in terms of self-
representation and the construct of online
identities
6) Private vs. public discourse - are the boundaries
between these two concepts blurring?
7) TV censorship - students can bring in concepts
like the ‘Watershed’ and the impact of taboo
language on young people
