© 2008 www.teachit.co.uk

he fabulous beasts of language change

Approaching the exam

TT

© 2008 www.teachit.co.uk

Language changes…

• How much? What changes can you see in this text?

• How fast? What year do you think this text is from?

• For better or worse?

© 2008 www.teachit.co.uk

Language changes…

1. Patterns of capitalisation: adverbs, nouns and numbers2. <ai> vowel sound spelled <y> and <i>3. Orthographic practices for <s>: strange and savage, beast and

was4. Less frequent vocabulary – beast, perhaps full form of rhino5. Adverb positioning – lately and daily6. Quaint collocations – first that ever was7. Vernacular spelling related to speech <a clock> and <till>8. Place names: East Indies9. 44 word, five clause sentence

© 2008 www.teachit.co.uk

Language changes…

1584 1684 1784 1884 1984

© 2008 www.teachit.co.uk

Language changes…

The English Language is much better now there is one correct form that everyone can stick to.

The kind of people who can’t spell are unwashed semi-literate troublemakers.

Language was much more elegant and poetic in Shakespeare’s time.

Historical texts are refreshingly untainted by contemporary political correctness.

???

?

© 2008 www.teachit.co.uk

Killing the fabulous beast of language change

• Individual language use changes at different speeds and in different ways during each of our lives.

• This inconsistent, idiosyncratic pattern is also true of language change in society, because it is driven by the habits, practices and fashions of its individual users.

• Language change is not some fabulous beast gradually adapting and evolving in some parallel Jurassic Park world.

© 2008 www.teachit.co.uk

Language changes…• because people and the

things they want to do with it change

• because the language resources available to them change

• because the technological means of written and spoken communication change.

© 2008 www.teachit.co.uk

And…

• that change can be described precisely in linguistic terms

• accounted for in relation to context

• and illuminated by reference to ideas about language.

© 2008 www.teachit.co.uk

What does this mean for ENB6?

• You need a good method for analysing unfamiliar text(s) from different times.

• This method needs to pay attention to language change detail, but also to context and to ideas about language drawn from the course.

• Ideally, an answer should be a conceptualised discussion, not a blow by blow explanation of the data.