Why does our language change?(Contextual Points)
Migration had a huge impact on the English Language because it meant that we had borrowed words from other countries and made them our own such as ‘croissant’ which originally came from the French Language but is now a part of the English dictionary. Also, travel as it enabled the English Language to expand across the world and allowed the language to borrow words from other counties which shows the huge impact this had as we now use these words in our everyday language. The British Empire was the cause of English ruling one third of the world by making it their language to learn therefore this is why so many countries still have it as their second language today. Furthermore, Globalisation is another contextual factor as it is the reason why most businesses from England have expanded abroad, this could be because for example Apple were or originally from and based in the USA but has now expanded all around the world and the main language that they will use to communicate is English as it is now a language that has expanded all over the world and became extremely popular. The first and second world wars were also another contextual influence on the English language. It was found that the wars had brought military into the mainstream, imported French and German words in to English and saw words from local dialects became part of national conversation. Many of these words were produced by soldiers to describe their unfamiliar surroundings and circumstances as they had to create names for items such as trench coats which is still used in the present English language. During the science and technology period so including the industrial revolution and the renaissance, England borrowed words from Latin and Greek as they created products themselves and named them and we continue to use these words today. Trade working and new inventions were also other contextual factors as the ‘internet’ and a ‘tv’ and any other new inventions all needed names for them and we therefore borrowed these words over and used them as part of our own language and these are now very popular today as millions of people own them/use them under the English name for them. The media was also a massive contextual influence on language change. One reason for this was that it altered the formality of the English Language as the language became more informal because of things like the internet and newspapers. Newspapers are now currently less formal to how they used to be as now it is perfectly acceptable to be informal and the writer’s use informal language to attract attention as this is now the case.
Lexical Change
We borrow from other languages, to either fill a gap in our own language or allow us a new word for another object. We also do this to adapt existing words in either a lazy or efficient way to make a new word. Also, we do this to create a completely new word when we don’t have anything else that is suitable such as neoglism or a coinage. I think that we have borrowed from the French and Latin languages so that we were able to expand our own language in order for it to become more popular and countries like France were able to learn English easier. From my classwork it is implied that in formal discussions such as an university interview we are most likely to use vocabulary borrowed from the French and Latin languages such as ‘enquire’ for ‘ask’ as it is more formal and impressive, and in less formal situations like a conversation with friends we would use vocabulary from Old English such as ‘come’ instead of ‘arrive’ as there is no need to impress anyone and having to speak in a formal manner.
Covert Prestige – this refers to the status speakers who choose not to adapt a standard dialect that you get from a particular group within a society.
Overt Prestige – this refers to the status speakers get from using the official and standard form of language.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations are used because they are quicker to say and a wider audience today can understand them.
Acronym – A lexicalised word is made up from the initial letters of phrase such as RADAR, SWAT, LASER and SCUBA.
Initialism – A word made from initial letters each being pronounced such as CD, WWW, DNA and BSE.
Clipping – A new word pronounced by shortening an existing one.
Acronyms and Initialisms came from:
– Medical = (DNA, BSE)
– Military = (SWAT)
– Technology = (CD, WWW, DOS)
We can find abbreviations in; blogs, social media as a lot of teenagers use this who are mostly known for using them, exam board (AQA), school, leaflets, magazines, text messages, personal ads and emails. We find them a lot in these because they tend to be informal depending on who the audience is and are used to make what you are writing quicker.
Samual Johnson created the first English dictionary and it is more standardised because I has been recorded.
Compound – The combining of separate words to create a new word, sometimes using a hyphen to link them
Back Formation – The removal of an imagined affix from an existing word
Blend – Two words fusing to make a new one
Suffixes – The addition of a bound morpheme to the end of a root word
Affixation – The addition of bound morphemes to an existing word
Conversion – A word changes its word class without adding a suffix
Prefixes – Addition of a bound morpheme to the beginning of a root word.
Semantic change
In addition to create new words language users are prone to recycling words and changing their meaning and semantic change or drift can occur. (Drift is the process of linguistic change over a period of time).
Drift Happens:
– Over time, old meanings are forgotten
– In response to new context for a particular word e.g. technology.
– Slang = particular social groups takes ownership of an existing word and changes it to suit e.g. ‘mint’ and ‘wicked’
‘Pants’ = In British English the meaning of this has shifted to mean underwear (From French ‘Pantalon’).
Metaphor – A word acquires a new meaning because it is used in a metaphorical sense – not literal.
Euphemism – A way of describing something unpleasant in a more pleasant way.
Idiom – A speech form or an expression that cannot be understood literally from the meanings of the individual parts
Amelioration – A word takes on a different, more positive meaning that it had previously
Pejoration – A word takes on a different, more negative meaning, losing status
Weakening – A word loses the strength of its original meaning
Narrowing – A word becomes more specific in meaning
Broadening – A word keeps its original meaning but acquires others.
Orthography
Orthography is a standardised system for using a particular writing system (script) to write a particular language. It includes rules of spelling; other elements of written language that are part of orthography include hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis and punctuation.
Standardisation of spelling began in the 18th century to standardise all form of written language. BUT… standardisation of spelling started with William Caxton and the printing press in the 15th Century. People that bought and read William Caxton’s books became familiar with the language he used, however not everyone could afford these books therefore not everyone was aware of the language especially words from different dialects. Although this happened with the rise of the printing press the drive for standardisation didn’t occur until the 18th century when our kingdom was expanding and the demand for jobs was a lot higher and being educated would have came as an advantage.
Codified – Arranging laws into a systematic code.
English spelling
Some English spellings had to memorise because of irregularities e.g. homophones such as ‘where, wear’, ‘hair, hare’, whether, weather’ and ‘wood, would’.
21st century and the influence of technology has shown how the fixed form is now changing more than ever.
Texting = ‘cos’ – Because
‘wud’ – Would
‘h8’ – Hate
Reasons for orthographical change
Phonology
- The sounds of English change – written form had to accommodate
- Our modern silent ‘E’ has evolved from old inflectional endings where sounds were pronounced to show the words function, it no longer vowels
- Middle English – terminal ‘E’ was used at the end of words ‘roote’. May have have been linked to Modern English punctuation bur died out in Early Modern English as it was no longer sounded.
Technological
- Printing practices in the 1800’s shaped the presentation of letters such as the long ‘s’
- Technology advancements – now can use emails, blogs and text messages
- In advertising non standard choices can send a clear message about the product. Non standard spelling can be linked to the technological audiences.
- William Caxton’s printing press encouraged standardised spelling as lots of printing facilitated
- 1450-700 – Individual printers established their own conventions and styles – as did writers so it was not deemed important at first.
- Printers wanted to fit words on a line so they would drop letters such as the terminal ‘e’
- At other times they added letters because they got paid per letter
How pronunciation has changed since Early Modern English
The process of expansion of the punctuation symbols used as the written mode became more important. However it is simplified again. Today we use a more informal style of writing.
- Caxton used the period (.)
- And the colon (:)
- And the oblique stroke (/) – we now call it a slash
- It was replaced by a comma in the 16th century – commas are used more liberally to link long, extended clauses and full stops
- Colons and semi colons are common features to separate clauses.
- Speech marks beginning to be used to differentiate between written and spoken form
- Contractions occur in various ways
- ‘ow’ ‘st’
- Poets typically used these – some of those may have been for poetic metre
We use standardised punctuation in formal writing such as an essay or a presentation, you do not HAVE to use it but it is correct when writing.
‘!!!’ – We use these in text messages or on social media as they are informal and that is fine to use informal punctuation in that context. However, mobile phones have now an automatic corrector so you are using them anyways to make people more aware of correct punctuation whether they decide to use it or not.
Capitalisation
By late Modern English capital letters had begun to be capitalised to the rules we follow today. Due to the 18th century Grammarians felt we needed the rules we have today.
Grammatical Change
Standardisation is a key event in the 18th century was a major factor in ‘fixing’ English grammar.
Prescriptive approach – Telling someone if they are right or wrong.
Word classes
Verbs– some irregular verbs have changed the way they have been formed. Stem vowels e.g. ‘spake’ became ‘spoke’.
Use of auxiliary verbs – These started to be used more in late modern English and had an effect on word order.
Adjectives – Comparative and superlative adjectives, these were used in Late Modern English. Some superlatives that are today grammatically unacceptable today were accepted ‘Properest’. Double comparatives were acceptable in Late Modern English ‘more clever’ today we use either ‘more clever’ or ‘cleverer’.
Nouns – Nouns have grammatically changed the least capitalised in a random way during late modern English. Use of the definite ‘the’ is used less now. ‘The russian’ was used to mean ‘Russians’ in general.
Syntax – Used to be more complicated, used to be lots of subordinate clauses used, used to overuse of semi colons and commas, today much more simple and less formal.
Grammatical change
- Use of auxiliary verbs has increased. Interrogatives used to be formed without AUX verbs and the verb at the start of the question (1500-1700 – still seen later on)
Spake you with him
(v) (s) (o)
Primary aux ‘do’ has some semantic value. The dummy aux ‘do’ has no semantic value. Today: Aux verb used at the start and subject and verb inverted.
Did you speak with him
(aux) (s) (v) (o)
- Negative constructions
In present day English, not is used before the verb not after it. The dummy auxiliary verb ‘do’ is used, ‘I deny not’ becomes ‘I did not deny it’.
Double negatives
- ‘ I do not want nothing’ is considered non standard
- Some Grammarians (perspective Grammarians) tried to get rid of constructions like these.
Robert Lowth believed that the use of ‘not’ and ‘nothing’ in the same sentence is wrong as it makes no sense because they are both negatives and two negatives make a positive.
Contractions
- Used quite a lot – Printers wanted to fit words onto a line
- Poets used them to make sure thyme and meter was kept = Inconsistent.
Proclitic contractions – at the beginning of the words – less common now
Enclitic contractions – at the end of words ‘it’s’
Past principles – used to be contracted to show the last vowel is not pronounced ‘disturb’d’
18th century – writers complained that the use of contractions was making the language too informal. Jonathon Swift complained that the future generations would not be able to understand the use of them.
By the 19th century – more people started to not use them, some even underlined where they had deliberately not used them
20th/21st century – used more frequently now.
Function of words can change:
– ‘text’ ‘email’ have now become verbs too
– ‘well’ is now used as an intensifying adverb before an adjective
– ‘innit’ is used as a tag question for ‘isn’t it?’
– In the 1990’s the intensifying adverb ‘so’ was used with ‘not’.
MOLLYMCALEAVEY 