Sunday, June 18, 2017

A level Paper 2: revision tips part 3

Here's the third in a short (and predictably-titled) series of ... yadda yadda yadda...you get the drift.

Still on the subject of Language Discourses, what have different people - linguists, writers and media commentators - had to say about the big debates around change and diversity? Who could you go to for some ideas about different approaches to these arguments?

A really good starting point is the linguist Jean Aitchison, whose BBC Reith Lectures in 1996 were all about language: what it is, how we acquire it, how it changes and how people feel about it. Her book, Language Change: Progress or Decay? (now in its fourth edition and a great text for the whole second year of this course) looks at some of the patterns of change we see in English over time and some of the perennial complaints about such change.

One of her best known metaphors is the the idea that prescriptivists (those who resist change and want to tell everyone else what constitutes 'proper English') fall into what she terms a 'crumbling castle' view of language. As a linguist and descriptivist, Aitchison herself is not a fan of the crumbling castle view and explains in her lectures (and her books) that the whole presumption that English was ever a perfectly-formed and gloriously complete language is completely false and that change is natural.

This treats the English language as a beautiful old building with gargoyles and pinnacles which need to be preserved intact, as implied in statements by the writer John Simon: Language, he argues, should be treated like "parks, national forests, monuments, and public utilities ... available for properly respectful use but not for defacement or destruction".
This view itself crumbles when examined carefully. It implies that the castle of English was gradually and lovingly assembled until it reached a point of maximum splendour at some unspecified time in the past. Yet no year can be found when language achieved some peak of perfection, like a vintage wine. The "beautiful building" notion presupposes that rigid systems, once assembled, are better than changing ones. This is untrue. In the animal world, flexibility is a great advantage, and animals that adhere to fixed systems often lose out.                         (from this Independent article)

Her other metaphors - the damp spoon and infectious disease - are explained in more detail in her own words here. And it's worth a listen.

Back in 2014 I did this post about attitudes to language change and you can find some useful points and links here about the ways in which more recent (prescriptive) media commentators such as Lynne Truss and Simon Heffer have argued a similar case to those that Aitchison outlines and how more progressive and descriptive writers and thinkers - Steven Pinker,  David Marsh, Michael Rosen and Erin Brenner - have argued their case.

Another interesting person to look at is Lane Greene. His book You Are What You Speak is another really good read and offers some really astute points about the reasons for people's concerns about change. In the two chapters you can find here and here, he looks at complaints about language and places them in what he terms declinist and sticklerist traditions.

Again, there's plenty on this blog about discourses and if you look here, here and here you'll find some useful material.

Black British English vs MLE

The latest episode of Lexis is out and it features an interview with Ife Thompson about lots of issues connected to Black British English, i...