Lesson - Friday 20th May 2016.

Political Correctness - 

Norman Fairclough - This the theorist suggested that political correctness isn't enough, we need to change society and the way it thinks about minority groups. For example there is no point arguing whether the word 'chairman' is sexist and instead the issue is that women are underrepresented in parliament.

Prescriptivist View of Political Correctness - This group may be in favour of political correctness as it's prescribing 'correct' language. However it could also be seen as language change and an attack on the language, linking to decay and the crumbling castle metaphor.

Descriptivist View of Political Correctness - They may see political correctness as a form of prescriptivism and therefore be against it.

Plain English Campaign - Since 1979, the Plain English Campaign have been campaigning against 'gobbledygook'. jargon and misleading public information. They have helped many government departments and other official organisations with their documents, reports and publications. They believe that everyone should have access to clear and concise information. Funded by offering their editing services to help clients get their publications up to scratch.

The Crystal Mark - The Crystal Mark is our seal of approval for the clarity of a document. It now appears on over 21,000 different documents in the UK and in other countries including the USA, Australia, Denmark, New Zealand and South Africa. It is the only internationally recognized mark of its kind.

Dog Whistle Politics - Dog whistle politics usually refers to the use of certain code words or phrases that are designed to be understood by only a small section of the population. The term alludes to the sound of a dog whistle, which can only be heard by the intended audience (the dog). Dog whistle terms are only noticed and understood by the people they are intended for.

World Englishes - World Englishes is a term for emerging localised or indigenized varieties of English, especially varieties of English, especially varieties that have developed in territories influenced by the United  Kingdom or the United States. 

Why is English Language changing?

• External Factors - external pressures will affect how language is used, either social, cultural or technological. We also borrow/loan words from other languages 'bungalow' (Hindi)
• Internal factors - aspects of the language itself contribute to change, ie. Assimilation - sounds that are adjacent to each other 'become similar', with one sound moving towards the other to make pronunciation simpler. And Omission - when speaking at speed, some sounds within a group of sounds might be left out. We further adapt existing words by modifying them ie. blending, compounding etc. 

Child Language Acquisition - Tuesday May 3rd 2016

Developmental Stages : 

Pre verbal - cooing, babbling.

Holophrastic - 12-18 months, can convey a whole sentence worth of meaning in one word, or label things around them, first words are often 'mummy' or 'daddy', concrete nouns. 

Two Word - Around 18 months, child puts two words together to convey meaning ie. 'Mummy sit', utterances are more refined, are beginning to understand grammar for the first time since they are demonstrating an understanding of two words together, from 18 months child has acquired 50-100 words, they gain a naming insight as they realise things around them have names, might acquire 2 or 3 new words a day before the age of 2. 

Telegraphic - from age 2 child will move from producing two word sentences to more complete utterances like a telegram, conveying a message in a short number of words, telegraphic speech will include key words, syntax is largely accurate, 

Post Telegraphic - By around the age of 3, a child will move into the post-telegraphic stage, child's speech becomes increasingly like adult speech, subtle nuances in speech begins to disappear, by age 4  a child's speech will be grammatically correct. 

Behaviourists theorists - language is developed through imitating others language, and gaining positive and negative feedback from adults.

Social Interactionists - Children's early language can be influenced and improved by adult carers adjusting their own speech patterns.

Nativist - language is innate, we are preprogrammed to acquire it.

Cognitive theories - children's language will develop when children's ideas about the world develop.

Blog lesson. - Wasn't uploaded during lesson time - finished 8th March.

Jean Aitchinson and John Humphrey's - Descriptivism and Prescriptivism -


Prescriptivism:
A prescriptive attitude is described as giving a judgement about whether language use/change is good or bad, correct or incorrect.


John Humphrey's has written an article about language and technology on the Mail Online. It is evident that John Humphrey's has a prescriptive attitude towards language and technology and how our language is evolving. His prescriptive attitude demonstrates he is unhappy about the developments in English and is also very disapproving of the evolving English language.
John's prescriptive attitude is present in the title of the article 'I h8 txt msgs', this gives an immediate example of the fact John has a prescriptive attitude as he is clearly unhappy with the development of the technology and emphasises the use of abbreviations in the title.


Descriptivism:
Happy to explore and embrace the change in English.


An example of these behaviours in action is in the use of double negatives. Jean Aitchinson, who is a descriptivist, suggests that the use of double negatives is a way of emphasising a point. In contrast, prescriptivists would argue that by using double negatives, you are expressing a positive. They view language in a logical manner.
Jean Aitchinson is a descriptivist. She attacks the prescriptivist view in her three language myths that she feels are false:
The Crumbling Castle myth suggests that the English language was once a great castle, but over time it has decayed and crumbled into the sea. She states this is false because the description of English as a 'once fine language' is a particularly inaccurate one, as language is constantly changing and evolving.
The Damp Spoon myth suggests that 'bad English' sticks to people who are lazy and passive. This laziness is reflected by the people that put the damp spoon into the sugar bowl. Aitchinson though, states that 'the only lazy speech is drunken speech' and that speaking quickly, for example, isn't a sign of laziness.
The Infectious Disease myth suggests that 'bad English' is like a horrible disease, that spreads from person to person. We have no control or vaccine. Aitchinson suggests that the idea that changes are caught and spread is technically correct, but it is no disease. People pick up changes in language because they want to.

Presentation Summary - 04/03/2016

Class Presentation - The Effect of Social Media on Language Change & Prescriptivism and Descriptivism. 

Has given us new ways of communicating: 

• Acronyms - 'LOL'
• Abbreviations such as 'cus' instead of 'because'.
• Neologisms which are newly coined words, phrases or expressions - ie 'selfie' 
• Twitter has restricted users - 140 makes users shorten words and express their feelings in other ways. They can also categorize their tweets with hashtags which have taken over popular culture, and have found their way into our everyday language. 
• Limited characters: let people get their point across quicker, use emoticons and hashtags and are more eye catching and more likely to be read. 

  Benefits:

• Boost creativity. 
• More likely to notice grammatical issues and misspellings.
• Saves time.

Disadvantages: 

• Some made up words are not liked/considered real words.
• Ie. Selfie, Photobomb, Yolo

Prescriptivism:

• The prescriptivism attitude is describes as giving a judgement about whether language use/change is 'good' or 'bad', 'correct' or 'incorrect'. 
• John Humphrey's is a prescriptivist: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3656080/Mind-your-language-it-matters.html

Descriptivism: 

• Happy to explore and embrace the change in language.
• Jean Aitchinson: http://www.slideshare.net/Robertagillum/language-change-theories
• Crumbling Castle, Damp Spoon and Infectious Disease theories/myths.

A2 Language Change Lesson 05/02/2016

Words that have changed/multiple meanings:

Chosen word: Gay. 

Definitions: 

1)  (of a person, especially a man) homosexual.  It has many synonyms: homosexual, lesbian, Sapphic, lesbigay, GLBT.

2) A more dated version:  Light-hearted and carefree “Nan had a gay disposition and a very pretty face”. Synonyms: Cheerful, cheery, merry, jolly, light-hearted, mirthful, jovial, glad, happy, bright, in good spirits, in high spirits, joyful, elated, exuberant, animated, lively, sprightly, vivacious, buoyant, bouncy, bubbly, perky, effervescent, playful, frolicsome etc.

3) A dated definition: Brightly coloured; showy, “a gay profusion of purple and pink sweet peas” . Synonyms: Bright, brightly coloured, vivid, brilliant, rich, vibrant.

4) An informal, offensive definition: Foolish, stupid or unimpressive “he thinks the obsession with celebrities are totally gay”

How has the word gone under change? 

1) The word 'gay' has gone through pejoration and has adopted three extra definitions (excluding it's original definition : Light-hearted and carefree). It has taken on other connotations to the word that can be taken positively and negatively. 

2)The word has also gone through broadening, where it means different things other than its first definition. At first, the word gay was in relation to a happy mood and now can be applied to one's sexuality, an offense and bright colours/showy things. 

3) Amelioration: whether or not the word has gone through amelioration needs to be evaluated by how the word is intended to be delivered to the recipient. The word gay was formerly a positive thing, but could now be thought of as a violent insult or a violation of chosen lifestyle/sexuality. 

Lexical and Grammatical Development of Children Summary..

Pre Verbal Stage

• The Cooing Stage: Occurs 8-20 weeks into the child's life, including sounds like "aaaaah".
• The Babbling Stage: Happens at the age of nine months, sounds like "ba,ba,ba,bbbb"
• Verbal Scribbling: Develops when the child is 30 weeks old. The child begins to use consonants, vowels and fricative, expanding their use of early vocabulary.
• Melodic Utterance: 9 to 18 months into the child's life, as they grow older, the sounds they utter begin to sound more recognizable as words.

Lexical and Grammatical Development of Children

Stage One: Holophrastic..

• The holophrastic, meaning the one word stage, occurs in children from 12-18 months. This is when the child utters their first word. They build a vocabulary of holophrases, which are single words used to convey meaning, this spans up to as much as 50 words. And the child will be able to understand ten times more words now, than before this stage. 
• Holophrases describe the meaning of a phrase or sentence through body language, intonation and volume ie; "doggy" and "gaga", these are examples of short words the child would begin to use, they relate to the child's everyday life. 

Stage 2: Two Phrase Words..

• Age - 18 months.
• The child begins to use two words at a time, Some call this stage 'The emergence of grammar', its now possible for the child to choose a word order, and for others to make simple grammatical analyses of the meanings of these sentences, 
• This usual consists of: a noun (object) -> and a verb (action).
• This allows the child to become more flexible with grammatical functions: "make bridge" "mommy sleep"
• The language of the child at this age relies heavily on context and a sympathetic listener, usually a parent. 
• The language at this age is not deficient or wanting, they are practicing language. 
• At 18 months, children have grasped a great deal of knowledge about language. 
• They have correct syntax, they use prepositions, possession words and pronouns. 

Stage 3: The Telegraphic Stage.. 

• Age: 2-2 1/2 years.
• The child begins to use sentences of up to four words in length.
• Sentences with gaps are used, non lexical words "and, but, if" as well as endings such as "ing" are often lost. 
• They begin to follow the structures of speech. Using question, statement and command sentences.

Stage 4: Post Telegraphic Stage..

• Age:36 months.
• More grammatically complex.
• Also, after this age, the child begins to develop necessary reading and writing skills with appropriate help. 
• After three years old, children's language advances in leaps and bounds. They begin to use: semantics, phonology, grammar and pragmatics. 

Speech.

Why exams aren’t a true representation of intelligence.

 

“Everybody is a genius but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend it’s whole life believing its stupid.” Albert Einstein.

 

For years of our lives we discuss the topics set by teachers in groups and learn through interaction, then at the end of the academic year we are forced to sit in silence and recite everything we’ve learnt that was crammed into a five minute revision session the night before. Exams are a test of memory which vary between ages and people. Revision techniques and teaching methods are not always applicable to everyone and this can affect how the subject is understood or approached by students leading them to believe they are not capable. An example of this is my current PE teacher who doesn’t believe in copying from texts books which I find helpful when I don’t understand something.

Many people struggle with nerves and the pressure put on during the exam period, stress levels burst through the roof as we are told we HAVE to meet target minimum grades of B’s, A’s and A*’s. The pressure of this alone can put off students, giving them a sense of impending doom. This shouldn’t be a true representation of intelligence, as many students struggle understanding the questions in the paper, because they are worded so complexly it causes confusion and losing marks.

The time period set for exams are often problematic for students when trying to gain over 100 marks in an hour, theoretically if we had an extra 5 minutes before an exam to revise could we get an A instead of a B, it could even be the difference between a pass and a fail. Its luck depending on the questions you receive and the topics you understand, exams don’t measure intelligence because you could explain your answer as fully as possible but miss one word meaning you don’t get any marks. The amount of revision we have to do means we have no social life and as the saying goes ‘youth is wasted on the young’ this implies that we have the capability to do things like travelling but no time or money to. The amount of information cannot possibly be retained or is even useful for working life; from personal experience I can tell you that I have never used Pythagoras’ Theorem or Hicks Law making it seem very useless.

To conclude, we feel that exams should be scrapped and education should be optional post 16.

 

Techniques Used:

• We used personal experiences in our speech "from personal experience I can tell you...", by using this it makes our speech more persuasive to the audience as it is more believable as we are able to back up our initial point with a valid reason.
•  We included alliterations: "always applicable", "students struggle" and "techniques and teaching".
• We included quotes and phrases, "youth is wasted on the young" "Everybody is a genius but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend it’s whole life believing its stupid.”
• We also included a variation of sentence types and a variation of adjectives.