What to Memorise Flashcards
What’s standardisation
Making all variations of language conform to standard language
Difference between diachronic and synchronic change
D- Historical language change that happens over time
S - Language at a certain point in time
Overt vs covert prestige
Overt is becoming more prestigious in order to gain prestige
Covert is deviating from a standard form to make themselves different from society
What 5 things usually change in a language over time
- Lexicon (words)
- Syntax (word order)
- Phonology (pronunciation and the way they’re expressed)
- Graphology
- Discourse (structures)
What are the 5 main influences for language change
- Globalisation
- Colonisation
- Technology/science advances
- Social changes
- Media
What are the 3 ways neologisms are found? Give examples
- Borrowing (bungalow from India)
- Eponym - named after someone (Sandwich)
- Proprietary names - The name of a company that soon becomes the name for the object (hoover)
What are the 3 ways to abbreviate a word? Give examples
- Acronym (NASA)
- Initialism (WTO)
- Clipping (fridge)
What’s the difference between blending and compounding
Blending is 2 words fusing together to make one word (smoke and fog make smog)
Compounding is taking 2 full words and putting them next to each other (thumbprint)
What is weakening?
AKA. semantic reduction. Word loses its original meaning (love is over-used now)
Difference between narrowing and broadening
Narrowing is when a word becomes more specific (meat - used to mean all food, now just animal flesh)
Broadening is when a word now means many things as well as its original meaning (pudding - once meant just black pudding, now it refers to ever dessert)
What are metaphor changes, euphemisms and idioms
Metaphor - a word acquires a meaning that metaphorically fits (bug - to annoy someone, like a fly does)
Euphemism - Way of describing something unpleasant in a pleasant way (passed away)
Idiom - An expression that doesn’t actually make sense but pragmatically we all understand (raining cats and dogs)
Reasons for orthographical changes
Phonological, technological, standardisation
Name 2 ways grammar has changed over time?
Adverbs are being replaced by adjective ‘you’ve done great’ instead of ‘you’ve done greatly’
Pronoun use is changing - whom replaced by who
Double negation - I didn’t do nothing
How has standardisation affected language?
Lexis, orthography and semantics - dictionaries, spell check
Grammar - Grammar rule books
Graphology - Printing exemplifies how writing should be
What is the timeline of The English Language
1066 - Norman conquest - French/Latin
1450 - Great Vowel Shift - Changed vowel sounds
1476 - Caxton’s printing press - Started standardisation
1702 - First newspaper
1755 - Samuel Johnson’s dictionary - standardisation
1762 - Lowth’s Grammar book
1927 - Television invented
1928 - Women get the right to vote
1980 - Rap
1990 - WWW
1992 - First text message
What are the 2 main attitudes to language change
Prescriptivism - Correct language usage, follow rules
Descriptivism - Describes how language is used, neither correct or incorrect
What could be the future for the English Language
Disintegration - British English will break up into many variations across the world
Uniformity - A world standard English may form, with the varieties of English already becoming similar, they will all merge into one uniform language
Biadialectalism - People will ‘code-switch’ which dialect they use depending on the context they’re in (support for this is Giles’ Accommodation Theory
What are the 4 stages of English, what year did they end and what who brought what words?
Old English - Angles, Saxons, Jutes ( ended 1150) Short and forceful lexis (it, anger, give, but, down)
Middle English - Norman (French) (ended 1476) Government, fashion and food words were borrowed
Early Modern English - Latin from Romans (ended 1700) many affixations (pre-, anti-, -ate)
Present Day English (PDE) - technology - ipad, wifi
What’s determinism and reflectionism?
Reflectionism - Language reflects thoughts (racist remarks) (we control language)
Determinism - Language determines thought (language controls us)
How does political correctness affect language
Instead of ‘headmistress’, ‘head teacher’
What’s polysemy
One word with 2 or more meanings
Read or Pupil
What’s coinage
A neologism that has come from nowhere. It is completely made up
What’s semantic reclamation
When society ‘reclaim’ a word for use of their own
What are Aitchison’s metaphors
Neither descriptivist nor prescriptivist, Aitchison uses metaphors to describe how language changes
Crumbling castle
Infectious disease
Damp spoon - people have become lazy with language
What’s the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis
The way people think is affected by their language and those in other languages don’t understand them
What’s the random fluctuation theory
When a random occurrence causes a word or phrase to catch on. (Book - autocorrected from f*ck on people’s phones - technology)
Evaluation - Not all aspects fluctuate (grammar)
What’s the accommodation theory
Giles 1973
People converge and diverge their language in order to fit in with those they are conversing with. Overt and covert prestige, overly prestigious and deviating from prestige respectively.
Labov’s Change from above and change from below
Above is usually governmental and enters formal speech. Below is from society and enters less prestigious dialects
Subconscious and conscious change - Labov
Conscious change example is the rhotic /r/ in a speaker’s dialect - New York study - In careful speech rather than spontaneous it was more apparent (overt prestige)
Subconscious change - Martha’s Vineyard - people conformed to have their own identity (cover prestige)
Natural and social change
Natural - Ease of articulation - Omission of ‘b’ in thum’b’
Social - Prestige (accommodation theory)
What’s the functional theory
Halliday - Innovation/tech/slang
Changes to suit the user
Evaluation - Cannot describe anything other than lexical changes
What’s the substratum theory
Language change through social contact
What used to be trade and invasion is now internet and globalisation
What’s sticklerism
AKA. a grammar Nazi, these people ‘finger wag’ to those who use language ‘incorrectly’ prescriptivist view
