Language, Culture, and Society

• English is one of the most common languages in the world, spoken by around 1.5 billion people globally
• It is the official language of many countries
• It is the lingua franca of international business and academia
• It is a rich and flexible language that has adapted to the needs of a rapidly changing world
• English language


  A West Germanic language that originated in England
• Main divisions in the history of the English language

  • Old English period
  • Middle English period
  • Modern English period
• Old English period


  1. Began in 449 AD with the arrival of three Germanic tribes from the continent: the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes

  2. They settled in the south and east of Britain, which was then inhabited by the Celts
• Dialects of the Old English language

  • Northumbrian
  • Mercian
  • Kentish
  • West Saxon
• Old English grammar


  • Five main cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental)
  • Three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter)
  • Two numbers (singular and plural)
• Futhorc


  The Anglo-Saxons' own alphabet, consisting of 24 letters
• Old English vocabulary had many words borrowed from other languages such as Latin, French, and Old Norse
• Sentence in Old English

  • Nominative case: "se cempa" or "se wīgend"
  • Accusative case: "sweord" or "bili"
  • Dative case: "þǣm cyninge" or "þǣre cyninge"
• Old English literature


  • Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Venerable Bede)
  • Beowulf
• Old English period came to an end with the Norman Conquest


  1066
• Old English continued to be spoken until the 12th century
• Middle English period


  1. Spoken from around the 12th century to the late 15th century

  2. French became the language of the ruling class, while English was spoken by the lower classes
• Periods of Middle English

  • Early Middle English (11th to 13th centuries)
  • Late Middle English (14th to 15th centuries)
• Normanisation


  The process where Normans brought many French words that began to replace their Old English equivalents
• The Hundred Years' War between England and France meant that English was used more and more in official documents during the Late Middle English period
• Middle English literature


  • The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• Modern English period


  1. Began in the 16th century and continues to the present day

  2. Emerged after the introduction of the printing press in England in 1476

  3. English language borrowed many Greek and Latin words

  4. The King James Bible (first published in 1611) was translated into English from Latin and Greek, introducing many new words into the language

  5. The rise of British Empire

  6. Introduction of mass media and technology in the 20th century
• Anglo-Saxon invasions


  1. Anglo-Saxons – Germanic tribes who began raiding the coastal areas of Britain around 450

  2. Celtic people was forced to move into the remote parts of the Britain

  3. By the year 700, various tribes settled in different parts of Britain, each with its own dialect

  4. Old English came primarily from the dialect of the West Saxons, located in an area known as Wessex
• Christian invasions


  1. Many words with Latin roots found their way into the English language with the assimilation of Christianity into the culture

  2. The establishment of monasteries in Britain also led to the production of beautifully illuminated manuscripts, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels
• Viking invasions


  1. Between 750 and 1050, another group of war-like, pagan tribes raided Britain and gradually established settlements, primarily in the north and east of England

  2. Words such as sky, skin, wagon originated with the language of the Vikings
• Norman invasions


  1. In 1066, when William the Conqueror defeated the English King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, he brought to England a new language and a new culture

  2. Old French became the language of the court, of the government, the church, and all the aristocratic entities

  3. The English language emerged greatly enriched by French vocabulary and distinctly different from the Anglo-Saxons' Old English, Chaucer's language, now referred to as Middle English
• Language tree model


  A means of visualizing the development of languages, the linguistic equivalent of a family tree
• Language borrowing


  Direct borrowing, borrowing through an intermediate language, calques, semantic borrowing, loanwords, and coinage
• Language variations


  Refer to word usage and rules, or merely to vocabulary, while others refers to the way language adapts culturally
• Factors affecting language variations

  • Regional (geographical)
  • Ethnic (national and racial)
  • Social (class, age, gender, socioeconomic status and education)
• Types of language variations

  • Standard
  • Vernacular
  • Colloquial
• Different ways to describe varieties of a creole

  • Acrolect
  • Mesolect
  • Basilect
• Types of lects


  • Regional dialect
  • Sociolect
  • Ethnolect
  • Idiolect