Monday 20 May 2013

AO3 for langugae change



Reasons for language change
Transport and Communication – Transport links to advances in technology, as words are created to describe new modes of transport (“automobile” – “motor car” – “car”) and communication, i.e. mobile phones and the Internet, has a great impact upon the language, e.g. the increasing use of ‘text language’.
Trade, work and urbanisation – The move from a focus on agriculture to industry has maintained some agricultural terminology in an urban context, e.g. “head count” came from farmers counting the number of cattle.
Globalisation/Travel – Communication with other countries has led to us borrowing some terms from other languages and cultures, particularly brand names and foods.
Science & Technology – Technology has given us a great number of new terms as we name new inventions. It has also broadened the meaning of some terms, particularly ones that relate to computers, e.g. ‘mouse’, ‘tower’, ‘cookies’.
Politics – E.g. the rise and fall of the British Empire led to foreign words entering our language. A highly important political change was the Norman Invasion in 1066, which led to the use of French words and spellings.

Ideology

War - Words such as “blitz”, “D-Day” and “radar” entered the English language after WWII.

Political Correctness – E.g. “Broken Home” – Dysfunctional family, “Bin man” – Sanitation Engineer, “Sex change” – gender re-assignment.

Social Groups – Stereotypes, such as “Emo” (a clipping of ‘emotional’), “Goth” (which has undergone semantic shift), “Chav” (An acronym of ‘Council Housing and Violence’) and “Geek” (which has undergone amelioration). 

Cultural Changes of Language – Semantic shift, e.g. “Gay” –from ‘carefree and happy’ to ‘homosexual’, “Wicked” – from ‘bad or evil’ to ‘good or awesome’.


Context of author/audience
- If a text is written by a person of specific politic views, for example, it may alter their choice of lexis and the tone that they use.
- If a text is written for a specific group of people, it may use jargon that would personally involve them and that only they would understand.

Purpose
-Instruct, explain, describe, persuade, argue, inform, entertain, etc.

AO2 for language change



Attitudes/ideas about language change

Disintegration – The idea that the English language will disintegrate into a collection of related but largely separate dialects. In 
1978, Robert Burchfield, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary predicted that within a few centuries the speakers of British and American English would be unable to understand each other.

Uniformity – The idea that a World Standard English is emerging, with the different varieties of English growing closer together, as a result of the influence of increased communication and the media.

Bidialectalism – The ability to use two dialects of the same language, with people about to adapt their language to meet the needs of different situations. A linguist that believes in this theory is David Crystal.

 

Standardisation

Prescriptivism – Prescribes how language should be in order to be better or pure; uses criteria of good/bad language, where standard forms are seen as good; draws its model of language from dictionaries, grammar books, etc.; rejects non-standard forms (e.g. slang, dialect, etc.) as bad; emphasis on written forms of language; language change is seen as decay of a pure form of language to be resisted and challenged, based on the golden age of the past.
Descriptivism – Describes the nature of language variations without judgement; uses criteria of standard/non-standard, or appropriateness in context; draws its model from how language is used by a variety of people in a variety of contexts; recognises importance of a standard form but accepts the many variations to it as legitimate and acceptable; language change is seen as part of the progress of language; believes language is worthy of study and recognition wherever it is used.

AS topics

Power – Power often leads to a more formal register, sophisticated lexis choice, the use of grammatical features such as the imperatives and bold fonts.
Gender – Changes in attitudes to gender has effected the English Language in the sense that texts are beginning to use more gender-neutral concepts and terminology as women have gained more rights. This change is also reflected within the use of graphology to indicate the gender of the intended audience.
Technology – Technology has had a great impact upon the context of the written word, e.g. internet blogs and text messaging. The influence of the printing press was also immeasurable – Caxton’s printing press led to greater standardisation and the establishment of norms. 

Informalisation

- Informalisation has led to the increased use of ‘slang’, varied graphology and a more personal and colloquial tone. It usually runs parallel with prescriptivism and standardisation; as such processes add a more formal and rigid structure to the English Language.

AO1 for language change



Lexis 

Borrowing – Taking words from other languages, e.g. karaoke

Affixation – Meaning ‘to fasten’ – attaching parts of words to others to form a new one, e.g. microbiology, eco-warrior

Compounds – Words formed from joining together two other words with or without a hyphen, e.g. laptop, see-through

Blends – When parts of words are chopped off and put together to form a new word, e.g. smog, frappe

Proprietary names – When a word is coined from a company name/ the name of the inventor of a product, e.g. Hoover, Walkman

Acronym A word made up of the first letters of a phrase, which is pronounced as if it were a usual word, e.g. RADAR (Radio Detection And Ranging) or TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space)

Initialism - A word made up of the first letters of a phrase, where the letters are individually pronounced (e.g. CD, FBI)

Coinage/neologism – The creation of completely new words

Back-formation – The removal of part of a word, e.g. editor/edit

Clipping – A more drastic form of back formation, creating new words by extracting an arbitrary portion of a longer word.

Jargon – Lexis specific to a particular job or interest. Requires previous knowledge.



Semantics

Narrowing – When the meaning of a particular word becomes more specific.
Broadening – When a word takes on additional new meanings.
Amelioration – When the meaning of a word becomes more positive, e.g. how ‘pretty’ used to mean sly or cunning, ‘wicked’ can now mean great.

Pejoration – When the meaning becomes less favourable/more negative, e.g. how ‘hussy’ used to be a housewife. 

Metaphorical extension/idiomatic usage – When words acquire new meanings because they have been used metaphorically, e.g. ‘over the moon’, ‘under the weather’, ‘in the doghouse’.

Euphemism – An inoffensive way of describing something distasteful.

Cliché – An overused expression or idea

Antithesis – A figure of speech with sharply contrasting ideas



Grammar


Negation – Today multiple negatives (e.g. double negatives) are considered incorrect grammar but in the past they were considered quite acceptable and were used for emphasis. They were even used in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Clauses – Subordinate Clauses (an additional piece of information which couldn’t stand on its own and is often parenthesised).

Pronouns – The pronouns ‘thou’, ‘thee’ and ‘thine’ have generally disappeared from English. Interestingly, in some regional dialects a distinction still exists between singular and plural second person pronouns, with the use of ‘youse’ as a plural word.

The be-ing construction – progressive – this has massively increased in usage, e.g Hamlet’s “What do you read my Lord?” would now be “What are you reading?” The progressive suggests instant action, involves the reader and focuses on the speaker’s immediate feelings. 

“Shall” or “Will” – There used to be more of a distinction between when “shall” and “will” should be used (“shall” with 1st persons and “will” with other persons).

Contractions – The increase in the use of contractions suggests a more informal/conversational style today and non-contracted forms now suggest a degree of formality or emphasis.

Inflections – The indication of the grammatical form (tense, person or number) of a word, usually at the end of the word. With adjectives, inflections are used for comparatives and superlatives, as in ‘fast’, ‘faster’, ‘fastest’. Although there are still inflections in modern English, there were once many more. Old English was very reliant on them, but most Old English inflections disappeared during the Middle Ages.

Word Order – In Old English, inflections would indicate whether a word was the subject of a sentence of the object. This meant that, compared with modern English, the expression of meaning was less reliant on word order, so construction of sentences was freer and word order showed more variation.

The subjunctive – expresses ‘unreal’ conditions such as wishes, doubts, etc. but has recently declined in usage (“If I were you” is becoming “If I was you”)

The active voice – “The dog chased the cat”

The passive – “The cat was chased by the dog” – used to disguise blame but has decreased in popularity, particularly in American English, where it is discouraged (e.g. US Microsoft Word Auto correct)



Pragmatics


Implication – The intended message of a text 

Shared Knowledge – Allows for the use of jargon, as the reader/audience of a text shares an understanding of the topic being discussed.



Orthography - Spelling


Einar Haugen’s stages of standardisation:


1. Selection of an existing language as the basis for the standard.

2. Codification involving the reduction in variability and the establishment of ‘norms’

3. Elaboration which ensures the standard can be used for a range of functions

4. Implementation – more texts become available, pride in the standard and the discouragement of alternatives.

Irregular spellings developed from the fact that Christian missionaries tried to use their 23 letter alphabet for the 35 phonemes of the Old English dialect.



Discourse


- The way that a text is set out, be it with a clear narrative, chronological, in a question and answer format, etc.



Phonetics


Accent levelling – People’s accents converge (become more similar to those around them). Upward convergence is where a person’s accent becomes more ‘upper class’, i.e. in a formal situation, whereas downward convergence is where a person’s accent becomes less received, perhaps as a method of decreasing social class differentiations.

Accent strengthening – People’s accents diverge (become less similar to those around them). This has often been considered to be a reflection upon the desire to emphasise differences in dialect and status.

Vowel Shift – (1300-1500) a change in the pronunciation of all long vowel sounds that took place between the Middle English and Early Modern English period. This explains why words like “nail” and “name” have different spellings – they were once pronounced differently, though they are not anymore.

Estuary English - A term coined as long ago as 1984 by David Rosewarne, a teacher, characterised as 'a variety of modified regional speech... a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation. If one imagines a continuum with RP and London speech at either end, "Estuary English" speakers are to be found grouped in the middle ground.' Basically, it is a name given to the form(s) of English widely spoken in and around London and, more generally, in the southeast of England — along the river Thames and its estuary.



Graphology

Fonts – different fonts can be used to portray different tones and meanings, e.g. sophistication, power, childishness and informality.

Layouts – Layouts can make a page busy, easy to follow, formal or informal and often reflect the context in which they would be found.

Colours – Different colours connote different moods and feelings, for example red suggests violence and blue suggests calm and serenity.

Images – Photos, graphs and diagrams provide additional information to the written text and also grab the reader’s attention.

Tuesday 14 May 2013

Jan 2012 CLA exam response



 Text A is a transcript of Ruby, aged 3 years and 4 months. I believe the language shown in this text shows that Ruby is in the telegraphic stage of development. However she expresses signs of post telegraphic language.
            Ruby uses mainly declaratives such as “it’s not a jacket it’s a coat”. This particular declarative shows she has pragmatically understood the inflexion “it’s”, this is difficult for children to understand as it is difficult to hear. This difficulty to hear can often support Skinner and his nurture theory. This is because they only pick this up by hearing what has been said. As this is a difficult thing to pick up it often comes later in a child’s development.
            Ruby however also uses quite a lot of interrogatives, most of which are “what” questions such as “what’s up wiv Felma”, “what” questions often come first. This is because of Halliday’s functions, informative language. As the child, in this case Ruby is interested in what is going on around her she expresses the need to know more. The comfortable context that Ruby is in could have contributed to the amount of questions she asked. Ruby is in a comfortable context, with a close relative in surroundings that are familiar and safe to her, this enables her to speak what is on her mind without worrying about others opinions.
            When discussing the cats, Ruby uses the verb “bitted”. Here Ruby has added the regular past tense “ed” to the irregular verb. This supports Noam Chomsky and his theory of the ‘LAD’, language acquisition device. He believes that children have an innate ability to speak. As Ruby has applied an ending that she believes is correct due to other words with ending this shows she is unconsciously thinking about her language as she would never have heard someone say “bitted” before. Further evidence for Chomsky is the FOXP2 genome, the specific area used for language, that was found in genome 7 as a result of the KE family and their speech defect. Ruby’s use of “bitted” also follows the results drawn from the “wug test”, where it was shown that children can apply the regular rules of language to imaginary words.
            As a care giver in the situation Lou scaffolds back to Ruby the correct Lexical choce “bitten”, this is a key example of care givers language. Another example of care givers language is the “for two pussy cats”. The addition of “pussy” to this interrogative shows convergence of Lou to a language similar to Ruby’s. This was explained by Deb Roy “caregivers speech would systematically dip to minimum making language as simple as possible and then slowly ascend back up in complexity.” This was found by his “speech home project”. The reason for this is, I believe, to ensure that the child fully understands all of your language to enable them to learn from it. This is shown again when Lou repeats Ruby and fails to correct her “grandma has glass and cups”. Here both Ruby and Lou have made a virtuous error by failing to add the plural. This is a sign of Ruby being in the telegraphic stage of development.
            Ruby lacks some of the politeness strategies that are required in normal conversation. This is shown by her very short utterances, as she quite often only responds with a “yes” or “no” answer and does not continue. This could be explained easily by Ruby being more interested in something else, for example her breakfast that is being made. However Lou is the person in this situation with the most power indicating that she should be setting the conversation.
            Ruby shows a high level of awareness to do with her pronoun choices. She is able to use the first person pronoun “I” correctly in the right order “I want to sit in the room” This shows she is at stage 3 or Ursula Bellugi’s pronoun stages. Ruby is also able to use the plural first person “we” correctly the majority of the time. Apart from “we getting a book” when Ruby missed out the 3rd person plural indicative of be “are”. This could be explained by Ruby’s excitement of becoming a big sister.            
In conclusion Ruby is still in the telegraphic stage however she expresses lots of example to show she will shortly be moving into the post telegraphic stage. There are plenty of example to show Aunt Lou has converged her language and is using techniques, whether known or unknown, to aid her nieces development.