CONGRATULATIONS...

...on choosing to take the most exciting*, useful** and just plain excellent*** A level course known to humankind. We'd just like to take this opportunity to say "welcome" to all our new AS English Language students, and "welcome back" to those of you starting your second year of English Language at Strode's.

The purpose of this blog is to help you to keep up to date with current news articles, websites and other resources that focus on a wide range of topics, issues and debates surrounding the English language in all its forms and uses. Not only will this blog support your learning, but it is also guaranteed to stimulate your curiosity about language and provoke debate and discussion with fellow English Language students, friends and family alike. I often say that there is no such thing as an 'off-duty' English Language student, and you'll find that the links and comments on this blog will open up a whole world of issues in which you will quickly find yourself becoming immersed.

The blog is updated by members of the English Language team on a regular basis (although you might have noticed that there was something of a 'hiatus' last year!), so please do log in as frequently as possible (there's a link to the blog on the AS and A2 English Language VLE sites). If you've got something to say about the issues raised in one of the blog entries, please do feel free to post a comment. You could even start a discussion about the topic on the VLE. Similarly, if you happen to come across an interesting language-related resource/website/news item somewhere and you think other students would benefit from accessing it, then please email the details to your teacher at jjones@strodes.ac.uk, nwhillans@strodes.ac.uk or telliott@strodes.ac.uk and we'll post it up. You'll find that each entry is tagged for the particular aspect(s) or unit(s) of the course to which it relates, which makes it easy for you to search through older posts if you're looking for something in particular.

To get us started for this year, here's a link to an interesting article about modern slang that appeared in The Sun. "What???", I hear you cry, outraged, "An English teacher recommending something written in THE SUN??? Preposterous!". Well, yes, actually. As students of English Language we are interested in language in all its forms and uses, both formal and informal. Much of our work over the two years of the course focuses on what society in general thinks and says about language, and how language is used by a wide range of social groups, and those attitudes and uses can be found in all sorts of places and texts. This article about 'modern' slang is particularly relevant to both AS and A2 at this point in the year, as we begin to look in AS at our own language habits and in A2 at age variation in language.

Enjoy the course!

*probably
**no doubt about this one
***well, we like to think so

When does a word become a word?

In case you didn't hear the triumphant fanfares or spot the vibrantly-coloured processions of jubilant lexicographers dancing in the street, yesterday was Million Word Day. Except it wasn't... and that's why the aformentioned festivities didn't actually happen. You may remember that in a previous post on this blog I talked about the Global Language Monitor's prediction that the English language would reach its one millionth word on 29th April 2009. Well, the day has come and the day has gone, and according to the GLM we still haven't quite got to 1 million. In fact, they've now moved the projected date for Million Word Day to around 8th June 2009... and this is not the first time they've changed their minds (they originally said we were going to become linguistic millionaires three years ago!).

All of this speculation and uncertainy has prompted discussion in the media of what actually constitutes a word. Can, for example, short-lived slang terms be classed as words in their own right. Are we going to let 'text speak' words into the dictionaries if they show signs of having crept into our spoken vocabulary? These are some of the questions addressed in this video report from the BBC. Members of the general public are asked to give their views on words such as chav ("It's a term that's been coined... it's slang... I don't think it's a real word.") and LOL ("Everyone's using it.. it's fun."), while a lexicographer from the Collins Dictionary points out that "a word needs to be used in a wide variety of [contexts] for it to be included in the dictionary". The report also looks at some of the new words that are helping the language to clock up its one million - words such as Obamamania and to defriend (the process of dumping someone from your list of firneds on Facebook).

In another part of the same report the issue of 'word death' is also discussed. Professor Mark Pagel from the University of Reading observes that words like to stab and to throw have a relatively limited life span of about 800-1000 years, while words such as I, to, five and who can be around for as long as 20,000 years. This in itself ios not surprising, given that the words in the latter category are either function words or fundamental basic content words, while those for which he predicts a shorter life belong to the content or open class word group, where, as we know, new words come along and de-throne old words all the time!

A special edition of the Forbes Magazine has recently looked at this issue of language growth. You can read the full article here, but I've picked out a few key points form it below.

On the issue of the one-millionth word:

An outfit called the Global Language Monitor claims that English is about to add
its millionth word, boldly (and absurdly) projecting the event to transpire some
time around June 8, 2009. But that gives the patina of precision to the
ultimately subjective task of determining what counts as "English" nowadays--and
what counts as a "word." Even if we content ourselves with the paltry number of
neologisms that get included in dictionary updates, it's instructive to see
which words make the cut. Recent additions to the Concise Oxford English
Dictionary, for instance, include biosignature, botnet, locavore, mocktail,
plus-one and vanity sizing. In some cases we know exactly where these words are
coming from. Locavore, meaning "a person whose diet consists only or principally
of locally grown or produced food," was coined in 2005 by a group of four San
Francisco women who challenged local residents to eat only food grown within a
100-mile radius. It was then picked up by like-minded activists around the
country.

On the issue of new prefixes and suffixes:

Suffixes and prefixes are the Legos of word-making, handy attachments we slap
onto words as needed. Most don't make us blink: like the "pre" and "s" in
"prefixes" itself.
Others are a little more creative, gaudy and
eye-catching. It's no longer unusual to spot "-y" suffixed words like "women's
magazine-y" and "false-prophet-y" or words with " 'tude" such as
"braindead-itude," "poor-human-being-itude" and "warlorditude." There's nothing
new about "nano" in conjunction with a very small iPod or scientific words like
"nanotubes," but slangy, informal words like "nano-brained" are adding fancy new
features to the insulter's toolbox. The celebutante-inspired prefix "celebu-"
has spawned many recent coinages such as "celebu-tats," "celebu-chefs,"
"celebu-ooops," and "celebu-scent."

On the issue of words that have come into the language from the world of gaming:

Sometimes new words are not invented, but are crafted from old words. In
gaming, a "griefer" is a player who intentionally disrupts the gameplay of other
players--a griefer gives other players grief. Gamers took a word that already
existed and added the highly productive suffix "-er" to make a word that fit
their language needs. On the history of new words:
Shakespeare popped off
hundreds of neologisms, such as "excellent," "lonely" and "leapfrog," that have
long been accepted as words, but which, if dictionaries were being written in
Elizabethan times, would have been flagged as suspiciously colloquial. Given
that it is nearly impossible to create a word for something out of thin air and
see it adopted by the rest of the English-speaking world--i.e., if you randomly
decided to call the cover for your memory stick a "verch," no one else would
join in--most of the words that have accreted in the vast English vocabulary
over the 2000-plus years of the language's existence have been created in
various ways.

Verdict on slang collector: 'helio proctosis'

Yesterday's edition of the London Student newspaper ran an article on the use of slang among students and other young people. The article features an interview with Tony Thorne, a linguist working at the English Language Centre at King's College, home to the 'Archive of Slang and New Language'.

The article lists some interesting slang terms, and if you're keen to follow this up then why not pay a visit to the Archive of Slang and New Language website, where there are literally hundreds of slang terms listed, together with their origins and uses. The article also makes some interesting references to attitudes towards slang usage, which are relevant to the kinds of debates that we're going to be having in ENA5 (A2) very soon and then later on this year in ENA6.

Out with the old...

Welcome back to the blog - and a somewhat belated Happy New Year to you all! And what better way to celebrate the arrival of 2009 than by having a look at some of the most annoying words of the year just gone? (OK, you can probably think of lots of better ways of celebrating the arrival of 2009, but just work with me on this one, will you??). Lexicographer and all-round word boffin Susie Dent has compiled a list of the worst words of 2008 as voted for by the general public. You'll find some old 'favourites' in here, as well as a few that you might not have heard before. Always useful for ENA5 Language Change and other language debates.

At the end of the day it's not rocket science

According to a new book by Jeremy Butterfield of the Oxford English Corpus, phrases like the two that I personally (there's another one) have just used in the title (and now the content) of this post are among the most irritating expressions in the English language. As reported by yesterday's Telegraph, the top ten language sins at this moment in time (there I go again) are:

1 - At the end of the day
2 - Fairly unique
3 - I personally
4 - At this moment in time
5 - With all due respect
6 - Absolutely
7 - It's a nightmare
8 - Shouldn't of
9 - 24/7
10 - It's not rocket science

You can add to that list misuses of the word literally and any number of cliches that are spawned by the world of corporate management (witness to incentivise, to action and synergy). The book's author says that "we grow tired of anything that is repeated too often – an anecdote, a joke, a mannerism – and the same seems to happen with some language." Interesting fuel for a language attitudes debate.

So which cliches of the modern age get up your nose the most? Post a comment and let us know.

Speaking of the cliche 'it's not rocket science', have you ever wondered what actual rocket scientists say when they want to make a point about something not being incredibly difficult? No? Just me then...

...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.

'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.

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).

Some accents just Palin comparison to others

Tee hee hee, see what I did there? A headline truly worthy of the hallowed pages of the "Sun Writer's Pun-Writer" handbook. For this post is indeed all about accents (accents such as that of Sarah Palin, candidate for the US Vice-Presidency) and how some accents (Sarah Palin's, for example) are seen to be less prestigious and/or desirable than others - in fact, some accents pale in comparison to others (Palin comparison... geddit?). Ahh-herrmmm... anyway...*

One article from the American press chooses to headline specific negative perceptions of Sarah Palin's accent ("What an accent! Mush!") as a summary of the writer's generally less than positive views about her as a politician. This highlights the fact that people tend to see accent and dialect as an important characteristic when it comes to making judgements about other people, and another article from the American press picks up on this. Like the first article, this one starts by focusing on Sarah Palin's accent ("Really? That's an Alaskan accent?") but moves on to a more detailed discussion of the significance of attitudes towards language varieties, drawing on the views and observations of a number of expert linguists. Whilst this article focuses exclusively on American accents (and is therefore technically outside of our remit for Unit 5 'Contemporary Language Variation in the British Isles'), many of the issues that are raised about accents of American English are of equal significance for British English varieties. Among the points raised is the observation that, contrary to earlier predictions that regional accents would 'die out', people are actually holding on to their distinctive linguistic varieties as a means of marking their identity.

On the other hand, the article reports, there are some people who see a distinctive regional accent as an obstacle to progression in socio-economic terms, and it is perhaps these people that are adopting a more standard language variety that is not marked for any particular region. The writer picks on "rural Maine" as the undesirable antithesis to the "city", and there's an important point to bear in mind here: attitudes towards regional accents and dialects are not always based on their linguistic characteristics, but often on society's percpetions of the region with which the variety is associated.

Nowhere is this more true than in Britain, where you can pretty much guarantee that any opinion poll asking which is Britain's coolest/most prestigious/sexiest accent will show one variety coming bottom of the heap: the Birmingham accent and dialect. The results of a recent CoolBrands survey identified 'Brummie' as the least cool accent of British English, with Received Pronunciation seen as the coolest (don't ask me why, I don't make up the rules!), closely followed by Scotts and Geordie. You can read the full story here and here. Like users of any regional variety, though, many Brummies are proud of their accent and dialect, even if they are aware of the negative light in which it casts them in many people's eyes.

The road sign pictured left actually appeared at roadworks in Dudley in the West Midlands a few years ago (I'm offering a prize for the first correct translation posted in the 'comments' section of this post), and gives a clear indication of the sense of solidarity that can come with the use of a regional variety. As a proud ex-pat Brummie myself, I'm always pleased to see this kind of thing. Imagine my delight last year, then, when I found out about national Talk Like a Brummie day. And how much more delighted do you think I was when I found out that said event is to be repeated on 19th July 2009?!! Yowm gunna loov it, aah kid.


_____________

*I'll get my coat...

Room for a small one?

Sticking with what seems to have become a bit of a theme in recent postings, this article on language innovation asks us to consider whether the English language is 'full'? The writer of the article, Alex Beam, claims to "love neologisms, coinages, new words, whatever you want to call them", citing staycation, manecdote and brocabulary as personal favourites. In the interest of presenting a balanced argument, however, Beam raises the following question:

Are new words as great as we think they are? Paul MacInnes, writing for The
Guardian newspaper, says no. "The common line is that any new word is a good
word," he says. "It shows a vibrant, playful language shaped by those who
practice it." He continues: "Not often, however, does anyone stop to ask whether
this is a good thing, whether... the English language is full."

It's an interesting point, whether or not you agree with it - and this kind of debate is right up our street as far as the A2 English Language course content is concerned.

Rents think Teenglish website is bare nang, blats

...or something. If you thought that 'malt' was something used in making beer, 'rare' was a way of cooking steak and 'flossing' was that thing the dentist is always nagging you to do, then you need the Teenglish Jargon Buster. Okay, maybe you don't actually need it, but your parents might, as this story in the Daily Mail tells us.

The jargon buster is a feature of the gotateenager website hosted by Parentlineplus, the purpose of which is to "help break down the language barrier" between parents and teenagers. What is interesting about this website is that it aims to keep on updating the dictionary of 'Teenglish', inviting contributions from parents in order to do so. This is particularly important given the extreme transience of this particular type of slang - it changes more rapidly, probably, than any other type of non-standard or colloquial usage, so websites like this are useful for linguists like us if we want to keep track of this high-speed language change as it occurs. After all, some of the words that appear in slang dictionaries like this one are out of date almost as soon as they are published ("phat", anyone...?).

War of the words

As the campaign for the American Presidency gathers pace, the candidates and their 'people' are keener than ever to find something - anything - to use as a weapon against their opponents. In the wake of yesterday's outcry about Barack Obama's 'lipstick on a pig' comment comes a fresh accusation of racism against supporters of John McCain.

The argument revolves around the use of the word 'uppity' by two separate Republican politicians in reference to Obama and his wife and to a black news reporter, as reported here. A spokesman for the two Republican politicians argued that they had "simply evoked a word that by definition described [their] demeanor as being superior, arrogant and presumptuous". However, supporters of Obama have been quick to point out that the word has a racially-loaded history and that its use by the Republicans is far from innocuous. This article explains the background to the use of the word:

The phrase “uppity (N-word)” was used to let a black person know he was out
of his “place.” It was used on black people during the civil rights movement, who refused to give up seats on buses and who moved into segregated neighborhoods, as well as black people who used proper English. It was likely the last phrase heard by freedom riders in Mississippi before they were killed and buried in an earthen dam.

Whether or not the Republicans were conscious of this history is unclear. What is clear, though, is that language really is a 'loaded weapon' and should be handled with extreme caution!

More grammar gripes

Following their report on Tesco's decision to re-label their "10 items or less" checkouts (as discussed in my recent Less is more blog posting), BBC News on-line magazine has published a 'rogues gallery' of the 20 most hated grammar crimes, as identified by its readers. Have a look at the list and see whether you feel as strongly about these misuses of language as some people apparently do. Perhaps you have some additional gripes of your own that don't get a mention here...

You say tomato...

In her editorial column in today's Guardian Siobhan Butterworth brings a well-worn language debate out for another airing. The debate focuses on the use (or rather misuse) of the phrases "bored of" and "disinterested in", among others. Butterworth gives a clear explanation of the 'correct' (as prescriptivists would have it) uses of these phrases and of the debates surrounding their misuse, but ultimately makes her own - more descriptivist - views plain by observing that "at some point we have to let go and accept modern usage or risk sounding clumsy, or worse, pompous".

Arguments like these about changes in what is considered to be 'standard' usage are the stuff of which Language Debates (ENA6) and the Language Change element of ENA5 are made, so it's worth considering your own views on these issues.

Time to call time on "chav"?

Smells like another language debate is in the air. In an article published in yesterday's Guardian Tom Hampson calls for the word 'chav' to be banned. His argument is that this word is "offensive to a largely voiceless group and – especially when used in normal middle-class conversation or on national TV – it betrays a deep and revealing level of class hatred". He goes on to say that "the common use of the word chav creates a sense that this type of discrimination and stereotyping is acceptable and legitimate", arguing that in fact the word is no less offensive than any number of racist or otherwise bigoted terms that most of us, thankfully, would never even dream of using. Hampson's plea is that we should "not replace the racist or bigoted language of the past with a new set of words that are just as hateful", and that we should, in fact, ban the word 'chav' altogether.

But not everyone agrees with this solution to the problem. In a response to Hampson's article publshed in today's Guardian Unlimited, Zoe Williams argues that banning words like 'chav' is pointless, because this does not address the real issue - i.e. the inherent snobbery amd prejudice that the word reflects. In an attack on the methods adopted by the PC movement in the 1980s and 1990s, Williams says that "the old strategies of striding around, banning bad words, did their job, but have had their day". Expressing what amounts to a reflectionist viewpoint (remember this from Language and Representation?), Zoe Williams is arguing that language reflects our views rather than shaping them (as a determinist would argue), and that the problem is not really the word itself (although she does agree that it's not a very nice word) but the bigoted attitudes of the people who use it.

Why not have your say? Post a comment below, or start a new thread in the VLE discussion forum.

Is modern language a load of hyperbolics?

Someone recently said that modern society has turned into one giant marketing campaign.
OK, nobody has actually said that, but if they had said it then it's almost certain that what they'd have meant by this is precisely what journalist Finton O'Toole argues in today's edition of The Irish Times. In his opinion piece, which you can read here, O'Toole claims that hyperbole is "rampant" in our modern language. Using a rather topical metaphor he refers to this as "the inflation of language, the hyping-up of the ordinary into the extraordinary, the mundane into the epic".

What O'Toole is saying is that we seem to no longer talk about everyday things in neutral terms, but instead we feel the need to 'big everything up'. No longer do we talk about sporting fixtures... instead we see 'epic battles' of 'heroic proportions' between 'the legendary X' and the 'almighty power that is Y'. Whilst the kind of examples that I've just given are really quite harmless, O'Toole does make a point about some arguably (albeit unintentionally) more offensive uses of hyperbole. And although he concludes his argument with the deliberately ironic hyperbolic observation that the use of such language is "horrific, cataclysmic, disastrous and apocalyptic", O'Toole's real - and very serious - conclusion is that "this relentless hyperbole is corrosive". It seems to me that the logic of his argument cannot be contested: if we use all our superlatives up on everyday matters, there won't be any left to use when talking about those events that are truly 'awesome' or public figures who really are 'iconic'.

Far be it from me to try to influence your views, but I have to say that I don't entirely disagree with O'Toole's argument (thought I'd redress the balance with a bit of litotes there...).

What do you think?