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.