language  change:
1000's -Anglo Saxons and William the conqueror
1100's - the beginning of middle English
1200's - medieval music
1300's - early cookery manuscript
1400's - Canterbury tales and western printing
1500's - the first bible printed in English
1600's - Shakespeare
1700's - revolution and William Blake
1800's - wordsworth and dickens
1900's - Wilfred Owen and Virginia Woolf
2000's - poetry by Mimi Khalvati and Moniza Alvi.


"Language also changes very subtly whenever speakers come into contact with each other. No two individuals speak identically. People from different geographical places clearly speak differently, but even within the same small community there are variations according to a speaker’s age, gender, ethnicity and social and educational background. Through our interactions with these different speakers, we encounter new words, expressions and pronunciations and integrate them into our own speech. Even if your family has lived in the same area for generations, you can probably identify a number of differences between the language you use and the way your grandparents speak. Every successive generation makes its own small contribution to language change and when sufficient time has elapsed the impact of these changes becomes more obvious."





Reasons for language change

• Individuals – Chaucer and Shakespeare
• Technology – Internet etc needing new lexis
• Society – Cultural changes and shifts in attitudes requiring new lexis E.g. Political Correctness
• Foreign Influence – E.g. America through film or trade
• Science – new inventions requiring new lexis
• Travel, trade and colonisation – require new lexis and shared lexis to barter and trade
• Globalisation – English becoming language of trade and business – new forms created (Spanglish)

Political Correctness

• Refrain from causing emotional harm
• Fit into society free of isolation
• However – gone to far - ‘vertically challenged’

Attitudes towards language change

• Prescriptivism – dictate how language should be used
• Want language to remain same and refrain from change
• Descriptivism – accept language change is inevitable and accept change
• David Crystal – 3^rd way – results in more creative and expressive form of language

Taboo

• Used for comedic effect
• Convergence or divergence – conform to more dialectical lexis to fit in or show separate from others
• Used as filler or to show pain and displeasure
• Negative views towards taboo
• Too much on TV
• However, shows reality to modern language in Britain

Lexical change – neologisms
Words from other languages
Borrowings –

• Loans taken from foreign languages 
• E.g. ‘Judge’ from French and ‘Opera’ from Latin

Words formed from existing words - 
Affixation –

• Adding affix (prefix or suffix) to an existing word - E.g. ‘Racism’ and ‘sexism’

Compounding –

• Two words are combined in their entirety to make a new word
• E.g. ‘Lap-top’ and ‘Happy-hour’

Blending –

• Two words parts are moulded together to form a new word, usually by adding the start of one word and the end of another
• E.g. ‘Smog’ – smoke and fog and ‘Motel’ – motor and hotel

Conversion –

• Changing of word class  - E.g. Noun to verb – ‘Text’ was noun now verb of ‘to text’

Words formed by shortening –
Shortening or abbreviation –

• Clipping part of a word
• E.g. Omnibus to ‘bus’ and Public house to ‘pub’

Acronym –

• Taking initial letters of words and making them into a combination of pronounceable as a new word
• E.g. NATO, NASA, AIDS, WAG

Initialism –

• Words abbreviated to initial letter - E.g. B.B.C, F.B.I, U.S.A.

Words from proper names –

• Derived from names or places synonymous with the product
• Denim – place in France
• Sandwich – after Earl of Sandwich

Semantic change
Broadening or generalisation –

• Meaning of a word broadens so as it retains old meaning but takes on new meanings as well
• E.g. ‘Mouse’ – was animal now computer equipment also

Narrowing or specialisation –

• Is the opposite of broadening
• Applies when word becomes more specific in its meaning, but again can retain the original meaning as well
• E.g. ‘Meat’ – meant all food now flesh of animals
• ‘Girl’ – middle ages meant all young people

Amelioration –

• Word has taken on a more pleasant or positive meaning than originally held
• E.g. ‘Wicked’ – still means evil now modern slang of good
• ‘Pretty’ – middle ages meant sly or cunning now beautiful

Pejoration –

• Opposite to amelioration
• words original meaning becomes less favourable
• E.g. ‘awful’ – originally 'worthy of awe' now 'exceedingly bad'

Metaphor –

• Words take on new meanings when begin to be used metaphorically
• E.g. ‘Cow’ – bitchy female and ‘Catty’ – female

Idioms –

• Formed from existing words but assume new meanings often as fixed frame forms
• Can only be properly interpreted by learning what the whole frame means
• E.g. ‘In the dog house’ and ‘Over the moon’

Euphemisms –

• Polite way of describing something unpleasant, embarrassing or socially undesirable
• More politically correct
• E.g. ‘Friendly fire’ and ‘Passed away’