Beckham's accent gets the boot

The language quest of hotel chain Travelodge continues apace this week, as they publish the results of their survey into both the favourite and most loathed accents of British English. In keeping with many such investigations in the past, the accents of areas such as London, Birmingham, Wales (huge generalisation, but don't shoot the messenger) and Liverpool come off the worst, with varieties associated with the north-east and Scotland coming out on top.

What's particularly interesting about these results is the celebrities that are chosen as examples of each variety. London accents are representated by controversial figures such as Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen, and although David Beckham might not be controversial in the strictest sense of the word, he certainly does divide opinion. Wales gets Charlotte Church (generally considered to be rather irritating), Liverpool gets Colleen Rooney (WAG famous for... well, being a WAG), and Birmingham gets Ozzy Osbourne (unique, but not necessarily in a good way). By contrast, Newcastle gets Cheryl Cole as its figurehead (considered to be quite attractive by lots of people), Bolton gets comedian Peter Kay (current media favourite) and Scotland gets Edith Bowman (popular with 'the yoof', I believe).

All of this supports the observations of linguist Howard Giles, who is famous for (among other things) his discussions of the motivations for language attitudes. One of the points he makes is that people's attitudes towards a particular accent are frequently motivated not by the aesthetic qualities of the actual sounds (although this can be significant), but by the things (people, places etc.) with which the accent is associated.

The results of the Travelodge survey are also reported in slightly different ways here, here and here.

Language is out of this world

No, that's not an observation on what a cracking course A level English Language is (although now you come to mention it...), but instead a comment relating to this report on the development of software that will allow linguists to decode alien language. "What?" I hear you cry, "Aliens? As in little green men?" (Actually the majority of people claiming to have seen aliens concur that they are in fact grey and not green... and not really 'little' at all... and there are probably female aliens too, when you think about it... but I digress). "Since when did alien language become fair game on an English Language course?" you continue, and not without justification. But it's what the article says about language in general that is interesting for us as linguists:

[Dr Elliott] believes that even an alien language far removed from any on Earth
is likely to have recognisable patterns that could help reveal how intelligent
the life forms are. "Language has to be structured in a certain way otherwise it
will be inefficient and unwieldy," he told New Scientist magazine.

This idea that all languages have a common basic structure (or 'deep structure' as it is sometimes known) is not a new one - linguist Noam Chomsky is well known for his theories in this area. The report goes on to explain:

All human languages have "functional terms" that bracket phrases - words like
"if" and "but" in English. According to Dr Elliott, such terms in any language,
are separated by up to nine words or characters. This limit on phrase length
seems to correspond to the level of human cognition - how much information we
are able to process at once.

Whether we apply this to alien languages or not (and I suggest that we don't spend too long on that one), this basic principle of (human) languages would seem to point to a definite link between language and cognition (mental agility and ability), which lends weight to at least one of the main theories of language acquisition that we will be debating later on this year.

...And yet more on dialect

Following on from the previous post on various regional dialects, the Lancastrian and Cornish varieties now get their turn in the spotlight. The Travelodge hotel chain has commissioned a study into the extent to which people understand various accents and dialects of British English. You can see reports on the results of their research into the Lancastrian dialects here (complete with a link to the short dialect guide that came out of it) and the findings of their Cornish dialect investigation here.

Dialect, dialect, dialect...

The subject of regional accents and dialects is rarely absent from the pages of national and local newspapers for very long, and in the last week or so there have been a number of interesting articles in various publications.

This article from the Northumberland Gazette looks at the work of the Northumbrian Language Society, whose efforts to keep the local dialect alive will this week include an event which sees the recital of a selection of poems written in the Northumbrian dialect. Further south in Hull, meanwhile, a hotel has begun to issue its guests with a tongue-in-cheek guide to the local dialect, as reported here. It's a pretty comprehensive list, which takes an affectionate look at the local regional variety - although there are a few people from the area who are less than pleased with what they consider to be bit of a mickey-take (although the hotel management denies it was ever meant to be seen in this way).

Elsewhere in Yorkshire, one of last week's editions of the Huddersfield Daily Examiner issued a plea to bring back the Yorkshire dialect - an article which, in turn, prompted some negative responses a few days later because of its use of what some people considered to be regional forms that were not from Yorkshire but from across the border in Lancashire.

And finally, no blog post (at least, no blog post from this writer) would be complete without something on the dialects of the West Midlands, which is why this video report gets a mention. Them bostin' Brummies have got in on the Facebook act, setting up a group called 'Faycebook' (the extra 'y' being an attempt to replicate the West Midlands vowel pronunication) to celebrate all things Brummie.

'Custody' battle

A real-life language and representation debate appeared in yesterday's Guardian. The writer of the article discusses the use of the word custody when talking about the responsibility of child care following a divorce or separation. This article demonstrates quite clearly just how significant language can be in terms of influencing people's perception of a given issue.

Going... Going... Gone!

In the last couple of months we've had quite a few posts focusing on new words that are finding their way into various 21st century dictionaries and other lexicographical collections, so in the interests of providing a balanced view of the whole process of language change, here is an article from Time Magazine that looks at what happens at the 'other end' of the language change production line, so to speak. The article begins:

The lexicographers behind Britain's Collins English Dictionary have decided to
exuviate (shed) rarely used and archaic words as part of an abstergent
(cleansing) process to make room for up to 2,000 new entries. "We want the
dictionary to be a reflection of English as it is currently spoken," says Ian
Brookes, managing editor of Collins, "rather than a fossilized version of the
language."

But this is a controversial mission statement, as the article goes on to point out:

Here in Old Blighty, the birthplace of English, the dictionary's compilers
face passionate resistance from language lovers who believe that any cull
reduces the richness and variety that make language powerful — and leaves us
all a bit dumber... Collins' editors know that old words die hard — and that
some people will vilipend (regard with contempt) any execution without a
fair trial. So they've offered the chance of a reprieve. They have made
public 24 words that face deletion because editors could find no example of
their use in their database of English-language books, newspapers,
broadcasts and other media. If, by February 2009, a word reappears in that
database with at least six "high quality" citations, it could be spared from
the semantic dustbin.

You can read the full list of 24 words currently residing on Dictionary Death Row here. If you ask me (you didn't, but I'll say it anyway), the thought of such wanton lexicide (wonder whether that one will ever make it into the CED) is abhorrent, and must be stopped! But it's not just these 24 words that face the chop - there are loads of unfortunate lexemes that need rescuing from the clutches of the language axeman. Where, for example, would we be without the word napiform meaning 'shaped like a turnip'? And what about typtology, 'the theory that the dead communicate with the living by tapping on tables'. And, should the day come when the word hylomania bites the dust, how on earth will we ever be able to talk about 'the abnormal love of wood'? A language cull would indeed reduce the richness, the variety and - at times - the downright weirdness of the English language... and that can only be a bad thing.

So let's hear from you - which obscure words are on your top three list of vocab worth reviving?

Wordsmiths strike again

Another list of the hottest new words of 2008 was published in today's Daily Mail. So if you suffer from nomophobia, get depressed by stagflation or simply can't tell your funt from your framily, then take a look at the article. It lists a number of very inventive new uses of language, each demonstrating one or other of the word formation processes that we're about to start looking at in A2 (Language Change).

Language is booming when it comes to the crunch

There's a really good article here about the new terms that have come into the language as a result of the current global financial crisis. As the article says, "tumultuous times change language" and this has certainly been the case with the world banking meltdown. Credit crunch is the most obvious example of linguistic innovation in this area, and the article gives a detailed account of the development of this term. The article as a whole presents an excellent overview of the ways in which language is used by the media to represent this particular issue, including a very useful glossary of 'meltdown lingo'. As such this is a great resource for your AS coursework on Representation and Language.