language change

• Chen's 'S' Curve Model

  Demonstrates that all change needs time in order to be effective
• Uptake


  1. At point 1 - the change is made and there is some uptake (usually spreads through a social group)

  2. At point 2 - more people are using it, but this is still limited to a geographical region or group

  3. At point 3 - many more people know it now

  4. At point 4 - the change has reached as many people as it can
• Resistance


  No change can ever reach 100% uptake, because people resist change, particularly older people
• Example of 'lol'


  • At stage 1 - used by teens texting
  • At stage 2 - more teenagers began to use it nationally, internationally and globally
  • At stage 3 - received media publicity leading to large uptake from parents and older texters (note that it becomes almost obsolete amongst teens now)
  • At stage 4 - many, many people know the term, but old people do not know it means 'laughing out loud' and not 'lots of love'
• It is unlikely that 'lol' will still be being used in 50 years
• Archaic racially-charged pejorative epithets (like the 'n' word) are rarely seen today, but are still occasionally seen in the speech of the older generation (who are resistant to change)
• Even standardised lexical values often vary according to things like region (e.g. 'children' are also known as 'bairnes' in Newcastle)
• Bailey's 'Wave Model'


  • Looks at how and why language has changed and the ways in which it continues to change
  • The wave model works exactly like a drop of water hitting the surface of a lake - it creates ripples
  • The closer you are to the geographical location of where the change occurs, the stronger the ripple
  • Those closest to the geographical location of where the change occurs are more likely to pick up the change
• Trudgill challenges the wave model, believing that change comes from big cities, then passed on to smaller towns, missing out country dwellings
• Aitchison's PIDC model


  • Potential - there is the gap or potential for change
  • Implementation - the change occurs
  • Diffusion - the change spreads
  • Codification - the change is made official (e.g. being added to the dictionary)
• Aitchison's 'Prescriptivist Attitudes'


  • Damp spoon syndrome - stems from the distasteful act of leaving a damp spoon in a bowl of sugar, implying that people are lazy and disrespectful of language
  • Infectious disease assumption - changes are like germs which spread and infect the language
  • Crumbling castle view - English was at some point at a 'golden age' and is now in a state of disrepair
• Halliday's Functional Theory


  • Language changes as a result of the needs and requirements of the users of the language
  • Lexical gaps - there is a gap in the lexicon for something which needs describing
  • Function shifts - where a word exists, but we need a different word class
• Hockett's 'Random Fluctuation' theory

  Accounts for errors - when someone makes an error (a 'random fluctuation' in the standard), these errors can be standardised and recognised as somewhat synonymous
• Hockett's Substratum theory


  • Explains how changes can be made as a result of interactions with other languages and variations of English
  • The most common explanation is the media, invasion, immigration, and travel/exploration
• David Crystal's 'Tide Metaphor'


  • Language changing is 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
  • 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
• Innovative Lexical Change


  • Blending - when two existing words are fused to make one new word
  • Clipping - when part of a word is removed, but the meaning is virtually the same
  • Compounding - when two existing words are stuck together as they are to form a new word
  • Conversion - the word class of an existing word is changed
• Inventive Lexical Change


  • Neologising - making up a brand-new word
  • Borrowing - words are taken from another language
  • Acronymising - forming a word which is said as a word and is formed of the initials from what it is describing
  • Initialising - forming a word which is said as the individual letters formed of the initials from what it is describing