Celibacy and gradable adjectives

So from one form of sexuality to another, or rather lack of any sexual activity... don't worry: it's not another autobiographical posting. A piece by Lucy Mangan in today's Guardian (That long Victoria line trip from Walthamstow to Stockwell is great for reading the papers!) looks at Robbie Williams' use of the adjective celibate, when he describes himself as almost celibate.

As Mangan puts it:

If we take the Shorter OED definition of celibacy as "the state of being unmarried", the man is clearly barking. He has, as many a recent interview attests, never found a woman with whom he could contemplate submitting to the bonds of holy matrimony and therefore cannot be almost unmarried. So one must conclude that the Robster is using the word in its more modern sense of sexual abstinence. Robbie, it seems, ain't gettin' any. Or rather, he almost ain't gettin' any.

One could phrase the pertinent question in the abstract: can one be almost celibate or is it an absolute state, an abstemious wasteland sharply delineated by the carnal woodlands abutting every border? Or one can put it more individually: is one man's "almost celibate" another man's "five-year period of being linked to some of the most desirable women in the world, including Kylie, Nicole Kidman and erm, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, but not having quite as much sex as you would like"?

Prurient interest in Tara Palmer-Tomkinson aside, it's perhaps interesting to look at the use of adjectives like celibate, certain and unique (but probably more interesting to look at posh Tara...sorry). Can we premodify these adjectives with adverbs - almost celibate, completely unique, virtually certain - when the adjectives themselves mean something in an absolute state? In other words, how can you be almost celibate when the word celibate means "completely free of sexual activity"? You either are or you aren't... or are you?

Traditionally these adjectives are referred to as non-gradable, as opposed to adjectives like lucky and happy which are gradable (really lucky, very happy etc.), but perhaps the point is that when we use adverbial modifers in front of non-gradable adjectives we're actually saying something about our own attitude to the thing being described.

An example in the recent ENA1 exam is the adjective British which you might think was an either/or description, except it's not that simple. A quick look at the press conference yesterday when the brothers arrrested for suspected terrorism offences in east London talked about their love of London and their country, might tell us that there are clearly different notions of Britishness (a clumsy abstract noun) depending on who you are and what you believe: some would say (wrongly) that you can't be British if you're a Muslim of Bangladeshi origin, while others claim a much broader definition that encompasses Owen Hargreaves, Greg Rusedski and anyone who is born here. So if we can't decide on what British means how can we say the adjective is non-gradable?

Perhaps it's not a case of being grammatically inaccurate, but of adding a subtle nuance to what we feel about the idea being described. So maybe when Robbie Williams talks of being almost celibate he perhaps means that he's only one (ahem) snog away from the barren wasteland of celibacy, close to the edge. Or maybe he just can't use grammar properly.But that isn't completely unique, is it?

Useful for:
ENA1 - Textual Analysis language frameworks

More gayness!

The discussion about the word "gay" caused by Radio One presenter Chris Moyles' comment about a "gay ringtone", has been picked up more widely and caused some friction between those who see "gay" as a harmless example of language change in action, and those who still see it as a word loaded with negative connotations.

Here's a link to yesterday's Guardian which ran a front page G2 feature on the word "gay", while here's a link to three letters in today's Guardian responding to that article. Underneath, I've cut n pasted some comments from contributors to Urban 75, a Brixton-based discussion site ( I can't link to the actual posts as you have to be a registered user to access the boards). These responses give you some sense of the issues at stake and the range of viewpoints:

EquationGirl: You may think you're not using it as a homophobic statement, but you're linking a word used to describe homosexuals as a slur, a derogatory statement, to mean something bad. In time, the word 'gay' just means something bad.You should stop, you know. I personally find it offensive, whether or not it's meant. It sends out the message that it's ok to use 'gay' to mean something bad, when it isn't.

Xes: Can I just say,that as a gayer,I'm not offended by the term "that's gay" I even use it myself.cos some things,just,are.

Wookie: I went through a lot of pain in order to be able to say 'I am gay' and be proud of it. To hear the word used to mean something shit, lame and defunct is hurtful in the extreme. It has nothing to do with inverting the meaning of 'gay' from 'happy and carefree' to something which is bad. It has everything to do with equating gay people with disfunctionality, and it's utterly unasseptable from people wishing be in the same room as me.Say it if you want by all means. But please stop kidding yourself that you aren't replicating homophobic ideals, because you are. And don't do it within arm's reach of me unless you have a comprehensive dental plan.

JHE: I don't like this use of 'gay' as a term of disparagement, but I suppose my dislike is partly generational. It strikes me as a silly schoolchild's usage.However, it's also an interesting reminder of the limits of attempts to reform language. 'Gay' was deliberately adopted (by the GLF?) to mean homosexual, because the term 'homosexual' sounds very clinical or scientific and all the other terms ('queer', 'poof' etc) were pejorative. It worked to a large extent. It is rare nowadays to find anyone who moans about (what many used to claim was) the misappropriation of the word. Yet the 'positive' word is now also used in a pejorative way - and its meaning, insofar as I understand it, is often similar to 'poofy'.

Your views would be most welcome!

Is your ringtone gay?

Well mine certainly is, but what about yours? Obviously I don't mean homosexual, but "lame", "crap" and "sad". According to the BBC Board of Governors, these are the modern meanings of the word "gay" alongside its other more traditional ones of "happy" and "carefree", and of course "homosexual" (which has been one of the word's other meanings for longer than many might expect).

In articles, here in The Times and here in the Daily Mail (spit), the BBC explain their position on the word "gay" and their decision that Chris Moyles' use of it to describe a ringtone was acceptable and not homophobic (compared to rapper, The Game's use of the term "faggot" to describe gay men which was labelled unacceptable and led to a ban on further interviews).

All of this raises interesting issues about language change and the processes that drive it, but also the decisions that lead to the acceptability or otherwise of particular words. It's not as if any of this is set in stone either: changes in meaning aren't decided by committees and then imposed on us, but rather certain groups of people and organisations tend to have more power to influence opinion and usage.

So, can using "gay" really not be homophobic? Or is the fact that it's now broadened to mean "rubbish", "lame" and "crap" just a symptom of a homophobic society?

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language & Representation
ENA5 - Language Change

Voice of the people?

We all know that these days politicians strive for that common touch (and I don't mean John Prescott yearning for desk action with a secretary) but how far are they prepared to go to reach out to the masses in their own language?

A report in yesterday's Observer tells us that "David Cameron, the somewhat posh Old Etonian leader of the Tories, comes over as a more credible 'man of the people' than Gordon Brown, the 'down-to-earth' Labour Chancellor and probable next Prime Minister, according to a new study of top politicians' vocabulary".

The report goes on to explain that the criteria used to ascertain this "common touch" come from a programme called "Everyday English" which monitors sentence length, the use of core vocabulary and teh number of syllables used.

"All of which, it turns out, favours Cameron over Brown. The Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, lags behind them both. Tony Blair finishes slightly in front of Cameron, though John Major registers more convincingly as 'one of us' than any of them. And none can hold a candle to an EastEnders script that was fed through the computer filter."

So, does this mean that Blair and Cameron genuinely speak the language of the streets ("Wahgwan Gordon, dat rave was heavy, blood") or just that they have mastered the art of accommodating towards what they see as their target audience? And what does this tell us about their perception of the language and identity of their target audience - i.e. the swing voters who might switch allegiances before the next election - that they are aiming their language at?

The danger (as we've seen with Labour moving into political ground once occupied by the Conservatives and the Conservatives desperately trying to recapture that ground) is that the politicians speak a language they think we want to hear but in the process have no distinct voice of their own. The upshot of this is often to give us smooth soundbites in easily digestible language, which mean absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, those with an identifiable voice (however objectionable) become more attractive as they appear to be speaking from the heart (witness the growth of nazi nutters, the BNP in Barking & Dagenham and other areas across the country).

You can find out more about the programme used to analyse the language and its uses here.

Useful for:
EA4C - Language Investigation

Top tips for ENA5

Following on from the top tips for ENA 1, here are some suggestions for what you can do to mug up on ENA5 Language Varieties and Change: today, the textual analysis and contemporary language change questions, later in the week, the varieties question...

ENA5 can be a tricky paper as you’re expected to have a decent knowledge of language change over time & attitudes towards change, as well as a sound grasp of more advanced elements of grammar. You can revise the change aspects using a range of online resources, but the grammar bit needs plenty of practice. There are some resources you can have a look at to help you test your own knowledge of grammar, and then you can try to apply this knowledge to some older texts. Try the Internet Grammar of English and English in Use sites and then take a look at the History of Prose Style and British Library online sites for examples of older texts.

I’d suggest looking at really short extracts of a range of forms and genres and see what you could usefully say about particular lexical and grammatical features in each text. So if you’re looking at one of the selection of recipes available on the British Library site, you could think about pronoun use, modal auxiliaries, sentence function and uses of subordinate clauses of condition in the context of what the recipe’s main purpose is.

Alternatively, with a piece of philosophical or political writing, you might get mileage out of looking for particular noun types, semantic fields and sentence types: you might find that there are more complex sentences featuring relative or dependent clauses, because that type of text requires more complex logical relationships as part of its subject matter.

For the contemporary language change essay question, it’s important you have a range of examples of new words that have come into the language over the past 50 years as well as the linguistic terms used to label the processes that have created them (clipping, compounding, blending etc.). It’s also useful to look at semantic change and have the same set of terms at your disposal to describe changes in meaning (pejoration, amelioration, semantic reclamation, broadening etc.). One of the best places I've come across for discussion of new words is the MacMillan English Dictionary site.

Try to get a sense of the reasons for change too: new technology and the influence of the media are two such factors but there are many wider ones to do with social and political change (gender, sexuality and race issues and the language associated with them) and education.

With attitudes towards language change, I think it’s important to know your history and realise that people have always moaned about how language changes, while others have embraced the changes as part of a natural organic process: progress, if you like!

So, look at the background to things like Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755 and Jonathan Swift’s calls to introduce an academy for language. The best places I’ve found to mug up on these have been Melvyn Bragg’s Adventure of English and the BBC series, the Routes of English .

For a critical look at attitudes to language change, your best bet is to read the chapter at the back of your ENA5 resource pack (if you haven't already) which covers Jean Aitchison's approach to others' attitudes (from her book The Language Web). These links created by the late Andrew Moore are very helpful in looking at language change and Aitchison’s views.

If you can get hold of it, David Crystal's new book How Language Works has a good section in it about change and the whole prescriptivist/descriptivist debate called "How Not to Protect Languages".

For more variety you could have a look at Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss and Adrian Beard's Language Change (check chapter list for the one on attitudes).

Londonstani

With all the recent media coverage of Sue Fox's research focusing on the made-up term "Jafaikan" and the Caribbean influence on English slang and youth dialect, it's easy to forget that most of her research started off looking at the Asian influence on Cockney in Tower Hamlets. A recent book by Gautam Malkani called Londonstani is written in what sounds like a form of the Multi Ethnic Youth Dialect that Sue has researched, and it's been widely talked about (a bit like the film Kidulthood) not just for its violent and disturbing plot, but for its grasp of the "real" sounds of speech from the street.

So how does it sound? Here's an extract as quoted in The Guardian's review of the book: "your glasses r so smashed up u can't count? Shud've gone 2 Specsavers, innit. How many a us bredren b here?".

So, does it sound genuine or not? Depends what you hear around you and how successfully you think Malkani has translated this into prose on the page. He's certainly not the first to attempt to convey dialect and accent on the page; as an article by Pete Bunten in the latest E Magazine explains, writers like Charles Dickens and D.H. Lawrence have used regional varieties to flesh out their characters' voices and identities, while more recently Scottish writers Irvine Welsh and James Kelman have used the voices of working class Scots to tell their complicated tales of drug addiction, alcoholism and dead-end lives.

A couple of reviews in The Guardian and Telegraph take differing positions on the novel and are linked here for you to look at. In terms of the usefulness of this for A Level study, ENA5 asks you to look at both change and varieties, so anything on emerging new dialects covers both topic areas, while ENA6 is all about language debates - issues around language that cause discussion or argument - so this could easily be part of that debate. For Lang and Lit students, it's perhaps helpful too to study the ways in which writers try to mimic spoken language in their prose style and the various technique sthey employ to capture the spoken voice.

Gangsta rap is "offensive and horrible"

A report in today's Guardian tells us that "a headteacher in charge of the government's taskforce on school discipline has urged parents and schools to ban children from listening to "offensive and horrible" sexist and racist rap music lyrics".

Whatever you think of the practicalities of stopping people listening to gangsta rap (Do teachers have to enforce a "no hoodies, no hats , no pimpin my hoes" rule in the classroom?), what do you think about the lyrical content of such beautiful gems as "Nothing left to do, but buy some shells for my glock/Why? So I can rob every known dope spot ... Gotta unlock it, and take me up a hostage" or "And what's between your legs is the product/Use it properly/And you'll make dollars, bitch"?

Many argue that the lyrics of this type of rap glorify violence, criminal lifestyles, abuse towards women and minority groups, and generally perpetuate a worldview that is negative and self-defeating. And I tend to agree, to an extent. Much as I liked the rap of my own era (and I'm showing my age here with names like Public Enemy, De La Soul, Paris, The Goats, Hijack and Ice Cube) a lot of the more recent lyrical output of 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg and many others seems to me to celebrate being an idiot. Maybe it's just my age...

But my opinions aside, is there a linguistic focus for all of this? Could we really argue that the words of these songs affect people - especially vulnerable, disadvantaged young boys - into behaving in more extreme and violent ways? The Sapir Whorf hypothesis (or at least the strong version of it, linguistic determinism) would propose that language can change the way we think, while reflectionists might argue that it simply tells us about a society that's going down the plughole.

Many A2 students have looked at the representation of women in rap lyrics as part of their Language Investigation coursework, and others have explored the different styles of language used in lyrics, but how about exploring the themes of violence and abuse, or looking at the connections between language and attitudes/ language and lifestyle choices?

I know the AS exams have only just finished but now's a good time to start thinking about coursework for next year...

You can join the Guardian debate on this story here too.

Good luck!

Good luck to all of you taking ENA1 and ENA3 today. Make sure you have some lunch before you start and don't revise up to the last minute!

Two cheers for PC

For those of you revising for ENA1 Language & Representation, this article by "Teacher of the Year" Philip Beadle has some good stuff to say about PC and attitudes towards it. (And on top of that, I like Phil Beadle - he's got a sound educational philosophy and his teaching is inventive and fun.)

In particular, this paragraph hits on issues around language and disability which some of you have asked for advice about:

Take, for instance, the phrase "Aids victim". During the early 90s, there
was a drive to tag people as "living with HIV", as opposed to being "victims" of
it. There are few, outside the most militant political group, who would argue
with this drive. The word "victim" implies defencelessness and defeat, whereas
"living with" suggests the fat lady hasn't even begun tuning up yet, and that
the person in question is vital, active, getting on with the task of living, and
not the passive recipient of an immediate death sentence.

If you need more advice on ENA1 work, try looking here and here, and do a search using the blog search toolbar at the top of the page using keywords like "political correctness" & "racist language".

Going grrrr can be grrrreat in some conversations

Most of us know that if we're angry it isn't always easy to make our point in a discussion (and research seems to support this), but what about if we're only pretending to be angry?

If we put on an angry face and behave in an angry fashion (without actually losing control) can we get better results in some conversational situations? Research from the British Psychological Society's research digest seems to suggest that such an angry act can get us results.

“Whereas feeling angry has been shown to lead to bad negotiation outcomes, we showed that expressing anger can lead to good negotiation outcomes” said researchers Marwan Sinaceur and Larissa Tiedens.

First they asked 157 students to imagine they were a salesman for a technology company, and to read a fictional account of a negation between themselves and a buyer. Afterwards, the students who read a version in which the buyer got angry agreed to more concessions than the students who read a version in which he stayed calm, but only if they were told beforehand that their business was struggling at the moment.

Could we apply some of these findings to conversation analysis ourselves, or perhaps link it to what we've seen with The Apprentice and the boardroom showdowns at the end of each episode?

Useful for:
ENA3 - Interacting through language

What do we mean by 'words'?

There was an item a few weeks ago about how many separate words there are in English. David Crystal has various suggestions in his Cambridge encyclopedias - and elsewhere - and you can easily find other figures bandied about by other linguists.

But it's not as easy as it might seem to calculate a precise figure. What do we mean by 'words'? Do we include every morphological variant of a root word, with every possible permutation of affixes? Do we just mean 'headword', as lexicographers term them? Some scientific and other specialist glossaries contain thousands, maybe even millions of entries that never make their way into 'English' dictionaries. So beware of easily swallowing stories like: 'English nears its millionth word'; the picture is more complex and multi-faceted than it appears. Here are two links for more nuanced discussion of this fascinating topic:

http://www.slate.com/id/2139611/
Merriam-Webster site on this (a very useful site for exploring in general, btw)
http://www.m-w.com/help/faq/total_words.htm

Simon

Internet gives language change free reign

Discussions about language change often seem to focus on new words and the ways in which words change meaning over time, but what about spelling (or orthography, as we tend to call it with A Level Language)?

A brief look at older texts - from Old English through to Middle English, and even up to Late Modern English - should reveal that spellings have undergone significant changes over time. Some are due to fairly simple typographical conventions of the time - how will smilies like this appear to readers in 20, 50 or 100 years? ;-) - while others seem to change for other reasons, such as particular foreign influences. How about French/Norman "querunto", American "color" or Jamaican "sekkle"?

An article in today's Guardian points the finger at one of the media for spreading changes in orthography: the internet. According to Patrick Barkham, dubious spellings of common expressions and cliches, whose meanings and original forms have become lost in time, are increasingly being disseminated through the internet. Take for example some of these:

"slight of hand" instead of "sleight", "phased by" when it should be "fazed by", "butt naked" instead of the correct "buck naked" and "vocal chords" for "vocal cords."

Many of these are quite baffling and rely on words that have either dropped out of usage or have changed meaning over time, but with the increased speed of communication that the internet offers, the "wrong" spellings seem to spread like wildfire.

But as Catherine Soanes, of Oxford Dictionaries goes on to explain in a pleasingly descriptivist way, "We have to accept spelling is not fixed and can change over the years. You only have to look back 100 years, when the word rhyme was spelled rime. But since then we adopted rhyme as the correct spelling because this is more like the Greek word from which it originally came".

And for this week's Haribo prize, what's the deliberate spelling mistake in this post's title, and what should it be? The first two answers posted as comments below get the prize...

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change

Wengerian

My first contribution to this site: thanks for inviting me.

After Arsenal's (lucky?) passage through to the European Cup Final the other night after a less than inspiring performance against plucky Villareal (Spanish for 'royal villa', not 'real villa'), their French manager was interviewed on tv.

He began by acknowledging that his team had not played well. The way he said it was wonderful; it was something like, 'Footballistically we didn't play well'. A delightful new word; how have we survived so long without it?

Btw, isn't it curious that his first name is French for arsenal (well, almost).

Unlikely to make the front page of The Daily Mail...

Those of you who remember the case of the 10 year old boy who was being prosecuted for racially abusing a schoolmate, may be interested to know that the case has been dropped by the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service). But the details of the case have also turned out to be more serious than was widely reported at the time, particularly in the right-wing papers which love to attack Political Correctness at every opportunity. But don't expect to see a Daily Mail front page tomorrow apologising for its reporting of the original story...

Top tips for ENA3

During the holidays I put together a list of top tips for approaching the ENA1 unit, so I'd like to do the same for ENA3. However, someone has beaten me to it and done it much better than I could manage, so I'm going to use hers instead and let you peruse this excellent site for help with all areas of this unit.

The dying art of conversation

The BBC website magazine featured an interview last week between Ron Carter (top linguist) and Ros Taylor (psychologist and business advisor) about the supposed death of "proper" conversation.

It's worth a read , I think, for a couple of reasons: firstly, it offers a broad discussion of what makes conversation work (good for ENA3 essay questions); secondly, the format of the interview could be of help to those of you working on radio scripts or web site articles for ENA6.

Have a look here for the article and here for another article about what we talk about in the office. Well, I don't work in an office. And you probably don't either... so I suppose it's what people in offices talk about then...

HRH Speech (literally)

Just watched the Prince's speech (sad I know, but somewhat justified in that I was actually waiting for the news to come on afterwards...*cough cough*)- and wanted to know if everyone agrees on HRH's accent as RP, or if we possibly have a case for a watered down version.

To put it more sensibly, is it only me (or should this pronoun be 'I'?) who found non-standard/non-RP features in the way he spoke? Discuss...

Charissa

More on jafaican/jafaikan...

The whole "Jafaikan" / "Jafaican" issue seems to have caught the media's imagination, so here are some links to other features on it:

Daily Mail - Jafaican is wiping out inner-city accents
Daily Mail - Understanding Jafaican
Evening Standard - Why we is all talkin like Ali G

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change & Varieties

Thanks to Helen, Opey and "The Library Skets" for some of these links.

Language & Liberty

In response to the Judge Feinstein outburst about "political correctness gone mad", ex-deputy Labour Party leader Roy Hattersley has made a vigorous defence of PC. He stops short of supporting prosecuting the child at the centre of the furore, but argues that

We think in words. If we use words that suggest there is something reprehensible about gays, women or ethnic minorities, that is how we come to think about them. What is more, our bad example can cause prejudice in others. Political correctness has helped change the world. It is at least in part because decent people denounce talk of poofters and queers that something approaching legal equality has been afforded to gay men. And it is because such language is still defended in the name of liberty and plain English that there are still some dark corners of society in which they are regarded as inferior.

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language & Representation

Favourite words

Rather like Charissa's post about Moving Words last week, this is one about people's favourite words. In yesterday's Independent a range of writers and lovers of English chose their favourite and least favourite words, explaining why.

So what's your favourite word and why? And your least favourite?

Jafaikan demeans women

In a response to the article mentioned in the "Can you speak Jafaikan?" post, Zoe Williams argues that we shouldn't be celebrating such slang developments but looking at why they disproportionately label women rather than men. She makes the point as follows:

What all these words in fact have in common is that they define women by sexual function - denigrating them if they show any interest in sex themselves, ranging them according to their physical attributes and dismissing them once their physical peak has passed.

It's an interesting response and one that I feel a degree of instant sympathy for, but having said that, when hasn't slang denigrated women? Julia Stanley's research in the early 1970s found over 200 terms used to derogate women, and only about 20 for men. Others have contested these figures and carried out their own research using online databases , but the pattern holds true for the most part: there are more terms around to label women than there are for men.

Is this because - as many feminist linguists suggest - men dominate language as they do society (Dale Spender's Man Made Language being a good example of this view)? Or is it down to the nature of slang itself?

Slang tends to serve many functions in society, but one of its main ones is to put other people down, so it's hardly surprising that new slang developments do that too. But Zoe Williams has a good point - if we uncritically embrace all new language just for the sake of appearing cool, hip, nang or whatever new word means "up to date and fashionable" then we might miss some of its nastier influences.

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language & Representation

Can you speak Jafaikan?

A piece in yesterday's Guardian looks at the influence of Jamaican English on London dialects. Referring to Sue Fox's research on changing London accents and dialects, the article brands such a dialect "Jafaikan" (fake Jamaican, geddit?). The author, Emily Ashton (a ghetto name if ever I heard one) then gives us a quick slang glossary before heading back to her ends for a cup of rosy lee.

Like a lot of articles about changing language, this one takes a fairly superficial view of what's a very complex pattern of subtle shifts and influences, but it's not a bad read and you can have a laugh at the definitions. In fact, Sue Fox's research will be given a more thorough explanation by the woman herself at next week's SFX Language Conference (plug).

Edited on 06.02.13 to add:
If you're coming here from The Guardian Society link then you can find some better discussions about Jafaican/Jafaikan, Multicultural London English (MLE) and Multi-ethnic Youth Dialect (MEYD) here and here.


Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Varieties and Change

"Playing like a spaz"

Tiger Woods, the golfer described his own performance the other day by saying, "I played like a spaz"... and I had typed a very long piece about this, full of references to negative semantic space, historical tributes to an icon of my teenage years (Joey Deacon) and Language & Representation, but some s*d just blew a fuse in our house, so it's all gone. Curses!

So have a look at this article about the words "spaz" and "spastic" from the BBC news website and its disability issues site, Ouch,and I reckon you can work out why it's interesting and how it might help you with your work on ENA1 Language & Representation.

And check out the top 10 most hated words as voted for by Ouch's readers. What's interesting to me is how different the two sets of charts are: the words hated by disabled people are quite different to those voted for by non-disabled people. Why might this be?

More grammar

Michael McCarthy, whose views on grammar and language have been mentioned here previously, has another article on the subject in yesterday's Guardian. In it he defends the use of certain types of more convoluted grammar in certain texts, mostly academic texts, and makes an excellent argument for viewing all grammar within its context: not judging the grammar of spoken English as poor, or criticising the grammar of academic texts as too complicated. It's a good, descriptivist argument and one that should help with A2 topics on ENA5 and ENA6.

Playground insults

The story of the 10 year-old boy who called his classmate a "p*ki", the n-word and "Bin Laden" and ended up in front of a judge, has been the lead story in several newspapers today. So, is this "political correctness gone mad" as the judge in the case himself claimed, or a reasonable attempt to clamp down on racist bigotry? The judge, Jonathan Finestein argued (according to The Telegraph) that "he used to be called fat at school and said that in the old days the headmaster would have given the children "a good clouting" and sent them on their way". Aah, those good old days when you could beat children and call a spade a spade, or a darkie, or whatever else you fancied... Err, racism aside, is it such a great idea to beat 10 year-old kids (or any kids for that matter) for things they say? And is calling someone "fat" really the same as calling someone deeply unpleasant racist names? There aren't gangs of demented murderers rushing around killing people because they're "fat", but there certainly are if they're black; you only have to look at the horrific cases of Anthony Walker this year, and Stephen Lawrence and Duwayne Brooks over ten years ago, to realise that people still get killed for the colour of their skin. So, "fat", "p*ki" and n-word are hardly equivalents, your honour... But might taking this language to court be a step too far? Can't the school punish the child and deal with it sensibly? Looking through the various stories in the press highlights each paper's political agenda and what they choose to report, or not. For example, Channel 4 News' website reveals that the child had refused to accept a "final warning" while Sky News tells us that the child accused his alleged victim of calling him "white trash" before he himself insulted him. Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror, which has had a more progressive anti-racist attitude than many papers, adds more detail to the insults offered. Useful for: ENA1 - Language & Representation

Seeking out new words and new civilisations...

The latest edition of Macmillan English Dictionary update has a brilliant feature on how new words are created, which is perfect revision for A2 students looking at Language Change. It explores processes like blending and compounding as well as looking at completely new words. Have a look here for more.

On the subject of Language Change, Beth Kemp's English website for King Edward VI College, Nuneaton. has some good revision material for this topic (and others) and has recently been updated. You can find it here.

Useful for:
ENA5 Language Change (Contemporary Language Change essay question)

The grammar debate revisited

This is just a quick follow up to last week's post "To boldly get it wrong" in which Linguistics Professor and co-editor of the Cambridge Grammar of English, Michael McCarthy argued that grammar rules are only as useful as we make them.

In this response to the Cambridge Grammar, "Dot Wordsworth" (a pseudonym, apparently) in the Telegraph attacks McCarthy's descriptivist attitude:

Without a knowledge of grammar, the young will be no more able to write down their thoughts coherently than they could text-message without knowing how to use a mobile phone. This will frustrate them, and relegate written English to the same kind of ghetto of incompetent self-expression with which we are familiar from graduates of art schools who have never learnt to draw.

Meanwhile, the whole issue was debated last week on Radio 4 and should be available to listen to again here

Useful for:
ENA6 - Language Debates

BBC English: Moving Words

Check it out- the BBC World Service (English divison)'s exhibition of 'Moving Words'

(-which to me is more like a memorable quotes site.)

>>http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/movingwords/<<

They're voting for the most moving quote under the heading of ''Which Words in English have Moved you?" I assumed you could suggest your own quotes but it seems that 'language God' (not my term I can assure you...) David Crystal has selected for us from hundreds of our nominations.

The US Declaration of Independence is amongst the selected gems of the English language... (need I say more...)

Vote, post, reply, cuss...ok maybe not too much cussing, but response and interest is welcome.

Charissa

Lazy frogs & bullsh*t

Two articles in the media over the last couple of days look at offensive words from different perspectives. In the first, Jeff Jarvis looks at the banning of the word "bullshit" from the American airwaves and what he sees as the political agenda behind such an act, while in the second an airline boss gets into trouble for labelling striking French workers as "lazy frogs". It's easy to criticise strikers from the comfort of your exec suite though isn't it?

With language investigation coursework coming up after the exams (oh joy!) these might be potentially good areas to start looking at now.

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language & Representation
EA4C - Language Investigations

Yet more top tips for ENA1

Indeed, these are tips, and lo they shall be top. Or something like that. I covered textual analysis a couple of days ago and CLA yesterday, so now it's the turn of Language & Representation. Again, the stuff here isn't comprehensive: it's just a few ideas gleaned from previous experience of teaching the paper and marking it. Any other suggestions or questions would be very welcome. Language & Representation This essay question deals with the links between language and thought - whether we control language or it controls us - and the ways in which language is used to label different groups in society. First off, it's important to be clear that this topic has nothing to do with how different groups in society use language varieties such as accent, dialect or sociolect (that's on ENA5 in the second year) so don't start writing at length about Black British English, Cockney, restricted codes etc. Secondly, you need to be clear that when the question talks about "social groups" (as it often does) , it's referring to ethnic groups, the different genders, social classes, age groups, or even what people often term subcultural groups like grungers, goths and rap fans. You can also add to that list groups defined by their sexuality, and disabled people. Of course, some of these labels themselves are problematic and you can talk about how they define individuals as parts of larger groups, removing their distinct identities and generalising about them, if you wish in your answer. Thirdly, you could (for revision purposes only of course - it's not a good idea to do this for fun) write down as many unpleasant words you can think of for each of those social groups and start to look at the common threads that emerge. We might find that words used to label gay people focus on their difference from the norm ("queer", "bent"), their supposed sexual practices ("batty man", "shirtlifter") or throw up some words which you'll have to explore more etymologically (Where does "faggot" come from? What did "gay" used to mean? What's a "chi-chi man" when he's at home? Well, probably still a homosexual, but you get the picture...). For women, many of the words that emerge are used to trivialise females as sweet, edible, consumable items, usually a bit decorative, but certainly not there to be taken seriously ("tart", "crumpet", "sweetie", "cupcake"), or again focus on a particular body part to define a woman solely by her appearance/sexual function to men ("the club was heaving with fanny", "oi, big jugs!"). Ethnicity and the words used to label different ethnic groups allow us to explore the etymology of terms like the n- and p-words, "pikey", "cracker", "coon", "half-caste", "taffy" and "gyppo". A quick look at the OED online or online etymology should help you track how these words have originated in racist attitudes (or not, as the case may be) and developed over time. And remember, white people are an ethnic group too! Have you ever met a black chav?! Actually, Croydon readers need not answer that rhetorical question... But of course, words like "black" and "white" can be explored in themselves for their negative and positive connotations, the words they tend to collocate with, and indeed the word "chav" is interesting as it is believed to has its roots in Gypsy slang for "child" or "lad" but has been used against Gypsies (and now any working class white person who dares to sport Burberry, Reebok Classics or sovereign rings). The next step is to look at some of the linguistic concepts and terms that can be used to explain these words and the patterns we notice. This sheet on the SFX Resource site should help. You could also look at research/texts by linguists such as Dale Spender (Man Made Language), Deborah Cameron (Verbal Hygiene), Muriel Schultz and Mary M Talbot whose work on gender is pretty interesting. There have been loads of blog posts about racist language so you could do a search on here using keywords and find material to bolster your knowledge. In terms of theory, it's important to understand linguistic reflectionism, determinism and wider concepts such as relativism and universalism, so an article in December's E Magazine by a strange looking white skinhead with a lop-sided mouth should help you. If it's not on the E Magazine site, it's certainly in the library. Alternatively, you could use Wikipedia and look up "Sapir Whorf" and find out where this bald man drew his "inspiration" from. While you're at it, you could search for "Political Correctness" as key words and have a look at why there has been a move to change language. The trickiest part is linking this together, but good answers can take many forms. You could explore the links between offensive words and the attitudes that create them - or even the language that shapes these attitudes - or you could take a range of examples and look at why they've changed over time and what this tells us about the society we live in. There are plenty of good, model answers we can give you too. I've probably missed lots of things out here, but you can fill in the gaps...

More top tips for ENA1

Now for the rest of ENA1, which consists of Child Language Acquisition (and Language and Representation which will follow tomorrow).

CLA
You can check the past questions on the AQA website or have a look at the SFX Resource Site for a downloadable document with previous questions and essay planning sheets, before doing any revision, and that should help you realise that there are several key things you need to know whatever the question.

1. You need to know the language framework and how each element is acquired (e.g. grammar, phonology, lexis, semantics, pragmatics).
2. You need to know the competing theories and how they offer competing explanations for the CLA process.
3. You need to have a grasp of relevant terminology (eg overextension, overgeneralisation, morphemes, consonants etc.)
4. You need to have a good range of examples of child language data.
5. You need to have a good grasp of the stages of CLA.
6. You need to have a knowledge of case studies that provide evidence for/against certain theories /positions.
7. You need to have your own view!

Looking at the previous essay questions should alert you to the fact that the questions follow one of three styles:

• they pick out a framework element and ask you to explore how that element is acquired (eg "how does grammar develop?"/ "how do children acquire words (lexis) and meanings (semantics)?"
• they pick out a theoretical position and ask you to explore its pros and cons (eg "to what extent do children learn by copying/applying rules/ interacting?")
• or they offer you short extracts of data and ask you to analyse it and relate it to theory.

Whatever happens, you should never uncritically accept either Chomsky's Nativist or Skinner's Behaviourist theory as the holy grails, but offer an open-minded approach to the reasons behind CLA.

Top Tips for ENA1

As many of you are now revising for your AS and A2 exams, I thought it might be handy to give some advice on what to revise and how to get yourself primed for each exam. So, every few days I'll try to post material on each unit (ENA1,3 5 & 6) to give you a bit of extra help, some of which is delivered with my examiner's hat on (it's a black and white cowboy hat, if you're interested). If you have any suggestions of your own - or questions - just add them through the comments icon.

ENA1
The paper consists of a written textual analysis question worth 40 marks, and a choice of essay questions on either Child Language Acquisition or Language & Representation worth 20 marks. A further 10 marks are allocated across the paper for AO1, which is your own written accuracy (punctuation, spelling, linguistic register and structure etc.).

Question 1 - types of text.
There's been a range of different written texts set for this question: newspaper interviews (Peter Fox last year), comment pieces (Vanessa Feltz on Miss World), reviews (film review of Moulin Rouge), obituaries (Joe Strummer in The Guardian); advertisements, both charitable (National Blood Service & Woodland Trust), educational (How to Become an Environmental Health Officer) and commercial (Nokia and Virgin phones).

To answer this question well, you'll need a combination of engagement with the text and a good grasp of language frameworks. For AO3, you are awarded marks for your ability to find significant language features (rather than just count random features and hope you'll pick up marks) such as word classes, verb tenses, verb aspects, verb forms and moods, and significant patterns.

So, looking at the mark scheme should tell you that if you start generally at pronouns and then gradually work your way through types of pronoun (first, second, third, plurals, reflexives etc), up to adjectives, nouns and adverbs and then up to types of noun (abstract, concrete, proper etc.), adverb types (time, manner, place etc.) you should be heading up to the 15 or 16 out of 20 area. If you can then explore tenses and aspect (e.g. present progressives, past tenses), modal verbs, types of adjective (superlative, comparative, evaluative etc.) you'll be hitting the top of the mark scheme.

You don't need to look at clause structure or types of sentence on this unit (so don't waste time looking at simple, compound, complex and subordinate or coordinaate clauses) and no marks are awarded for doing this.

Revising this part is fairly straightforward and you should try to look back through the early pages of your text book and class notes, making sure you're clear on how different word classes function in sentences and how they can affect meanings in different ways. The knack then is to pick out the features in the text that have a significant impact on the way the text works, and explain those effects.

Your model should be the "analytical sentence" in which you pick out a feature, illustrate it, linguistically label it and then explain its possible effects. An example might be as follows: The use of a modal auxiliary verb in the second paragraph ("He could have been very successful in this field") demonstrates the potential that Gary Barlow failed to achieve, linking to earlier points about his ever-decreasing chart positions.

For AO5 it's a less exact science, but you should try to read a range of past papers to get a feel for the nature of the texts set. Get used to the broadsheet register and try to build up an understanding of the vocabulary that's often used. Try to engage with how an idea is presented and the ways in which writers express their own attitudes towards their subject matter. At its simplest, AO5 is all about interpreting the material in an intelligent way and engaging with meaning.

The next time round, we'll have a look at the essay questions.

Caribbean accent upsets Middle England

Just when you thought it was only regional accents like Brummie and Scouse that caused consternation for RP-speaking Middle Englanders, comes shocking news that Caribbean ones are unsettling too!

In a story in yesterday's Observer - and in various postings on a BBC message board - the true feelings of various Radio 4 listeners about presenter Neil Nunes' Jamaican accent are made clear. One listener comments, "BBC does stand for BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation, doesn't it? Do we really have to listen to this American drawl every time we hear an announcement?".

Perhaps this listener should take geography lessons - last time I looked, Jamaica was in the West Indies, not the USA. Others have been quick to defend Nunes' accent, variously describing it as "refreshing" and "mellifluous".

So what is it about accents that makes us react so strongly? A casual listen to the adverts on any commercial radio station should let us know that certain regional and national accents are often associated with particular character traits. If you want wholesome and natural (like when selling wholemeal bread or organic vegetables) you employ a Yorkshire accent; if you want slightly dozy or slow-witted characters, you employ a Brummie or Black Country accent. Likewise, streetwise and slightly dodgy can be created through Scouse or Cockney, and rural trustworthiness, if a little dim, can be conveyed by Devon or Norfolk accents. And let's not forget those trustworthy financial adverts which seem to rely on the stereotypes of Scottish people being mean and stingy (and presumably therefore, good at looking after our cash for us).

Occasionally, you'll get a national accent used too: German accents are often used to convey stereotyped notions of discipline and organisation, French to convey sophistication and culture, Australian accents to convey mateyness and the common touch, Caribbean to signify laid back vibes, err, man. Lilt - it's the totally tropical taste, innit?

Of course, these are all bizarre and sweeping generalisations about people's characters based on their regional or national accents, but ones that appear to have some currency in the world of advertising...and beyond. Howard Giles' matched guise experiment (more available here about this line of research) tested people's responses to regional accents and found differing reactions to perceived qualities such as honesty and warmth, based on the accent used to deliver the same message, rather than the message itself.

You can read more about studies of accent (and dialect) in forthcoming E Magazine and E Magazine Extra articles written by ex-SFX students Charissa King & Anjuli Rogers, and myself, but there are also posts on here from last year which look at attitudes to accent. Try searching for "accent" as a key word in the search bar at the top of this page for some of these.

And just to round this off, if you've ever wanted to put a face to the voice that keeps you on hold when you phone up to pay bills, get help for your dodgy broadband connection, or whatever, have a look at this article in today's Guardian, and find out why having a regional accent makes you a "real person". Hmm....

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Varieties and Change

Blogging in the library

The rather excellent staff in the LRC have set up their own blog to promote new books and films, and to encourage students to write their own reviews of these. So, don't miss this opportunity to get your writing in print and don't miss out on the latest top tips for new releases; visit the Books and Films at SFX blog as soon as you can and get involved.

To boldly get it wrong

With the government's plans for "functional skills" hitting the news agenda and claims that students will fail their GCSEs if they can't accurately use commas and apostrophes (see here for Guardian article on it and QCA's own report here), it's good to see someone else putting the other side of the debate in today's Observer.

Michael McCarthy argues that many of our so-called "rules" are redundant and that we should instead think about what's clear and practical when we communicate, rather than trying to follow such rules.

People get upset about split infinitives, prepositions ending sentences, speech habits such as saying 'dunno' and 'gonna', the greengrocer's apostrophe ('carrot's 30p a pound'), using a singular verb when logic demands a plural ('there's five boys in the band'), double negatives ('I haven't done nothing') and so on. Most of these don't matter as long as they're used in appropriate contexts.

It's an interesting and provocative approach, and one that contrasts with that of Lynne Truss and her followers. Although, is that deliberately dodgy grammar in the second to last paragraph?

Useful for:
ENA6 - Language Debates

This week's competition

Congratulations to Andrea F and Evelyn O for winning last week's prize. Indeed, the Haribo shall be yours and lo, you shall enjoy it.

This week's quiz question requires the same type of response as last week. If you know the answer (or once you've found it) add a comment to this post and write your answer, making sure to leave a name. Once again two prizes are available.

The question this week is "What is etymology?".

A slip of the tongue?

An American radio host has been fired after only 2 weeks in his job, for an alleged racial slur against Condoleezza Rice. In today's Guardian it's reported that the presenter used the word "coon" when he claimed he meant to say "coup". So was this a genuine mistake for which he should be forgiven, or a deliberate dig at an African-American politician? Looking at the word "coon" itself tells us quite a bit about the origins of racist terms used to label Black people in America. According to etymology online, the word "coon" is derived from a "barracoos", buildings constructed to house slaves. Looking at other terms like the n-word and "negro" tells us a great deal about the historical roots of racism and the shifts in semantics many words go through over time. You could do worse than look at this link from Ferris University which offers a history and wide-ranging discussion of the n-word. Given the sordid and shameful origins of many of these offensive words, is it therefore fair to castigate someone who uses them, regardless of their supposed intentions, or should we look at the intent behind a word's use before criticising? The case of the Leeds University lecturer, Frank Ellis who (it is claimed) believes white people are more intelligent than black people, and that the BNP are "too socialist", perhaps underlines this problem. His views are probably much more offensive to most people than what might have been an unintended slip of the tongue from the American radio host, but they are couched in a more academic language and avoid the crass shock value of racist epithets. Perhaps this makes his views more dangerous? This takes us into more theoretical areas of language and thought, which can be explored by looking at theories such as linguistic relativism and linguistic determinism, as well as the whole PC debate. Useful for: ENA1 - Language & Representation ENA6 - Language Debates

No jokes about tractors or turkeys, please

The Norfolk dialect is set to be taught in schools in an attempt to restore its status in the region and make its users more aware of their cultural heritage. A report in yesterday's Guardian tells us that funding has been given to a project which will "create exhibitions, performance pieces and dialect recordings to "reclaim" cultural heritage in Norfolk".

As the report says, the local dialect has been ridiculed by "urban" types (as in the old sense of the word "urban" not the more recent one) and looked down upon for generations.

It's an interesting attempt to halt dialect levelling, but will it work and does it have any precedents in other parts of the country or abroad? A quick look at the BBC Voices project reveals that local dialect is alive and well in many parts of the country, but - many argue - it's dying out among younger speakers and morphing into new multi-ethnic youth dialects or super-regional dialects.

Paul Kerswill of Lancaster University, and his team of researchers (including Sue Fox who'll be at our SFX Language Conference) have been looking at exactly this sort of language change and their findings are awaited with interest.

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Varieties and Change

The pen is not as mighty as Microsoft's word

A report on the BBC website today tells us that the art of handwriting is dying out, superseded by emails and text messaging. Apparently, only 5% of young people's communications regularly use pen and paper.

Is this the end for the pen? And if it is, what does this mean for the future of exams, which seem to be some of the very few occasions in young people's lives that they have to pick up a biro and write (often straining their delicate, unpractised wrists in the process)?

We interrupt this transmission

If you're an A Level Language student, you may well be studying Media too, so this post is just to let you know that the SFX Media blog is now up and running and getting fairly regular updates here.

Recent posts give links to articles on New Media Technologies and Pop Music and Youth Culture (goths!).

Gossip is good

We all do it, but we might not admit to it. So, research in today's Mirror is a relief to gossips. Apparently gossip keeps us healthy and human. Read on for more fascinating facts...

Useful for:
ENA3 - Interacting through Language

This week's competition

Following the runaway success of last week's competition (winners were Jocelyn, Evelyn, Rachel and Izonebi) my bank balance has been dented, so I'm only offering two prizes this week (the usual large pack of Haribo). The question is "What is pragmatics?". Get searching...

He- he- hemail is so not funny

“If comprehending human communication consisted merely of translating sentences and syntax into thoughts and ideas, there would be no room for misunderstanding. But it does not, and so there is.”

So say Justin Kruger and colleagues who have been researching the ambiguity of email communication. According to the research (full text available here) which is in the latest British Psychological Society research digest (you can subscribe here), "the ambiguity of email communication, stripped as it is of any extra-linguistic cues such as gestures and intonation" leads to misinterpretation and miscommunication.

When we study email communication as part of Language Change, we often focus on the variations in form between email language and its standard written equivalent, but as this research shows, there's a lot more to communication than structure and form: there's pragmatics, for a start, which is the study of what utterances or messages actually mean within their context. So, while we can merrily email away in a tone that we think is perfectly witty or obviously sarcastic, the reader of teh message may find it much trickier to decipher our intended meanings at the other end.

Even with smilies and other emoticons, email can be a blunt tool. But, like texting, for many of us it's a preferred method of communication and one that allows us to keep in touch with people we probably wouldn't bother to phone up or visit.

There's plenty here to follow up from a language perspective, and whole investigations for A2 coursework could explore different areas of this topic.

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language frameworks (pragmatics)
ENA5 - Language Change
EA4C - Language Investigation

Football chants again...

And picking up the story of football chants from yesterday, the BBC website reports that FIFA, the world football governing body, have pledged to take more vigorous action against teams and whole Football associations in an attempt to crack down on racist chanting.

And here's a link to the Kick It Out! anti-racist website.

10 German bombers

Returning briefly to football chants, there's a piece in today's Guardian by Nicky Campbell (of Radio 5 Live and Just the Two of Us fame) which looks at matters of nationalism, xenophobia and sensitivity in the run-up to this summer's World Cup in Germany (is it only Ghana and England supporters who are getting excited about this, or are Nigeria fans just keeping a dignified silence?).

Campbell (who I once bumped into in Marks and Spencers on Balham Hill, celebrity spotters!) actually does something which we're not supposed to do this summer: he mentions THE WAR. Now, it's not big or clever to link German people or the history of the whole country with just one (or maybe two) horrific conflicts, but where should we draw the line when looking for subject matter for football chants?

As Campbell points out, there's a world of difference between singing the Dambusters theme and chanting "I'd rather be a P*ki than a Turk", but what's acceptable and what's not? It brings up interesting debates about political correctness, the power that language has to offend and incite, and more complex questions about how we define who we are.

And just to lower the tone further, the most hits this blog has ever had was when I posted the story about anti-Sol Campbell chants from Tottenham supporters. According to the hit counter, the main searches that landed people on these pages contained the words "Sol" "gay" and "Campbell"! So maybe Ashley Cole was onto something after all when his solicitors got on the case with Google for linking his name to gay sex scandals involving premiership footballers.

But of course by putting those words in that order I've just guaranteed 1000 extra hits from salacious websearchers and a legal writ from Ashley Cole (who - celeb spotters - used to live on the estate just over the road from my house!). Oh well...

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language & Representation

Gadsbobs, zounds and by gum

A piece in today's Guardian bemoans the ubiquity of the naughty "f-word" in conversation today, not simply because it's rude but because its overuse seems to have made swearing and taboo language less inventive.

The author, David McKie argues, "Indeed, since today's universal F-words have largely surrendered their old power to shock or even, perhaps, to intensify, it would be good to see some of the old expletives creeping back into the language".

So, is he right? Have we lost the power to shock each other with our uses of swearing? Are we all growing more tolerant towards previously shocking words? Or is it a more complicated story of words shifting meaning over time: some losing their impact, some gaining offensive connotations? And if he is right, should we really be returning to old classics such as "By my troth!" and "Odds Bodkins"? Or would we get looked at strangely and locked up in a "special room"?

For another look at swearing on this blog, try one of these links:
Swearing like a bloody trooper
You f***ing beauty
It is big and it is clever

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change
EA4C - Language Investigation

and the winners are (week 3)...

Congratulations to Jocelyn, Rachel and Evelyn for this week's correct answers. You are winners. Frankly, you should call yourselves "The A Team" or "Winners".

The second SFX English Language Conference

Or "SFX in the LDN (remix)", as... err... no one is calling it...

We put one of these on in September 2004 and it went very well, so we're doing another. It's aimed primarily at A2 students because the topics are mostly linked to Language Change and Varieties of English, but AS students from SFX will be more than welcome to come too as these are topics that could be part of your coursework (which you start in July after your AS exams).

There are four guest speakers and they'll each be doing lectures of about 40 minutes: 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon.

Check the flyer for more details, but don't worry about the £7.50 tickets as it's free to all SFX students. Don't say we never do nothing for you...

Vlogging a dead horse

New words, how they're created and why they come into existence are always popular subjects for discussion on the Language Change and Varieties paper (ENA5) so this site run by the MacMillan English Dictionary is a great way of keeping up with the latest new words and what they mean.

This week's new word is "vlog" and this week's prize of a packet of Haribo goes to the first 3 students who can tell me what it means. To enter this week's competition, just click on "comment" under this post, type your answer and make sure you leave your name.

And for more information on Haribo and my shares in it, click here.

Useful for:
ENA5 - Contemporary Language Change (essay question)

Exam dates

The provisional examinations timetable is now out and students will get a chance to note all of their exam dates in a tutorial coming up very soon, but for English Language the dates are as follows:

AS ENA1 - Tuesday 23rd May (pm) 1 hr 30 mins
AS ENA3 - Tuesday 23rd May (pm) 1 hr 30 mins
A2 ENA5 - Monday 26th June (pm) 1 hr 30 mins
A2 ENA6 - Wednesday 28th June (pm) 2 hr 30 mins

For a breakdown of what's on each paper, check with either Dan or Raj or have a look at the AQA A site here.

Get revising!

And the winner is (week 2)...

... Sherelle in C block AS English Language. Congratulations! You are a winner!

She wins the Haribo this week with her lightning quick response of "John Barnes".

It really should be time for an A2 student to win next week. Are you out there? Or are these prizes too childish for the likes of you? Come on, as Michael Jackson might have once said "You're never too old for Haribo". Or something like that.

Next week's question will appear on Friday. It's all too exciting...

Baa baa rainbow sheep?

Political Correctness (P.C.) has been a target for the right wing press for a long time now. If it wasn't The Sun in the 1980s shouting "Pooftas on Parade" when gay men were allowed to join the army, it was the Daily Mail lambasting local councils over their supposed attempts to avoid ofending non-Christians by changing "Christmas" to "Winterval".

Now The Times is reporting that nursery schools in Oxford are changing the words of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" to "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep" to avoid offending minority groups. But as with all these stories about PC, is it just an opportunity for a silly story, or are there really people out there with so much time on their hands and so little grasp of reality that they actually do think of these ideas?

According to The Times, the poor black sheep is not the only nursery rhyme character to be reassessed:

In keeping with the new approach, teachers at the nurseries have reportedly also changed the ending of Humpty Dumpty so as not to upset the children and dropped the seven dwarfs from the title of Snow White.

So, is there any evidence that this story is actually true? It's dubious. The quotes in the article purporting to come from the people who've changed the lyrics are so general that they could apply to any type of anti-discrimination policy, while the quotes from OFSTED are very similar. The BBC report it slightly differently, while The Express put it on their front page.

Many of the "truths" about P.C. are in fact myths, "P.C. satires" designed to denigrate the whole approach. But some are true, and have to make you wonder what on earth could be offensive about a blackboard, a black sheep or even a cracked egg...

It would be interesting to see how this story develops and if there's any right to reply for the supposed perpetrators of this act of "PC gone mad".

Edited to add: you can contribute to the debate on The Times site here.

Other links to PC:
Wikipedia
Baa Baa Green Sheep

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language & Representation
ENA5 - Language Change
ENA6 - Language Debates

And the winner is...

Maidei in B block AS English Language wins the 2 packets of Skittles this week for mentioning Nicaraguan Deaf Schools during an English lesson. Woo hoo!

Next week's prize will be a packet of Haribo Fangtastic flavours for the first person to name the ex-England footballer who rapped on New Order's 1990 World Cup song, World In Motion.

The return of the mack daddy

Those of you too young to remember John Barnes' iconic rap on the 1990 New Order World Cup song, World in Motion should count yourselves lucky. But, oh dear, he's set to make a rapping comeback in this world cup year, according to this story on the BBC website, but only if the lyrics are "like Kanye West or Busta Rhymes".

So, let's remind ourselves of those mighty rhymes that John spat the last time he graced our airwaves:

You’ve got to hold and give
But do it at the right time
You can be slow or fast
But you must get to the line
They’ll always hit you and hurt you
Defend and attack
Theres only one way to beat them
Get round the back
Catch me if you can
Cos’ I’m the danger man
And what you’re looking at
Is the master plan
We ain’t no hooligans
This ain’t a football song
Three lions on my chest
I know we can’t go wrong

lyrics from lyricsfreak.com

So let's see if we can provide a rap for this great man. Here's a start, "Brap brap, watch my shizzle as i dribble. Brap brap, it's the sound of my feet..." err or something...

Twincomprehensible

There's a scary story for parents of twins everywhere, in today's Mirror. Apparently Jack and Luke Ryan, who are four years old, have developed a special twin language that only they can understand. Their mum can occasionally pick out words like "wawa" for "grandad" and "tee" for "cheese" but the rest is a mystery.

According to research in the Netherlands, 40% of twins develop their own language, or idioglossia as it's called (I thought that's what George Bush spoke), but grow out of it as they start to converse with a wider range of adults and children.

It raises interesting questions about the influence of interaction and the nature of children's language acquisition. Whose input has the most influence? Do twins get more input but of lower "quality" (a bit like Chomsky's poverty of the stimulus idea) because they hear each others' language more? According to the National Literacy Trust website there are various reasons for twins developing language in different ways:

Late onset of speech, and speech and language difficulties, including stuttering, are more common in twins than in singletons. This is because twins are frequently premature or low birth weight babies, and their parents may have less time to attend to them individually and to help them develop verbal skills... They used simple language and fewer words when they talked to each other. A British study showed that twin language is higher (around 50%) in twins with speech and language difficulties than for twins with normal language (11%).

I've not noticed my own twin sons speaking like this, but they do have a weird telepathy sometimes and know just when to get on the computer whenever I want to update this blog.

Meanwhile, here are some links to research and advice on twin speech:

First words on twin speech
Wikipedia - idioglossia
National Literacy Trust on twin language

Useful for:
ENA1 - Child Language Acquisition
EA4C - Language Investigation (potential investigations could include comparative analysis of twins' language against singletons' language, or even analysis of differences between siblings)

Kidulthood revisited

Two more articles on this film, each with a few bits to say about its use of urban vernacular:

Observer article
Guardian article