New words for the official rule book to scrabble?

Click here for a guardian article on new words being added to the the official scrabble book. Words like "bezzy", "dench" and "lolz" are now all acceptable words in the game, and this has sparked controversy from all around.
It is arguable that people are against language change for socio-economic reasons. It’s essentially a stick to beat young children with, but it’s also another tool for prejudice - the general consensus among some prescriptivists is that slang words make the lexicon of the youth, which is where we can start to see ageism, racism and possibly even sexism.

A History of the English language

Click this for a video explaining the ten main historical stages of the English language in ten minutes. Below is a summary of these points:

410 AD – Romans leave Britain and Germanic tribes start coming in, tribes such as the Angles and the Saxons. The Latin language used by Romans was deserted as the Anglo-saxon vocabulary was much more useful as it contained words for simple everyday things like ‘house’ and ‘woman’. In fact, three days of the week were named after Anglo-Saxon Gods.

597 AD – Christians came in and brought back some Latin words with them.

800 – Vikings came in and brought their lexicon which included words like “thrust”, “drag”, “ransack” and “die”. 1066 – William the conqueror invades England bringing new concepts from across the channel – like the French language (where words like ‘judge’, ‘jury’, ‘evidence’ and ‘justice’ originate from).

Latin was still used in the Church, but the common man spoke English. Words like ‘cow’, ‘sheep’ and ‘swine’ come from the English-speaking farmers whilst the words ‘beef’, ‘mutton’ and ‘pork’ come from the French. Overall the English absorbed over 10,000 new words from the Normans.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) – About 2000 new words and phrases were invented by William Shakespeare, including ‘eyeball’, ‘puppy’ and ‘anchovy’. Shakespeare’s poetry showed the world that English was a rich, vibrant language with limitless expressive and emotional power.

1611 AD – A team of scribes created a new translation of the Bible (King James bible) which has had a visible impact on the English language today.

1660 – The Royal society was formed by new-age scientists like Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. New words had to be created to label the many things that were being discovered, including words like ‘acid’, ‘gravity’, ‘electricity’ and ‘pendulum’. They began working in Latin until realising they all spoke English.

With English quickly becoming the language of science, religion and Shakespeare, Britain decided to take it on tour, searching for land, wealth, and natural resources. New words were collected from all around the world in places such as the Caribbean, Africa, India, and Australia and brought back to use in the English language.

1746 – Lexicographers began to come along, aiming to find a way to stop the English language from becoming too diverse. Doctor Johnson took nine years to write the first dictionary. Words continued to be invented and in 1857 the Oxford English dictionary was started – though it took 70 years to complete due to troubles with the editor.

As soon as the Brits entered American soil they needed to borrow words to define new animals and plants, like ‘racoon’ and ‘squash’. Waves of immigrants brought new delicacies to America (like ‘pizza’ and ‘pretzels’), broadening the English language even further. America spread a new language of Capitalism, bringing in words like ‘merger’ and ‘downsizing’.

1972 – The first email was sent. The internet later arrived in 1991, and has since had a huge impact on the English language we use today. The net brought typing back into fashion and conversations became shorter than the average attention span, due to the vast amount of abbreviations being created in ‘text talk’.

1500 years after the Romans left England, the English language has demonstrated its unique ability to absorb, evolve and steal from over 350 languages. It was started by foreigners and has grown into a fully-fledged language on its own, and has travelled all over the world – first via the high seas and then via the high-speed broadband connection, eventually establishing itself as a global institution.

The stages of CLA

Year 1 – Babies work on speech sounds (often known as vegetative noises) to express pain, pleasure of hunger. The first sound they make is crying. At six to nine months old this becomes babbling which is not learnt or copied but pre-programmed. The work out of the vocal-chords means babies repeat syllables over and over.

Year 2 – An increase in the ability to manipulate speech sounds. The second year can be roughly divided up into three sub-stages: ‘one-word’, ‘two-word’ and ‘telegraphic’. During the one-word stage children concentrate on building phonemes into words, beginning largely with nouns that reflect their needs/interests. Single words can convey more than one meaning, and when they do it is called a holophrase. Holophrases are used as a substitute for complex grammar – i.e “Milk!” may mean “I want some milk!” or “I’ve spilt some milk!”

This then develops overtime into two word phrases, and then a few months after the two-word stage (age varying from child to child) comes what is known as the telegraphic stage. This is where children begin using increasingly complex multi-word sentences. Grammatical words and endings are also present, and this stage includes all the important function words whilst leaving out things like conjunctions, auxiliary verbs and prepositions.

Year 3 – A child’s pragmatic ability is greater, and they are effective language users.

Year 4 – Children are sophisticated language users by year four. Their use of language is purposeful.

Robin Lakoff's features of women's language

Sociolinguist Robin Lakoff theorised that the language of women could be distinguished from the language of men by the use of several gender-specific traits. One of these include hedges, which are phrases that fill gaps in speech such as ‘sort of’, ‘kind of’, etc. Another Lakoff spoke about is the use of empty adjectives, which are adjectives used to soften and apply an element of friendliness to a conversation, e.g ‘wonderful’ or ‘gorgeous’, despite the fact that they may be meaningless and insincere. This can be seen as holding parallels with linguist Deborah Tannen’s ‘difference theory’, which states that the language of males reflect their conditioned belief that the world is a competitive place whereas women view the world as a network of connections, using their language primarily to make social links.

Another trait proposed by Lakoff is the use of super-polite forms, which are usually independent clauses applied to a request in order to soften the imperative impact of it. For example, rather than saying ‘pass the salt’, one might say ‘would you mind passing the salt’.
According to Lakoff, women also apologize more and tend to speak less often: usually the addition of the adjective ‘sorry’ is not even contextually appropriate, for example ‘I’m sorry, but I think that…’, etc.

Female language according to Lakoff also frequently features indirect requests, which are declarative or exclamative statements which very subtly express a wish or desire. An example of this would be if one were to say ‘gosh, I’m so thirsty’. Although this is dressed as a declarative, pragmatically it means the speaker is asking for a drink. Women’s language also regularly features tag questions, which are statements converted into questions by applying the interrogative formula to the end. For example, ‘it’s a lovely day out, isn’t it?’. This further suggests that women are less direct and use more influential power to control a conversation.

One more trait of women’s language include what is known as hyper-correct grammar and pronunciation. This is the use of clear articulation and prestige grammar during conversation, which allows a certain representation of one’s self.

Brown and Levinson's politeness theory

The politeness theory was first developed by acclaimed linguists Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson. It states that in every conversation we adhere to certain language rules depending on the other participant's 'face', in order to assure that everyone feels affirmed in any social interaction. 'Face' is the public self-image that every person aims to protect, and it is vulnerable to 'face-threatening acts'.

Face comes in two forms: positive and negative. By using politeness strategies we can influence a person more effectively by appealing to their different faces.

Positive face - The need to feel appreciated and cared for.
Negative face - The need to not have one's freedom of choice infringed on.

The four different types of politeness:

Positive politeness aims to minimize the threat to a person's positive face, so it will make the participant feel good about himself and his wants.
E.g, "Excuse me, mate - pass the salt?"
The colloquial noun 'mate' causes the other participant to feel wanted and appreciated, thus appealing to their positive face.

Negative politeness aims to minimize the threat to a person's negative face, so it will try to minimize the imposition on the hearer.
E.g, "Could you pass me the salt?"
The epistemic modal auxiliary verb 'could' indicates to the hearer that passing the salt is not a demand - it is a possibility and they have the free choice whether to do so or not.

Bald-on record politeness - This type of politeness doesn't really try to minimize the threat to a hearer's face; it is very direct and most often only used when the speaker has a close relationship with the hearer. E.g, "pass me the salt."

Off-record (indirect) politeness - This type of politeness uses indirect language to hint at its goal, rather than saying it outright. E.g, "god, I'd REALLY love some salt right now."

Article on 'uptalk'

Click here for a Guardian article written on 'uptalk' - the speech-habit that is sweeping the nation.
'Uptalk' is when someone makes every declarative statement they say sound like an interrogative (also known as suffering from 'high-rise terminals'). This article discusses its possible origins and also has opinions from various different linguists on the topic.

Understanding the passive/active voice

Active - The active voice is arguably more commonly used than the passive. In the formula for the active voice, the subject comes first, then the verb followed by the object which is affected by the verb. E.g, "The teacher kicked the chair". In this example, the teacher is the subject that is carrying out the verb ('to kick') on the object (the chair).

Passive - The passive voice is seen across more informal texts, and therefore is common in older examples of writing. The formula for the passive voice is the same as the active only it is effectively reversed. It begins with the object and then the verb, followed by the subject (however the subject is not an integral element to the passive voice and can be excluded). E.g, "The chair was kicked by the teacher" or "The chair was kicked".

A2 exam pointers (language change)

-Because we have an Anglo-Saxon, latinate language a lot of our lexicon is borrowed.
-Never use the word 'word'.
-Always mention AFFIXATION.
-Consider the syntax; is it multi-clausal? Where is the subordinate clause placed?
-Talk about the passive/active voice.
-When writing about standardisation mention the different descriptive/prescriptive attitudes.
-Mention David Crystal's descriptive attitude: "When you've got flowers in a garden you can't say one flower is better than another".

Article on language change and political correctness regarding mental health

Click here for an article from the Guardian regarding the stigma around mental health and how it is fueled by use of certain language.

According to this article, political correctness must be considered when using evaluative adjectives like "nuts" or "bonkers". This kind of mental-health jargon is offensive to those who suffer from mental illnesses when it is used out of context, and we need to end it. Stop describing the weather as "schizophrenic"!