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Language Change - AQA English language A-level - Coggle Diagram
Language Change - AQA English language A-level
Key Subject Terminology and How language has changed (AO1)
Semantics
Word Formation Processes
Semantic broadening
- A process by which words acquire a broader reference. Example: 'hoover' can be used as a general label for vacuum cleaners, but it was formerly the name of a particular brand.
Semantic narrowing
- A process by which words acquire a narrower reference. Examples: 'deer' used to refer to animals in general, not to a specific animal.
Amelioration
- A process whereby a word or phrase develops more positive connotations. Examples: 'nice' - from the Latin 'nescire' meaning 'to not know', 'sick' - originally meaning illness or disease it now has an unequivocally positive slang meaning now.
Pejoration
- A process whereby a word or phrase develops more negative connotations. Examples: 'Cunning' - used to mean 'knowledgable', 'silly' - which originally meant 'holly', or 'blessed' and now has connotations of stupidity and foolishness, 'Awful' - originally meant 'worthy of awe'. It then came to mean 'very bad' and then by 1818 it comes to mean 'exceedingly bad'.
Lexis
Word Formation Processes
Abbreviations
Initialisms
- Forming a word which is said as the individual letters formed of the initials from what it is describing. For example, 'BBC' for the 'British Broadcasting Corporation'.
Acronym
- Forming a word which is said as a word and is formed of the initials from what it is describing. For example, 'SCUBA' for 'Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus'.
Contraction
- A shortened form of a word (or group of words) that omits certain letters or sounds. For example, 'blvd' for 'boulevard'.
Clipping
- When part of a word is removed, but the meaning is virtually the same. For example, 'sync' from 'synchronise'. Also known as a shortening.
Conversion
- The word class of an existing word is changed. For example, from 'text' the noun ('I sent a text') to 'text' the verb ('I'll text him'). Also known as a function-shift.
Derivation
- Adding a bound morpheme to change the word class of a word. For example, adding '-ing' onto the noun 'text' to form the present progressive verb 'texting'. Also known more broadly called affixation.
Back formation
-The removal of a morpheme in order to change the word class of an existing word. For example, the verb 'enthuse' comes from the noun 'enthusiasm'.
Reduplication
- The repetition of words which are the same or very similar. For example, 'nitty-gritty'.
Neologisms
- Making up a brand-new word. For example, the word 'yeet' which occurred in the past few years. Also known as a coinage.
Borrowing
- Words are taken from another language. For example, 'person' is a borrowing from the Latin 'persona'.
Eponyming
- Forming a word based on a brand name or a person’s name. For example, 'hoover' for vacuuming from the brand 'Hoover'.
Compounding
- When two existing words are stuck together as they are to form a new word. For example, 'black' and 'bird' to form 'blackbird'.
Blending
- When two existing words are fused to make one new word. For example, smoke and fog forming smog.
Key Theorists and Concepts (AO2)
Wave Model
- The wave model works on the same basis as a drop of water hitting the surface of a lake – it creates ripples. Essentially, the closer you are to the drop of water the stronger the ripple. In this sense, those closest to the geographical location of where the change occurs are more likely to pick up the change. If you think back to MLE, the change spread very quickly through London, but took longer to diffuse out wider than this.
Peter Trudgill challenging the Wave Model
-Trudgill, however, challenges this model. He believes that change comes from big cities, is passed to big towns and then to smaller towns, missing out country dwellings. He believes that the core case study of this is Yorkshire, where the archaic 'thee' and 'thou' are still in use in place of 'you'.
S-curve Model
- Click here to view an S-curve.
You can use an example to exemplify this, like 'lol'. At stage 1, 'lol' was used by teens texting. At stage 2, more teenagers began to use it nationally, internationally and globally. This continued to spread and texters of other ages began to use it. It received media publicity leading to stage 3 where there is now a large uptake from parents and older texters (note that it becomes almost obsolete amongst teens now). We are currently at point 4, where many, many people know the term.
S-curve Model
- Click here to view an S-curve.
At point 1 – the change is made and there is some uptake (usually spreads through a social group). At point 2 – more people are using it, but this is still limited to a geographical region or group. At point 1 – the change is made and there is some uptake (usually spreads through a social group). At point 2 – more people are using it, but this is still limited to a geographical region or group.
Jean Aitchison 3 ways language can change
- She posits that there are three ways of viewing raw phenomenon of language change: Decay (This is the view of prescriptivists), Progress (This is the view of some descriptivists), Neither Progress nor Decay, but inevitable (most descriptivists are in this camp)
David Crystal's Tides Metaphor
- Crystal describes language changing as being like the tide – new things get washed up on shore and the tide takes other things away. Sometimes things make it onto the beach permanently, others only momentarily. In addition, there are never two tides exactly the same – some tides will only impact certain parts of the beach. The metaphor explains that all change is different, lasts differing amounts of time and affects different groups of people.
Charles Hockett’s random fluctuation theory
- Hockett's theory accounts for errors. He says that when someone makes an error (a 'random fluctuation' in the standard), these errors can be standardised and recognised as somewhat synonymous. For example, iPhones famously autocorrect 'fuck' and 'fucking' to 'duck' and 'ducking', sparking social media attention and memes. Another example is the 'pwned'.
Michael Halliday Functional Theory
- Halliday believes that language changes as a result of the needs and requirements of the users of the language. This can work in two ways... Lexical gaps – there is a gap in the lexicon for something which needs describing. For example, 'laptop'. Function shifts – where a word exists, but we need a different word class. For example, 'Google' as: A noun ('I found it on Google'). A verb ('I'll Google it'). An adjective ('A Google search').
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
- A belief that the language we speak influences our views/ideas on the world. The idea that the language we speak is the only influence on our views/ideas on the world is called determinism or strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis The idea that the language we speak influences our views/ideas on the world but not to a large extent is called reflectionism or weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. They suggest that language Depending on which theory is believed, an individual would believe that world is shaped by the language we speak (determinists) or the language we speak is shaped by the world (reflectionism).
Darwinism and Language Change
- Darwin, Plotkin says, used the way language changes "to popularize his heretical theory and explain for a broad audience what natural selection means. The process wasn't easy to observe in organisms, but it was easier to see in words." But natural selection is just one force of evolutionary change.
How language has changed
Movement of people from one place to another
- Individuals, groups and even whole communities move from one place to another, bringing with them their own vocabulary. Through contact, the new words are picked up by other speakers and the overall vocabulary grows. This can be a movement within a country or between countries.
Technological change
Caxton's Printing Press
- William Caxton is thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into England, in 1476, and as a printer was the first English retailer of printed books. The introduction of the printing press had different effects on the language because of the communication revolution it brought into society. English received influences from other languages. Such effect brought in new words, hence expanding the language lexicon.
Inventions
- New inventions need new names. New words are created to label these new objects, ideas (podcast, laptop, smartphone) and their components. Older words might be recycled to have new meanings. The word 'twitter' is now the name of a social media platform although it also means za bird giving a call consisting of repeated light tremulous sounds. Other examples include 'cloud', 'tablet'.
War
- While wars are usually devastating for those involved, they are often intense periods of word creation and adoption. World War 1 gave us 'shell shock' (now referred to in our abbreviation-happy times as PTSD, for post-traumatic stress disorder) and 'tank', while World War 2 provided loan words from German and Japanese respectively, such as 'Blitzkrieg' (lightning war) and 'kamikaze' (divine wind).
Youth culture
- The emergence of the 'teenager' as a distinct demographic group (and word) in the 1950s led to a spike in terms associated with youth culture. With various youth subcultures forming, spreading, dying out and then being revived years later.
Attitudes towards Language change
Descriptivist views (Descriptivism)
- A positive attitude towards language change. These people believe that language should change naturally.
Prescriptivist views (Prescriptivism)
- A negative attitude towards language change. These people believe that language change should be restricted and rules should be placed on language change.
These prescriptivist and descriptivist views can be used with the Jean Aitchison theory.
What else has changed
Grammar: syntax and morphology
Inflectional morphemes
- Change occurred in Middle English. One example is the noun for ‘name’ was ‘nama’ when used as the subject but ‘naman’ when used as the object. A second example is the noun for ‘tongue’ was ‘tunge’ when used as the subject but ‘tungan’ when used as the object. A third example is the noun for ‘queen’ was ‘cwen’ when used as the subject but ‘cwene’ when used as the object.
The shift towards syntax from morphology
- In present-day English, syntax is now the most important determining factor in grammar. Syntax concerns the word order.
Graphology and orthography
Computer-mediated communication (CMC)
- The rise of spellchecks and predictive text have led some critics to argue that spelling standardisation is breaking down.
Emoticons and emojis
- The obsolescence of some letters (such as æ) and the appearance of more keyboard-based symbols (such as hashtags (#), ampersands (&) and emoticons and emojis).
Silent 'e' obsolescence
- Language has changed so that the silent 'e' has become more obsolete, however, some examples still remain: 'become', 'compare', 'are', 'example'. became silent in late Middle English or Early Modern English.
Phonological
Great Vowel Shift (GVS)
- A three century long process, sometimes misnomered as an event, where vowel sounds in English changed.
Click here to view the history of English.
Interchangeability of letters
- 'i' and 'y' interchangeability for the /i/ sound. 'u' and 'v' interchangeability.