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

Noughty language

Now that 2009 is well and truly behind us and the so-called Noughties are nought (pun intended) but a distant memory, what could be more heart-warmingly nostalgic than to have a look back at some of the most popular linguistic innovations of the past decade? That's precisely what this Guardian blog does.

You say tomato...

Here's an interesting article that ties in nicely with some of the work we've been doing recently on regional variation on the A2 course. In it the writer, Richard Morrison, discusses the 'state' of regional accents and dialects in modern Britain. It is a widely-held (if not necessarily always empirically based) view that 'accents and dialects are dying out', but Morrison seeks to debunk this perspective. He observes that "the British are reasserting their regional distinctions, at least in the one area over which ordinary folk have total control — the way we speak". Morrison continues:

Academics at Lancaster University have found that, rather than disappearing or merging, British dialects and accents are stronger than ever. Indeed, it seems that the great urban argots — Geordie, Scouse, Glaswegian, Brummie and the like — are actually extending their reach into the surrounding towns and countryside, as more and more people assert with their mode of speech their pride in belonging to a particular region.

The writer goes on to observe:

What’s really important is that, despite all the predictions made half a century ago, regional accents clearly haven’t been steamrollered into oblivion by mass communication and social mobility. Yes, all of us listen to the same TV and radio presenters, and many of us live hundreds of miles from where we learnt to speak our mother tongue. Yet we appear not merely to be clinging to the distinctive figures of speech and vowel sounds of our native soil, but actively nurturing them.

We're about to start looking at a phenomenon known as dialect levelling, and related theories that suggest that varieties associated with particular regions are becoming less distinct and are instead adopting non-standard forms that are shared by speakers across the country. The spread of so-called 'Estuary English' over the last couple of decades is often cited as evidence of this phenomenon, whereby speakers from areas as far north as Hull have been recorded using non-standard linguistic features not associated with the traditional varieties of their area but with varieties linked to the South-East of England. Whilst on one level Morrison's observations would appear to run counter to this, he does comment that "[t]he academics say that there are fewer and fewer differences between the way that people speak in neighbouring villages or urban districts. These micro-distinctions are being subsumed into regional “super-dialects”...". So to some extent this is like a localised version of dialect levelling. This gives us another angle to consider when looking at the issue of change in regional varieties, and should encourage us not to make blanket assumptions about the extent or nature of dialect levelling, but instead to consider each regioan and their related varieties on their own merits.