Deb Roy - "The Birth of a Word"

So on TED talks, there is a talk by Mr Roy himself, talking about his groundbreaking research that is called "The Speech-Home Project. In this talk, he goes on to explain what it was about and how he did it so it was about putting cameras up in every room in his house to record his sons speech and movement up to the age of 2. An interesting thing to pick up and is useful to the CLA part of the exam is known as the Caregiver Feedback Loop. This is about caregivers utterances and language spoken by the caregivers being restructures to converge into simple language for children to understand. This is the scaffolding for children to build up their language. So he shows his son going from "gaga" to water in 6 months due to this. A nice quote you can pull out from this is that Deb Roy compare language to a flower blossoming and the different stimuli that help to the flower to achieve its full potentional is what caregivers do to help stimulate a child's language. He goes on to explain different part of his experiment like how context is important for lexis and how they now have moved it in from the CLA aspect and onto looking at media coverage.

Here is the link: <iframe src="https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>

AO2 of Language change

AO2 is about:

- knowing what to write to have a good phonological order

- standardisation of English is very important to look at like the invention of the printing press

- theories and stages like the telegraphic stage in CLA

- this can be linked back to AO1 

Orthographied change

- Older texts = archaic lexis

- Lexis that has been spelt differently = spelling mistakes ➡️ spelling changes to accommodate spoken language but NEVER say a word has been spelt wrong!

- Accomdation theory - social and contextual factors, David Crystal e.g polish section in the market means therefore some words have been intergrated in our vocab

-Kagston = in the15th century, he encouraged standardisation as texts became aimed at a wider audience 

- Standardisation e.g schools adopting rules from Latin and Greek and adopting Anglo-Saxon = the introduction of prescriptive ideas 

- It was a need for people to communicate as more people began to learn to read

- Technology has become a main way of how language has changed! This TED talk by John McWhorter: http://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk takes the descriptive view on how texting develops out language and we shouldn't critise it, we should just let it devlop.

Samuel Johnsons Dictionary, 1950

- made by a process of recording words 

- shows a prescriptive attitude to language, where as now could be described as a more descriptive attitude being formed

1955 - 2014: what contexts have influenced our language? Vogue? Immigration? Music?

Stephen Fry - French insitution meets to decide words going into French dictionary where as in England words are more likely to be suggested to be added in

This link: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/25/vape-this-years-selfie-2014-word-of-the-year goes to tak about this years word of the year: vape! The guardian describes it as the new selfie, which was last years word of the year! Interesting to find out how it came about to be this years word of the year! 

Interesting bits and bobs found this week

This first link: http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2014/nov/14/mind-your-language-grammar-nazi, is a interesting piece about a conformed "Grammar nazi", someone who picks up on the smallest mistakes in punctuation and grammar like apostrophes and points it out to the victim, who can have give many reactions. She goes onto talk about how this was once her until she made a mistake herself and then got an idea of what the other side was like. She now looks at language in a different way, so instead of sneering and feeling smug, she learns to give people the benefit of the doubt. This article is a good description on how we all make mistakes in out grammar but straight away judging about it, is not the way forward.

This second link is about a useful guide for terminology for analysing texts. From the simplest bit of terminology to the in depth details. Need help with any of this then click here: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/index.htm

This final link is a bit of fun about the Bristolian accent and dialect and what is interesting about language in this part of the country, who uses it and how it is easily stereotyped into a language that is not formal and can easily be looked down on. This article argues both sides in a fun debate of a city near us: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-17523102

Standardisation of English

Diachronic approach - study of history and evolution of a language 

Synchronic approach - the study of language at a particular point in time 

Descriptive attitudes = David Crystal 

Prescriptive attitudes - Standard English, politcal correctness = context 

This link here to an article called: "The hyperbole we love to hate" 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/04/hyperbole-love-hate-language-linguistics

Looks at how we exaggerate objects and experiences in reviews, for food ect to be more appealing to the audience when the metaphors and adjectives used can been seen as over the top. The word "literally" as well has become more it use to also add persuasion to make the experince seem more real. The it is done is for attentions and the one example of how the media is helping to change our language and the replacement of hedges and fillers is increasing.

The AO1 and 2 language change overview

So when it's comes to anylsing those texts, what do you know you will be looking out for:

AO1

High and low frequency lexis. There is more likely to be more low as that is lexis that is not used a lot in the present and old texts will use more of it that H.F.L. E.g the word "grandiose"

Why? Due to to different Form, Purpose and Audiences of the text. Audience for olders texts are more likely to be aimed at the higher classes, who are educated and literate. So the register will be expected tot be more formal.

Field specific lexis/jargon will also be important for looking at old texts as it will help to relate to the context.

Semantic fields = meaning of words and that will lead onto the idea of semantic shifts = how the meaning of words have changed over time e.g "gay" - happy, homosexual reference and now an insult and how it has become "banta" (uni lad). Also, the universal use of "he" in gender.

Grammar: punctuation and syntax structure - more complex. Why? Audience again.

Power - F.P.A - instrumental and influence of religion 

AO2  

Theory = David Crystal

Influence of external factors - descriptive and prescriptive

Standard and non-standard English 

Political correctness in language 

Standardisation snd dictionaries- Johnson

The printing press and Caxton - mass audience 

Research into Language Change

In today's lesson, we did some research into language change and how it is changing:

http://www.ted.com/talks/anne_curzan_what_makes_a_word_real

This clip is from TedTalks and is a talk by Anne Curzan. The blurb for this talk is:

One could argue that slang words like ‘hangry,’ ‘defriend’ and ‘adorkable’ fill crucial meaning gaps in the English language, even if they don't appear in the dictionary. After all, who actually decides which words make it into those pages? Language historian Anne Curzan gives a charming look at the humans behind dictionaries, and the choices they make. 

This talk is interesting as she begins to discuss how slang over the has changed over time and how many new words there are every year. She gives us an idea how dictionary editors jobs are harder than it looks and how deciding whether a word should be in the dictionary. It also interesting to see how the Usage Panel in dictionary's show how that words change in usage is acceptable. But the main message is that language change should not be seen as worrying but as fasinating and intreseting to compare to how it was used in the past to how it is used now.

Another intresting article is this one published this year in March:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/11/pronunciation-errors-english-language

This article looks at 8 pronoucation errors that have changed the English language today. Looking through the 8 ways, it's intresting to see which ones you do and how it has effected your language. There coud also be a question that is it actually a good thing or a bad things that this is happening in the English Language today. Other TedTalk: http://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk by John McWhorter places his veiw on how texting is killing the English Language. It brings back an idea that our speech in converging to writing. However, David Crystal argues the fact that actually texting could be good for the English language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h79V_qUp91M and this clipd shows us his reasoning for this. How taxting is a language that had been developed from the uprising use of technology

Language Change

The second part of the exam this year is about language change post 1600. Here are the starter notes for this part of the course:

The 2 schools of thought in language change:

1. Descriptive Approach in language = context and the more modern one of today

2. Prescriptive Approach in language 

Key influences of language change

1. War, invasion and immigration - In past terms, the Brirish Empire was the main reason for new ways for language to mix. People from Jamaica, Australia, India and Canada all came to Britain and also with the introduction the the BBC The World, English was broadcast everywhere. A example for now, is the polish and simlaian coming into the south west looking for jobs, religous influences and the fact the are war or economic refuges.

An important theorist who is important to language change is David Crystal. This link: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/sunday-brunch takes you to an episode of Sunday Brunch on channel 4 he was on with his son, Ben talking about his new book and also how today is English language day! His main point how all of us in contempary Britainhave mongrel accents.

"There are more accents per mile than any other English speaking part of the world"

This is linking back to how invasion is a key feature of language change. His son Ben Cyrstal agrees by saying:

"Accents change from street to street."

The new book out called "You say potatoe" is all about about language has changed and this link here: http://www.panmacmillan.com/book/bencrystal/yousaypotato

Takes you to an investigation he is doing into this and collecting data from all over Britain over people's accents and you can get involved too.

They also talk about the idea that Shakespears language in the 1600's, would have had one of the original a accents of Cornish and now in the future, there is the idea that we won't have one accent and the media will help.

2. Science and technology - spoken and wort ten language is converging. We are in a generation now that will write more than we speak and the introduction of predicted texting is becoming a big infulence too.

This link here is to the new Barclays advert: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=825793004122235&video_source=pages_finch_thumbnail_video

Which is about teaching young people how to speak without using hedges or fillers. However, it maybe be stereotypical about language status and authority these days but it does have a point.