English around the world

Here's a quick link to an American article offering advice to American English speakers about how to avoid communication difficulties with other English speakers. It covers some of the main areas we'll look at in our A2 course when we look at Language Variation and how English is used around the world, specifically that the English used by non-native speakers is often a very different beast from what we use in the UK and USA. Here's an example:

Common colloquial American phrases will not mean much to a person who does not live in the United States. Telling a colleague that he or she should "go for it" will not take anyone anywhere and saying someone is "out of the loop" will likely put you there.

We've covered World Englishes (as they're often called) in previous posts, so if you want to stay ahead of the game...sorry, prepare so you are ready when we start this unit... have a look at these links:
The End of English - David Crystal's take on World English
Globish
French, English and American
Dirty English infects beautiful Italian

Vlogging a dead horse

The latest version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary is coming out and some of the words it has included are covered here in a Guardian piece.

Among the words are vlog (video blog) which you will know all about if you attended Kerry Maxwell's sessions last week. Also featured is another blend, frenemy ( a sneaky snake who pretends to be your friend but is in fact your enemy).

For more detail on vlog check the Macmillan Dictionary Word of the Week page on it here.

Ephebiphobia

Ephebiphobia: fear of young people. Some of us might have experienced it; others might find it bizarre. Perhaps Michael Jackson would have benefitted from it. But in this article from back in March, psychologist Tanya Byron argues that it's skewing our perception of young people and society.

This is the sort of text we look at as part of ENGA2 Investigating Representations and it's one to which there are some really interesting and provocative online responses.

Investigating Language

Here are the suggestions for language investigations that we've come up with in our intro pack. If you've got any adaptations to these, or ideas of your own, please add them here. But remember, that on the new AQA A spec the focus has to be spoken language.


An investigation into the ways in which two children of different ages use spoken language in similar situations.

A study of the use of metaphor in a political speech

An investigation into how three different teenagers use language while involved in a puzzle solving task.

A study of the language used by gym instructors or football coaches

An investigation into how males and females use similar or different language when describing a picture.

An investigation into the language used by teachers in 2 different classes of similarly aged students/pupils.

An investigation into how candidates on The Apprentice use language in the boardroom.

A study of attitudes towards different regional or national accents.

An investigation into how different ethnic groups use particular slang expressions in conversation.

A study of how Creole is used in three different generations of the same family.

An investigation into the differences between how the same person tells a story in spoken English compared to in a written form.

A study of the language of cinema trailers

An investigation into the language used by a range of radio DJs to introduce songs

Monkey magic

And following hot on the heels of the last post about research into child language and how it seems to support interactional theories of development, here's research on monkeys that seems to offer support to nativist theories. According to the BBC news website and New Scientist (quoted here) by playing repeated patterns of two syllable "words" to monkeys on one day and then mixing up the patterns on the second day, it could be observed that the monkeys were alert to differences in syllables:

The findings do not mean primates can communicate using language, but they do suggest that some of the skills required to use language may be linked to very basic memory functions.

One grammatical structure that is found across many languages is affixation: the addition of syllables, either at the beginning or at the end of a word, to modify its meaning.

For instance, in English, the suffix "–ed" is added to verbs to make the past tense. In German, the same effect is achieved by adding the prefix "ge–" to the front of verb stems.

What this doesn't "prove" (and to be fair, no one is claiming that it does) is that grammar is inbuilt. What it does seem to support is that some sort of learning process - which involves language in some form - is present is monkeys, our evolutionary relatives and that this process can be extended to "rules" of human languages.

Language development under the microscope

This article on the BBC news website offers an insight into one approach to researching children's language development at the moment. As part of the "speechome project", Professor Deb Roy and his colleagues are collecting a quarter of a million hours of data. And the other figures are equally staggering:

"The first task we set for ourselves was to transcribe everything my son heard
or said from nine to 24 months," he says. He estimates that there is somewhere
between 10 to 12 million words of speech to transcribe. "For anyone that has
transcribed speech, they will know that is a laborious and slow process," he
says, with a degree of understatement.

And some initial observations that Roy has made seem to offer support to social interactive theories of language development. The BBC site explains:

By analysing the length, and hence complexity, of sentences spoken by caregivers
to his son, he believes that he has shown that adults subconsciously simplify
sentences until the child understands the word. Once it has been understood, the
adults then build up the complexity of the sentences containing the word. "We
essentially meet him at this point of the birth of the word and gently pull him
into language," he says.

Elsewhere, there's more support for interactive models of language acquisition. A report from UCLA suggests that adult-child conversations can potentially offer six times as much language development improvement as talking at a child (parent monologues/reading) or the child watching TV.

"Talk is powerful, but what's even more powerful is engaging a child in
meaningful interactions — the 'give and take' that is so important to the
social, emotional and cognitive development of infants and toddlers," says Dr.
Jill Gilkerson, language research director at LENA Foundation and a study
co-author.

"It is not enough to speak to children," Zimmerman adds.
"Parents should also engage them in conversation. Kids love to hear you speak,
but they thrive on trying speech out for themselves. Give them a chance to say
what's on their minds, even if it's 'goo goo gah.'"

And finally, in a piece of investigation that could win the No Sh*t Sherlock award for 2009, researchers at Seattle Children's Research Institute have discovered that when the TV is on people talk less and use fewer vocalisations, potentially harming the language development of children who are in the same environment. What is interesting about this is the observation that it's not so much the TV programmes that could damage the children's language (although In the Night Garden is the work of Satan as far as I'm concerned) but the effect watching TV has on the family's spoken interaction.

The study found that each hour of audible television was associated with
significant reductions in child vocalizations, vocalization duration, and
conversational turns. On average, each additional hour of television exposure
was also associated with a decrease of 770 words the child heard from an adult
during the recording session. This represented a seven percent decrease in words
heard, on average. There were significant reductions in both adult female and
male word counts. From 500 to 1,000 fewer adult words were spoken per hour of
audible television.

A2 coursework & contributions to the blog

Exams may be over but we're going to focus on A2 coursework projects in this blog from now on, as well as all the usual links to language stuff in the media.

If anyone who has been using the blog would like to become a contributor to it, please email me on d.clayton at sfx.ac.uk (swapping the at for @). This would be especially good if you are planning to go on to university to study language or linguistics!

ENA6 - good luck

There's been nearly 1000 views of this blog today (not that I check...ahem), so I hope it's been of some use to you if you're revising for ENA6.

It's probably worth saying that even though I teach the unit and mark it, I have as much idea as you about what will turn up on tomorrow's paper (honestly!), so even though I've suggested various topics, if they don't come up don't get stressed: just make sure you read the material properly, annotate it sensibly and know exactly what's required on each part of the paper.

Here's what i put on the blog this time last year about what to do...

There are plenty of tips on this blog for how to approach this paper, but remember that reading carefully, annotating well and thinking about the specific demands of each question are the keys to success.

Don't spend too long on parts 1a and 1b: you should be able to get 10 marks for these in about 10 minutes maximum, leaving you about 50 minutes to analyse and evaluate the text for 1c. Remember that you're not just feature spotting (although that is part of your job), but you're supposed to be evaluating how the writer of the text represents the issue he or she is talking about. In the texts we've looked at in class (the ones that haven't been past paper questions), think about how the rabidly anti-PC David Gelernter constructed his attack on the feminist "language rapists" as he termed them, or how Michael McCarthy in his "I'm Happy to Boldly Get it Wrong" argued against prescriptive views in grammar and language change. The title of the paper is Language Debates and you will get more marks if you write like you're contributing to , and care about, the debate.

With part 2a, selecting your relevant sources is important: use a range of texts from the paper (and your own ideas and other study) and don't rely too much on the one you've just analysed for 1c. If you feel confident, tie this debate into that of other language topics. PC and Language Change are closely linked. Accents and dialects are changing too - they could be linked into Language Change. It's a synoptic paper, so look for links with other areas. But, be careful not to confuse your reader. You will be writing for a non-specialist audience, so take care to explain technical ideas and don't assume they will know who particular linguists are.

As for my top tips for which topic it might be, I suspect (based on previous papers and topics, not any inside information obviously) it will be either Political Correctness/ Language and Representation or something about Accent and Dialect. For the latter, I'd say look at ideas like dialect levelling and the ways in which new varieties of English have grown - MEYD, Estuary English etc. I got it right last year (attitudes to Language Change) but hopelessly wrong the year before (the speech of chipmunks and cheerleaders) so don't bet everything you have on my predictions.

Good luck!

Child Language Acquisition - mini-investigation

And here's a quick one in a 1b style for CLA.

Explain the methodology you would use to investigate how children acquire the sounds of English.

Remember to follow the 5 point plan as laid out below:

• AIM/ANGLE
• METHOD of DATA COLLECTION
• FRAMEWORK for ANALYSING YOUR DATA
• CONSIDERATION of EXTRA LINGUISTIC VARIABLES/ VALIDITY/ ETHICS
• WHAT YOU EXPECT to FIND

Child Language Acquisition - data set

And just to be on the safe side, here's a quick 1a style question on CLA. All you have to do is identify and label 3 "interesting" features from the data set below:

Data set:

1. I readed that book yesterday.
2. What that man doing?
3. Dat's gusting. I not like that dinner.
4. My tooth is hurty.

If you give your points as comments, I'll try to give you some feedback (my own child language data providers permitting).

ENA6 - revising dialects

Here's some stuff to help you revise dialect and accent.

Andrew Moore's pages on dialect levelling, Estuary and recent change
Features of traditional dialects
Features of modern dialects
Peter Trudgill on Language and Place

ENA6 - some language variation data

Here's a quick 1a style question for ENA6 using some examples of regional/social variation. The question (in the usual style) is "Comment linguistically on three features of non-standard language use in the data list below".

Data list

She were wearing a mask.
What are yous guys up to?
Second prize don't exist.
What's tha been doing?
There was bare mans.

If you post your 3 features as comments below, I'll give some feedback.

Good luck with ENA5!

Geek-speak

This is a bit of a weird one, but if you're looking for examples of how different social groups use language to cement their in-group status, then have a look here for expressions used by fans of science fiction and fantasy.

It's quite interesting stuff from a Language Variation perspective (like how different social groups use language in their own communities of practice) and could also be useful for Language Change when thinking about how words go through processes of abbreviation in contexts like this. A good example of this is the suffix -zine, which itself derives from a clipping of magazine, but is now used in all sorts of contexts (fanzine, e-zine, crudzine).

Communities of practice
A community of practice is an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in some common endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations - in short, practices - emerge in the course of their joint activity around that endeavor. A community of practice is different as a social construct from the traditional notion of community,primarily because it is defined simultaneously by its membership and by the practice in which that membership engages. And this practice involves the construction of a shared orientation to the world around them - a tacit definition of themselves in relation to each other, and in relation to other communities of practice. The individual constructs an identity - a sense of place in the social world - through participation in a variety of communities of practice, and in forms of participation in each of those communities. And key to this entire process of construction is stylistic practice.

And it also gives me an excuse to use a picture of a cylon.

A post about the post

I've nicked this link from the Teachit Language sputnik (which is available to Teachit Language subscribers) as it's excellent material for revising the ENA5 Language Change texts from different times question. If you click here, you'll be taken to the British Postal Museum and Archive site from where you can download letters from different time periods - perfect for helping you see how similar themes are dealt with over the centuries.

For example, the 1750 - 1900 link has these letters: an early Valentine card, a letter from a slave owner in Jamaica and a soldier's letter from the Crimean War.

ENA6 - the topics so far

It's always a fun way to pass an evening, guessing which topic will be on ENA6, but this year will be the last chance we have as it's the end of the AQA A spec as we know it. Here's what's been featured so far...

June 2008

Political correctness and slang

1c. Zoe Williams Guardian article on slang that demeans women

2a. Article for online newspaper responding to Zoe Williams


June 2007

Attitudes to Language Change

1c. Kate Burridge article

2a. Broadsheet editorial on views about Language Change


June 2006

Male/female conversation

1c. John and Barbara Pease self-help book

2a. Radio script on male female conversation


June 2005

Child Language Acquisition

1c. Baby and You magazine article

2a.Magazine article


Feb 2005

Language and Representation

1c. George Orwell extract from Politics and the English Language

2a. Broadsheet feature article on language and its effect on attitudes


June 2004

Development of new accents

1c. Daily Telegraph article

2a. Broadsheet feature article on high rising intonation


Jan 2004

Language of texting and emails

1c. Guardian article Cn u txt?

2a. Radio script on texting and email language and attitudes to these forms


June 2003

Political Correctness in Language

1c. Terry Deary extract from Wicked Words kids book

2a. Broadsheet editorial on PC and attitudes to it


Jan 2003

Child Language Acquisition - interaction

1c. extract from Baby Talk advice book

2a. Magazine article on role of verbal interaction


June 2002

Male/female conversation

1c. Extract from John Gray Men Are From Mars, Women From Venus

2a.Broadsheet newspaper article on male/female conversation styles


My guesses for this year’s paper:

Language Varieties and Slang - perhaps something looking at the changing face of Britain’s accents and dialects - Estuary English, MEYD, development of new slang, dialect levelling.

Language Change & Technology* - perhaps something about text messages, emails, social networking and language, and attitudes towards these forms.

Child Language* - hasn't turned up since 2005, but has been set twice before. I suspect it won't appear, but be ready just in case!

Form of question in 2a? Be ready for anything, but letters to the editor and website articles haven’t turned up yet and might do this year.

*Edited to change from my publishing last year's advice - sorry!

ENA5 revision reminders

Just in case you're revising for Friday's ENA5 exam, have a quick look at advice for this paper in these older blog posts from last year and the year before:

ENA5 advice from 2008
ENA5 Language Change timelines
Top tips for ENA5 & ENA6
And don't forget Beth Kemp's website which has loads of stuff for this unit here.

T-weet t-who?

Twitter has been big news for a while among media folk, with lots of celebrity tweeters singing its praises. If you're unfamiliar with what Twitter is and what it allows you to do, check here. And if you want to see how it's relevant to your study of language, have a look at this blog post from earlier in the year.

But a report on today's BBC news website, casts into doubt some of the hype around Twitter. Who' s actually tweeting who(m)? According to the Harvard research quoted in the article, 10% of Twitter users generate 90% of the content and most people who sign up only ever tweet once:

"Based on the numbers, Twitter is certainly not a service where everyone who has
seen it has instantly loved it," said Bill Heil, a graduate from Harvard
Business School who carried out the work. On a typical online social network, he
said, the top 10% of users accounted for 30% of all production. This implies
that Twitter's resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more
than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network," the team wrote in a blog
post.

So, what are the implications of this research on our study of the language of Tweets and Twitter users? If it's less of a conversation and more of a broadcast or publication, then does this mean that it's more like a blog and less like email, text or MSN? In other words, is it less of a conversation and more of a series of monologues?

Perhaps more importantly, if it's all about numbers - as so much language change often is - and there's a limited core of Twitter users generating most of the content, will there be much of an impact on the language styles of the majority of Twitter users who don't tweet? In other words, will Twitter have much of an impact on the language styles of most of us? Probably not...

Sling some snout into the chokey

If you love slang and you love prison (and what south Londoner doesn't one day dream of slinging slang inside the glorious environs of Brikkie Pen?), then this is the story for you. It might also help you if you're looking for interesting examples of contemporary language change for Friday's ENA5 exam.

Yesterday's Daily Mail and today's Guardian feature articles on an apparently growing trend of prisoners reviving Early Modern English thieves' slang (or cant, as it's often called) to hide their illegal practices (mostly taking drugs and smuggling sim cards) from the ears of prison officers. As the Daily Mail explains, "The dialect, thought to originate from medieval gipsies, was used by all manner of villains in Shakespeare's England, becoming known as thieves' cant or rogues' cant. But it was thought to have become obsolete until its unexpected revival, believed to have been led by criminal members of the travelling community".

The Mail tells us that words like those featured on the list at the top are being used as code, while The Guardian goes into more detail about other types of slang (pig Latin and backslang) which help both exclude outsiders and foster in-group identity. What The Daily Mail doesn't really explain is how Elizabethan slang had words for crack cocaine and sim cards. Hmm...

As it happens, I'm reading a really excellent book on slang at the moment by Michael Adams, called Slang: The People's Poetry, which has some fascinating ideas about what slang is, how it's perceived and what it's used for. As Adams points out, slang has social value and he is concerned with finding out "how it marks groups off from one another and indicates group membership, its use among different races and genders, the extent to which it belongs to the young and eludes the old, and how we use it as social currency to negotiate our way through problems of living with others".

In this particular case, it would seem that an old form of slang has been revived as a means of eluding prison officers and fostering group identity among prisoners and their contacts on the outside, but also perhaps as a means of keeping a tradition alive. If, as the Daily Mail speculates, the slang being used has its roots in thieves' cant of the Sixteenth Century, perhaps it's part of a means of preserving a culture too.

Some more stuff on new words

Just a couple of quick things that might help with ENA5 Contemporary Language Change (or ENA6 if this topic turns up).

First up is glamping (glamorous + camping), a phenomenon of recent years in which people who wouldn't normally go camping (poshos) slum it with the rest of us and do it in typical middle class style (pink camouflage tents, flower design welly boots, wine cooler etc.).
So which word formation process has created this word?

Next come J-Lo (Jennifer Lopez), BoJo (Boris Johnson) and SuBo (Susan Boyle). There's been a trend to shorten celebrity names to these clipped versions, but the most recent one has to be rather ironic (and cruel, given her recently reported collapse). Any ideas what processes might be involved here?

And how about these words, all derived from the recent economic collapse (and found here): bailout, dead mall and green shoots. Could the first be a conversion from the verb phrase "to bail (someone) out"? What about the processes involved in the other two?

Attitudes to accents

Now the AS students have done their exams, we'll concentrate on the A2 units and here's a piece from The Guardian on Wednesday which looks at people's attitudes to regional accents. It's no great surprise that we all have different preferences and dislikes when it comes to accents, but what might be surprising is how little some people like their own accent.

Basing their research on government-funded radio and TV advertising, the Central Office of Information has found that respondents in some regions dislike the sound of their own regional accent when used as a voice-over, preferring other regional accents or even Received Pronunciation. In other areas, there's more warmth towards the local variety.

Tynesiders appear to be proud of their accents, according to the findings, but Brummies responded negatively to hearing their vowels on TV and radio, partly because they recognise they are ridiculed for them by some of their compatriots.

"The research clearly shows that the accent used in radio and TV advertising can have an impact on how the ad is received," said Brian Jenkins, the head of radio at the COI. "Regional accents can make a difference but not necessarily a positive one. There was quite a negative reaction from people in Birmingham and Bristol to their own accents," he said.

Jenkins added respondents in both cities were "very proud" of the way they spoke, but seem to have been affected by "other people's perceptions of their accent".

And it's this last point that's quite interesting as an explanation: that people perhaps internalise others' ridicule of their accent and feel less secure about their own voices as a result.

An article in The Guardian some 10 years ago (which I stumbled across while clearing out English Language coursework from 1999 in my classroom) sheds some light on historical attitudes to regional accents. In one part of the article, the link is made between region and social class:

Academic studies confirm that, socio-linguistically, Cockney has shared the bottom rung with Scouse, Glaswegian, West Midlands and Belfast. Almost certainly this is because, historically, they have all been essentially working-class accents - unlike Yorkshire, say, which might be middle class. This is one reason why Scots voices, and to a lesser extent Irish and Welsh ones, are different. A middle-class Scottish accent can signify a good education (lawyers, doctors).

So, how does this help with A2 English Language? Language variation is part of ENA5 and could also be a topic for ENA6 (Language Debates), so it's worth having a think about why certain accents give rise to certain attitudes, but it's also important to think about how regional varieties are changing and attitudes towards previously prestige forms (such as RP) are altering. In the COI survey above, it was noted that older respondents, and those who weren't "positively engaged with authority" (i.e. a hardened criminal or a junior gangbanger from some dodgy endz) had very different attitudes to RP:

Older people tend to be more accepting of ad campaigns featuring received pronunciation, perhaps because they grew up listening to the "cut-glass" English accents that featured on public information films of the past.

Younger people were more engaged by local accents, it found, but sometimes a more authoritative voice is more appropriate, according to the research.

Advertisements which encourage the public to comply with deadlines, including filling in tax returns, "need to impart trust and authority" the COI said, and are more effective when a Home Counties accent is used.

Local accents proved more persuasive in campaigns which include "credible real-life experiences" to try to change people's behaviour, perhaps to prevent drink driving or encourage homeowners to fix faulty smoke alarms.

The study also found that people who were already "positively engaged with authority" were more likely to absorb the message of campaigns using RP, while those who are not prefer to hear local accents.

Synecdoche SW12

Fancy stretching your vocabulary a bit further? Like a bit of lexical flexing? Try this 7 question quiz on the BBC website, inspired by the troublesome title of the latest Charlie Kaufman film, Synecdoche, New York.

There's also a brief article in today's Guardian about the word synecdoche, a term we've used in A2 lessons this term when looking at how some words and phrases used to label social groups have been formed ("Nice bit of ass" = an attractive woman etc.). Then there's metonymy, a similar process in which a metaphorical link is made between an object and the thing associated with it (e.g. "hoodie" becomes the person wearing it)

These are words that Sean and Gilberto already use with great perspicacity and aplomb, so see if you too can elevate your lexical performance to match their verbal gymnastics.

ENGA1 Language Development essay questions part 3

And here's another one we prepared earlier. It's a suggested approach to the phonology question (question 2 on the list below).

To use Teachit links you'll have to register on their site first, but it's still free. Go here, register, log in then follow the link above.

ENGA1 mode exercise 3

And now try analysing this text, which is also about the singer mentioned in mode exercise 2, Regina Spektor. This extract is taken from a Guardian newspaper review of one of her live performances, written by Maddy Costa. If you feel brave, you could even have a go at comparing the two extracts...

What a canny operator Regina Spektor is. She scuttles on stage every bit the little-girl-lost, her bashful expression and cute outfit (sparkly top, puffball skirt, flat shoes) creating the impression that this venue is too big, too daunting for her. So daunting, in fact, that she must sing as if no one else is in the room, unselfconsciously burbling notes the way one might in the shower, barely saying a word between songs. Which just serves to underscore how capable she is of mesmerising an audience: her voice is so pure, so vital, she could play a venue four times this size and still have everyone rapt.

But everything Spektor does is poised between extremes. She is at once artful and artless, mannered and unmannerly. Her eccentricity can seem contrived: Poor Little Rich Boy, which Spektor plays with one hand on the piano, the other bashing at a chair with a drumstick, has an air of party piece about it. But the eccentricity can also seem wholly natural: in songs like Music Box and Baby Jesus, her voice flutters like a hummingbird, her melodies are staccato and forthright, and her lyrics inject barbed social commentary into fairytale flights of fancy. This oddball theatricality is not adopted; it is part of her Russian-Jewish-New-York-immigrant heritage.

There is canniness, too, in the way Spektor marries outlandishness with the kind of sentimental gush you would associate with Celine Dion. Watching her is a game; it is never clear what is coming next. A trickle of syrup or a dash of salt? An irritating, unnecessary scat vocal line, or a melody of such beauty you catch your breath? That ability to create wonder, in both senses of the word, is Spektor's smartest trick of all.

ENGA1 mode exercise 2

Here's another extract for a bit of mode analysis. It's taken from a discussion forum on a music festival website. See what you make of it. If it's a bit blurred, click on the image to get a better picture. Try applying the same questions as the last revision post:

1. Where would you place this extract on the mode continuum?
2. Why?
3. What language evidence can you produce for your decision?

ENGA1 Language Development essay questions part 2

And here is a link to an approach to question 5 from the Teachit site. That's the one that asks you "To what extent do children acquire language by actively working out its rules?".

To use Teachit links you'll have to register on their site first, but it's still free. Go here, register, log in then follow the link above.

ENGA1 Language Development essay questions

As this is the start of a new specification, there has only been one "proper" essay question set on this topic so far, but many of the old spec's child language questions might be reworked (or recycled - it is the 21st century) into something suitable for the new spec.

Here's a list of loads of previous questions from the AQA A spec and in days to come we'll have a look at how you might approach these if they were set on the ENGA1 paper.

1. Discuss the ways in which young children up to the age of four learn words and their meanings.
2. Give examples of how children develop their ability to use the sounds of English. What do your examples reveal about the nature of children’s language acquisition?
3. To what extent do children learn language by copying the language that is spoken to them?
4. Give examples of how children learn to use the grammar of English. What do your examples reveal about the nature of children’s language acquisition?
5. To what extent do children acquire language by actively working out its rules?
6. To what extent is it appropriate to describe children’s early uses of language as wrong or incorrect?
7. To what extent do children learn language through imitation? Give examples of sounds, vocabulary, grammar and meaning.
8. How important is the interaction between children and adult speakers in the process of children’s language acquisition?
9. What have you discovered about the nature of language acquisition from the ways children develop their grammatical skills?
10. It has been suggested that children’s language acquisition is a more interesting process than the simple imitation of adult speech.
11. What have you found interesting about the ways children acquire language?

A plan for answering question 4 (grammar acquisition) can be found here on the Teachit website, if you want to have a look at some approaches to it.

To use Teachit links you'll have to register on their site first, but it's still free. Go here, register, log in then follow the link above.

ENGA1 mode exercise 1

Here's a quick revision exercise you can do using the mode continuum (see yesterday's post if you want to open a copy of the graphic).

The following is an online comment to The Daily Mail's website in response to a story about Chelsea's defeat at the hands of Barcelona last week.

1. Where would you place this extract on the mode continuum?
2. Why?
3. What language evidence can you produce for your decision?

Post your response as a comment, or just use it as a way of thinking about how you would approach an extract like this, if you prefer.

Chelsea have only got themselves to blame,they went to barcelona and were a total embarassment and were very lucky to come away nil nil,they made no attempt to play football and went there to get a draw.If you score goals you go through if you don't your out,it's as simple as.

ENGA1 mode continuum

Here's a quickly cobbled together graphic of the mode continuum which might help a bit with revision. In the next few days, and in the run-up to Friday 15th's ENGA1 exam, I'll add some short extracts of texts for you to place onto this continuum.

The millionth word

Today's Daily Mirror has a page dedicated to the English language and the story from the Global Language Monitor about English approaching its millionth word. According to the site today, the English language will reach its millionth word on June 10th. How they work this out, I'm not sure, and it's clear that proper, qualified linguists are sceptical too. Language Log calls it the "million word hoax" and criticises it as a publicity stunt to promote a book by Paul Payack the boss of GLM.

Whatever the pros and cons of the claim about a million words, the article in The Mirror gives a neat, potted account of the development of English and quotes language guru (and future SFX speaker) David Crystal which is always a good thing. It also mentions lots of new words that have entered the language through social networking, online games and gloomy economic conditions, so it's a very handy article to refer to if you want some examples for your language change essays on ENA5.

It's also got lots of fascinating language facts such as the most commonly used words in English, the longest words without vowels and much much more!

Sociable networking

Today's Guardian Technology has a good article about the language of social networking sites, based on research by Professor Mike Thelwall at Wolverhampton University. He's currently researching the language of MySpace and looking specifically at how sentiment is expressed, and how emotions are conveyed through creative grammar, puctuation and spelling. He's previously worked on swearing and gender on MySpace (covered in a good article in emag) and will be speaking at the next SFX teacher conference (he's appearing on the afternoon of Thursday 18th June, along with Bev Plester) about his research.

The article is a good read for anyone looking at technology and Language Change in A2, but it's also interesting from an AS Language & Mode perspective because it covers many of the features of computer-mediated communication and how orthography can be used to convey some of the patterns of spoken English.

The research is presented here in more detail and the previous work on swearing and MySpace is here.

As the article points out, MySpace is no longer the "top dog in social networking", having been superseded by Facebook and maybe to some extent Twitter, but the open nature of MySpace and the accessibility of its data makes it an attractive proposition for researchers. And who's to say that the patterns apparent in MySpace data won't be pretty much identical to those in other social networking applications?

The table here gives a quick rundown of some of the main non-standard features found in MySpace comments and should give you a chance to think about how this kind of thing might link to your ENA5, ENA6 or ENGA1 exams.

A new word every 98 minutes

The English language is heading towards its millionth word, according to an organisation called the Global Language Monitor who say that a new word is created every 98 minutes. It's a hotly contested claim and one that top linguistics blog Language Log takes issue with. But whatever the pros and cons of this claim, there's not much doubt that our language is rapidly expanding. This edition of the BBC News Magazine has a good article about new words, our own personal vocabularies and recent claims that young people are suffering from "word poverty" and need a boot up the lexical arse.

One interesting point for A2 Language Change students is the question of when a word is actually a "proper" word. For example, do these new words count: Obamamania, noob and airline pulp? And what about d'oh and meh, or even teh and pwn? See this post for more on some of these terms and the million words "hoax".

Will they last and should they be entered into dictionaries, or are they just silly expressions that no one will remember in 20 years?

OMG!!!! I hate exclamation marks!!!!!

"An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes," according to the late, great F.Scott Fitzgerald. Well, as someone who is sometimes lucky just to have an audience of one (myself) laughing at my "jokes", I know where he's coming from. He's so right!!!

Apparently, these days we're seeing more exclamation marks than ever before in written and - especially - blended mode communications. In this article from The Guardian, earlier in the week, Stuart Jeffries looks at the exclamation mark and what it means, and how it's changing. Interestingly, he makes the point that 30 years ago, some manual typewriters (those things that existed before word processors and PCs) didn't even have exclamation mark keys:

It is important to realise that advances in technology (if that's what they are) affect how we write. And how we write includes how often we deploy the beloved gasper. Before the 1970s, few manual typewriters were equipped with an exclamation mark key. Instead, if you wanted to express your unbridled joy at - ooh, I don't know - the budding loveliness of an early spring morning and gild the lily of your purple prose with an upbeat startler, you would have to type a full stop, then back space, push the shift key and type an apostrophe.

He goes on to look at how women and men use the exclamation mark in computer-mediated communication and refers to research that suggests women use them more than men:

But technological change is not the only reason for variations in the use of exclamations. Carol Waseleski's unexpectedly diverting paper, Gender and the Use of Exclamation Points in Computer-Mediated Communication, found that women used more exclamation marks than men. But why was this? Are women more excitable? Some theorists (notably D Rubin and K Greene in their paper Gender-Typical Style in Written Language) had argued that the exclamation mark was often a sign of excitability, and that "a high frequency of exclamation points can be regarded as sort of an orthographic intensifier signalling 'I really mean this!'" They also argued that this might convey the writer's lack of stature; that, in fact, a confident person (read: man) could "affirm their views by simply asserting them". Perhaps then the use of multiple exclamation marks is not simply a sign that someone is wearing underpants on their head, but of deeply unmasculine insecurity about expressing one's thoughts. Or maybe that's just my theory!

Waseleski found otherwise. She concluded that exclamation marks were not just marks of excitability but of friendliness, and suggested that one reason women use them more than men is because they were, as a gender, less likely to be socially inept, funless egotists - which isn't quite how she put it. Instead, she wrote: "The results point to the need to reconsider the negative labels that have often been associated with female communication styles, and to investigate [their use] as they relate to email and other forms of computer-mediated communication."

The rest of the article is a good read for anyone interested in language change - especially orthographic change - over the centuries. So read it!!!!

Our magnificent bastard tongue...

...is an ace phrase and also the name of a book by American linguist John McWhorter who is one of several writers contributing to a special edition of Forbes magazine. In it (click here for the link) various experts and lexophiles have a good look at the growth of the English language as it (apparently and rather controversially) heads towards its 1 millionth word.

Among the articles are some really good pieces on how language changes and spreads, new words that have come from internet gaming, how new types of prefixes and suffixes have arisen, and loads, loads more.

I've picked out a few extracts below to give you a taste of what's covered, and I'm sure we'll be using some of this in class in the next two weeks (which is all we have left before study leave...woohoo! Sorry, I mean dammit).

On the millionth word topic:

An outfit called the Global Language Monitor claims that English is about to add its millionth word, boldly (and absurdly) projecting the event to transpire some time around June 8, 2009. But that gives the patina of precision to the ultimately subjective task of determining what counts as "English" nowadays--and what counts as a "word." Even if we content ourselves with the paltry number of neologisms that get included in dictionary updates, it's instructive to see which words make the cut. Recent additions to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, for instance, include biosignature, botnet, locavore, mocktail, plus-one and vanity sizing. In some cases we know exactly where these words are coming from. Locavore, meaning "a person whose diet consists only or principally of locally grown or produced food," was coined in 2005 by a group of four San Francisco women who challenged local residents to eat only food grown within a 100-mile radius. It was then picked up by like-minded activists around the country.

On new prefixes and suffixes:

Suffixes and prefixes are the Legos of word-making, handy attachments we slap onto words as needed. Most don't make us blink: like the "pre" and "s" in "prefixes" itself.

Others are a little more creative, gaudy and eye-catching. It's no longer unusual to spot "-y" suffixed words like "women's magazine-y" and "false-prophet-y" or words with " 'tude" such as "braindead-itude," "poor-human-being-itude" and "warlorditude." There's nothing new about "nano" in conjunction with a very small iPod or scientific words like "nanotubes," but slangy, informal words like "nano-brained" are adding fancy new features to the insulter's toolbox. The celebutante-inspired prefix "celebu-" has spawned many recent coinages such as "celebu-tats," "celebu-chefs," "celebu-ooops," and "celebu-scent."

On gaming words:

Sometimes new words are not invented, but are crafted from old words. In gaming, a "griefer" is a player who intentionally disrupts the gameplay of other players--a griefer gives other players grief. Gamers took a word that already existed and added the highly productive suffix "-er" to make a word that fit their language needs.

On the history of new words:

Shakespeare popped off hundreds of neologisms, such as "excellent," "lonely" and "leapfrog," that have long been accepted as words, but which, if dictionaries were being written in Elizabethan times, would have been flagged as suspiciously colloquial. Given that it is nearly impossible to create a word for something out of thin air and see it adopted by the rest of the English-speaking world--i.e., if you randomly decided to call the cover for your memory stick a "verch," no one else would join in--most of the words that have accreted in the vast English vocabulary over the 2000-plus years of the language's existence have been created in various ways.

Twitter gives descriptivists a treat...

...or a tweet. In this article from the Greensboro News Record, Mike Clark takes a look at arguments about outside influences on our own ways of communicating: be they accents in new areas we move to, or technologies like texting and Twitter. He makes a number of interesting points for English Language students about how our individual language (idiolect) changes based on the contexts we're using it in and goes on to suggest that we'll switch between different types of language:

How you talk is often influenced by where you are, by the context of the communication, and that’s just fine. Kids who are born and spend a few years in one part of the country and then move with their families to another will often become bi-dialectal. They’ll play with their new neighbors outdoors, speaking with the patois of those new friends, and revert to the dialect of their own family when they’re in the house. I feel pretty confident that the same transformation can occur, will occur, in fact, does occur with today’s young people as they move from technology-based talking to formal writing, from daily talk to giving a speech, and so on.

Far from being responsible for the demise of formal written English that some prescriptivists have argued, texting and Twitter messages might actually help us develop clearer and more creative language styles:

And think about those parameters. Imagine what a good exercise it is to write something in 140 characters (including punctuation and spaces) max. I think it was Pascal who wrote: “I’m sorry for the long letter. I didn’t have time to write a short one.” If you’re a teacher, you must like that kind of discipline for your students; it forces them to focus, to write with attention and precision. The preceding sentence is 141 characters. Can you effectively remove one character? Twitter people can, even the young ones. Let’s say hello to a new age of talking.

ENA6 - 1a word formation processes

Here's a 1a style question for ENA6 based on the post below about words from politics, technology and economics.

Comment linguistically on three processes used to create the following examples of recent words and phrases:

• credit crunch (a term used to describe the lack of credit or lending available in the current economic crisis)
• zombie (originally a word used to describe a body brought back to life by magic, now used to describe a computer taken over by a hacker and used to perform illegal activity)
• downturn (a word used to describe an economic decline)
• bankster (a word used to equate bankers' behaviour with criminals')
• virus (originally a term used for an infectious disease but now used to describe a code that affects a computer)

Best two answers get the Haribo...

Words of warcraft

Today's New York Times runs an article on the changing language of the Whitehouse under Barack Obama's administration. It's not "a war on terror" anymore; it's overseas contingency operations, and it's no longer "terrorist attacks" but man-caused disasters.

Why should we care? They're just words, aren't they? And words don't kill people: weapons do. Well, kind of, but words are part of war and the groundwork that goes into softening up a population for war, or in Obama's case (we hope) a step away from the deranged war his nutty predecessor decided to wage.

Peter Baker explains in his article:

Every White House picks its words carefully, using poll-tested, focus-grouped language to frame issues and ideas to advance its goals. Mr. Bush's team did that assertively. The initial legislation expanding government power after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was called the USA Patriot Act. The eavesdropping without warrants that became so controversial was rebranded the Terrorist Surveillance Program. The enemy was, for a time, dubbed ''Islamofascism,'' until that was deemed insensitive to Muslims.

And he goes on to argue that while Obama is keen to change perceptions about his policies, in Baker's view, the substance of Bush's policies actually remains in place:

He has made no move to revise the Patriot Act or the eavesdropping program. He has ordered the Guantánamo prison to be closed in a year but has not settled on an alternative way to house inmates deemed to be truly dangerous.

Are the Obama administration's words a whitewash then? Is the emphasis on a change of language just a way of hiding the fact that the policies remain the same, or does the shift in tone signal a profound shift in direction to come? The jury's out...

And how is this useful to you at A level? The contemporary language change question on ENA5 often asks you to consider how new words and phrases come into existence or how existing words change, and politics has been explicitly mentioned on a couple of occasions as an are to look at (along with technology, communication, youth culture, immigration and war), so it's worth trying to have a few examples from contemporary news stories at your fingertips.

You might also want to look at how the recent global economic crisis (a nice new noun phrase) has led to new expressions, or how technology has co-opted older expressions and recycled them. How about these examples:

• credit crunch
• financial liquidity
• quantitative easing
  
• fiscal stimulus package
• avatar
• icon
• virus
• bankster
• menu
• zombie
• downturn

Chatting gas

Here's a very dubious poll that claims men gossip more than women. It's not dubious because men don't gossip (they do, but they probably don't like to call it "gossip"), but it's dubious because it's such a rubbish set of questions and relies on such sketchy data. Have a look here for The Telegraph's take on it.

As Deborah Cameron points out so clearly in her excellent Myth of Mars and Venus (covered here), we shouldn't generalise about what men and women do in conversation, because there are so many different types of men and women and we all "do" masculinity and femininity in different ways depending on where we are and who we're with, but one big stereotype about gossip is that it's just a girl thing.

ENGA1 Language Development data response part 2

OK, thanks for the responses last time. The Haribo will be with the winners on Tuesday (after I've been paid).

Here's a new one for your revising pleasure. The ages of the speakers are in brackets (years, months). The question is the same as last time: comment linguistically on 5 features of child language that you find interesting. Remember that it's not just a question of picking out things that the children say "wrong", but also looking at what they are saying and what they are achieving, and how this might place them at a certain stage of development.

(2,9)
Liam: Did you hid it in my castle?
Stan: Yes, I hid it in the dungeons.

Liam: They shotted their arrows at the baddy

(2,9)
Dad: It’ll be better watching it at the cinema than on DVD
Liam: Yeah, it’s better dan dat

(3,6)
Liam: The goodies are going on their ship cos they’ve caught a baddie

Liam: The cavemans are laughing

Liam: I’m going to build a whole army of goodies//
Stan: // yeah, cos the baddies are coming

(4,6)
Stan: Don’t do that because you’ll hit the men and they’ll fall over.

Blaefummery anywhen

Today's Guardian has a good feature on regional dialects and how they're being recorded. The focus is mostly on lexical variation - dialect words - and gives a good run through of some weird and wonderful local phrases, but Stuart Jeffries also provides a bigger picture with a few interesting snippets from Susie Dent and Jonnie Robinson. The etymology of some of these dialect terms is explained too:

"Some words just seem born for their task," says Dent, "and the echoic blaefummery is one of them. It is an extension of blaflum (or bleflum/blaeflum), meaning a deception, a hoax, nonsense, or illusion; as a verb it means to cajole or impose upon. There seems to be no indisputable origin: blae means blue or livid - in colour, that is - but perhaps one can see some relation to flummery, flattery, empty talk or humbug, and which word has the charm of having started off its life meaning food, whether made of oatmeal or flour, milk and eggs."

ENGA1 Language Development data response

Here's the first Haribo prize competition for AS students. It's based on the 2a question you get for Language Development, so all you need to do is pick out 5 linguistic features from the data below and label them accurately, putting your answer as a comment to this post. For example, if you think "I falled over" is an example of overextension, you would write "1. I falled over = overextension".

Obviously, the more alert among you would realise that's not the right answer. That's because I'm not giving you the answers for nothing and I'm not parting with my Haribo that easily. Oh no. And remember, what you're looking for should be phonological, lexical, semantic, grammatical and pragmatic features, as well as how the interaction does or doesn't illustrate particular theories at work, or a child being at a particular stage or demonstrating a particular function of language. It's also worth thinking not just about what the child says but how the child and parent interact. But that's enough bold font...

So, to win the Haribo pick out your five features and add them as comments. The best 2 responses by next Friday lunchtime will win this coveted prize.

Data:
Girl (age 4,4) in conversation with Dad (age 39..I mean 21)

Girl: Did you eat all your dinner up at work?
Dad: Yes, I did
G: What did you hab?
D: Err, I had a cheese and tomato roll
G: I said to mummy are you gonna hab your dinner at office at work and her said yes
D: What did you do at nursery?
G: I did find the Dora book and I hided it under the table. Daddy, who done dis card? Did you draw it? Look what I drawed. I writed this well didn't I?
D: Yes, you wrote that really well
G: I wrote it well, yes.

OK, ready steady Haribooooooooooooo!!!!!

Apostrophe bullies

This is probably very old, but if you look at this link from You Tube you'll find a heartfelt attack on Lynne Truss and her prescriptivism from comedian Marcus Brigstocke.

Net slang

Confused by the nerdy slang your geeky friends use? Can't understand what your teacher is on about when he mumbles about his Level 58 Captain of Gondor pwning the creeps in the Etten raids? Just want to know more words? Then go to this site which has lots of help about such stuff. BRB LOL.

ENA6 - Investigating Use of Language in Online Communication

Here's this week's Haribo competition, which is based on an ENA6 1b question. The best 2 answers to this by next Thursday get the prizes.

Explain the methodology you would use for investigating how language is used in different forms of computer-mediated communication (email, texting, MSN, social networking sites etc.)

Question 1b requires a 5 point approach. You have to have some sort of aim, a method of collecting data, a framework to analyse that data, an awareness of extra linguistic variables and issues of ethics and validity, and an idea of what you will find and what it means. There is more detail on this available on the AQA site here (aimed at teachers but useful for students if you know what you're doing).

Remember to follow the 5 point plan as laid out below:

• AIM/ANGLE
• METHOD of DATA COLLECTION
• FRAMEWORK for ANALYSING YOUR DATA
• CONSIDERATION of EXTRA LINGUISTIC VARIABLES/ VALIDITY/ ETHICS
• WHAT YOU EXPECT to FIND

On your marks...get set...Haribooooooooooooooooo

KMT @ TXTspk*

A report in today's Sun and a longer one in The Scotsman carry findings from a survey by a company which claims that while 76% of us admit to using "text slang" in our SMS messages, 71% dislike receiving it and would prefer a "properly written" message. Like any survey carried out by a company that's promoting its own services (in this case the "text question and answer service AQA 63336" - no relation to our exam board, I hope) the survey should probably be treated with caution, but in the Scotsman they quote a proper linguist, Dr Christian Kay from Glasgow University who has a look at the limitations of texting:

"I think that when texting first appeared young people took it as a new way of conversing which could exclude people who weren't in on the scene," Prof Kay said.

"At the time this was quite interesting, because we were being told that the written language was going to disappear.

"But after an initial burst of enthusiasm we are at the stage where texting either has to develop or fade away."

She added: "It has reduced everything to a very basic language, which doesn't leave room to convey the nuance of a word.

"In many ways it has run out of interesting things to say, which limits interpretation, which leads to misunderstandings," Prof Kay said.

Hmm, I'm not so sure. I doubt that text abbreviations originally sprung up as a means of keeping others out - after all, what goes on between two phones is relatively private - but rather as a means of saving time and money. Yes, texting can be a crude and unsubtle form of communication open to misinterpretation as most distant modes are, but its got a kind of dialogic structure to it that allows a texter to reply and seek further clarification if the first message doesn't make sense.

And of course, given that the company advertising the survey is in the business of making money from sending answers to a range of questions from the general public, they don't have a personal relationship with the other texter, or any knowledge of what that person's text idiolect is like, so will probably use a more standard form.

So is texting dying out and are we getting sick of its abbreviations? Probably not. The numbers speak for themselves: we sent a total of 78.9 billion texts last year, 216 million a day, according to the Mobile Data Association.

* KMT = Kiss/ing My Teeth (Caribbean expression of distaste/ disapproval)
KMFT = Kiss/ing My F***ing Teeth
KMBCT = Kiss/ing My Bloodclart Teeth (Caribbean expression of extreme distaste/ disapproval)

ENA6 question 1a - technology and language change

Here's the new Haribo prize question, based on a 1a ENA6 question focused on technology and language change.

Comment linguistically on three processes used to create or write the following examples of computer-mediated communication:

FYI (For your information)
Dat (That)
i dont no what yr doin (I don’t know what you’re doing)
cya (See you - signing off at end of online chat)
L8er (Later - signing off at end of email message)

Remember, you just need to accurately identify and label 3 processes going on with these words or how they've been written/typed. The best 2 answers get that lovely Haribo.

Licking the lollipop

An Independent article from Monday takes aim at rap music's potential to influence young people into degrading and unpleasant behaviour. And they're not referring to your mum trying to bogle to Elephant Man either. Research from the University of Pittsburgh showed a link between teenagers who listen to music which features "degrading" lyrics of a sexual nature and younger sexual activity. They don't claim that the lyrics cause this earlier sexual activity, but that the two go hand in hand. Or gland in hand, if you prefer.

Two criteria were used in establishing whether lyrics were degrading. The words
had to be based on a purely physical, non-emotional description of sexual
activity and there had to be a “power differential”, with one sex expressing
physical dominance over another, Professor Primack said. An example of a non-degrading sexual lyric was: “Come a litter closer baby, I feel like srippin’ it down.” While a degrading lyric would be: “After you work up a sweat you can play with the
stick.”

We looked at the lyrics of rap here a while ago on this blog and it's always been an interesting topic for language investigations over the years, but maybe the language angle is what makes this interesting for us on this course: can lyrics actually influence or shape our behaviour? Does language control us or is it a lot more complicated than that? I suppose one argument against this determinist position would be that young people who listen to music with such lyrics may already have different, more accepting, attitudes to "degrading" sexual imagery and therefore be more likely to seek out such music. Then again, we might argue that our perceptions about what's an acceptable way to treat our bitches - sorry, I mean life partners and Strong Independent Black Females - might be skewed by exposure to such lyrics. Perhaps they naturalise certain types of behaviour which we would previously have seen as wrong or demeaning.

This blog post about an article by Zoe Williams in The Guardian is worth a link if you want to follow it up. It also featured on last summer's ENA6 paper, so it's good practice for those of you looking to get some work done for June 18th and the dreaded ENA6 exam.

GR8 news 4 ur kids

Catching on to texting a few years after the UK, the USA is now going through the same kind of media hysteria about texting destroying literacy and language skills that we had. In this brief article on an American news website and this from the BBC website research from Coventry University (whose similar research we covered here in 2006) creates a good news story about the link between texting and literacy.

But not everyone's convinced: have a look at the comments after the article for a prescriptivist angle.

This is the sort of language debate you should be ready for on ENA6. Is texting ruining our language? Is texting just another style we can switch in and out of in different contexts? Do teh arguments against language change have any kind of logic to them or are they less to do with language and more to do with fear of change?

Cunning stunts and gran slang

Last week's Sun has a fairly hopeless guide to teen slang (see picture) which not only puts slang words together in a silly order but also stereotypes teenagers as Vicky Pollard wannabes.

So we get lots of terms like fam, breh, bare and hater which have been knocking around for years (probably centuries in the case of breh), and others which I've not come across like piff (good), stunting (showing off) and shifted (arrested).

But what I want to know is,where does bare come from and what's its etymology? Is it anything to do with the American expression "loaded for bear" (see here). And secondly, why do young south Londoners pronounce seen as skeen? Is it anything to do with the original 1960s (?) slang word being spelt as scene and the new way of saying it just a deviant, phonetic pronunciation? These are proper questions, so if you've got any ideas please say...

And in today's Telegraph there's a story about a new dictionary aimed at young people, designed to help them understand "gran slang". As the article points out "Many of the words used by teenagers today are incomprehensible to older generations, but it must be equally baffling for younger people trying to get to grips with the lexicon of their grandparents" and the creator of the dictionary wittily adds "No longer will the word mint, used by young people to denote approval, be confused with a request for a hard-boiled, peppermint-flavoured sweet". The wag...

Edited 16.03.11 to add:
Jonathon Green, the famous slang lexicographer, has offered the following etymology of bare on The Dabbler's website:

bare, which is also found as bere, is an import from the Caribbean. It began life as a Bajan (Barbados) word meaning ‘nothing but’, i.e. ‘too much of’ and links back to and plays on the standard English barely (enough). It seems to have emerged in the UK in the late Nineties, first among black and then all teens, who use it to mean ‘many’ or ‘lots of’. 

For ‘bare’ examples, I offer a 2003 interview with Dizzee Rascal in Vice Magazine:

I got kicked out of bare schools. [...] Bare people were getting pregnant around me in the manor, getme? Bare girls were getting breeded up. [...] There’s just so many talented people but road gets a hold of them, bare people I know could have made it. [...] One little thing gets out, gets changed, changed, by the time it goes from two people to bare people. [...] Oh yeah I’ve heard bare times that I’ve been shot.

Gestures point to a baby's success

Research from the University of Chicago reported here and here suggests that parents who use gesture with their children in the early stages of language development are more likely to see their kids grow up to have higher productive vocabularies and be better prepared for school.

As you'll probably have looked at with interactional theories of language development - Jerome Bruner, Catherine Snow et al. - there's a belief on the part of many child language experts that parents and caregivers can use body language and gesture to help children develop their language skills.

The Guardian report explains:

Meredith Rowe and Susan Goldin-Meadow, from the University of Chicago, worked with 50 young families from different socio-economic backgrounds to investigate why some toddlers seemed to grasp language more quickly than others.

They filmed 14-month-old children during an hour and a half of play with their parents and noted down the words and gestures that were used. Later, when the children were aged four and a half, they were given a vocabulary test to assess their language skills.

The video sessions showed that better-educated parents used gestures more often, and as a result, their children learned to use hand signals themselves in a variety of ways. On average, toddlers from well-educated families used gestures to convey 24 different meanings during a 90-minute play session. Toddlers from less-educated families used gestures to convey only 13.

They go on to add, "By learning to gesture, toddlers pick up new words more quickly because it prompts parents to name the object the gesture is directed at. For example, if a child points at a doll, the parent might repeat the word "doll" a few times, boosting the child's chances of remembering the word".

But is it as simple as that? Socio-economic status is very important in this study and it's pretty clear that children from higher income backgrounds tend to have more communication and interaction with their parents (...he says while tapping at a keyboard ignoring his 3 kids who are watching TV or playing on a DS...) as this 2004 Guardian article by Polly Toynbee points out in its reference to research by Hart and Risley into social class and language.

I'm sure the researchers will have looked at this issue and I'm probably missing something obvious, but from the reports printed here I can't see any reason to think that gesture has that much to do with anything: just because a child from a higher income family uses more gesture at 14 months and then goes on to have a higher productive vocabulary at 54 months, doesn't necessarily mean that any improvement is down to gesture. Surely the socio-economic status of the child is what is really influencing the leap? And while there's clearly a case for arguing that gesture can help improve children's language development, is it really more important than the child's opportunities for communication, the level of interaction they receive from parents and the environment the child grows up in? I'm not so sure...

n00bs get pwned

At the root of all internet dialects is leet, the most impenetrable of them all. Leet was what hackers and gamers spoke to each other on bulletin boards back in the 1990s. Since then, it has grown and morphed, hitting a peak in 2005. “Leet”, often spelt “l33t”, is, as mentioned, a phonetic version of the word “elite”, a reference to the technocrats who used it. Leet grew in chat rooms as a means of creating a linguistic in-crowd that excluded uninitiated newcomers, or “n00bs”.

This is how leetspeak (l33tsp34k) is explained by Anna Leach in a fascinating article in yesterday's Independent. With internet slang becoming mainstream and even your granny knowing something about LOLcats and perhaps even having her own level 27 Nightelf hunter in World of Warcraft, the article takes a look at where it's all come from and how it connects to other forms of slang.

As the lexicographer Jonathan Green (speaker at next June's SFX Language workshops, fact fans!) explains "BBC English is what the establishment speaks. Slang is the language that intentionally does the opposite. We are hard-wired as humans to take the piss – we do it politically and socially, and we do it linguistically". And internet slang is very much part of this.

David Crystal (another speaker in June) adds “Fifty years ago, if you invented a word it would take approximately 20 years to get it into the dictionary. Now you can invent something and it’s all over the net in days,” making it clear that while many of the sources of slang are not new - abuse, in-group markers of identity, terms of approval and excitement - that the speed at which they proliferate is something we haven't seen before.

The article goes on to explain how l33t words are often formed and how they are used:

A combination of typos, computer-game references and tech jargon, leet is intentionally baffling. It is also the common ancestor of lolspeak and snark: lolspeak has inherited its linguistic tinkering, while snark has taken on the ethos of the egotistical put-down. “To make leet,” says Kat Hannaford, news editor of T3 magazine’s website, “you manipulate language by adding -xor or -age on the end of words.” Some leet words, such as “w00t” (hooray) and “I have skillz” are becoming mainstream, while other words and phrases reflect the preoccupation of the élite with putting down n00bs, or the analogous pleasure-rush of hacking someone else’s computer system. “Elite speakers are arrogant,” Hannaford says. “There’s a lot of ego in leetspeak.”

Battle of the texters

Gender and text messaging come under the spotlight in a recent piece of research from Indiana University carried out by Susan Herring and Asta Zelenkauskaite, reported here in Science Daily.

According to the summary on Science Daily, the usual patterns of gender interaction* - men talking for longer and using more non-standard forms - are reversed when men and women use text messaging to interact in public forums.

Expecting findings consistent with past research on gender-patterned public communication, Herring and Zelenkauskaite were predicting men would post more and longer text messages, and that men would also employ more non-standard techniques. Instead, the opposite was true when it came to communication within a new, convergent medium that mixes interactive television (iTV) with SMS or texting.

The study found women used more non-standard language such as abbreviations or expressive insertions that represented characteristics including enthusiasm, sadness, emphasis and individuality. And while women were both more economical and expressive, they also came closer to maxing out, or did max out, on the 160-character message limit more often than their male counterparts.

So, according to this research, if the length of a text message equates to the length of an utterance in spoken mode, then it's actually women who are "saying" more and "saying" it more often. But of course, this isn't quite the texting we're used to here, because (as they explain in the article) the texts are used as part of an interactive TV forum, rather than phone to phone. Presumably you text in and your message appears on the screen.

Would the same patterns hold true in phone to phone texting or would the usual patterns* of gender and spoken language kick back in? And might this research throw up these findings because the nature of the text "conversation" is flirtatious and expressive in nature?

But whatever the quibbles over the possible differences between this and "proper" texting, it does raise lots of interesting questions about how we negotiate computer-mediated communication and blended modes, and whether the patterns sometimes noted in spoken interaction can be seen directly translated over onto these newer modes.

(*I'm using this term with some qualification, because as you can see here and here, generalising about gender and language is a bit of a mug's game)