variation over time Flashcards
context
mode
field
function
audience
deixis
pointing - non verbal forms of speech
anglo saxon
1
simple everyday words
christianity - brought back latin
2000 new words
the Norman conquest
2 people in power - French people in church - latin common - English French language - judge, jury 10000 new words
shakespeare
3
English language became rich and vibrant
the king James bible
4
new translation of the bible - into english
the English of science
5
scientists all spoke English
made new scientific words e.g. acid
the English & empire
6
took many new words from other countries
the age of the dictionary
7
70 years - to make a new dictionary
4 different people
American english
8
new language of capitalism
business and music
internet English
9
abbreviations
btw, lol, yolo, fyi
global english
10
became a fully formed language
1.5 billon people speak English
what causes lexical change?
new inventions wars/invasions prominent people standardisation globalisation social/cultural change
how are new words created
?
borrowed from other countries
neologism - completely new word invented
eponym (sandwich) and proprietary names (hoover) can be used to name things
abbreviations - acronyms, clippings, initialism
compounding and blending
semantic change
amelioration pejoration weakening narrowing broadening
amelioration
a word takes on a more positive meaning, gaining status
pejoration
a word takes on a more negative meaning, losing status
weakening
generalisation
shit - faeces
but now its used in everyday life
tragedy - a massive terrible event but now is used on a day to day basis
narrowing
specialisation apple used to mean fruit now its a type of fruit girl used to mean young person now its a female young person
broadening
proprietary names - hoover
business - used to refer just to the state of being busy
metaphor
a word acquires new meanings - bug in the system
euphemism
a way of describing something in a more pleasant way
passed away
idiom
an expression that can’t be understood through its literal translation
its raining cats and dogs
pronunciation change influenced by spelling
age
pronunciation affected by grammatical choices
the former are becoming less and less common, particularly among young speakers
an otel - a hotel
why have speech styles chnaged?
ease of articulation
- we make things easier to say
social prestige and changes in society
- less regional variation due to more movement
accommodation theory
reduce the social distance
convergence
when we adapt our language depending on who we talk to
divergence
when we move further away
upwards
towards RP
downwards
towards a regional or sociolectal variation
fairclough
this move is part of conversationalism
judgements about regional accents
Freebom
the incorrectness view - this links to RP being viewed as the accent of standard English
the ugliness view - some accents don’t sound nice - often links to stereotypes
the impreciseness view - some accents are seen as sloppy or lazy
standardisation
the process of making something conform to a standard
e.g. in production - there are norms e.g. typical sizes of soft drinks
what has been standardised?
spelling
lexis and semantics
syntax
handwriting
the background of standardisation
the renaissance - revival of learning
growth of capitalism - new social classes
the reformation - breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church
the rise of the humanist science
transition from a medieval to a modern society
orthography
spelling
reasons for orthographical change
technological
standardisation
influences from other languages
phonological
phoneme
a unit of sound
grapheme
how it is written (letter)
the great vowel shift
gradual shift
affected the pronunciation of long vowels
hoose - house
why did the great vowel shift happen?
southern - east
movement of people
change in English rule by the french (English may have wanted to sound different to the French)
phonological factors
great vowel shift
many words ended in silent ‘e’ e.g. male and rule
now it just indicates a long vowel sound
some letters were printed with ligatures - hard to print so was dropped
technological factors
printing- the long s died out
printers might’ve dropped some letters if the text didn’t fit on a line
or they might’ve added the in because they were paid by the letter
standardisation
renaissance - scholars tried to make English more like Classical Greek and latin
e.g det - debt
influences from other languages
borrowings affects spellings
silent letters from greek - psychology
germanic influences - word endings like ‘due’ and ‘tch’
punctuation change
caxton used the full stop
and the colon
pragmatics
the branch of linguistics dealing with language in use and the contexts in which it is used
historic gendered language features
‘he’ used to represent either gender in 18th century writing
generic man - ‘mankind’
male first - mr and mrs
occupational suffixes - waitress and actress
some changes in gender
‘they’ used as a gender neutral singular pronoun, or ‘he/she’
using non gendered occupational titles - police officer and head teacher
the Sapir - wharf hypothesis
the way we learn language changes the way we perceive reality
linguistic relatively
cultures see the world in different ways, and language is used to encode this difference
linguistic determinism
the way we perceive the world influences not only our language, but the way we think
AO2 concepts and issues
in formalisation unequal tenor genre change technological change power
features that have declined during the late modern period
from of the subjunctive e.g. if I were you using the passive voice (by who?) epistemic modal verb shall relative clause he as a gender neutral third person whom as an object pronoun
features that have increased in modern usage
the progressive aspect - verbs ending in ‘ing’
I’m making
phrasal verbs e.g. stand b
semi-modal verbs e.g. need to
omission of the definite singer e.g. world - famous singer
pronoun change ‘they’ to mean singular non defined gender
