Attitudes to Language Change, Prescriptive and Descriptive
In the article linked at the bottom of this post, it explores the idea that fashion is like language. It's interesting as it suggests that where fashion has it's phases that come and go like "beards", language too has phases, like when people in the 2000's were saying "sick" and in the 90's "wicked" was the word everyone said. Another more modern example is how teenagers from last year started saying "fleek" and "bae", the fashion trend was having "ombre" hair. The article had a very descriptive attitude, exploring the different attitudes and why they may have changed.
However it then explained that fashion and language do differ from each other. This is because in fashion, trends come back, where as it is unlikely for language trends to come back, like with the example the article gave: "hotsy totsy". It ended up explaining that language differs from fashion because language is a practical tool, not just a form of expression.
Even though clothes are practical, fashion is an aspect of clothing that can be changed to suit a person's taste. Language has parts that aren't essential to what is being
communicated. It has a purpose to do that is essential for us to live. Fashion,
although good as it is, doesn’t have an important purpose. If there was an
emergency and you had to explain something to an emergency team, fashion wouldn’t
help in that situation, words will.
Another person who has an interesting view on language is Jean Aitchison. She is a Professor of Language and Communication and created metaphors to describe prescriptive views to language change. The metaphors included: the damp spoon metaphor, the crumbling castle metaphor and the infectious disease assumption metaphor.
The Damp Spoon:
This is the metaphor that suggest that language change is because of laziness. She said that "there's a trade off between smooth, fast speech and slow careful speech. Faster speech involves more words per minute, and cannot be classed as ‘laziness’." When we speak faster, we will most likely use more words than if we spoke slower. When we speak slower, we miss out words that we as irrelevant. For example: People may now say "Went Asda" instead of "I went to Asda." This could also link to the idea of technology and text speak, creating initialisms because we can't be bothered to say "be right back" so we say "BRB".
The Crumbling Castle:
This metaphor is about language crumbling and that it needs to be preserved. She said, "…implies that the language of English was gradually and lovingly assembled until it reached a point of maximum splendour at some unspecified time in the past. Yet no year can be found when language achieved some peak of perfection, like a vintage wine.” She suggested that we use new uses of older forms of words, EG: "shoot up", "shot up" and "shooted up."
The Infectious Disease Assumption:
She stated, "The wholesale spread of corruption may surely be ascribed to mere infection, to the careless, unthinking assimilation of the floating germs which envelop us." The changes in language aren't random and hold on if language is moving in a specific direction.
Bibliography:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/06/language-fashion-weather-speak
http://a2englishlanguagestringer.blogspot.co.uk/
https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/jean-aitchesons-language-change-progress-or-decay/
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