Language Change

• Aitchison's metaphors are used to portray the way that other people talk about language.
• Aitchison's metaphor of the 'Crumbling Castle' is used to imply the prescriptivist view of English Language a beautiful old castle that should be preserved.
• Aitchison's metaphor of the 'Damp Spoon' implies the descriptivist view that sloppiness and laziness causes much of language change. For example, the glottal stop.
• Aitchison's metaphor of the 'Infectious Disease' imply that change is caused from those around use. For example, American English features becoming prominent in British English.
• Aitchison's metaphor of a 'Frog in a Well' derives from the Chinese Folk Tale of being only knowing language from the limited scope that we have.
• Donald MacKinnon talks about language only being correct or not correct. The descriptivist approach is acceptable but for a consensus, worldwide understanding, the prescriptivist approach is more efficient.
• Convergence refers to when people will change their language to accommodate with others in order to express relatability. Essentially, they want to fit in.
• Divergence refers to when people will use their language to sound different from other people in order to reinforce their own identity.
• Dialect Levelling refers to the variation across a country converging. There is a loss of regional features and reduced diversity of language.
• Dialect Levelling can occur when social and locational mobility becomes more accessible, leading to a more homogenisation of language.
• Estuary English is the effects of London accents spreading to countries long the Thames. Key features are the glottal stop, the use of 'gonna' and 'wanna', and the use of 'like' and 'you know'.
• Etymology is the study of the origin of words and how their meanings have changed throughout history.
• The Great Vowel Shift was a change in pronunciation between Old English and Middle English, resulting in many vowels being pronounced differently today.
• Neologisms refer to borrowing or loaning words. For example, chocolat (f) = chocolate (e)
• Amelioration refers to improving a word's meaning into something positive. For example, the meaning of 'cool' changes from cold to good.
• Pejoration refers to turning a word into something negative.
• Weakening a word is to dilute its meaning.
• An example of a word weakening would be 'soon'. It went from meaning 'immediately' to 'in a short while'.
• Narrowing a word refers to the meaning of a word narrowing.
• An example of narrowing would be the word 'wife'. It went from meaning any woman to a married woman.
• Broadening a word's meaning refers to the word keeping its original meaning and and adding more.
• An example of broadening would be the word 'place'. It used to mean 'a broad street' but now it means an area.
• A blend of words are words blended together to create blended meaning. For example, bromance and brunch.
• Overt prestige refers moving towards the standard variety for status.
• Overt prestige can be seen as people moving towards received pronunciation.
• Covert prestige is when speakers move away from the standard variety for status.
• Halliday's Functional Theory talks about how language meets the need of people and takes the form of new discoveries, technological words and slang.
• Halliday's Functional Theory is flawed because it only focuses on lexical change and does not talk about grammar.
• Bailey's Wave model is using the analogy of a drop of water hitting the surface of the lake and it creates ripples. The closer you are to the drop of water, the stronger the language change.
• Those closest to the geographical location of where the change occurs, are more likely to pick up the change.
• Trudgill talks about how changes come from big cities and then spread to big towns and smaller towns.
• When Trudgill investigates the spread of language change, he misses out the country side.
• Yorkshire's lack of language change goes against Trudgill's theory of language change spreading. Yorkshire still uses the archaic 'thee' and 'thou' instead of 'you'.
• Chen's S- Curve Model talks about how all changes need time to be effective.
• Chen's S- Curve model shows the change starting from a social group which then spreads within a geographical region and then completely spreads.
• Aitchison's PIDC Model talks about the impact of change.
• Aitchison's PIDC stages are Potential, Implementation, Diffusion and Codification.
• 'Potential' in Aitchison's model, means that there is a potential for change.
• 'Implementation' in Aitchison's model, means that there change occurs.
• 'Diffusion' in Aitchison's model, means that the change spreads.