15 minute writing task: To what
extent do you agree with this statement?
Text messaging is just the most recent focus of people's anxiety; what
people are really worried about is a new generation gaining control of what
they see as their language. (David Crystal)
Key Words: Prescriptivism, Aitchison, descriptivism
15 minute writing task: To what
extent do you agree with this statement?
“Language change is not a disease, any more than adolescence, or autumn
are illnesses.” (Jean Aitchison, Language Change: Progress or Decay?
Key Words: Prescriptivism, Aitchison, descriptivism
15 minute writing task: To what
extent do you agree with this statement?
I once met a very interesting guy from the OED who was fed up with
people misunderstanding what a dictionary is. It's not a set of rules about how
to use language, it's a set of observations about how it's used, which is why
it needs to be constantly updated. Language changes, it is not fixed, and the
only function it needs to perform is to be understood. (C. Higson)
Key Words: Prescriptivism, Aitchison, descriptivism
15 minute writing task: To what
extent do you agree with this statement?
Defenders of politically correct language claim that such speech
reduces offensive behaviour. (O’Neill)
Key Words: determinism,
reflectivism, Sapir Whorf, Deutscher, Aitchison, euphemism treadmill
15 minute writing task: To what
extent do you agree with this statement?
Departures from the Queen's English do get noticed. The head of an
online graduate recruitment agency wrote that they reject one third of all job
applications from graduates with good degrees from good universities, because
errors in English in their CVs and covering letters show ignorance, carelessness
and a bad attitude. (B.Lamb)
Key Words: Prescriptivism, Aitchison, declinism, descriptivism
15 minute writing task: To what
extent do you agree with this statement?
"You have too many words in English," said Jean-Paul
Nerrière, a retired vice president of IBM USA, who is French. He has proposed
his own version of Globish that would have just 15,000 simple words for use by
non-native speakers. "We are a
majority," Nerrière said, "so our way of speaking English should be
the official way of speaking English."
Key Words: Globish, linguistic imperialism, norm-dependent, norm developing, lingua franca, spread, power
