Standardisation and codification of language:
What? It is a gradual change of languge overtime so a mass audience can get the shared understanding
Who? William Caxtons printing press on 1476 = printed texts meant easier for them to be read by a mass audience so a shared understanding of language needed to be created.
Samuel Johnsons Dictionary of 1975 = helped to show words which should be used in everyday life, increasing a chance of shared understanding.
Robert Lowth's "Introduction to Grammar" in 1762 = shows standardisation is a gradual process and it's helping to make the English language Easy to read via a mass audience.
Prescriptive vs Descriptive attitudes
What? These two different attitudes to language are defined in other post but are important because it is about whether change is good for in the English language.
Who? Samuel Johnson and John Humpreys are on the prescriptive side whether as Stephen Fry and David Crystal support to descriptive side.
Two other theorist come up such as Jean Aitchisons Language Web and Dennis Freeborn, who looks into the incorrectness view, ugliness view and imprecisness view.
Other things:
Phonogy: Great Vowel Shift, convergence and divergence and Labov's "Martha's Vineyard study" for informalisation.
And worldwide Englishs such as bidialectalism
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