A LEVEL PREPARATION:

ENGLISH A
DLAPENG02
A LEVEL PREPARATION: ENGLISH
A
 MASTHEAD

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DLAPENG02
Version No.: 001-2022-0930
Inga Birth

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2
DR. PETER EGOROV

Dr. Egorov is an Academic Director for International Affairs at IU International University of

Applied Sciences, focusing on facilitating strategic partnerships with a wide variety of institu-
tions.

After completing his studies, Dr. Egorov worked several years as a management consultant in
Germany within the scope of University-Industry collaborations. Dr. Egorov’s work as a
researcher and consultant is responsible for the development and implementation of novel
metadata metrics as well as has contributed to the global collaborative engagement strategy.

Additionally, Dr. Egorov has extensive multinational experience working across industry sec-
tors, whilst having obtained academic background in business economics as well as natural
sciences.

3
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
A LEVEL PREPARATION: ENGLISH A

Module Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Introduction
Signposts Throughout the Course Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Basic Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Learning Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Unit 1
Language Change 13

1.1 How English has Changed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1.2 Processes of Language Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.3 Theories and Theorists of Language Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.4 Analyzing and Evaluating Corpus Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Unit 2
Child Language Acquisition 41

2.1 The Main Stages of Early Development in Child Language Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

2.2 The Different Functions of Children’s Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.3 Theories and Theorists of Child Language Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.4 The Conventions and Features of Unscripted Conversation and Spoken Language
Transcripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Unit 3
English in the World 67

3.1 The Historical Development of English as a Global Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

3.2 Varieties of English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.3 Relevant Ethical Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Unit 4
Language and the Self 85

4.1 The Relationship Between Language and Self-Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

4.2 The Relationship Between Language and Social Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.3 The Relationship Between Language and Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

4
Appendix
List of References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
List of Tables and Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

5
INTRODUCTION
 WELCOME
SIGNPOSTS THROUGHOUT THE COURSE BOOK

This course book contains the core content for this course. Additional learning materials
can be found on the learning platform, but this course book should form the basis for your
learning.

The content of this course book is divided into units, which are divided further into sec-
tions. Each section contains only one new key concept to allow you to quickly and effi-
ciently add new learning material to your existing knowledge.

At the end of each section of the digital course book, you will find self-check questions.
These questions are designed to help you check whether you have understood the con-
cepts in each section.

For all modules with a final exam, you must complete the knowledge tests on the learning
platform. You will pass the knowledge test for each unit when you answer at least 80% of
the questions correctly.

When you have passed the knowledge tests for all the units, the course is considered fin-
ished and you will be able to register for the final assessment. Please ensure that you com-
plete the evaluation prior to registering for the assessment.

Good luck!

8
 BASIC READING
Gould, M., & Rankin, M. (2019). Cambridge International AS and A Level English language
coursebook (2nd ed). Cambridge University Press.

Burton, B.S.H. (2016). Work Out English A Level. Macmillan Education UK.

Pavich, J. (2018). Cambridge International AS Level English General Paper Coursebook Digi-
tal Edition. Cambridge University Press.

9
 FURTHER READING
UNIT 1

Linguistic Society of America. (2022). Is English changing? https://www.linguisticsociety.or

g/content/english-changing

UNIT 2

Berko, J. (1958). The child’s learning of English morphology. WORD, 14(2/3), 150–177. https
://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1958.11659661

UNIT 3

Cowie, C. (2017, April 17). World English and globalisation. The University of Edinburgh. htt
ps://forwardthinking.ppls.ed.ac.uk/2017/04/23/world-english-and-globalisation/

UNIT 4

Lavelle, D. (2019, March 20). The rise of ‘accent softening’: Why more and more people are
changing their voices. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar
/20/ugly-rise-accent-softening-people-changing-their-voices

TED. (2018, May 2). How language shapes the way we think | Lera Boroditsky [Video]. https:/
/www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k&t=44s

10
 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The expression of thoughts, feelings, and complex ideas through language is a uniquely
human ability: No other animal has a language system as extensive and elaborate as ours.
From advertising to politics, from lullabies to love songs, from shopping lists to argu-
ments, from banter to barter: What we do, we do – to a large extent – using language. In
this course, you will develop a strong basis in English linguistics, the study of the English
language from a scientific viewpoint.

In this A Level Preparation Course will begin by looking at language change. You will gain
knowledge about the history of the English language, discover why and how languages
change, become familiar with the concepts and terminology related to the phenomenon,
and learn how to use language data to discuss examples of language change. Next, you
will be introduced to the stages of development in child language acquisition, explore the
features and functions of children’s language, study relevant theories, and familiarize
yourself with the conventions of unscripted conversation and spoken language transcrip-
tion. You will also look at English in the world, investigating its historical development as a
global language and encounter some of its many varieties, while also considering ethical
implications. Lastly, you will examine the relationship between language and the self,
looking in particular at the ways in which language and thought are interrelated, the influ-
ence of language on self-identity, and the construction of social identities through lan-
guage use.

11
 UNIT 1
LANGUAGE CHANGE

STUDY GOALS

On completion of this unit, you will be able to ...

– demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the important stages in the develop-

ment of the English language.
– identify features of earlier forms of the English language.
– outline and discuss reasons for language change.
– identify various processes of language change.
– outline and comment on several theories that attempt to explain aspects of language
change.
– analyze and contextualize language data presented in the form of n-grams, n-gram line
graphs, word sketches, and concordances.
 1. LANGUAGE CHANGE

Introduction
All living languages undergo change. The term used to describe this process of gradual
variation of a language’s features over time is linguistic change or language change. New
words are coined, others fall out of use. Meanings shift, pronunciations are altered, and
even grammar is affected. While new vocabulary can quickly become a part of the lan-
guage, structural transformations take much longer and become noticeable only over the
course of several generations.

In 1871, the US-American scholar, journalist, and literary critic Richard Grant White dedica-
ted an entire 29-page-long chapter of his book Words and their Uses to criticizing the use of
“is” with “being.” A sentence he considers unacceptable is, for example: “The house is
being built” (p. 361). He calls this, the passive progressive, a “fatal absurdity” that is “illog-
ical, confusing, inaccurate, unidiomatic” and “… which, […] affront[s] the eye, torment[s]
the ear, and assault[s] the common sense of the speaker of plain and idiomatic English”
(p. 353, p. 361, p. 337). It was only later, by the end of the 19th century, that the passive
Archaic progressive fully replaced the old, now archaic construction: “The house is building.” At
The adjective archaic is the time of White’s writing, it was still completely normal to say, “Our garden is putting in
used to describe some-
thing as dated and old- order” (Jane Austen in a letter to her sister Cassandra, February 8, 1807) and “Tea was pre-
fashioned. Archaic lan- paring” (from the novel The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Richardson, 1753, p. 92), while
guage uses features that today’s norm was considered not only wrong but “monstrous” (White, 1871, p. 353) by
are no longer in (every-
day) use. These features some.
are called archaisms.
This negative attitude towards language change is a common phenomenon. Just as
Richard Grant White and many others before him resented the linguistic change that was
in progress during their lifetimes, people today complain about newly emerging language
features. For example, they criticize the use of “like” as a filler, take offense at (too many)
Neologism neologisms entering the vocabulary (e.g. “clickbait,” “to unfollow,” “to verse”) or turn
A neologism is a new their noses up at allegedly “ungrammatical” constructions, such as “they” as a singular
word or expression or an
existing word with a new pronoun.
meaning.
Prescriptivist Language, in prescriptivists’ eyes, is in constant danger of degeneration, corruption, and
A prescriptivist is a person decline. This, however, could not be further from the truth. New words entering the lan-
who advocates the view
that there are right and guage, the emergence of new meanings for old words, or the spread of altered sentence
wrong ways to use a lan- structures, all of this shows that a language is alive and well. What can be witnessed here,
guage. in fact, is language change in real time.

1.1 How English has Changed

In this following section we will look at the stages of language change in English and at
what present day English looks like.

14
The Time Periods of English

The earliest recorded form of the English language is called Old English, which developed
from Germanic dialects that Anglo-Saxon settlers brought with them from the European
mainland in the mid-fifth century. After the Norman conquest in 1066, Old English became
heavily influenced by the French variety spoken by the invaders and, thus, a new distinct
form evolved: Middle English. It was spoken until approximately 1500 when a process of
standardization paved the way for a third development stage.

Early Modern English was spoken during the 300 years that followed, coinciding with the
Tudor and Stuart dynasties. It is often called “Shakespeare’s English” because it is the
form of English in which his works were written, and it is also the language spoken, for
example, by Queen Elizabeth I. Early Modern English had fully developed into Late Modern
English, also simply called Modern English, by the end of the 18th century. This is the cur-
rent development phase of the English language. Sometimes, the term Present Day Eng-
lish (PDE) is used to distinguish the language spoken by English speakers today from the
language used by people living in the 19th and 20th century.

Of course, there is no exact moment of transition from one period to the next. Language
change happens gradually and while (at least some) contemporary speakers did notice
certain changes – we know this from their commentary – they would not have considered
the language of their parents (or even grandparents) an entirely different form of English.
The periods were assigned in retrospect by analyzing the features and differences
between them, and not all linguists agree on the exact same demarcations. The table
below, which shows the four stages of the English language and when they were spoken,
should therefore be treated as a guide rather than a definitive representation.

Table 1: The Periods of English

Name Time period

Old English First half of the 5th century CE to c. 1100

Middle English c. 1100 to c. 1500

Early Modern English c. 1500 to c. 1800

Late Modern English / Present Day English c. 1800 to present

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

Early Modern English

The Early Modern Period was a time of great political, economic, and social change that,
as may be expected, affected the English language to a considerable degree.

In comparison to writing from the Old or Middle English Period, however, texts written in
Early Modern English are relatively easy to read and understand for modern English speak-
ers. The changes that have taken place since approximately 1500, then, have not created a
radically different linguistic system. We can, after all, read Shakespeare’s plays and poetry.

15
 That being said, while we may not need a dictionary to understand the gist of Romeo and
Juliet, we do benefit greatly from explanatory notes and vocabulary lists. This gives you an
idea of how much the English language has changed.

We are now going to look at some specific features of Early Modern English and how they
differ from Present Day English. Language change takes place with regard to all aspects of
a language: its pronunciation (phonology), its grammar (the rule system) and sentence
structures (syntax), its words (lexis) as well as how words are formed (morphology) and
what they mean (semantics). Moreover, spelling and what is considered correct or incor-
rect in writing (orthography), graphic elements of texts (graphology), and the way lan-
guage is used in context (pragmatics) are aspects that are affected by and that, in turn,
influence language change.

The Great Vowel Shift

One of the most significant changes that took place in English in the Early Modern Period
Vowel is a shift in the pronunciation of vowels. This process is called the Great Vowel Shift. It
A vowel is a sound pro- began towards the end of the 14th century and lasted approximately 200 years.
duced with an open
mouth, i.e. without teeth
or tongue or lips blocking We know that this happened because of the way people spelled and rhymed words in the
the flow of breath. They past. Chaucer (born c. 1342/43), for example, rhymed “food,” “good,” and “blood,” the
are represented in writing
by the letters a, e, i, o, vowel sound in all of which would have been similar to the one in “goad” (Todd, 2006). By
and u. the time of Shakespeare, these words still rhymed, but the pronunciation of the vowel had
already shifted to sound more like the way “food” is pronounced today (Todd, 2006).

It is easiest to understand what happened to the vowels in English when you compare how
they were pronounced before the Great Vowel Shift in Middle English (the period preced-
ing Early Modern English) and the way they are pronounced today:

Table 2: Comparison of Vowel Pronunciation Before and After the Great Vowel Shift

Modern English pro-

Word (vowel) Middle English vowel pronunciation nunciation

“bite” similar to the modern pronunciation of “beet” bite

“feet” a long /e:/ sound: try to stretch the ‘e’ in “fed” (and feet
end on a ‘t’), similar to “fate”

“sea” a long /ɛ:/ sound: similar to the first element in the sea
name Sarah

“fame” similar to the modern pronunciation of “farm” fame

“so” similar to the modern pronunciation of “saw” so

“boot” similar to the modern pronunciation of “boat” boot

“out” similar to the modern pronunciation of the vowel out

in “loot”

Source: Inga Birth, based on Fennell (2008) and Crystal (2005).

16
According to Crystal (2005, p. 252), a sentence such as “We do make time to go now”
would have sounded something like “Way doe mahk teem to gaw noo” before the Great
Vowel Shift.

Many books were written and printed prior to the completion of the sound changes, and
these use a spelling system that reflects the pronunciation at the time (Denham & Lobeck,
2010). For example, the word “goose” was spelled with two ‘o’s because this was sup-
posed to indicate a long /o/ sound: /o:/. In other words, the spelling was designed to fit the
sound. In the course of the Great Vowel Shift, however, the vowel in “goose” became a
long /u/-sound: /u:/, while the spelling was not altered. This is why we spell words like
“goose,” “food,” “moose” etc. with a double ‘o’ even though we do not pronounce them
with an /o/-sound anymore at all. The Great Vowel Shift is the reason these and many
other words are spelled in a way that does not reflect their modern pronunciations (Den-
ham & Lobeck, 2010). The pronunciation has changed – the spelling has not.

There is no consensus among scholars why these changes in pronunciation may have hap-
pened, but a number of theories have been put forward.

One factor that appears to have been influential is migration. After and during the bubonic
plague (the “Black Death”) pandemic, people migrated in masses to the south-east of Eng-
land. This caused a mingling of a variety of accents and may have led to the evolution of
different pronunciations.

It is important to note that the aristocracy at the time were only just beginning to use Eng-
lish instead of French, probably retaining a certain French-ness to their pronunciation.
Alternatively, they may have exaggerated their pronunciation to set themselves apart,
while many people may have wanted to sound more like them and emulated their way of
speaking. Londoners who sought to differentiate themselves from the masses of newly
immigrated people may have begun to pronounce their vowels in a different manner and
thus the change may have spread from there.

While scholars debate the exact causes of the Great Vowel Shift, it may be agreed upon
that the following factors appear to have played a role:

• mass migration, causing a mixing of accents and an increase in social differentiation

• people’s desire to distinguish themselves from others (e.g. from newly immigrated peo-
ple or lower classes) or to emulate the pronunciation of a socially superior group
• the French language

Pronouns and verbs

Another important change concerns the second person pronouns. In Modern English, we
use only one pronoun when addressing a person or a group: you. There is no alternative in
the standard variety. In earlier forms of English there was more than one option, depend-
ing on the social class of the speaker and the addressee(s) and whether one person or sev-
eral people were being addressed.

17
 In Early Modern English, the pronouns of address were thou and ye/you. Thou (and its var-
iant forms thee, thy, thine) was used (a) to people the speaker considered to belong to a
social class lower than their own, or (b) as a familiar form of address among people of
lower social status. You/ye (and its possessive forms your, yours), in contrast, was used to
address people of a higher social standing than the speaker and as a familiar form of
address among members of the upper classes.

The distinction between thou and you/ye could also be employed to express a change in
“emotional temperature” (Crystal, 2005, p. 308). For example, a speaker may express con-
descension or contempt when using thou where you would have been the expected form.
Conversely, you could be used to convey “special intimacy” (Crystal, 2005, p. 309).

Note that originally (in Old English), ye and you were used as a plural pronoun, i.e. to
address more than one person, while thou and thee were used when speaking to a single
person. Later, in the Middle English Period, people started using the second person plural
as a singular form of address in formal situations, the way it is done in French and most
likely as a result of French influence (Crystal, 2005). This means that from the second half
of the 13th century onwards both ye/you and thou/thee could be used as singular pro-
nouns.

In Old English and Middle English there used to be a distinction between using the second
person pronoun as the subject or the object of a sentence. Thou and ye were the subject
forms, thee and you the object forms. With regard to you, this difference gradually disap-
peared in the course of the sixteenth century and soon you was used regardless of
whether it was the object or subject of the sentence. After that time, ye still existed, but its
use was largely limited to religious and literary contexts, e.g. to give the impression that
someone’s speech is old-fashioned.

Thou and thee (in addition to ye/you) was still in use in the Early Modern Period but in
Standard English rapid decline. It disappeared entirely from Standard English during the first half of the
This is the name for the 17th century, although it (has) remained a feature in regional dialects and as archaisms in
form of English that is
widely considered most plays and literature (Crystal, 2005, p. 310).
“correct.” It is commonly
contrasted with non- The table below shows the forms of the second person singular and plural as they were
standard varieties of the
language. used in the Early Modern English Period and their equivalents in Modern English.

Table 3: Pronouns of Address and Possessives: Early Modern English and Modern
English

Early Modern
English example of use Modern English example of use

2nd pers. sg., sub- thou* “Thou art you “You are wrong.”
ject of the sen- wrong.”
tence

2nd pers. sg., thee* “I helped thee.” you “I helped you.”

object of the sen-
tence

18
 Early Modern
English example of use Modern English example of use

Possessive thy, thine “thy mother” (thy your, yours “your mother,”
is used before “your apple”
consonants),
“thine apple”
(thine is used
before vowels)

2nd pers. sg./pl.† (ye/) you “(Ye/) you shall you “You shall have
subject of the have it.” it.”
sentence‡

2nd pers. sg./pl.† you “I helped you.” you “I helped you.”

object of the sen-
tence‡

Possessive your, yours “your mother,” your, yours “your mother,”

“your apple” “your apple”

*Thou/thee fell out of Standard English use in the 17th century.

†From the second half of the 13th century onwards both ye/you and thou/thee could be used as singular pro-

nouns. This was the norm in Early Modern English. However, in certain contexts, such as religious writing,
the distinction had been preserved.
‡You was the norm for both subject and object use after the subject/object distinction was lost in the 16th

century. Ye remained in use only in certain contexts, e.g. in literature and religious situations.

Source: Inga Birth, based on Fennell (2008), Crystal (2005), and Weiner (2012b).

Earlier forms of English also differed from Modern English in terms of the verb endings
that were used. For example, in Middle English and (at the beginning of) Early Modern
English, the present tense second person singular inflection was -est and, later, -‘st (e.g. Inflection
thou talkest, thou talk’st). This use declined parallel with the decline of the pronoun thou. This term refers to a
change in the form of a
word, e.g. the ending,
The regular ending in the 3rd person present tense was -eth (e.g. giveth, telleth), which was that conveys its grammat-
replaced by -(e)s during the first half of the 17th century, especially in spoken language. ical function in a sen-
tence.
There are a few exceptions: A few very common words, particularly doth and hath,
retained their older forms much longer and, specifically, continued to be spelled that way.

The regular past tense was the same we still use today: -ed. However, in Early Modern Eng-
lish, this initially used to be pronounced as a separate syllable (as it is still found today in
blessed or beloved), a pronunciation that was lost during the 16th century. It is noteworthy
that Early Modern English speakers attempted to represent some of the ways -ed can be
pronounced in their spelling: ’d, d, ’t, t; in Modern English, the difference can only be said
and heard, not written.

The table below shows an overview of the changes.

19
 Table 4: Overview of Verb Endings

Middle English / start

of Early Modern Eng-
lish Early Modern English Modern English

2nd person sg. (present -est, -‘st, -st -est, -‘st, -st (in decline) no regular ending →
tense) base form

3rd person sg. (present -(e)th, e.g. giveth, -(e)s (replaced -(e)th -s
tense) loveth, telleth, doth during the 17th cen-
tury, with the excep-
tion of a few common
words, particularly:
doth and hath)

regular past tense -ed, pronounced as a -ed the separate sylla- -ed
separate syllable (as in ble was lost during the
the two-syllable pro- 16th century → move
nunciation of beloved) towards modern past
tense pronunciation,
written variably as ‘d,
d, ‘t, t

Source: Inga Birth, based on Fennell (2008), Crystal (2005), and Weiner (2012b).

It is interesting to note that in comparison to Modern English earlier forms of English

showed considerable degrees of variation.

For example, today, irregular verbs are used only in their one applicable correct form, such
as write/wrote/written. In Early Modern English, some verbs had various different past
tense forms. The past tense of to write, for instance, could variably be wrote, writ, or even
wrate (Weiner, 2012). There was similar variability in the present tense forms of to be. For
example, speakers used thou art but also thou beest.

Lexis

Lexicon In the Early Modern Period the lexicon expanded dramatically.

In linguistics, the term
lexicon is usually used
synonymously with lexis This was due to a number of factors:
and, thus, refers to all the
words in a language. • Developments and discoveries in various fields, particularly science, medicine, and
Coinage communication, which led to new coinages as well as the incorporation and adaptation
The inventing of a new of Classical Greek and Latin words as terminology.
word or phrase and the
new word or phrase itself • Colonialism, travel, and exploration, which led to greater cultural and economic
is often referred to as a exchange, and connected with this.
coinage. • Influence from other European languages, especially French and Italian.
• Advances in art and literature, which, again, led to the increased use of French, Italian,
Greek, and Latin words.

People were faced with many new ideas, products, objects, and processes, for which they
needed to invent new words or adopt existing words from other languages.

20
Of particular importance in the area of lexical innovation are the works of William Shake-
speare. You may have heard that he is credited with having introduced a vast number of
new words and expressions into the language. While it is difficult to say with certainty how
many new items he contributed exactly, estimates lie somewhere between 800 and 1700
(Crystal, 2005, p. 327). This is particularly impressive given that many of his innovations
are in widespread, everyday use today.

Below you see a list of words and phrases that Shakespeare brought into the English lan-
guage.

Table 5: Words and Phrases First Used by Shakespeare

Phrases Words

We have seen better days bedroom, n.

I have not slept one wink critic, n.

Own flesh and blood gossip, v.

It’s Greek to me hurry, v.

What’s done is done lonely, adj.

Wear my heart upon my sleeve obscene, adj.

All that glitters isn’t gold skim milk, n.

The world is my oyster traditional, adj.

Wild-goose chase undress, v.

Break the ice varied, adj.

Melted into thin air worthless, adj.

Source: Inga Birth, based on Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (2022a; 2022b).

Late Modern English: Industrialization and Colonialism

Early Modern English evolved into (Late) Modern English around the turn of the 19th cen-
tury. Causes for this change were further rapid developments in science, technology, and
society, specifically the Industrial Revolution and Britain’s colonial expansion as well as
the social changes associated with these.

The biggest difference between (the later stages of) Early Modern English and Late Modern
English lies in the latter’s vastly increased lexicon, a direct result of abovementioned fac-
tors.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, many English speaking people found themselves in need of
new words simply because there were so many new things: new machines, new processes,
new products. More words entered the English language during that time than ever before
in the history of the language. As mentioned above, a lot of the items added to the lexicon

21
 during that time were technological and scientific in nature. These words were often
Greek or Latin in origin. Moreover, social developments, including urbanization and social
Social Stratification stratification, trends in fashion and art, and new ways of spending one’s leisure time
This term refers to a soci- played an important role. Lastly, the expansion of the British Empire and cultural contact
ety’s division into social
classes. through travel and improved communication also resulted in the introduction of thou-
sands of new words to describe foreign food, environments, and ways of life.

Below you find a list of words that were Late Modern English additions to the lexicon.

Table 6: Late Modern English Additions to the Lexicon

Area New words

Art, literature, and fashion art deco, beige, brassiere, chic, cinematography,
cliché, dossier, flair, foyer, genre, lingerie, mackin-
tosh, salon

Biology hibiscus, latex, rhizome, spermatozoon

Chemistry acetylene, ethanol, halogen, pipette

Food and eating café, caffeine, cuisine, gourmet, lasagne, liqueur,

menu, sorbet, soufflé, tofu, vodka

Hobby marathon, rugby, roulette, souvenir yoga

Medicine ambulance, aspirin, influenza, migraine

Psychology agoraphobia, hysteria, kleptomania, psychiatry

Source: Inga Birth, based on Harper (2022).

Present Day English: Globalization and Digitalization

Two of the most important catalysts for change to the English language in more recent
years are globalization and digitalization. English is a global language in the sense that
countless companies, organizations, and private people use it to communicate with each
other all across the globe. This global interconnectedness has increased as communica-
tion and transportation technology has continued to improve and become more readily
available and, thus, more widely employed. This has had a direct effect on the language.

Developments in science, business, and technology have made it necessary to add a vast
number of terms from various fields to the lexicon. Language has to fulfil the functions
speakers need it to fulfil and so it has to be continuously adapted to its speakers’ require-
ments. In other words: If it cannot serve its purpose as it is, it has to change. As in previous
centuries, this means that when people invent new products or processes, or when new
ideas or concepts emerge, names need to be found for them, simply in order to be able to
talk about them. Additionally, social changes, including not only new forms of communi-
cation but also new ways of thinking about the world and new social structures influence
how people speak.

22
The widespread use of social media, for example, has had an immense effect on the lan-
guage. Online, language changes at great speed. This is very obvious when it comes to
new vocabulary. Users of social media, networking sites, blogs, forums, and content-shar-
ing platforms etc. often use English in a particularly creative way. They change existing
nouns into verbs, make up new lexis by combining two words, or, for example, shorten
words to form interesting novel items. These new words frequently go viral; when a large
enough number of people get into the habit of using them, they quickly become part of
the language. (Of course, they may equally quickly fall out of use again.)

Furthermore, it is not only the lexicon that changes due to the influence of the internet.
Developments in the grammar include, for instance, the use of “because” to introduce
nouns or noun phrases instead of clauses (“because she was tired”) or a compound prepo-
sition with “of” (“because of the snow”). Examples of this new use are: “I’ll reply later
because more time” and “I didn’t finish my homework because Netflix.” Another new use,
which, however, seems to be already in decline, is “This.” as an approving clause or excla-
mation in place of a complete sentence.

Online language has become what it is today in answer to the conditions of its use, among
them immediacy, interactivity, and speed, a need for brevity, and often an eagerness to
fulfil expectations of being amusing and/or eye-catching. Thus, new forms of discourse
have emerged. It is possible to tell the difference between a tweet and an email, a blog
post and a WhatsApp message because they require different styles. They all also certainly
differ dramatically from 18th-century letters or Shakespeare’s plays. Changes in style can
be studied when looking at text form specific characteristics.

Characteristics of online and social media language

As online language keeps developing, we find that certain changes are typical for com-
puter-mediated discourse: Computer-mediated
Discourse
This term refers to the
• the emergence of new meanings for already existing words: e.g. “pin,” “tweet,” “troll,” form of language people
“friend,” “like” etc. use to communicate
• the use of nouns as verbs: e.g. “Google” to “to Google sth./sb.,” “troll” to “to troll sb.” online.

• the introduction of new lexis: “selfie,” “hashtag,” “unfriend,” “vlog”

• the use of abbreviations and acronyms: “LOL,” “OMG,” “IMHO,” “ur” (instead of “your” or
“you’re”)
• the omission of vowels: “frndz” (“friends”), “ddnt” (“didn’t”), “tht” (“that”)
• the combined use of letters and numbers: “sme1” (“someone”)
• the omission of apostrophes: “Im” (instead of “I’m”), “dont” (instead of “don’t”)
• the emergence of new word elements: “e-” (e.g. “to e-meet”), “cyber” (e.g. “cyber-
crime”)
• the development of new graphological elements that carry additional meaning: e.g.
emojis, hashtags

Here we can see how (specialized) language is adapted and created to serve its particular
purpose. For instance, being a form of communication almost as instantaneous as speech,
its characteristics blur the boundaries between written and spoken language.

23
 Above, you have encountered various examples of how the English language has changed
from early forms of the language to Present Day English. In the following section we will
look in detail at the specific processes that underly language change.

1.2 Processes of Language Change

In this section you will first learn about processes of language change that affect the
words in a language, the lexis. Later on, you will also explore changes in spelling and
graphology, grammar, and meaning.

Changes in Word Form

Lexis is the element of language that changes fastest, which is why the majority of lan-
guage changes are of a lexical kind.

Derivation

Derivation is the process by which new words are formed from existing words in that lan-
Affix guage or adapted from foreign words. For example, affixes may be added to create a new
An affix is a letter, or a lexical item. There are two kinds: prefixes and suffixes. These are added to the beginning
group of letters added to
the beginning (prefix) or of a word (for example: un-, dis-, in-, mis-, pre-, re-, non-, co-, de-) or the end of a word (for
end (suffix) of a word to example: -ness, -ity, -tion, -ify, -dom, -able, -ly, -ment, -ous) respectively. The addition of a
form a new one. prefix changes the meaning of a word (for example, when “dis-” is added to “agreement”),
while the addition of a suffix changes the function of a word (for example, when “excite”
becomes “excitement”). The elements affixes are added to are called roots or stems.

Sometimes, the function of a word can be changed without changing the form of the
word, for example, when a noun such as “email” is used as a verb: “to email.” This process
is called conversion. It is also sometimes referred to as zero derivation because no change
in form takes place.

Borrowing

The term borrowing refers to the introduction of specific foreign-language words or word
elements into another language. These words are called loanwords, even though, of
course, they are not so much lent and borrowed as taken and incorporated into the lan-
guage system, not to be returned. When speakers of different languages come into con-
tact, be it due to invasion and colonization, war, globalization, travel, cultural exchange, or
trade, they tend to adopt words they encounter and find useful because their own lan-
guage appears to lack them.

English has borrowed a vast number of words from a diverse range of languages, which is
why a substantial percentage of its lexis today is foreign in origin: It has, at some point,
been borrowed from another language. The process of borrowing is so fundamental to
language change, many words “travel” through various languages. “Music,” for example, is
originally Greek and entered Old French via Latin before it was adopted into English.

24
The list below gives you an idea both of the variety of languages borrowed from and how
entrenched these loanwords have become in the English language.

Figure 1: Loanwords

Source: Inga Birth, based on Harper (2022).

Other important processes of lexical change

The table below provides an overview over the most common processes of lexical change
and related terminology. You already know borrowing and derivation; using the explana-
tions and examples given here, you can explore further ways in which the lexicon of a lan-
guage may develop.

Table 7: Processes of Language Change and Related Terminology

Term Explanation Example

Acronym a word formed from the initial “AIDS” (acronym for “Acquired
letters of a name or a fixed Immune Deficiency Syndrome”),
description “UNESCO” (acronym for “United
Nations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization”),
“NASA” (acronym for “National
Aeronautics and Space Adminis-
tration”)

Backformation forming a new word by remov- “edit” (from “editor”), “babysit”

ing affixes (or elements assumed (from “babysitter”), “burgle”
to be affixes) from an existing (from “burglar”), “enthuse”
word; often the new word is (from “enthusiasm”), “auto-
thought to have pre-existed, mate” (from “automation”)
with the existing one being its
derivative

Blending combining two words to form a “brunch” (from “breakfast” and

new one; the resulting word is “lunch”), “motel” (from “motor”
called a blend (also: portman- and “hotel”), “smog” (from
teau word) “smoke” and “fog”)

Borrowing adopting words from another “croissant,” “cigar,” “kinder-

language garten”

Clipping shortening a word “photo” (from “photograph”),

“exam” (from “examination”)

Compounding combining two words to form a “bodyguard,” “apple juice,”

new one (called a compound) “soap dispenser”

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 Term Explanation Example

Conversion (also called zero-der- a type of derivation (see below) “to gift” (from “gift,” n.), “to
ivation) that changes the function of a parent” (from “parent,” n.)
word without changing its form

Derivation the process of forming a new “misinterpretation,” “recon-

word from an existing one, often sider,” “greatness,” “gelatinous,”
by adding an affix “unfair”

Eponym a new word that is based on the “sandwich,” “Alzheimer’s,” “car-

name of an inventor or discov- digan,” “nicotine”
erer

Neologism a new word or expression or an “cancel culture,” “workcation,”

existing word with a new mean- “blogosphere”
ing

Onomatopoeia (creating) a word that is sup- “buzz,” “rat-tat-tat,” “moo”

posed to mimic the sound it
refers to

Reduplication the process of creating a word “mish-mash,” “chick flick,” “pit-

by repeating a sound or syllable ter-patter”

telescoping the contraction of a phrase or “biodegradable” (from “biologi-

(part of a) word into a new word cally degradable”)
(analogy: the new word
becomes shortened like a tele-
scope being closed)

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

Changes in Spelling and Graphology

You may have come across unusual spellings of words when reading texts written in earlier
forms of English. This is due to the fact that it took some time to standardize spelling. For a
long time, people simply wrote, more or less, however they personally saw fit.

In addition to this large degree of spelling variation, there are some systemic differences
between Modern English spelling and Early Modern English spelling:

• ‘v’ and ‘u’ were graphic variants, which means they could represent either sound. ‘V’
was used at the beginning of words and ‘u’ in the middle, regardless of sound.
• Similarly, ‘j’ and ‘i’ were both used to represent the vowel and the consonant.
• It was common to use the letter ‘y’ to represent the vowel /i/.
• A silent ‘e’ (as it is found in today’s “take” or “make”) was much more common. It was
often found without having any phonetic function whatsoever, e.g. in “crosse.”
• In printing, the letter ‘y’ was used to represent ‘th’; “ye” was an abbreviated representa-
tion of “the.”
• A letter called long s, which looks very similar to modern ‘f,’ was used at the beginning
and in the middle of words, while short s was used at the end of words.

26
Standardization

Standardization is the process of agreeing on a fixed system, such as a spelling and writing
system or a standard variety of spoken language. The following developments helped
standardize the English language:

Table 8: Developments: Standardization

Introduction of the printing press into England by English printer William Caxton. 1476 CE

Books on spelling and usage become common, e.g. the writing of John Hart (1551, 16th century
1569, 1570), proposing a reformed spelling system, and of Richard Mulcaster (1582),
providing word lists and advocating consistency in spelling.

Publication of The Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson. 1755 CE

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

The spelling of English has changed very little since 1755 CE.

In the context of standardization, it is important to mention attitudes to language and lan-

guage change. Prescriptivists advocate for a “right” way to use a language, implying that Prescriptivism
one form is superior to another. Descriptivism, conversely, is the view that there is no A prescriptivist is a person
who seeks to prescribe a
superior variety: Language that is actually used, in writing and in speech, including recent specific, “right,” use of the
changes and developments that may seem ungrammatical to (some) contemporaries, language.
should not be considered “wrong.” An example of a disagreement between prescriptivist
Descriptivism
and descriptivist views is the use “is being,” the passive progressive, discussed in the intro- A descriptivist views lan-
duction to this unit. guage as a constantly
evolving communication
tool defined by its factual
Note that dictionaries and grammar books, especially modern ones, have usually been use among speakers.
written to document rather than prescribe. In other words, they are not prescriptivist by
default. The fact that they contain certain spellings of words, however, has helped stand-
ardize the language by example.

Graphology

Graphology, in linguistics, refers to the graphic aspects of a text, i.e., what you see on the Graphology
page (or screen), including, for example, capitalization and specific symbols. The alpha- In general use, graphol-
ogy refers to the study of
bet, the letters themselves, are graphological symbols, as are emojis and hashtags. Spell- a person’s handwriting. In
ing and graphology are closely related concepts, which is why there is a certain degree of linguistics, however, it is
overlap. Writing the letter ‘v’ instead of ‘u,’ for instance, can be considered a matter of the name for the study of
written and printed sym-
graphology as well as of spelling. The use of emojis, on the other hand, is a graphological bols and writing systems.
phenomenon.

Emojis and hashtags are, of course, a relatively recent development, serving the purpose
of reducing the number of words in short messages and enabling almost instantaneous
communication. Incorporating graphological elements like these into texts is a feature of
online and social media language. Since they provide the user with the opportunity to add
an additional layer of meaning to texts, they are important when dealing with writing
styles and thinking about how different forms of discourse communicate meaning.

27
 Changes in Grammar

Grammar is the aspect of language that takes longest to change. While the lexicon, for
example, is easily influenced by trends, grammar is only really affected by radical changes
in the lives of the language’s speakers as a whole, for instance due to prolonged intensive
contact with another language. There are a number of changes a grammar system can
undergo. In this section, you will encounter a few of them.

Word order

In Old English and early Middle English, word order was a lot less fixed than it is today.
This is because words’ grammatical functions were more generally expressed through
their form. In Modern English, inflection can be seen, for example, in the plural and singu-
lar numbers (e.g. “apple” vs. “apples”), grammatical cases (e.g. “she” vs. “her”), and verb
tenses (e.g. “walk” vs. “walked” and “sit” vs. “sits”). In earlier periods of English, most
nouns, articles, adjectives, and pronouns had a variety of forms depending on case, num-
ber, and gender. Additionally, words’ grammatical functions were expressed through
either varying word endings or changes to the vowels in the middle of words (as you find,
for instance, in some of today’s irregular verbs, such as “drink” and “drank”). Because of
this, it was possible to move words around without affecting the meaning of the sentence.
In Modern English, with fewer inflectional markers, the word order is a lot less flexible and
speakers rely on it to communicate effectively.

In addition to the effect of the loss of inflections, word order was influenced by the
Auxiliary increased use of “do” as an auxiliary. The standard in negatives and yes/no-questions
An auxiliary is a verb that used to be subject-verb inversion (“I doubt it not”), which, for a while, existed alongside “I
is used with another verb
(the main verb) to show do not doubt it” but was eventually replaced by the latter construction, the so-called peri-
tense and to form ques- phrastic “do,” which adds “do” as an auxiliary, by approximately 1700.
tions and negatives. The
verbs “do,” “be,” and
“have” can be used as In the 18th century, using “do” in an affirmative declarative sentence (as opposed to a
auxiliaries, for example in question) started to become a marker of emphasis (Weiner, 2012).
sentences like “I did not
know” or “Have you ever
heard of that?”. Grammatical case and gender

Modern English has largely lost its inflectional case system. As you have learned above, in
the past, nouns, adjectives, articles, and pronouns were inflected for case, number, and
gender. In Modern English, grammatical case is mostly expressed through word order
rather than form. There is no difference between the forms of “dog” in the sentences “I
own a dog” (objective case) and “My dog loves food” (subjective case), where in Old and
Middle English there would have been. Exceptions are “who” (“whom,” “whose”), the per-
sonal pronouns in Modern English, which differ in form depending on case, e.g. “I” (nomi-
native case) and “me” (objective case), and the possessive forms of nouns (“cat” vs. “cat’s”
and “cats” vs. “cats’”).

Another significant change that affected the grammar of English is the loss of grammatical
gender. Already starting to decline in Old English, inflectional gender distinctions had
been lost by the end of the Middle English Period. This means that all nouns became neu-
ter instead of being treated as grammatically female or male. During that period, the lan-

28
guage switched to a logical (also referred to as natural) gender system, which explains
that, for example, a girl is referred to as “she” and a boy as “he,” not “it,” while a table, for
instance, is both logically and grammatically neuter.

Changes in Meaning

Semantics is the study of meanings in a language, on the level of lexis and syntax (i.e. the
sentence level) and whole texts and utterances. In this section, we are going to focus on
lexical semantic change.

In addition to new words being created and old words becoming obsolete, the lexicon Obsolete
also develops in ways that leave the forms of words unchanged. Sometimes, it is the way A word that is obsolete
has fallen out of use.
in which particular words are used that undergoes change.

Ameliortion

Amelioration is a process by which a word’s meaning changes from negative to neutral or

even positive. An example is the word “nice.” Its etymology is a story of great change. Etymology
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is Latin in origin (from “nescius”: ignorant, When used with reference
to a specific word, “ety-
unaware, literally “not-knowing,” a negation (“ne-”: not) of “scire”: to know) and came into mology” refers to that
English via Old French. At the time, c. 1300, it meant “clumsy” or “foolish”. Its meaning particular word’s origin
became increasingly less negative over the centuries, moving first through the senses and history. More gener-
ally, the term is also used
“fussy” (late 14th century), “dainty,” and “delicate” (c. 1400), “precise” and “careful” to refer to the study of the
(1500s), “agreeable” and “delightful” (1769), until finally, by the 17th century, it came to origin and history of
words and their mean-
mean “kind” and “thoughtful” (1830).
ings.

Pejoration

The opposite of amelioration is pejoration. Here, a word’s meaning grows increasingly

more negative. For example, the word “lewd” used to mean “unlettered,” “uneducated”
(early 13th century). While this isn’t exactly a positive meaning, it is certainly more so than
“coarse,” “vile,” and “lustful,” which is the sense it had acquired by the late 1400s. “Vulgar”
underwent a similar change. In the late 14th century, it meant “common” or “ordinary”; by
the mid-1600s it had arrived at the sense “coarse,” “low,” “ill-bred”.

Broadening and narrowing

When the meaning of a word becomes more inclusive and general, it has undergone the
process of broadening. Narrowing is the term used to describe the reverse process: when a
word’s sense becomes more specific.

Below you find examples of words whose meanings have broadened and narrowed.

29
 Table 9: Examples: Broadening and Narrowing

Broadening original meaning today’s meaning

pudding a sausage made with a usually hot dish,

animal intestines either sweet or savory,
or the last course of a
meal

business the state of being various kinds of work

occupied or anxious or a specific company

cool a term of approval a general term of

originally only used to approval
refer to certain styles
of jazz music

bird a young bird, a fledg- any kind of bird

ling

Narrowing

girl young person female young person

meat any form of food animal flesh (usually

intended for consump-
tion)

hound any sort of dog specific breeds of dogs

used for hunting

fowl any bird a type of bird used to

produce eggs or meat

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

1.3 Theories and Theorists of Language

Change
Linguists have put forward a number of theories why languages change and how this
process unfolds. In this section you will be introduced to the key language change theories
and the linguists who proposed them. Each theory has its benefits and drawbacks. Due to
the complexity of languages and the contexts they are used in, it is unlikely for there to be
one single explanation for the continuous changes in lexis, pronunciation, morphology,
semantics, and syntax. Rather, the theories should be evaluated for their individual
strengths and studied in combination so as to arrive at an understanding of (some of) the
reasons for language change.

30
Functional Theory (Michael Halliday)

According to functional theory, developed by the linguist Michael Halliday, language

evolves to match the requirements of its users. As you have learned, social and economic
developments can bring about language change. For instance, new inventions, such as
new means of transport or communication, may lead to the adaptation and/or coinage of
new relevant lexis, i.e. words that speakers require in order to be able to talk about those
new items or processes.

Old words are not actively discarded. Instead, they remain a part of the lexicon until
speakers have no longer any use for them. New lexis, likewise, moves into the language as
and when the need arises.

This is evident in the spread (at the time) of new words such as “separatist” (c. 1600),
“chronometer” (1735), “omnibus” (1829), “typewriter” (1868), “USB-stick” (c. 1994) and
“tweet” (c. 2007).

While functional theory is well suited to explaining lexical changes, it does not as clearly
account for grammatical and semantic changes.

Theory of Lexical Gaps

English has a finite number of letters and allows only particular combinations of sounds.
For example, “cowshed” is a word, “cwhdeso” is not. In this system, we find that certain
words have been coined, while others – although they would be equally possible and per-
missible – have not. The theory of lexical gaps is concerned with these, with words that
could, but do not (yet) exist.

The word “dample,” for instance, does not exist, although it is a possible combination of
sounds in the English language as can be seen in words such as “damp” and “dimple.” This
is called a phonological gap. Often these are used to invent new words in advertising or
internet language.

Similarly, we encounter morphological patterns such as “propose,” “proposal,” “proposi-

tion” and “recite,” “recital,” “recitation,” yet there is a gap in the pattern for some words,
for instance the verbs “arrive” (arrival, –) and “describe” (–, “description”). This is referred
to as a morphological gap. These “slots” are also sometimes “filled” in advertising and on
social media due to their prominence and transparency of meaning.

Lastly, semantic gaps are words that would be useful to have but that have not yet been
invented. In that case, speakers sometimes coin words to fill the gap (e.g. “selfie”) or bor-
row words from other languages (e.g. German “Schadenfreude” has entered the English
lexicon).

Related to Halliday’s functional theory of language change, the theory of lexical gaps is
concerned with how the lexicon is expanded and does not deal with any other aspects of
language change.

31
 Cultural Transmission Theory

This theory, also referred to as cultural learning, is concerned with how information is
passed from one generation to the next. Yule points out that if “birds spend their first
seven weeks without hearing other birds, they will instinctively produce songs or calls”
(2014, p. 15). Human children, by contrast, if isolated from society, “produce no ‘instincti-
ve’ language” (Yule, 2014, p. 15). This means that language cannot be learned outside of
social interaction. Although humans appear to have an innate capacity for language learn-
ing, it is by transmission that they actually acquire it.

The cultural transmission theory posits that all non-biological information, i.e. cultural
values, traditions, ideas and so forth, in addition to language, has to be transmitted in
some way other than by biological inheritance. Children acquire language (and other skills
and knowledge) in social contact with those around them. Being based on learning
through engagement and socialization, the theory does not account for learning by trial
and error.

When it comes to language change, cultural transmission theory explains the process as a
matter of perceived benefit: According to the theory, language change happens when a
change is perceived as beneficial by a group or individuals, for example, when speakers
adjust their accents to gain access to a certain group. This is comparable to evolution,
where biological features that are in some way beneficial to a species affect the biological
makeup of future generations. Similarly, linguistic features whose use is seen as beneficial
for a group or individuals may influence the language’s development. In that way, cultural
transmission can be seen as a driver of language change.

Since this theory is of importance to and can be applied in a number of fields, among
them psychology, sociology, genetics, and linguistics, its development cannot be attrib-
uted to one individual researcher. Many scholars have contributed to it, for example Ban-
dura (1977), Mackintosh (1983), and Hartl and Clark (1997).

Random Fluctuation Theory (Charles Hockett)

Languages are unstable in that (a) pronunciations differ and (b) errors and random events
may influence linguistic features in unpredictable ways. According to Charles Hockett’s
random fluctuation theory, it is this instability that causes language change.

For instance, when a large enough number of people pronounce “mischievous” as though
it were spelled “mischievious” with an additional vowel and syllable and stress on the sec-
ond syllable – a pronunciation already common, though still seen as nonstandard – this
may one day become a widely accepted form, potentially even supplant the pronunciation
and spelling considered correct today. Similar examples are the pronunciation of “deterio-
rate” as though it were written “deteriate” and the pronunciation of “library” without the
first /r/.

Moreover, when a certain pronunciation is seen as desirable, some speakers who did not
previously pronounce their words this way may change their accents accordingly. Thus,
the prestigious pronunciation may spread further and, eventually, become the norm.

32
Hockett’s random fluctuation theory also explains how predictive text messaging may be
involved in language change. People relying on their spelling being automatically correc-
ted (so that, e.g. “isnt” is automatically changed to “isn’t”) may lead to their not using
apostrophes in their writing even when not using predictive text tools.

Predictive texting may also, for instance, have helped normalize American spelling in non-
American contexts because American spelling is the default in some predictive text soft-
ware. This, in turn, could lead to American spelling eventually becoming the standard
even in non-American varieties of English.

Substratum Theory

In linguistics, the terms superstratum (Latin, literally: upper (or: over) layer) and substra- Substratum and super-
tum (Latin, literally: lower (or: under) layer) refer to languages in contact: A superstratum stratum
Generally speaking, a
supplants a substratum, for example when a language spoken by invaders replaces the substratum is a layer of
language of the indigenous population, while the substratum often influences the super- something below another
stratum, for example when the pre-existing language in the region affects features of the layer; a superstratum is
the overlying layer. In lin-
language brought in by the invaders. Thus, the two languages form a new variety, with a guistics, these terms
base layer (the substratum) and an overlying layer (the superstratum). You may find it describe the phenom-
enon of one language’s
helpful to imagine this lower language layer positioned underneath the upper one and
dominance over another.
“shining through.”

Consequently, the substratum theory of language change attributes linguistic change to

language contact. Factors that drive language change, according to the substratum theory
are invasion, migration, media, and travel. In Present Day English, substratum influences
may come from other varieties of English, regional dialects, or non-native varieties of Eng-
lish. For example, the use of “like” as a filler (e.g. “It’s, like, this big house.”), which has its
origins in American television, and of a rising intonation at the end of statements (e.g. “I
don’t know?” instead of “I don’t know.”), originating from New Zealand and Australian
English, have spread much more widely due to language contact.

An often-cited example of substratum influence is US-American linguist William Labov’s

work with second-generation Italian and Jewish immigrants in New York, who, his studies
have shown, subconsciously articulated words differently, presumably in order to sound
different from their non-native English-speaking parents, and more like New Yorkers. Their
hypercorrection of vowels helped form the distinctive New York accent. Hypercorrection
This term refers to speak-
ers mistakenly correcting
Note that influence of this kind is different from borrowing because the language as a their pronunciation or
whole is changed, not simply added to in the form of lexical items. writing. “Between you
and I” is an example of a
hypercorrection of
Tree Model Theory “between you and me.”

The tree model is based on the fact that many languages seem to have a common “ances-
tor.” The relationship between them may be visualized as a tree, much like a family tree
diagram that shows the relationship between family members and their ancestry over
generations.

33
 A language thought to have been spoken before the invention of writing, probably in the
Proto Language late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, is Proto-Indo-European. There are no direct records of
This is the term for a com- this language; it has been reconstructed from linguistic evidence in languages that
mon linguistic ancestor.
Latin, e.g., is the language evolved from it: the Indo-European language family.
all Romance languages
(French, Italian, Spanish You may imagine Proto-Indo-European as the roots and trunk of the tree from which many
etc.) derived from; it is
their parent language. other, smaller language families and languages emerged like boughs and branches. Proto-
Proto-Indo-European is Germanic, for example, is a parent family to the branches of North, East and West Ger-
the protolanguage of all
manic. West Germanic diverged into High German and low German, from which, in turn,
Indo-European lan-
guages, including Latin languages like English and Dutch branched off.
and the Romance lan-
guages.
The diagram below is a simplified representation of these relationships and serves illus-
trative purposes. It does neither show all members of the Indo-European language family
nor all divisions and subdivisions that make up this language family tree model. Lan-
guages spoken today, including English, are represented in orange.

34
Figure 2: A Section of the Indo-European Language Family (simplified)

Source: Inga Birth, based on Fennell (2008).

When speakers from a larger population group with a common language split into smaller
groups and separate – as happened when human tribes migrated – so does their lan-
guage. Over time, their ways of speaking, though based on a common “parent,” become
so different from each other that they are considered different languages.

While the tree model is useful in explaining certain linguistic relationships, it also has its
limitations. First of all, it is based on the assumption that languages can be clearly classi-
fied when in actual fact this is not the case. What, after all, is a dialect, what is a language?
When do two languages truly become two individual languages instead of being consid-
ered two different dialects of the same one?

35
 Furthermore, the theory does not account for the existence of pidgin and creole lan-
Pidgin and Creole guages because these result from language mixing, not as a consequence of languages
Languages splitting from a parent language.
A pidgin is a mixture of a
grammatically simplified
form of one language and Generally, language development and change are far more complex than the tree model
words from another lan- would have us believe.
guage. It serves as a
means of communication
between people who do Wave Model Theory
not speak the same lan-
guage. When a pidgin
develops into a language The wave model was intended as a substitute for the tree model. It uses the image of a
in its own right, and has disturbance in water that sends ripples across the surface. As the rings become wider and
native speakers, it is
called a creole language. move further away from the center, they become weaker. When used as an analogy for
developments in languages, the disturbance represents a linguistic change in a language
feature, for example an altered pronunciation of a word. Its effect becomes weaker the far-
ther one moves away from its origin. This explains the process of new languages and dia-
lects developing from a shared language: When speakers split into smaller groups and
move away from each other, they create their own center. The “ripples” of disturbances,
such as new lexis, while strongly affecting this center, their area of origin, do not reach
some of the other groups at all. However, they do reach neighboring communities in a
more or less weakened form, and when these feature “ripples” are picked up by a neigh-
boring group, they may become reinforced and thus the feature may spread in a kind of
chain of dialects.

Both the tree model and the wave model assume that languages undergo change at a
steady pace. However, this is not a given. Particularly in times of the internet, new features
can spread globally at astonishing speed.

The S-Curve Model (Chen, 1968/1972)

The S-curve model of language change is used to describe and predict the diffusion of
new linguistic features. It posits that to begin with, innovation spreads slowly, then accel-
erates as more speakers use the new feature, before the speed finally tapers off once
again, resulting in an s-shaped pattern when represented in diagram form. The process is
hypothesized to be linked to people’s willingness to adopt linguistic innovation. Once the
new feature is better known and is becoming more widely spread, more and more individ-
uals incorporate it into their language, producing said acceleration effect.

You can see the S-shape in the chart below, which shows the development of a hypotheti-
cal new feature from 1610 to 1710.

36
Figure 3: S-Curve Model of a new Feature (hypothetical)

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

1.4 Analyzing and Evaluating Corpus Data

Now you will learn how language data can be analyzed and evaluated. We are going to
look at so-called n-grams and at word tables. Both of these are useful when studying lan-
guage change over time. This kind of language study is called diachronic linguistics. Inves-
tigating language at a particular time, usually the present, is called synchronic linguistics.

Language data can be collected or it may be derived from a corpus. Linguistic corpora are
large collections of texts and/or (transcriptions of) spoken utterances, such as newspapers
and magazines, novels and non-fiction books, online text, broadcasts, interviews, etc. Two
of the most important of these databases are The British National Corpus (BNC) consisting
of more than 100 million words of written and spoken English from a wide range of sour-
ces from the late 20th century and The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
with more than 1 billion words of written and spoken texts from various genres.

n-grams and n-gram Line Graphs

An n-gram is a chart containing the results of a corpus analysis regarding the frequency of
particular words or phrases over time. For example, we may want to find out whether the
use of the word “children” has increased. Or we could suspect that “phone” has been on
the rise and “telephone” in decline. Below are two n-grams showing the respective
results. The percentages given relate to all the words in the corpus that were analyzed, in
this case the Google corpus of books written in English until 2019.

37
 n-gram Table 10: n -gram: children
An n-gram presents the
results of a corpus analy-
sis in terms of changes in 1850 1900 1950 2000
the frequency of the use
of a word or of a combi- “children” 0.021% 0.021% 0.022% 0.031%
nation of words over
time. “Gram” derives Source: Inga Birth, based on Google Books (2022).
from Greek for “writing,”
“drawing,” or “letter”; n
stands for an indefinite Table 11: n -gram: phone and telephone
number. Thus, a two-
word n-gram is a two-
gram, a four-word n-gram 1850 1900 1950 2000
a four-gram.
“phone” 0.000006% 0.000152% 0.002293% 0.008561%

“telephone” 0.000019% 0.004191% 0.007132% 0.007040%

Source: Inga Birth, based on Google Books (2022).

This data can be used to identify patterns and serve as a basis for a discussion of potential
reasons for a particular change, for example social or economic developments at the time.

An n-gram line graph (see below) is the term for a chart illustrating n-gram results.

Figure 4: n -gram Line Graph Comparing watch (verb) and watch (noun)

Source: Inga Birth, based on Google Books (2022).

Word Sketches and Concordance Lists

A word sketch, a summary derived from a corpus, shows the usage of a particular word or
phrase and its function. This also gives you information about which words frequently
occur together with that word, i.e. in collocation. These are its collocates. For example,
“fire” collocates with “open.” The word to be investigated, usually in its citation or “dic-
tionary” form, i.e. the basic or stem form of a word, referred to as lemma, appears at the
top of the list. The following chart gives you an idea of what a word sketch looks like. In
addition to the words themselves, word sketches usually provide additional information,
e.g. how often a particular word combination occurs in the corpus.

38
Table 12: Word sketch of fire as Noun

nouns modified by verbs with “fire” as verbs with “fire” as

modifiers of “fire” “fire” object subject

log brigade light start

gas engine catch break out

electric extinguisher open blaze

coal escape set burn

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

Concordance(r) programs, also called concordancers, are tools that create a complete list
of a search word’s occurrences in a corpus. Searching, for example, for “fire” in a corpus
with the help of a concordance program would result in a list of every single instance “fire”
is used as well as the sentences (or parts thereof) in which the word is found. Usually,
additional details, such as the source text, the genre of that text, and frequency numbers,
are provided. The results can also be filtered, and the search conditions adjusted to serve
the researcher’s specific needs.

Concordance programs are useful to study the contexts in which certain words occur and
to investigate whether any patterns of use can be identified.

SUMMARY
The English language, as all living languages, is in continuous develop-
ment. From Old English to Present Day English, the language has moved
from relying heavily on inflections to convey words’ functions in a sen-
tence to a more fixed word order to serve the same purpose. It lost most
of its grammatical case system as well as its grammatical genders and
has undergone an enormous change in pronunciation: the Great Vowel
Shift.

Its lexicon has expanded dramatically, particularly due to scientific and

technological advancements, economic and social changes, individuals’
innovation – Shakespeare is of note here – the trends of the digital era,
travel, migration, and globalization.

Language change affects the forms of words, spelling and graphology,

pronunciation, grammar, and meaning. Processes such as borrowing,
derivation, and compounding, blending, backformation, and the use of
acronyms, semantic broadening and narrowing, amelioration and pejo-
ration, to name but a few, are specific processes of language change.

39
 Numerous theories have been put forward attempting to explain why
and how exactly languages change, among them Halliday’s functional
theory, the theory of lexical gaps, the cultural transmission, random
fluctuation, and substratum theories, the tree and wave models and the
S-curve model of language change.

Changes can be identified and investigated using, for instance, corpus

data. The output of corpus analyses can then be represented in form of
word sketches, concordances and n-grams or n-gram line graphs.

As complex as it is fascinating, language change is an aspect that defines

living languages. Without continuous development, frozen in a fixed
state, it would be far less interesting to use and study languages since
many forms of linguistic creativity would suddenly become impossible.

40
 UNIT 2
CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

STUDY GOALS

On completion of this unit, you will be able to ...

– outline and discuss the stages of early child language acquisition.

– identify the characteristic features of each stage of child language acquisition.
– demonstrate knowledge of various functions of children’s language.
– outline and comment on several theories that attempt to explain the processes of how
children acquire language.
– demonstrate familiarity with the conventions and features of unscripted language as
well as speech transcriptions.
– analyze and contextualize language data presented in the form of spoken language
transcripts.
 2. CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Introduction
When a child points at a cat and calls “dog,” bystanders usually smile, and the caregiver(s)
may correct the child’s usage. The same goes for utterances such as “I goed Nana” and
“mouses go bye-bye.” We trust that the child will learn eventually. Under normal circum-
stances, all children do. But how does this work?

How do children go from crying to uttering babbles that sound similar to the language
spoken around them? How do they learn how to say their first word – and what it means?
How do they go from “dada juice” to reciting children’s poetry in primary school?

In short, which processes lie behind their acquisition of their native language?

This is, of course, only one aspect of the language skills children acquire in early child-
hood. They do not only learn how to use language correctly in the sense of their speech
organs developing, their lexicon expanding, and their understanding of grammar growing.
Children also learn how to communicate appropriately. As their social circle widens, their
conversational skills improve and the content of their discourse becomes increasingly log-
ical, structured, and abstract. They get into contact with a variety of people and gain the
skill to know how to speak to each of them in a polite and context-specific manner.

2.1 The Main Stages of Early Development

in Child Language Acquisition
Linguists have discovered that as children acquire language, they all go through certain
developmental stages. Although each child is individual and may enter a particular stage
sooner or later than other children, the sequence is always the same.

Language Development from (before) Birth to Five Years

The table below gives you an overview of the main stages of child language acquisition
from before birth to five years of age.

Table 13: The Main Stages of Early Language Developement

Age Stage

1 before birth

2 the first year the babbling stage

42
 Age Stage

3 one to two years the holophrastic stage

(one and a half to two years) (two-word stage)

4 two to three years the telegraphic stage

5 three to five years post-telegraphic stage

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

The start of child language acquistion: prenatal developments and the first six weeks

Studies have shown that some extremely early language development begins before a
child is even born. It is known that the intensity of sucking increases when a baby is inter-
ested and decreases when they become used to hearing a sound, and this knowledge was
made use of in experiments with pacifiers that monitored the strength and duration of
sucking. Newborn babies appear to react differently to the native language of their mother
and to foreign languages, which implies that they have learned to recognize certain lin-
guistic differences in the womb (Mehler et al., 1988).

Even the cries they emit seem to be language-specific, for example evincing the tonal
characteristics of their native language. At this stage, crying is the baby’s main form of
communication and caregivers learn quickly that the baby uses varying sorts of cries to
express different needs.

The babbling stage

At around the age of six to eight weeks, babies usually begin to “coo,” i.e., making exten-
ded vowel sounds (“ooooo,” “aaaaaa”). Soon, they learn how to add consonants
(“gooooo,” “baaaa”) and to combine these sounds into repetitive patterns (“baba,” “gaga,”
etc.). These sounds, known as reduplication, are a way for the vocal cords to develop the
skills needed for speech. They represent, so to speak, a first warm-up.

At approximately three to four months, babies begin to make sounds that, as they get
more and more practiced, increasingly resemble the typical sound features of their
mother tongue. This “babbling” continues throughout their first year, which is why this
period is called babbling stage.

When caregivers talk to babies, the children learn how conversations work, even though
for a while they do not understand what is being said. For instance, they will begin to see
that turn-taking is a feature in conversations.

The language family members and friends speak with the infants and small children they
look after is referred to as caregiver (or caretaker) language (or speech). It is characterized
by higher pitch, lighter tone and the frequent repetition of relevant words (e.g. “daddy,”
“mummy,” “baby,” “boy,” “girl”). The baby replies with babbling, spluttering etc., continu-
ously exploring which sounds they can make and how they can repeat the sounds others
make, thus developing their speech organs.

43
 The holophrastic stage

On average, children will speak their first words when they are approximately one year of
age. In the following year, they go through the holophrastic stage, a period of rapid lexical
acquisition. During this time, children learn about 200 new words.

When children begin using actual words – as opposed to babbling – they start by using a
single word to express an entire idea. For example, they may say “want” when they want
something without it being clear what it is they want (although this can often be guessed
from contextual clues). This single-word expression is called a holophrase. “Holo-” is a
combining form derived from Greek “holos,” “whole” or “entire” and “phrase” from Greek
“phrasis,” meaning “speech.”

Although it may seem that children learn only words when they do this, they are in fact in
the process of acquiring syntax. This one-word stage is followed, at around the age of
18-24 months, by a two-word stage, in which they combine two words to make their first
“sentences”: utterances such as “daddy no” and “more juice.”

Earliest words are often names of family members, pets, toys, and objects the child
encounters on a daily basis (“mama,” “daddy,” “baby,” “duck,” “doggie,” “eye,” “nose,”
etc.). Other lexical items concern interactions (e.g. “bye bye” and “hello”) or the condi-
tions they find themselves in (“hot,” “gone”). First verbs usually relate to simple actions,
such as “drink” and “sit.” Generally, lexis at this stage is focused on fulfilling their wants
and needs (e.g. “more,” “milk,” “juice,” etc.).

By the age of two, a child will use their foundational lexicon and basic conversational skills
to chatter, to themselves and to others.

The telegraphic stage

The telegraphic stage, when children make utterances of two to three words, gets its name
from telegraphy, i.e., sending messages by telegraph. As telegrams were paid by the word,
people usually tried to put as much information into as few words as possible. When chil-
dren between the ages of two and three speak, they are similarly limited in the number of
words they can use, though obviously for a different reason: They have to make do with
the words they have learned this far. That being said, children acquire lexis at a tremen-
dous speed. By the age of five, they will have a lexicon of approximately 2000 words, most
of which are acquired between the ages of two and three.

A common phenomenon at this stage is using words in too narrow or too broad a context.
Overextension is, for example, when children apply the term “doggie” to all four-legged
creatures or use a person’s name for other people who share some characteristics with
that person. Underextension, by contrast, is when “doggie,” for instance, is used only for
the family’s pet and not for any other dogs.

44
The telegraphic stage is characterized by increasing lexis and longer and more complex
utterances. Children may now use two to four words in a sentence, combined to express
their ideas more clearly and usually employing the correct word order (subject – verb –
object). Examples of these kind of sentences are “doggie tired,” “no go sleep,” or “dada
drink juice.”

In the early telegraphic stage, grammatical words, which are often not absolutely essential
for communication to be successful, are not incorporated into babies’ first short senten-
ces. In the later telegraphic stage and post-telegraphic stage children eventually begin
adding increasingly more of these, for instance auxiliary words (e.g. “is”), prepositions
(e.g. “to,” “from,” “under”), determiners, such as the articles “the” and “a,” and inflections
(e.g. plural “-s,” past tense “-ed,” progressive “-ing”).

As the lexicon increases and the correct use of syntax improves, children usually grow ever
more enthusiastic about using language. They will talk to themselves and to their toys
(monologues) and with the people around them (dialogues). A feature of early speech
development is the habit of keeping up a running commentary on what the child is doing
at the moment. Children from around the age of two engage in this type of behavior. It
often becomes part of their daily rituals or their play.

The post-telegraphic stage

The post-telegraphic stage, from approximately three to four years of age, is characterized
by an increase in complexity of expression and a broadening of lexis.

For example, they acquire the skill to combine ideas using connecting words (conjunc-
tions), such as “because,” “and,” “if,” and “but,” and to make comparisons (e.g. “bigger”).
Their lexicon further increases to include numbers, words connected with emotions, terms
expressing familial relations, and colors. Moreover, they begin to grasp the concept of
hypernyms and hyponyms, begin using polysyllabic words (i.e. words with two or more Hypernym and
syllables), and advance in their use of inflections, forming past tenses and plurals. They Hyponyms
A hypernym, also called
also start using auxiliary verbs, with “do” usually being the first to be acquired, followed superordinate, is a word
by “can” and “will,” and begin forming correct questions and negations (“I don’t want that refers to a category
juice.”). of things. The term for the
things within this cate-
gory is hyponym. For
As they accumulate more knowledge about the language’s grammar, they make what is example: “tree” is the
hypernym of the hypo-
called virtuous errors: they apply regular endings to irregular forms. Instead of saying “we
nyms “elder,” “birch,” and
went,” they might say “we goed”; instead of “mice,” they might say “mouses,” showing “oak.”
that they grasp the concept of past tense and plural formation in principle but have not
yet acquired an understanding of the irregularity present in the language.

Psycholinguist Jean Berko Gleason conducted a seminal experiment in 1958 that proved
that young children are capable of generalizing grammar principles from their experience
with language. The participants, children between four and seven, were prompted to form
inflected words, derivatives, and compounds. For example, they were shown images of a Derivative
small imaginary creature and told that it was “a wug” (Berko 1958, p. 154). Then they were A derivative is a word
formed from another
told that “Now there is another one” and prompted to complete the sentence “There are word.
two …” with the correct English plural.

45
 Other questions were used to elicit – among several other forms – past tense inflections
(“This is a man who knows how to rick /rik/. He is ricking. He did the same thing yesterday.
What did he do yesterday? Yesterday he--.”), possessives (“This is a bik /bik/ who owns a
hat. Whose hat is it? It is the -- hat.”), and agentive “-er” (“What would you call a man
whose job is to zib?”). Berko concluded that while “[t]he answers were not always right so
far as English is concerned; […] they were consistent and orderly answers, and they dem-
onstrated that there can be no doubt that children in this age range operate with clearly
delimited morphological rules” (1958, p. 171).

As their social skills increase, children also gain a sense of politeness and appropriateness.
They furthermore begin to develop an understanding of ambiguity, i.e. the fact that words
often have more than one meaning, and learn that some words sound the same but mean
different things (e.g. “won” and “one”), – these are called homophones – although children
at this age continue to mix them up.

They also begin to understand the concept of idioms, non-literal expressions whose mean-
ings cannot be derived from the individual meanings of their elements (e.g. “to rain cats
and dogs” has nothing to do with either animal). This development starts around the age
of three years, but it continues well into their later childhood.

By the age of five, most children’s linguistic, interpersonal, and conversation skills are suf-
ficiently developed to converse effortlessly and appropriately, although they can still
show certain signs of a lack of fluency, for instance by pausing frequently, aborting an
utterance before continuing with a new thought or idea (false start), and displaying a
degree of haphazardness in the sequence of their statements. While this is common even
in the speech of fluent adults, it can, depending on context and particularly in young chil-
dren, be indicative of a lack of fluency.

They can express and understand tenses and make utterances that combine several ideas
into one, using connectives. They moreover use the conditional tense, which shows that
they have grasped the concept of uncertainty and possibility, understood many idiomatic
expressions and even abstract ideas, and modify words with adjectives and adverbs.

Language Development from Five to Eight Years

As children enter school, they are exposed to different kinds of language, such as a variety
of textbooks and stories. This improves their understanding of context-dependent mean-
ings of words (e.g. “funny” can mean either amusing or strange) and of more creative and
non-literal use of language. Their lexicon keeps expanding and begins to include syno-
Synonym nyms. Their linguistic skills develop further; they employ adverbs and adjectives, thereby
A synonym is a word or improving their speech’s clarity of meaning and variety of expression.
expression that has
roughly the same mean-
ing as another word or At five and six years of age, children’s conversations are still mostly centered around them-
expression in the same selves and their experience of the world.
language.

46
By the age of seven, children can speak fluently and have a lexicon of several thousand
words. Their communication skills involve arguing with others as well as resolving those
arguments; they will have developed the relevant language strategies. Around this time,
they also master the use of humor and plays on words.

Their conversations become less self-centered as their social networks grow and their
horizons broaden. Encountering different people in various situations helps them gain an
increasing awareness of language styles and of register. Furthermore, they develop a Register
grasp of certain abstract concepts and ethical issues and can use their improved language This term refers to the
style of language used in
skills to talk about them. particular situations and
with particular people.
For example, certain
words and grammar

2.2 The Different Functions of Children’s

usage are appropriate
with some people but
inappropriate with oth-

Language ers. Which register a

speaker ordinarily ought
to use depends on the
level of (in)formality of
Context is a significant contributor to the meaning we produce and comprehend when we the situation and/or the
communicate. We speak differently depending on the situational context we find our- familiarity between the
selves in and the people we talk to. As children grow older, their understanding of this people involved.
aspect of language use improves and their communication skills become noticeably more
nuanced.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the study of the ways in which context adds to or even changes the meaning
of what is being said.

For example, an utterance such as “this isn’t happening” can mean entirely different
things depending on the occasion (a birthday party, a funeral service, a business meet-
ing?) and the way in which it is being said (is the speaker sad, angry, happy, matter-of-fact,
resigned?). Further, the relationship between the people presents the level of respect
between them, the formality of the occasion, and what has happened until that point in
the conversation affects the meaning – or what we take to be the meaning – of an utter-
ance. To put it simply, while semantics is concerned with the literal meaning of expres-
sions, pragmatics deals with what the speaker implies and what listeners infer. Ultimately,
without pragmatic considerations we are incapable of saying what an utterance really
means.

This is why in addition to developing their speech organs, expanding their lexicon, and
acquiring the grammar of their native language, children need to learn to include contex-
tual aspects in their meaning making. As a child’s world widens to encompass more peo-
ple, different places, and new situations and institutions, they have to learn how (not) to
speak in a variety of circumstances and to a multitude of different people, including, for
instance, their peers, their teachers, and strangers. They need to learn to express them-
selves appropriately and, also, to correctly interpret contextual clues when others speak.

47
 To a large extent, this process happens subconsciously. Yet, some aspects of it can be –
and often are – taught, for example the use of “please” and “thank you” and different
forms of address.

It is important to note that the conventions of communication and politeness may differ
from place to place, which means that children in France learn other pragmatic skills than
children in Namibia, for example. What is the same for all of them is that they grow
increasingly aware that we speak differently to different people in different situations,
that some subjects can be talked about in certain contexts but not in others, and that we
may use certain words or non-standard elements of grammar when talking to our peers,
for instance, which we feel would be inappropriate in a conversation with a teacher or a
stranger. They learn which forms of address to use, which subjects to broach in which con-
text (and which not to), how to respond in a socially acceptable manner, and how to infer
the “correct” meaning from what they are told. For example, someone asking “Do you
have the time?” expects to be told what time it is, although this is not – literally – what
they are asking. Someone being told they gained weight would – in many western coun-
tries – feel insulted, while in many African countries this is considered a compliment.
Growing older, children gain (culture-specific) pragmatic competence.

Halliday’s Functions of Language

According to linguist Michael Halliday, “language development is learning how to mean”

(1993, p. 93). It goes above and beyond children’s physical abilities to speak and their
acquisition of lexical items and grammatical rules. Halliday identified seven functions of
language that serve the purposes of a child developing the necessary language skills:

Table 14: Halliday’s Functions of Language

Function: language used to… for example:

Instrumental …fulfil a need, e.g. obtaining “juice!”

food, drink, comfort ,
“ouch!”

Regulatory …influence the behavior of oth- “Go away!”

ers, e.g. commanding, request- ,
ing, persuading “play with me!”

Interactional …form and develop relation- “I love you”

ships ,
“thank you”

Personal …express a speaker’s personal “me good”

opinions, attitudes, feelings, ,
ultimately: their identity; also “Sarah here!”
called the ‘Here I am!’ function

Representational …exchange or request informa- “tea gone”

tion, give instructions, convey ,
facts “meet Anna”

48
 Function: language used to… for example:

Heuristic …explore the world, to learn “Why is the sun yellow?”

and discover, e.g. running com- ,
mentary during play, questions “Why is ice cold?”
and answers ,
“Where mummy?”

Imaginative …explore the imagination, e.g. “Teddy and Doggo have adven-
inventing dialogue, fantasy ture.”
worlds, stories

Source: Inga Birth, based on Thwaite (2019).

Halliday groups the first four functions (instrumental, regulatory, interactional, and per-
sonal) as pragmatic functions. They are practical in the sense that they help children sat-
isfy their physical and emotional needs. The other three (representational, heuristic, imag-
inative) make up the class of the mathetic functions. They help children come to terms Mathetic
with their environment and are more concerned with information and understanding than This is an archaic term
that means “relating to
with action or interaction. knowledge, science, or
the process of learning.”

2.3 Theories and Theorists of Child

Language Acquisition
Theories about the processes that underlie children’s acquisition of language usually
answer (one of) the following two questions:

• Which role do nature and nurture play in language learning?

• What comes first, language or thought?

In this context, nature refers to a child’s natural abilities, while nurture is concerned with
external influences (e.g. caregivers speaking to the child).

The language and thought debate deals with the link between children’s thoughts and
their (lack of) language skills. To put it another way: Is language a prerequisite for think-
ing?

Imitation and Reinforcement: The Behaviorist Theory of Imitation in Child

Language Acquisition

Behaviorism is an influential psychological theory which posits that learning is based on

conditioning, the act of reinforcing desired behavior with praise and approval. This has
been shown to be effective in animal studies and observations. An example of condition-
ing is when a dog is given praise and/or a treat when it sits: The dog quickly learns what is
expected and repeats its behavior. Introducing a stimulus (e.g. the command “sit!” or a
hand signal) eventually results in the dog being able to perform the trick on command: It
has been conditioned to do so.

49
 According to US-American psychologist B. F. Skinner, language acquisition is based on the
same basic principle. When a child receives praise for imitating sounds, this serves as rein-
forcement, and they are likely to do so again. They are thus being conditioned to develop
their linguistic skills. In addition to the approval of caregivers, there are various other
enticements for young children learning language, for example the “treat” of learning
about the world or being able to obtain what they need using language.

The table below gives an overview of evidence for and against the imitation and reinforce-
ment theory.

Table 15: Support for and Criticism of the Imitation and Reinforcement Theory

Support

Children learn the language that surrounds them as they grow up. They even acquire the accents spoken
by the people around them. This shows that they are influenced by their environment.

Criticism

Children make virtuous errors. Since their caregivers speak the language fluently, these utterances cannot
have been acquired by imitation. Instead, children appear to possess an understanding of the grammati-
cal structures present in a language.

Many of children’s utterances are entirely new; they cannot – as such – have been acquired by imitation.

All children go through the same developmental stages at roughly the same ages. Given the differences in
their environments, a greater degree of variation should be expected.

Children seem to understand more than they can (at a young age) express. They may, for example, be
familiar with the word ‘story time’ before using the term themselves. If they were merely imitating what they
hear, there should be no such discrepancy.

Children make overextensions and underextensions. These uses should not occur were their learning
based entirely on imitation.

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

The Language Acquisition Device (LAD): The Theory of Innate Language

Competence

Criticizing the assumption that children acquire language by a process of imitation and
reinforcement, US-American linguist Noam Chomsky (1965) suggested that humans have
an innate ability to learn languages. He called this facility in the brain the Language
Acquisition Device. Humans’ alleged instinctive capacity to learn grammatical systems is
dependent, Chomsky claims, on a universal grammar, a set of fundamental rules applica-
ble to all of the world’s languages. This is what allows young children to become native
speakers of any language at all.

He summarizes his perspective on language acquisition thus: “[A]ll through an organism’s

existence, from birth to death, it passes through a series of genetically programmed
changes. Plainly, language growth is simply one of these predetermined changes. Lan-

50
guage depends upon genetic endowment that’s on par with the ones that specify the
structure of our visual or circulatory systems or determine that we have arms instead of
wings” (Chomsky, 1983).

The table below lists evidence supporting and challenging the LAD-theory.

Table 16: Support for and Criticism of the Theory of Innate Language Competence

Support

Children go through the same language development stages at roughly the same ages, regardless of their
environment (as long as they are not isolated), which suggests that these phases are not subject to exter-
nal influence.

The process of language acquisition is extremely fast and happens effortlessly, suggesting that children
have a kind of inherent basis from which to start.

Virtuous errors may be interpreted as evidence for children’s innate knowledge of the deep grammar
structures of the language.

Certain properties (e.g. differentiating subjects and verbs) are common to all languages and children
appear to be aware of this even when making up their own languages, as, for instance, some deaf children
do.

Children are not exposed to every kind of utterance before becoming capable of producing them, i.e. they
experience too little input to account for their later language abilities.

Criticism

Cases of “feral children,” i.e. children who spent extended periods in isolation (see Curtiss, 1977), and of chil-
dren who were not spoken to in early childhood (see Bard and Sachs, 1981) fail to provide evidence for an
innate LAD as these children do not automatically develop language.

Recent evidence from neurology, genetics and linguistics contradicts Chomsky’s theory. For example, there
is no neurobiological evidence for a LAD or a similar structure in the brain.

Children appear to be actively engaged in their language learning, a role which the LAD does not con-
sider.

The LAD does not take social interactions into account, although this is obviously a vital factor.

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

The critical period hypothesis

Wilder Penfield and Lamar Roberts (1959), Eric Lenneberg (1967), and others have sugges-
ted that language acquisition needs to take place during a certain time frame, the so-
called critical period. Indeed, there is evidence that child language acquisition has to take
place during this window of time (e.g. cases of feral children who were incapable of
acquiring language at a more advanced age). There is much debate about when exactly
the period ends, but it is certain that the first few years of life are crucial in an individual’s
development in many respects, including language, and that in the case of insufficient
exposure to language at the time, it is impossible to become a fluent speaker of one’s

51
 native language. A sensitive period has also been proposed, which broadens the time
range and applies to the years when language acquisition remains easier than in later
years.

The Language Acquisition Support System (LASS)

US-American linguist Jerome Bruner (1983) expanded on the LAD by introducing the Lan-
guage Acquisition Support System (abbreviated to LASS), which, put simply, is the com-
bined support provided by the people in a child’s life that help the child acquire language.
This is hypothesized to bring out innate linguistic abilities.

In contrast to the LAD, which does not account for social interaction, the LASS allows for
the vital role of caregivers and diverse social environments, which, according to Bruner, is
of particular importance between the ages of two and five.

This can include:

• caregivers talking to the child, singing songs, telling or reading stories, playing games,
naming items, frequently repeating important words and phrases
• involving the child as active learner
• exposing the child to pre-school education contexts in which they can interact with
other children and adults and encounter various new situations

Cognitive Development Theories

Jean Piaget’s four stages of development

Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980) was a pioneer in the study of children’s cogni-
tive development. His theory of how children acquire understanding revolutionized the
field and was tremendously influential, in developmental psychology as an academic dis-
cipline as well as in its application, for example in the design of primary education curric-
ula.

Piaget’s theory differs from many other approaches (e.g. LAD and LASS) in that (a) he
asserts that children’s thinking is unlike adult thinking and that they should in conse-
quence not be treated as miniature adults, and (b) he considers language acquisition but
one element of a child’s development, not a stand-alone goal, process, or achievement;
instead, he professes that it is intertwined with and inseparable from other developments
in a child’s life.

As a child develops increasingly complex mental abilities, their language skills grow
accordingly. The more they understand in general and the more complex their thoughts,
the more advanced and complex their language becomes.

These are the four stages of development according to Piaget:

52
Table 17: Piaget’s Stages of Development

Stage Age Characteristics

Sensorimotor stage 0-2 years the child gains knowledge

through physical actions and
through use of their senses
important developments: the
realization that objects and
beings have an independent
existence and that they con-
tinue to exist even when they
cannot be seen; the acquisition
of names for these (personal
names + first words); a basic
understanding of the link
between causes and effects

Preoperational stage 2-7 years the child thinks in rather con-

crete and literal terms and from
an egocentric (i.e. self-centered)
perspective
important developments: the
child’s language skills improve
rapidly as they begin to think
symbolically and learn to use
words to represent objects and
people

Concrete operational stage 7-11/12 years the child continues to think in

concrete and literal terms, yet
their thinking grows more
organized and logical
important developments:
understanding that their experi-
ence is unique and that others
have other thoughts and feel-
ings, a gradual move away
from egocentrism and towards
the ability to consider the per-
spective of others; conservation:
the child realizes that something
stays the same quantity even
when moved from one container
into another (e.g. juice poured
from a beaker into a glass)

Formal operational stage 12+ years advanced ability for logical

thinking, ability to deduce and
reason, ability to understand
and express abstract ideas

Source: Inga Birth, based on The University of Wolverhampton (2021).

Note that there is some debate in the field about when each stage begins and ends, and
that some researchers have proposed alternative time spans to those Piaget suggested.

53
 Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development

In contrast to Piaget, who believed that language acquisition is inseparably linked with
cognitive development, the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) was convinced
that learning precedes cognitive development. In his eyes, children do not gain knowledge
and skills as a result of their developing cognitive abilities but the other way around: Their
cognitive abilities grow because they learn.

In this, children rely on interaction with their environment. A child faced with a new task,
such as completing a jigsaw puzzle, can master the skill by trial and error or with support
and guidance from another person, which then leads to cognitive enhancement.

For learning to be effective, the goal – in this instance working out how the pieces of a jig-
saw puzzle can be joined to make a picture – has to be achievable. Too many puzzle pieces
and the child will feel frustrated, too few and the child will experience boredom.

Some tasks a child can accomplish without assistance, while others are attainable with
help, and some are outside of what the child can reasonably be expected to achieve.

Vygotsky referred to the gap between the former two as the Zone of Proximal Develop-
ment (ZPD). He believed that children’s learning can be accelerated when they are given
guidance and support to complete tasks that fall in the range of their ZPD.

Figure 5: Zone of Proximal Development

Source: [Dcoetzee] (2012). [CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication].

54
Vygotsky stressed that a child’s ZPD is unique since every child is an individual. Some are
ready to learn a certain skill sooner than others, and guidance and teaching must reflect
this. His theories find application in education, particularly Early Years learning, for
instance in the use of Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) and scaffolding. IRF is a teaching
technique that is based on a fixed pattern of discussion: (a) a teacher asks the student a
question, (b) the student answers, and (c) the teacher provides feedback. Scaffolding
refers (here) to the process of helping a child gain skills and knowledge in their ZPD. As
guidance becomes increasingly unnecessary, the support tapers off. This is similar to the
construction of a house: Upon completion, the scaffold can be removed.

2.4 The Conventions and Features of

Unscripted Conversation and Spoken
Language Transcripts
When studying child language acquisition in detail, it is necessary to either listen to and
record actual utterances made by children or to be able to read transcriptions of these. Utterance
This section, therefore, deals with the conventions and features of unscripted language, An utterance is a continu-
ous section of speech,
enabling you to analyze (the development of) children’s conversational skills. You will also ranging from a single
learn how unscripted conversations are written down with accuracy so that they can be sound to longer state-
used (and reused) in research. ments. In speech analysis
this term is usually used
instead of sentence,
The main difference between written and spoken language lies in the fact that the former which refers to written
language.
is usually carefully drafted. Writing, be it an essay, a birthday card, or a bachelor’s thesis, is
normally preceded by a stage of thinking and planning and is – in many cases and most
importantly – even followed by a revision and editing stage. Thus, the resulting text is a
more refined and polished version of language. Conversations, i.e. talks between two or
more people, conversely, consist of spontaneous utterances. Writing a text, the author can
think long and carefully about what they want to say and how best to communicate their
ideas. They can search for the most fitting expressions, avoid repetition by looking up syn-
onyms, delete sections and rephrase sentences in retrospect, move and swap entire para-
graphs and so on and so forth, all of which is impossible when having a natural conversa-
tion. Scripted discourse, such as speeches and talks or fictional or pre-planned Discourse
conversations written for film, television, or theatre productions, is therefore in this A linguistic unit that is
longer than a sentence or
respect a lot closer to written language than to speech. Usually, these exist in written form utterance. Thus, the term
before they are spoken and have, at that stage, undergone rigorous editing and re-writing. can refer to texts, conver-
sations, speeches, etc.

Online and social media language (WhatsApp messages, tweets, Facebook posts, etc.)
could be said to inhabit a certain middle ground between spoken and written language as
they are, on the one hand, to an extent spontaneous expressions but, on the other, allow a
certain degree of planning and re-writing. In that sense, they blur the boundaries between
written and spoken language.

The next section deals with the structure and features of unscripted conversations.

55
 The Structure of Unscripted Conversation and the Features of Spoken
Language

Conversations commonly follow a recognizable pattern and children need to become

familiar with these conventions. An example of a conversational convention is turn-taking.
Babies learn about this feature early on in their lives when caregivers talk to them and the
children respond with babbling.

Moreover, conversations usually have identifiable stages. There are conventional begin-
nings, for example greetings (“Hey, how are you?,” “Hello!,” “hiya,” “What’s up?”), cues
that introduce a topic or topic shifts (“Have I told you about …,” “By the way, …,” “which
reminds me …”), and conventional endings (“Nice talking to you,” “see you next Monday,”
etc.). Conversations often consist of so-called adjacency pairs: a statement and a
response. Note that a “statement,” in this context, may be an actual statement, exclama-
tion or declaration, or a question.

It is helpful to think of conversations as alternating turns to speak. The person speaking at

the moment has the conversational floor until they finish what they wanted to say or are
interrupted; it is then someone else’s turn to speak.

As children become better conversationalists, they grow familiar with common ways of
managing conversations and are capable of communicating what they would like to hap-
pen next in the exchange as well as of interpreting and responding to other participants’
conversational behavior. The table below summarizes several common strategies for man-
aging conversations.

Table 18: Managing Conversations

strategy example

giving up one’s turn to speak naming another person “Anna was there, too…”
or concluding a conversation

56
 asking a question “What do you think?”; “What’s
your opinion?”

making a concluding statement “Yup, and that’s how I spent my

or explicitly stating one’s inten- Saturday.”
tion to conclude the conversa- “Sorry, I have to run.”
tion

pauses, hesitation, indicating

that someone else is welcome
take over

body language looking at someone in particu-

lar, nodding;
checking the time, packing one’s
belongings, standing up, or
turning away

intonation rising (“I don’t know?”) or falling

(“that’s how it happened”) into-
nation can indicate that a
speaker is about to finish their
turn

strategy example

indicating that we want to body language e.g. opening one’s mouth,

speak next breathing in, leaving one’s
mouth open, sometimes accom-
panied by nodding; putting up a
hand or finger; leaning forward

interrupting “hang on, do you mean…”

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

Sometimes two people start speaking at the same time. This is called clashing. The con-
text, the relationship between the people, and their status helps to decide who can con-
tinue, while the other waits their turn. For instance, when a teacher and a student begin
talking at the same time in a lesson, it is often the student who waits for the teacher to
complete their utterance first.

In addition to knowing when to speak and when to wait their turn, children also learn how
to use and interpret paralinguistic and prosodic features. Paralinguistic features are all the
elements of communication that are not words, for example body language, gestures, and
facial expressions. Prosodic elements are the ways in which something is being said. This
includes intonation (the rising and falling of a speaker’s voice), stress (when a word or syl-
lable is pronounced with greater force), tone (the quality in a speaker’s voice that indi-
cates emotions and/or intentions), speed (of talking), volume (the loudness or softness of
a voice/utterance), and pitch (the degree to which a voice/utterance is low or high, e.g.
squealing).

57
 These non-lexical communication means are extremely important. Without them, it is usu-
ally hard and sometimes even impossible to communicate successfully. This is why it can
be difficult to gauge someone’s meaning when speaking to them on the phone, and why
so many conversations on social media lead to arguments: People lack the cues to cor-
rectly interpret the words.

Features of Unscripted Language

There are a number of features that are characteristic of unscripted conversations. These
are summarized in the table below.

Table 19: Features of Unscripted Conversation

Feature Example Function

adverbs and adverbial phrases “really” emphasis, intensifying, style

,
“extremely”
,
“literally”
,
“absolutely”

contractions (sometimes infor- “doesn’t” facilitating faster speed, style

mal or dialectal) ,
“gonna” (informal), “innit”
(informal), “dinnae” (Scots
“don’t”)

corrections, self-corrections “I should have said …” repairing errors, speaking with

using metalanguage (i.e. lan- “She was small, no, what’s the greater precision/clarity, asking
guage describing language) word … petite.” for clarification
“Do you mean 2 pm? You said 4.”

deictic expressions (i.e. expres- “this” avoiding giving unnecessary

sions whose meaning depends , information (it can sound
on who is speaking, with whom “here” unnatural to give information
they are talking, when, where, , that is understood from the con-
etc.) “now” text)
,
“you”
,
“those”
,
“me”

discourse markers “well” marking the boundaries

, between one section of conver-
“so” sation and the next or the end of
, the conversation
“right”
,
“I see”
,
“anyway”

58
Feature Example Function

false starts “I don’t know if– do you ever self-correction

think about …”
“I went– I meant to go to …”

fillers and pauses “mmm” gaining thinking time, prompt-

, ing a response, prompting a per-
“um” son to take over
, announcing the wish to speak
“er” (often when drawn out)

fixed expressions and phatic “to be honest” providing routine and predicta-
language (i.e. language with a , bility
social purpose as opposed to “at the end of the day”
gaining/giving information) ,
“on the whole”
,
“off the top of my head”
,
“I was struck by …”
,
“hang in there”
,
“how are you?”
,
“alright?”

hedges and vague language, “kind of”, “sort of”, “or some- hedge words and modals can
modality thing”, “know what I mean?” make a statement less forceful
“perhaps”, “normally”, “maybe” or straightforward; they may be
use of modals (“could”, “may”, used to sound more polite or to
“might”, etc.) invite discussion, negotiation,
and compromises

non-standard and colloquial “gonna” style, register

forms ,
“ain’t”
,
“they was”
,
“them guys”

omission of sounds (elision) “n” instead of “and,” “dunno” easier pronunciation, facilitating
(omitting the ‘t’-sound) faster speed, style

omission of words (ellipsis) In reply: “[I am leaving] tomor- avoiding unnecessary repetition
row afternoon.” not stating obvious information
“Let me just …” brevity, style
“[I] dunno.”
“[Do you] know what I mean?”

repetition making sure the listener is fol-

lowing, gaining thinking time,
emphasising a point etc.

59
 Feature Example Function

tag questions “isn’t it?” prompting a response

,
“aren’t you?”
,
“wasn’t she?”
,
“don’t you?”

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

Children’s language usually shows a lesser degree of fluency than adult language. This is
seen, for example, in longer pauses and more frequent false starts.

Transcribing Speech

Transcriptions are records of speech. As such, they do not follow the conventions of writ-
ing, and thus differ in many respects from texts such as novels, essays, newspaper articles
and so on. This is because they have a different purpose. Fiction and non-fiction texts seek
to entertain or inform. The language serves as a tool to achieve this. The aim of transcrip-
tions, on the other hand, is to represent spoken language as accurately as possible in
order to allow a precise analysis of speech. This also includes how something was said,
when the speaker paused or hesitated, which intonation, tone, and stress they used, and,
sometimes, which pronunciation. Consequently, transcriptions of conversations do not
resemble, for example, dialogues in works of fiction.

There exists some variability between transcription conventions depending on discipline,

approach, and research aim. That being said, there are some general rules that apply to
most types of speech transcriptions:

• Speakers’ names (or initial(s)) or descriptive terms (e.g. “mother,” “son”) are given on
the left-hand side (often capitalized), followed by a colon.
• Alternatively, “S1” and “S2” (for “first speaker” and “second speaker”) or “F1,” “M1,” and
“F2” etc. (for “first female speaker,” “first male speaker,” “second female speaker”) may
be used, also followed by a colon.
• Transcriptions do not contain quotations marks.
• Usually, dictionary spelling (i.e. conventional spelling) is used, although some excep-
tions may be agreed upon among researchers (e.g. “gonna” or “wanna”).
• Commonly, words at the start of a new line are not capitalized.
• Punctuation marks are not used grammatically but to indicate intonation.

Transcriptions use symbols to indicate pauses, intonation, paralinguistic features,

stresses, overlapping speech, volume, speed, and pronunciation – among many other
aspects of speech. The following are the most common symbols used.

60
Table 20: Transcription Symbols

symbol meaning example

(.) micropause, i.e. a notable but F1: maybe we can (.) talk later
brief pause, e.g. a breath

(1.2) a pause, the number represent- F1: maybe we can talk later (1.2)
ing its duration in seconds (i.e. it what do you think
has been timed)

(xxxxxx) unclear words F2: yeah, it depends on (xxxxxx)

// OR [ ] overlapping speech of two F1: maybe we

speakers //
F2: are you cold
OR:
F1: maybe [we]
F2: [are] you cold

underlined stressed sound or word F1: do you think so

[italics] paralinguistic features, e.g. F1: what if we [laughing] went

laughing, coughing etc.; note skiing
laughter can also be represen- Alternatively:
ted by h (between words) or (h) F1: what if we w(h)en(h)t
(inside the boundaries of a ski(h)ing
word)

UPPER CASE increased volume F2: I said I don’t KNOW

°word° decreased volume F2: I said I don’t °know°

↗ OR ? rising intonation (note: only F1: maybe we can talk later↗

used if there is a change in into- OR:
nation) F1: maybe we can talk later?

↘ OR . falling intonation (note: only F1: maybe we can talk later↘

used if there is a change in into- OR:
nation) F1: maybe we can talk later.

/wɜːd/ phonetic transcription

Source: Inga Birth, based on Heritage & Clayman (2010) and The University of Leicester (2022).

Some other terms and concepts relevant to transcribing speech are tone units, pitch
movement, and tonic syllable. The term tone unit, also called tone group, refers to a group
of words that forms a distinctive unit in an utterance. In a transcript, tone units are usually
separated from the preceding and following group by (micro)pauses. The tonic syllable is
the main stress in the unit, i.e. the sound that is uttered with more force than the sur-
rounding ones. Pitch movement is the way in which the quality of a speaker’s voice
changes as they speak. They may, for example, change their pitch to express sarcasm.

Sometimes when transcribing a conversation, it can be useful to include phonetic tran-

scriptions, i.e. records of how a speaker pronounces a word or of a sound they make. This
is made possible by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a system of symbols and

61
 small marks near or through letters (referred to as diacritics) that allows the representa-
tion of any sound in any language in writing, which means that being able to read the pho-
netic alphabet equals being able to read the pronunciation of any word in any language.

Phonetic transcriptions can be particularly important when it comes to studying child lan-
guage acquisition since young children are in the process of learning the correct pronunci-
ation, and a child’s mispronunciations and their progress over time can thus be charted
and analyzed.

The table below lists IPA symbols, provides examples of words that – in British English –
contain the sounds these symbols represent, and shows how the examples are written
using the IPA. Note that some other accents and varieties of English use some other
sounds in those words, i.e. they are pronounced differently. For example, compare the
pronunciation of the word “bath” in British and American English: /bɑːθ/ and /bæθ/
respectively. Further, other languages use these sounds, of course, in completely different
words. Where an (r) is found in the right-hand column of the table, this indicates that it is
pronounced in certain contexts and varieties of British English but not in others.

Table 21: The International Phonetic Alphabet

symbol for the sound (underlined)… example written in the IPA

iː sheep /ʃiːp/

ɪ lip /lɪp/

ʊ book /bʊk/

uː zoo /zuː/

ɪə here /hɪə(r)/

eɪ May /meɪ/

e bed /bed/

ə the /ðə/

ɜː world /wɜːld/

ɔː door /dɔː(r)/

ʊə pure /pjʊə(r)/

ɔɪ boy /bɔɪ/

əʊ slow /sləʊ/

æ cat /kæt/

ʌ up /ʌp/

ɑː far /fɑː(r)/

62
 symbol for the sound (underlined)… example written in the IPA

ɒ pot /pɒt/

eə fair /feə(r)/

aɪ lie /laɪ/

aʊ now /naʊ/

p pot /pɒt/

b bed /bed/

t tag /tæɡ/

d dog /dɒɡ/

tʃ chip /tʃɪp/

dʒ jazz /dʒæz/

k cat /kæt/

ɡ gum /ɡʌm/

f fit /fɪt/

v vote /vəʊt/

θ think /θɪŋk/

ð this /ðɪs/

s slow /sləʊ/

z zoo /zuː/

ʃ sheep /ʃiːp/

ʒ vision /ˈvɪʒn/

m man /mæn/

n nut /nʌt/

ŋ wing /wɪŋ/

h hip /hɪp/

l love /lʌv/

r red /red/

w win /wɪn/

j yes /jes/

Source: Inga Birth, based on BBC Learning English (2013).

63
 In polysyllabic words stress is indicated by vertical lines, with a low vertical line marking
secondary (i.e. weaker) stress and a high vertical line indicating primary (i.e. stronger)
stress. IPA, for instance, is written /ˌaɪ piː ˈeɪ/. Another important symbol is /ʔ/ standing for
a glottal stop, a speech sound that is produced by the rapid closing and releasing of the
vocal cords. It occurs in “uh-oh” and is sometimes used as a substitute for /t/, for example
in some British English pronunciations of the phrase “that one,” which can sound more
like “tha’ one.”

SUMMARY
Under normal conditions all children learn to speak at least one lan-
guage. The process by which they do so is always the same: They go
through roughly the same stages at roughly the same age. As newborns,
they have already developed a certain sensitivity to the speech sounds
of their native language. During the first five years, they go through the
babbling, holophrastic, telegraphic, and post-telegraphic stages. They
move from cries to babbles, from their first words and telegram style
sentences to having conversations with themselves and other people.
By the age of five, their linguistic and interpersonal skills are sufficiently
developed to converse appropriately in a multitude of contexts, and in
the years that follow, their linguistic and pragmatic abilities advance fur-
ther, to include an awareness of language styles and register and the
ability to express abstract ideas.

In terms of children’s language development, it is useful to think about

why children use language. Linguist Michael Halliday introduced a set of
functions of children’s language: Instrumental, Regulatory, Interactional,
Personal, Representational, Heuristic, and Imaginative. Children’s grow-
ing functional range reflects their language development.

There are various theories that deal with how children’s linguistic and
conversational skills develop, among them the behaviorist theory that
posits that children acquire language through a process of imitation and
reinforcement, Chomsky’s theory of innate language competence (LAD),
and the language acquisition support system (LASS) developed by Jer-
ome Bruner. Further, cognitive theories, for instance by Piaget (the four
stages of cognitive development) and Vygotksy (the Zone of Proximal
Development), highlight the link between cognitive development and
language learning. Each of these theories shows weaknesses in certain
respects; however, looked at in conjunction with each other, they can
help gain an understanding of some of the processes underlying child
language acquisition.

In addition to acquiring their native language as a system, children

moreover grow familiar with the pragmatic aspects of language use and
the conventions and characteristic features of conversation. In order to

64
study this development, utterances may be recorded in a detailed and
accurate manner using transcription symbols and the International Pho-
netic Alphabet.

65
 UNIT 3
ENGLISH IN THE WORLD

STUDY GOALS

On completion of this unit, you will be able to ...

– demonstrate knowledge of the historical development of English as a global language

and discuss its potential future.
– explain how the English language and language norms spread across the world.
– demonstrate knowledge and understanding of language decline, language death, and
language revitalization.
– display familiarity with some national, regional, and social varieties of English, includ-
ing the difference between standard and non-standard English.
– discuss ethical issues relating to language dominance and linguistic imperialism.
– demonstrate understanding of the link between speakers’ political and economic
power and a language variety’s status.
 3. ENGLISH IN THE WORLD

Introduction
A global (or: world) language is a geographically widespread language, i.e. one that is spo-
ken in many different areas across the globe. Even considering that languages are used by
learners and native speakers alike and that it is, thus, not entirely straightforward to say
who “qualifies” as a speaker of a language, it is clear that the English language has a spe-
cial position in today’s world. It is the language of

• international affairs: It is used as a working language by organizations such as the UN,

The Commonwealth Secretariat, NATO, international police agencies, and international
air and sea traffic.
Lingua Franca • global trade, business, and finance: It is used as a lingua franca by an increasing
A lingua franca is a lan- number of companies worldwide (Borzykowski, 2017).
guage adopted for com-
munication between
speakers of different • research and education: It is used in more than 90% of international scientific commu-
native languages. nication (Montgomery, 2013), in some fields, more than 90% of all scientific publica-
tions are written in English, and it is the most widely taught language in the world (Crys-
tal, 2003).
• information technology, software, the internet, and entertainment: 61.8% of online
content is written in English (W3Techs, 2022), and a considerable proportion of other
artistic and cultural output (films, television, music, tweets, memes, YouTube content,
etc.) people watch, read, and listen to uses English (Van Kessel, P., Toor, S., & Smith, A.,
2019; Palo Alto Research Center, 2022).

Moreover, it is an official language in 59 sovereign states (Education Policies for Global

Development, 2022) and is widely spoken in dozens of other territories. It is, with French,
one of only two languages widely spoken as a first language on five continents (Cité inter-
nationale de la langue française, 2022).

According to the British Council, in 2013, English was “spoken at a useful level by some
1.75 billion people – a quarter of the world’s population” (British Council, 2013). Today,
there are at least 360 million English native speakers, making it the third most common
first language (Lyons, 2021).

Several factors influence whether people think of a language as a global language, among
them the number of native speakers and, especially, its geographical distribution and the
number of countries using it as an official language, as well as the number of learners.
Crystal (2003) stresses that what truly makes a language a global language is its “special
role” in the world, which depends on how powerful its speakers are in terms of economic,
cultural, and technological status, and is reflected in its use “as a medium of communica-
tion in such domains as government, the law courts, the media, and the educational sys-
tem” in a number of countries around the world (Crystal, 2003, p. 3–4).

68
It cannot be overstated that a global language is always a language of dominance: When
its speakers “succeed, on the international stage, their language succeeds. When they fail,
their language fails” (Crystal, 2003, p. 7). This was as true for Latin in the Roman Empire as
it is today in the case of English.

The following section, firstly, deals with how English has developed into a language with a
“special role” in many territories around the globe. We will also consider whether its sta-
tus as a global language may change in the future, and, lastly, look at Kachru’s circles
model, a theory that attempts to explain the spread of English and English language
norms from core regions outwards to other countries.

3.1 The Historical Development of English

as a Global Language
The English language has not always had the status it has today. During its history it was,
for example, long considered an inadequate medium for literary and scientific writing. In
certain periods it had very low status, particularly in the 200 years following the Norman
conquest of England in 1066 AD, which brought Norman French to Britain. At the time,
French was the language of the government and the aristocracy, and “English was the lan-
guage of the people,” spoken only by lower social classes (Fennell, 2008, p. 116–117). It
was only when English and French political relations deteriorated that English was finally
re-established. While French persisted in parliament, in the law courts, and in administra-
tion approximately until the end of the 13th century, it became increasingly less accurate
and native in quality; it seems that before long even the nobility began to acquire French
as a second language (Fennell, 2008). “By the end of the thirteenth century the attitude
had developed to one of advocating English as the language of Englishmen” (Fennell,
2008, p. 119), and in 1362 it was declared in parliament that all lawsuits should be conduc-
ted in English, which is often regarded as the moment English became recognized as the
official language of England (Fennell, 2008).

However, Latin and French continued to be popular mediums of writing, especially in sci-
ence and clerical texts. Even at the beginning of the Early Modern Period, the English lan-
guage was still frequently compared unfavorably with Latin and French as a language of
literature and it was only when the status of Latin declined in the 17th century that English
came to be commonly used even in works of science (Weiner, 2012a).

The history of English as a global language can be said to begin with the rapid expansion
of the British Empire during the 17th century when English settlers established colonies in
North America and the West Indies. At the beginning of this time, there were approxi-
mately five to seven million native English speakers, the vast majority of them inhabitants
of the British Isles (Crystal, 2003). By the 1950s this number had increased by a factor of
fifty, to approximately 250 million English native speakers, most of them living outside the
United Kingdom.

69
 The most important historical factor that led to English developing into a global language
is colonialism. The British Empire helped spread the language as British people claimed
territories all across the globe, resulting in English native speakers in areas as distant from
each other as New Zealand and Canada. In the process, many local languages, for example
a great number of Australian aboriginal languages and indigenous American and African
languages, were eradicated.

Moreover, in part linked to colonialism, migration played an important role in the langua-
ge’s internationalization. For example, during the 19th and early 20th century millions of
people emigrated to the US, where their children and grandchildren grew up speaking
English, vastly increasing the number of native English speakers.

The industrial revolution and related developments – for instance rapidly improving com-
munication technology and the emergence of multinational organizations – are further
factors that helped strengthen the language’s dominance globally.

Relatedly, another element that influenced the rise of English as a global language is the
growing importance of the United States as an economic giant. Crystal (2003, p. 10) points
out that while the British Empire launched the English language around the world,
“[d]uring the 20th century, this world presence was maintained and promoted almost sin-
gle-handedly through the economic supremacy of the new American superpower.” He
explains that “[e]conomics replaced politics as the chief driving force” and stresses the
significance of the fact that “the language behind the US dollar was English” (Crystal,
2003, p. 10).

The English language has also been a dominant force in the media and entertainment
industries for a long time; for instance, English-language blockbusters and hit singles fre-
quently break sales records and reach global popularity, which is also reflected in English-
language industry awards ceremonies such as the Academy Awards or the Grammy
Awards. Further, a large number of the major newspapers in the world are published in
English. With the emergence of the internet – which it is important to note has US-Ameri-
can origins – and internet culture, the spread of the English language has once more accel-
erated.

Today, as over half of all website content is written in English and English serves as a lin-
gua franca in a multitude of contexts, both online and in face-to-face communication, it
may not only be considered the language of the internet but of our globally interconnec-
ted world. This, however, does not mean that the status of English is set in stone. Just as it
developed from a low-status language in the early Middle Ages to the most studied lan-
guage in 2022, its prestige may very well decline again over time.

Such a development would in all likelihood be caused by changes in the global economy.
If the USA’s influence in the global market were to decrease, and a country such as China,
which has seen massive economic growth in the last few decades, were to overtake it in
terms of economic power, which in fact some predict (Brancaccio & Conlon, 2022), this
could eventually pose a challenge to the dominance of the English language as well.

70
Kachru’s Circles Model

Indian linguist Braj Kachru developed a model that classifies the ways in which English is
used and spread throughout the world. Kachru’s circles model (1985), also sometimes
referred to as the (three) concentric circles model or the three concentric circles of world
Englishes (Kachru’s term), consists of three circles, each representing a group of English
language varieties.

The Inner Circle comprises of native English varieties spoken in countries regarded as the
traditional bases of English, among them the UK and USA as well as Australia, New Zea-
land, Ireland, Canada, and English-speaking regions of South Africa and the Caribbean.
Here, English is the primary language, which means that it is used for all official, adminis-
trative, educational, and social purposes. The Inner Circle contains the ENL (English as a
native language) group of speakers, and it is from these countries that the language
spreads to other parts of the world. The English spoken in the Inner Circle is thought to be
norm-providing. This means that people’s idea of the correct form of English spreads out-
wards from this group of speakers and their language varieties.

The Outer Circle contains the ESL (English as a second language) group of speakers in
regions that use English as an official language, for instance in higher education, the
media, legislation, and many administrative contexts. In these countries, English has the
role of a lingua franca that facilitates communication between speakers of different native
languages. These other languages are usually spoken for social purposes. Countries with a
colonial legacy, such as India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Singapore, Malaysia, and some regions in
South Africa, among many others, fall into this group. The Outer Circle is thought to be
norm-developing, meaning that speakers may challenge the norms and develop their own.

The Expanding Circle is made up of most of the rest of the world, where English is used for
specific purposes, for example on the internet and in science and business communica-
tion. In these regions, speakers follow the norms provided by the Inner Circle; they are
norm-dependent and speak English as a foreign language (EFL).

Kachru’s model is based on the straightforward hypothesis that English spreads outwards
from a core region. It is interesting to also consider the question whether the influence
may go both ways, with, for example, non-native varieties exerting influence on native
varieties, or pronunciation, vocabulary, and phrases from Outer Circle varieties being
picked up in the Inner Circle.

Note that the concentric circles model is helpful in discussing the spread of the English
language, the typical use of the varieties in each circle, and the evolution and further
development of norms, although it presents in many ways an oversimplified view. As
such, the classification of varieties is not always clear-cut and the model does not, by vir-
tue of it predating the later stages of the digital age, deal with the intricacies of language
spread via online communication.

71
 3.2 Varieties of English
There are many varieties of the English language. You will be aware that the English spo-
ken in Australia is different from the English spoken in South Africa and have probably
encountered some of the well-known differences between British and American English
(commonly abbreviated to BrE and AmE, respectively). There are also, of course, many
different local varieties. People in London speak a different British English from people in
Scotland, and people in New York have a different kind of accent than speakers of Ameri-
can English in California. Moreover, non-native varieties abound. These develop from
using English as a common means of communication between non-native English speak-
ers.

In the following section, you are going to learn how the English language developed its
diversity. Also, there being so many different forms of English, the question arises as to
whose English is the “correct” one. Are there several correct “Englishes” or should all fol-
low the same norm, and if the latter, whose? Additionally, with non-native speakers being
in the vast majority compared to the number of native speakers, it is fair to ask whether
they (should) have more of a say in what is considered “correct.” Does the fact that so
many people learn English as a foreign language have an effect on the language? We will
examine the different origins of some English language varieties and consider their
respective statuses. It is important to stress that no variety is inherently better than any
other; a variety’s status is always dependent on the status of its speakers.

Standard vs. Non-standard English

Standard English is the name given to the form of English that is widely considered most
“correct.” It is what many English speakers think of as the norm and the formal, official,
and polite way of speaking and writing. As such, its use is usually perceived as indicative
of being an educated person. It is commonly contrasted with non-standard varieties of the
language, which are seen as unacceptable in many contexts, although they often repre-
sent the natural way of communicating in informal settings. Examples are “ain’t,” “I seen,”
and “yeah” (as an alternative to “yes”), and certain features of regional dialects. There are
different standard varieties of English, for example British Standard English, Canadian
Standard English, and American Standard English, which differ from each other in terms of
their pronunciation, though only minimally with regards to their grammar (Cambridge
Dictionary, 2022). Being the formal variety, Standard English is also the form usually
taught to non-native speakers.

The Received Pronunciation accent (abbreviated to RP) is associated with Standard Eng-
lish insofar as it is an accent that has been used by many well-educated (and usually weal-
thy) people from the British upper and middle classes – often influential members of soci-
ety – and has consequently come to be seen as the “correct” pronunciation. It emerged
towards the end of the 18th century as a non-localized prestige accent (Mugglestone,
2012), i.e. it does not give away the speaker’s origin, which other accents do, and origina-
ted in certain circles, such as public schools, (elite) universities, and the civic service. It is
sometimes referred to as the “Queen’s English,” “Oxford English,” the “Oxford accent,” and
“BBC English.” The latter is due to the fact that the BBC relied entirely on its use for the
better part of the 20th century: No radio or television program was delivered by a speaker

72
with a regional accent. Thus, RP became “the voice” of the British media. Today, the BBC
no longer adheres to this standard – in 1989 the BBC World Service “announced a new pol-
icy of using announcers and newsreaders with a more representative range of accents”
(McArthur et al., 2018) – nor do other British media companies, and while Received Pro-
nunciation continues to be regarded as a high status accent due to its origin and the asso-
ciations it evokes, it is nowadays also often viewed (and even mocked) as old-fashioned
and pompous.

It must be stressed here that RP’s prestige is not based on any quality of the accent itself; it
is linked solely to the status of its speakers.

Regional and National Native and Non-native Varieties

Every variety of English, be it a regional form (e.g. New York dialect and Scouse (Liverpool)
accent) or a national variety (e.g. Australian English), has its own individual history in how
it has evolved and developed its distinctiveness.

American and British English

American English emerged as a new variety when English people began to settle in Amer-
ica in the early 17th century. New experiences, landscapes, food, animals, and plants
required the settlers to either borrow words from local indigenous languages (for instance
“raccoon,” “opossum,” “pecan,” “squash,” “hickory,” “caribou,” and “totem”) or to invent
their own in order to be able to talk about them. The two varieties diverged very quickly,
first in terms of lexicon and later with regard to pronunciation, certain grammatical fea-
tures, and commonly used expressions. Immigrants from other countries, for example
Spain, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany, brought their languages
with them to America, which influenced how American English developed because this
affected, for instance, the pronunciation and the language’s word stock. Below, you find
some examples of loanwords that entered the English language via immigration to Amer-
ica.

Table 22: Loanwords AmE Borrowed from Immigrants’ Native Languages

word origin

bagel Yiddish

boss Dutch

cafeteria Mexican Spanish

coleslaw Dutch

cookie Dutch

dachshund German

delicatessen German

kindergarten German

73
 word origin

pepperoni Italian

pizza Italian

pretzel German

Source: Inga Birth, based on Harper (2022).

All of the words above, including the words mentioned in the text derived from indigenous
languages, are, of course, today also known in British English. This is due, firstly, to the
dominance of American film, music, media, and online content worldwide, which means
that American English vocabulary and phrasing is well-known to a great number of English
speakers so that even if they may say things differently themselves, they are familiar with
the American expressions. Secondly, British English borrows from American English, or as
Brandreth (2019) puts it: “The Americans imported English wholesale, forged it to meet
their own needs, then exported their own words back across the Atlantic.” This has
become a very common phenomenon in the 19th and 20th century as communication tech-
nology underwent drastic improvements and the USA emerged as an economic super-
power. Words that were borrowed during this period are, for instance, “cool” (used as a
term of approval), “jazz,”and “okay.” British English speakers continue to adopt American
lexical items and constructions that have gained cultural significance and a high degree of
Americanism popularity. These words and expressions are referred to as Americanisms and are, like
An Americanism is a word most aspects of language change, embraced by some and harshly criticized by others.
or phrase that is charac-
teristic of American Eng- Words that appear neither American nor British to us today, such as “talented” and “relia-
lish, often one that is ble,” were once seen as clearly American and rejected by some British English speakers
adopted for use in (Brandreth, 2019). Some of today’s Americanisms are received by UK speakers with similar
another variety of the
English language. ambivalence (among them “She was like” (instead of “She said”), “I’m good” (instead of
“I’m well”), and “gotten” (instead of “got”)). The younger generation of British English
speakers are particularly inclined to use Americanisms, probably owing to American fic-
tion franchises, social media, and music.

American English differs from British English in a variety of ways. As mentioned above,
vocabulary is one such aspect. The table below lists a few common examples.

Table 23: Lexical differences (AmE and BrE)

American English British English

(French) fries chips

candy sweets

elevator lift

fall autumn

first floor ground floor

hood bonnet

74
 American English British English

line queue

pants trousers

restroom, bathroom (public) toilet, loo

sidewalk pavement

trash can, garbage can (rubbish or: litter) bin, dustbin

truck lorry

trunk boot

underwear, panties pants, underwear, knickers

yard garden

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

The differences are not limited to single words. Certain phrases have American English
and British English “versions,” for example “a quarter after” (a stated hour) is common in
American English but very uncommon in the UK, where the phrase would be “a quarter
past.” American English also often employs the past tense (“I didn’t read the book yet”) in
cases in which British English speakers would use the present perfect (“I haven’t read the
book yet”).

In addition, American and British English spelling differs in certain respects, such as the “-
er” vs. “-re” endings of some word (e.g. AmE: “center”; BrE: “centre”), the doubling of cer-
tain consonants (e.g. AmE: “fulfill”; BrE: “fulfil”), and the American “or” spelling where
British English uses “our” (e.g. AmE: “color,” “behavior,” “neighbor”; BrE: “colour,” “behav-
iour,” “neighbour”). Many of these differences can be attributed to the fact that when the
English first colonized parts of North America, spelling was not yet fixed, leaving the colo-
nists to devise their own system, and the British theirs. American lexicographer Noah Web-
ster, attempted to reform and simplify the spelling of words with his American Dictionary of
the English Language (the forerunner of today’s Merriam-Webster Dictionary), also some-
times referred to as Webster’s Dictionary and first published in 1828. One of his intentions
was to make words’ spelling (better) reflect their pronunciation. A great number of his sug-
gestions have been adopted, among them the “or” spelling in words such as “humor” and
“color.”

It is a common belief that the spelling difference between “-ize” vs. “-ise” and “-yze” vs. “-
yse” (e.g. in “civilize”/“civilise” and “analyze”/“analyse”) neatly reflects American and Brit-
ish spelling, respectively. This, however, is inaccurate. While it is true that American spell-
ing does not allow the ‘s’-spelling in words such as “organize” or “realize,” British English
allows both. In fact, the ‘z’-spelling is preferred by some British institutions, such as
Oxford Dictionaries (Oxford Dictionaries, 2011) and many UK-based academic journals;
this has become known as the Oxford spelling. Yet, in a word such as “analyse”/“analyze,”
only the former is accepted in the UK; the latter is considered incorrect.

75
 There are also various pronunciation differences. For instance, many American English
accents – though not all of them – are rhotic, which means that the /r/ is pronounced
before consonants and at the end of words. In many British accents this is not the case.

Other regional and national varieties

Many varieties of English spoken in postcolonial, often multilingual, societies result from
language contact. These Englishes borrow and/or adapt lexis from local languages as well
as, in some cases, foreign languages that are or used to be of significance to the region,
e.g. for reasons of trade or because they were spoken by non-British imperial powers. The
pronunciation of words and the intonation are often also influenced owing to these con-
tact situations.

South African English (SAE), for instance, adopted lexis brought to the country by Dutch
settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries, such as “krantz,” “kraal,” and “springbok” (Silva,
2021). It also borrowed extensively from Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch, for
example “lekker” (Afrikaans for “delicious,” “nice”) and “ja” (Afrikaans for “yes”). SAE has
moreover adopted intonation patterns from local languages.

Because of their history, accents and dialects usually acquire a certain status in relation to
others. Received Pronunciation, for example, is a prestigious variety on account of its his-
torical association with the British middle and upper classes, while urban accents and dia-
lects from historically industrial cities in the UK, such as the Liverpool (Scouse) and Essex
accents, the Birmingham (Brummie) and the London Cockney dialect, have a much lower
status (Sharma, 2019).

In some regions with a history of colonial influence, there is often a marked difference in
status between the English language and local languages, which is usually reflected in the
contexts in which each language is used (e.g. personal communication, public discourse,
media, literature, formal situations). In some areas, English is regarded as a means to
advance in society and its use is therefore encouraged and equated with a high level of
education. In others, it is strongly opposed as an element of past colonial oppression. In
others again, it is considered a useful, neutral way to communicate among speakers with
different native languages. In many cases, people’s attitude towards English is a complex
mixture of the aforementioned.

It is noteworthy that even when English is rejected and the use of indigenous languages is
promoted in an attempt to create a sense of new nationhood and to liberate the country in
that respect from its colonial past, this is not always a realistic option. In Nigeria, for exam-
ple, where over 500 languages are spoken, it proved unworkable to designate a national
language and, thus, the use of the former colonial language has continued as a lingua
franca (Crystal, 2003).

76
New Englishes and (other) non-native varieties

In addition to long-established varieties of English, such as British and American English,

newer forms of the language have evolved in multilingual regions where English is not
spoken as a native language by the majority of the population. Rather than having devel-
oped from native speaker use, these varieties are based on English employed for adminis-
trative, educational, media, and literary purposes largely by non-native speakers.

Examples are Pakistani English, Indian English, Singapore English, and Nigerian English.
These forms are referred to as New Englishes, new varieties of English (NVEs), non-native
varieties of English, and non-native institutionalized varieties of English. They emerged in
regions with a colonial past and have over time developed their own lexis, pronunciation,
and syntax (Nordquist, 2020). Many speakers of New Englishes learn English through the
education system and potentially other forms of public exposure, as opposed to speaking
it at home, where an indigenous language would be used instead.

That being said, in some speech communities there appears to be a trend towards speak-
ing English among family members, sometimes in addition to one or more other lan-
guages. In the 2020 Singapore census, for instance, 48.3 % of the population reported they
used English at home, making it the most used language overall (Department of Statistics,
Ministry of Trade & Industry, Republic of Singapore, 2020).

New Englishes are usually grouped as pertaining to the Outer Circle in Kachru’s circles
model, the English as a second language (ESL) circle. However, with some varieties devel-
oping into languages in their own right through a process of creolization, this categoriza- Creolization
tion may be called into question as creoles are separate languages with their own native When a pidgin, a mixture
of two or more languages,
speakers and, although based on English, could thus arguably be considered an entirely develops into a natively
different class. Singapore Colloquial English, for instance, (better known as Singlish and spoken language, it is
not to be confused with Singapore Standard English, one of the official languages of the called a creole. The proc-
ess is consequently refer-
country), which is a hybrid of English, Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and Hokkien, is a creole lan- red to as creolization.
guage with a large number of native speakers that is largely unintelligible to many English
speakers (Lu, 2008).

Although the term Singlish follows the same word-formation pattern as Japlish, Franglais,
and Spanglish, it must be differentiated from these non-native speaker varieties in terms
of how they are used. For example, Spanglish is a form of Spanish mixed with many Eng-
lish words and phrases – or, sometimes, the reverse: English mixed with Spanish words. It
is not a creole, and neither are Franglais or Japlish. None of them are anywhere near hav-
ing native speakers. What these types of varieties share is that they mix varying degrees of
their speakers’ native language(s) with varying degrees of English and that they are spo-
ken in areas where English is a foreign language (the Expanding Circle in Kachru’s model).

With these many varieties of English and some developing into creoles, the question is
warranted as to what is to become of the English language in the future.

Some believe that English is ensconced as the language of global communication and that
a common standard form is likely to develop. Crystal (2003) termed this hypothetical var-
iant “World Standard Spoken English” (WSSE). He is convinced that “[i]n a future where

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 there were many national Englishes, little would change. People would still have their dia-
lects for use within their own country, but when the need came to communicate with peo-
ple from other countries they would slip into WSSE” (Crystal, 2003, p. 185). Another
hypothesis is that English may split into many separate languages, i.e. undergo a process
of linguistic fragmentation similar to Latin, which is the origin language of Italian, French,
Spanish, Portuguese, and others. In that case, an English language family of mutually
unintelligible languages would result (Crystal, 2003).

3.3 Relevant Ethical Considerations

Since languages are means of communication and expression, not living and breathing
beings, it may sound peculiar to say that they can die. And knowing about language
change, you have all the more reason to wonder if language death is only a turn of phrase
and whether languages do not in actual fact become extinct but simply develop into some
other variety. This, of course, is something that does happen. When a language gradually
changes into a distinctly separate form, the origin language is, naturally, no longer spoken
as it used to be at a certain point in the past. Old English, for instance, stopped having
native speakers after it evolved into Middle English. Latin, likewise, is a “dead language” in
this sense. This process, although it results in a “dead language” is not what is meant by
the term language death, however, because it is a natural progression from form to form;
there is, so to speak, no moment of death. Language death is a more definite and usually
quicker process. It often involves what Anne Pakir (1991) termed a killer language, one
that is responsible for the other language’s extinction.

Languages are an integral part of any culture, being used in the transmission of cultural
heritage by way of songs and sayings, stories and legends, and culture-specific expres-
sions that describe people’s relationship with the world around them and with each other
and that could even be said to reflect a language community’s way of thinking. Therefore,
the death of a language may be argued to equal the loss of (at least certain aspects of) a
culture. It is for this reason that a discussion of English as a global language – or any global
language for that matter – has to incorporate ethical considerations of language domi-
nance.

Language Death, Language Decline, and Language Shift

Language death occurs with the death of a language’s last native speaker. Consequently, it
can be very sudden. This is the case when an entire speech community is killed and no or
very few native speakers survive. Language death can also be gradual. In this very com-
mon scenario, a dominant language, for example the language of a colonizing power or a
language that – usually for economic reasons – offers certain advantages to its speakers,
slowly supplants the language(s) previously spoken in the region. This process normally
begins with the spread of multilingualism in the community, i.e. speakers’ proficiency in
two or more languages, one of them, in this case, being the dominant language. The dom-
inant language may then grow in importance and replace the local language(s) in an

78
increasing number of contexts. When a language is gradually spoken less and less fre-
quently, we speak of language decline. The process of a speech community shifting from
using one language to using another one in its stead, is called language shift.

This usually happens because there are incentives to speaking the dominant language, for
example improved access to education and employment and social opportunities. In con-
trast, there may be very few (if any) perceived advantages to speaking the minority lan-
guage, with the result that it is spoken less, its use often becoming restricted to the home,
that it is no longer taught to children, and that eventually, only older generations still use
it at all.

Language shift does not always take place at the same rate. In rural areas, where there is
usually less exposure to the dominant language, the process is often slower than in urban
regions. There is also a difference within speech communities: The younger generation
usually adopts the dominant language faster and more willingly, perceiving it as a means
for advancement, whereas older generations commonly show a greater degree of resist-
ance.

Language Endangerment and Revitalization

Being aware of the stages of language decline is helpful in identifying endangered lan-
guages, which in turn enables linguists, activists, and governments to put measures in
place that may help prevent language death. To this end, the UNESCO publishes and regu-
larly updates The Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (UNESCO, 2011).

Figure 6: The UNESCO Six Degrees of Endangerment

Source: Inga Birth, (2022), based on UNESCO (2011, p. 6)

79
 There are more than 6000 languages in the world today. According to UNESCO data, about
half of these are in danger of disappearing, with approximately 30% of them falling into
the group of definitely, severely, or critically endangered languages (UNESCO, 2011).

Bellos (2011) estimates that being able to speak nine languages would suffice to converse
with 90% of the world’s population, meaning that there are several thousands of lan-
guages with a markedly smaller native speaker population, making each one of them vul-
nerable to the influence of more dominant languages.

Language revitalization is the term for measures that seek to counteract the process of
language decline and prevent eventual language death. It usually includes steps such as
creating opportunities for learning the language in early years, teaching a variety of school
subjects in the language, offering language classes for adults, and promoting its use in var-
ious social and employment contexts. In short, language revitalization attempts to get the
language spoken by speakers of all ages in all sorts of contexts. A particular focus is on
increasing the number of native speakers.

While taking action against the potential loss of a language does not always have the
desired effect, there are some cases in which language decline has successfully been
reversed. An example of this is the Hawaiian language, which came near extinction in the
1970s with only 2000 native speakers remaining, but that experienced a revival thanks to
dedicated activism (Daigneault, 2019). In 2016, around 19,000 people spoke Hawaiian at
home (Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism, State of Hawaii, 2016).
The Māori language was saved from extinction in a similar manner. The Māori Language
Act 1987 gave Māori official language status in New Zealand.

Both Scottish Gaelic and Welsh have experienced extreme language decline due the domi-
nance of English in Scotland and Wales and the economic importance of England in the
British Isles. Part of revitalization efforts were the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 and
the Welsh Language Act 1993, which made Scottish Gaelic and Welsh official languages in
their respective countries.

Language revitalization is not only important because of the languages themselves. If any
of these languages were to die, the cultures associated with them would die as well.

Language Dominance and Linguistic Imperialism

We refer to a language as dominant when it is the language that is used most widely in a
multilingual speech community.

Linguistic imperialism is the concept of imposing a language spoken by a politically and/or

economically powerful group of people upon the speakers of another language. With ref-
erence to English, linguist Robert Phillipson defined the term thus: “[T]he dominance
asserted and maintained by the establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural
and cultural inequalities between English and other languages” (Phillipson, 1992, p. 47).

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Imperial powers usually introduced their own languages into countries they colonized. In
the process, many indigenous languages were lost. This happened, in part, because indig-
enous people were killed. It also happened because languages were actively suppressed:
Their use was forbidden or discouraged. Even in cases in which no active position was
taken, many languages declined, often culminating in their death. This decline can in
many cases be attributed directly to the spread of a dominant language, such as Spanish
in South America or English in North America. Anne Pakir (1991) introduced the term killer
language to apply to a language that causes the extinction of others.

Language dominance, be it directly linked to (post-)colonialism or other factors, continues

to pose a problem today. Often, speakers of minority languages which exist alongside a
dominant language such as English are made to feel inferior about their language and, by
extension, themselves.

According to Phillipson (1992), the spread of English (and other dominant languages)
undermines multilingualism because languages perceived as less important decline in the
“presence” of a dominant language. Furthermore, the use of English instead of learners’
native languages in educational contexts may disadvantage them on account of poten-
tially representing a hindrance to their understanding of the material. Crystal (2003), in
contrast, is of the opinion that while the legacy of colonialism – which has led to many
inequalities that still manifest themselves today – has to be considered in a discussion of
present linguistic realities, it is important to additionally take the respective functions of
both dominant and minority languages into account today. He states that a language like
English can in fact play “a central role in empowering the subjugated and marginalized,
and eroding the division between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’” as it has acquired “a
new functional role, no longer associated with the political authority it once held” (Crys-
tal, 2003, p. 24-25).

The role of TESOL

As English is widely used as a lingua franca, many people learn it to advance their educa-
tional or employment prospects or to benefit from social advantages such as online com-
munication with other people across the world. TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of
Other Languages) programs can be viewed as playing a role in language imperialism if
their design and the teachers are insensitive to learners’ native languages and cultures. It
is undoubtedly useful to learn a language that enables its speakers to communicate with
many other people in the world regardless of their native languages. On the other hand,
learners can be made to feel that their success in the world, including their education,
work, and social status depends on their being able to speak English (and often a certain
variety of English at that). Moreover, if English is taught in a manner that presents English
as a superior language and Western culture and values as something to aspire to, for
example by using Anglocentric textbooks that abound with references to British (mostly Anglocentric
English) culture and relate to British (mostly English) contexts only, learners’ native lan- When something is Anglo-
centric it is centered on
guages and national identity may become associated with an inferior status. Britain (often England)
and/or considers only
For this reason, TESOL programs should absolutely avoid insensitivity of this kind. Teach- British (or English) con-
texts.
ing that is sensitive to the learners’ languages and cultures may use, for instance, text-
books containing different cultural references and/or examples taken directly from con-

81
 texts learners are familiar with. It can also be beneficial to incorporate different forms of
English, such as different national varieties and various English-language dialects. More-
over, the transmission of English as it is really spoken by a variety of native speakers, also
including non-standard forms, as opposed to restricting teaching, for example, to Stand-
ard English and Received Pronunciation, communicates a more complex and authentic
picture of the English language and how it is used. Showing linguistic diversity in a TESOL
program may thus prevent learners from associating the English language exclusively with
one nation (such as the UK) and that speech community’s cultural contexts and values.

SUMMARY
The status of English as a global language appears fixed at this moment
in time: It is spoken as a native language on five continents, is the most
taught foreign language, and is used as a lingua franca all across the
globe. Yet, its status may change when other nations (e.g. China) con-
tinue to experience economic growth. It is important to keep in mind
that a language’s power reflects its speakers’ power. Hence, the signifi-
cance of English grew with the expansion of the British Empire and,
later, the economic dominance of the USA. Today, it is of immense social
and cultural importance and a globally used lingua franca, particularly
in scientific and business contexts and international affairs.

Other factors that contributed to the rise of English as a global language

are migration, the industrial revolution and related developments (e.g.
communication technologies and the emergence of multinational
organizations), and the language’s dominance in the media and enter-
tainment industries. In recent decades, English has become the lan-
guage of the internet, making it spread faster and easier than ever. Kach-
ru’s circles model can help illustrate the way it diffuses across the world.

While there are many advantages to, for instance, using English as a lin-
gua franca, there are also several ethical issues linked to its spread. Lin-
guistic imperialism caused the death of many local languages (e.g. a
great number of Australian aboriginal languages and indigenous North
American languages), and the dominance of English continues to con-
tribute to the decline of many languages today. Even TESOL can be seen
as a form of linguistic imperialism when it is insensitive to learners’ lan-
guages and cultures.

One positive result of the spread of English is the development of many

different varieties. Thus, in addition to British standard and non-stand-
ard forms and regional and social accents such as Received Pronuncia-
tion, Scouse, and Cockney, we find Australian, Indian, Nigerian, Carib-
bean Englishes and many, many more. There are New Englishes and

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older forms, working class dialects and prestige accents, standard and
non-standard varieties, each of them adding an interesting facet to the
mosaic that is the English language.

83
 UNIT 4
LANGUAGE AND THE SELF

STUDY GOALS

On completion of this unit, you will be able to ...

– demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the concepts of self and self-identity

and how they relate to language.
– outline and comment on theories of language and self-identity, in particular innatism/
nativism and empiricism.
– explain Grice’s Maxims and politeness strategies.
– discuss the relationship between language and social identity and outline and com-
ment on several relevant theories.
– discuss the relationship between language and thought and outline and comment on
key theories.
– demonstrate familiarity with relevant terminology.
 4. LANGUAGE AND THE SELF

Introduction
What is the self? The American Psychological Association (2022a) defines it as “the totality
of the individual, consisting of all characteristic attributes, conscious and unconscious,
mental and physical.” A person’s sense of self is their being aware of their separateness
from every other person and object. We are aware where our bodies begin and end. We
know we are neither the person next to us nor the ground we stand on. We know what we
like or do not like, and when we speak our mind, that it is our thoughts we express and
that we do so with our own speech organs. People are not born with this sense of self, this
awareness of having a self. It is something that they acquire in early childhood. What is the
link between this development and the acquisition of language, which also happens in a
person’s first months and years of life? And how does language help people create and
express their identity as they grow older, become adolescents and adults? What role, in
short, does language play in identity formation?

4.1 The Relationship Between Language

and Self-Identity
Children grow aware of their own distinctness from other people around them at around
the age of two months. They begin to respond in a manner that suggests they realize that
an interaction is taking place, for instance by smiling back at someone. Their investigating
toys or their own feet and other people’s hands or faces also indicates that they grow con-
scious of their separate existence. In the process they learn that objects and people have
certain characteristics, which they will eventually be able to categorize (e.g. pink, small,
sweet, sour, boy, girl, adult, child, etc.) and, then, also apply to themselves. This range of
categories expands as they develop and grows to include abstract classes such as likes
and dislikes and behaviors. When a child can express what makes them them, the individ-
ual “cocktail” of characteristics that makes them unique, they have developed a self-iden-
tity. In the course of a person’s life, their self-identity is continuously influenced by their
experiences and their interaction with others. In childhood, for instance, a child’s identity
is usually influenced by how it is spoken to by their caregivers or other people in their sur-
roundings. A child who is often explicitly called a girl will logically have a heightened sense
that femaleness is an element of their self-identity. A child who receives praise for display-
ing a certain characteristic is likely to repeat it, reinforcing it as a facet of their self and
probably also gaining confidence, which may become another aspect of their identity. A
child who witnesses their sibling being scolded for a particular behavior may purposely
demonstrate the opposite, and thus adopt the latter as a characteristic.

With time, children learn to foreground certain characteristics in one context, while accen-
tuating others in other situations. This context-dependence of some facets of their self-
identity is due to the fact that any individual’s self is really an assemblage of identities. A

86
person may be a woman, a scientist, a football fan, a hobby artist, a cinema enthusiast, an
atheist, a daughter, a sister, a Nigerian, a best friend, a lesbian, a wife, and so on. We are
formed by and define ourselves through our relation to others and our interactions – one
element of which, of course, is language.

What role does language play in all this exactly? How does language influence our self-
identity? As mentioned above, when people speak with each other, they help one another
to form, define, and redefine their self-identity. By adopting group-specific phrases and
vocabulary they may, for instance, show their membership to a certain group and express
their solidarity. Or they may use language to present themselves in the way they would
like to be perceived (e.g. funny, creative, stern, intelligent, etc., and any combination of
these). In other words: They express and maintain their self-identities through their indi-
vidual way of using language.

Interaction and Self-Identity

For the expression of self through language to work and for communication to be success-
ful, people need to agree to cooperate in discourse. Participants in a conversation usually
assume that they share a common purpose, an aim, namely that of having an effective
conversation on whatever subject, and that to achieve this mutual understanding, they
need to cooperate with each other.

This is called the cooperative principle. The concept was introduced by the English philos-
opher Paul Grice in 1975. He further defined four maxims, i.e. guiding principles, by divid-
ing the cooperative principle into four elements. These are called the Gricean Maxims, also
referred to as Grice’s Maxims, the (four) maxims of conversation and the (four) conversa-
tional maxims.

Gricean Maxims

The conversational maxims comprise of the maxim of quantity, the maxim of quality, the
maxim of relation, and the maxim of manner (Grice, 1975). They state the following:

• The maxim of quantity: Say no more and no less than the conversation requires.
• The maxim of quality: Say only what you believe to be true and do not contribute any-
thing for which you lack evidence.
• The maxim of relation: Only contribute information that is relevant.
• The maxim of manner: Avoid ambiguity and obscurity; aim for brevity and clarity.

The conversational maxims are, of course, not always followed. For instance, a person
may talk a lot more than is warranted, the information they give may be totally irrelevant
to the topic of the conversation, they may tell a lie, or express themselves in a manner that
is very difficult to follow (e.g. speak too quickly or too low or use words the other person
does not know). Such cases normally result in some form of confusion, disappointment,
frustration, or misunderstanding.

87
 The fact that people in conversation assume that all parties attempt to be informative and
truthful, that what they say is relevant and expressed in as clear a manner as possible, is
what makes the interpretation of many utterances possible in the first place. Grice (1975,
p. 51) illustrates this interplay of the maxims with this example:

A. Smith doesn’t seem to have a girlfriend these days.

B. He has been paying a lot of visits to New York lately.

Speaker A understands that speaker B implies that Smith may have a girlfriend in New
York because they rely on speaker B following the maxim of relation. If they did not and if
speaker B did not assume so, the statement would make no sense at all.

Politeness strategies

You may be familiar with the idioms “to save face” and “to lose face,” which are general
expressions for preserving or losing one’s reputation and other people’s respect, for being
humiliated or for preventing humiliation. In conversations, a person’s conversational face
can, for example, be threatened when they are made to feel inferior, excluded, or ridiculed
as a

result of the exchange. Because of this, participants in a conversation usually use face-sav-
ing strategies to avoid threatening other people’s face and to minimize any potential
threat to their own. The theory of face as it relates to conversational cooperation has been
introduced by Erving Goffman (1967). On his foundation, Penelope Brown and Stephen C.
Levinson built their theory of politeness (1978/1987), which is also sometimes called the
face-saving theory of politeness. It distinguishes two forms of “face,” the negative face,
which is a person’s claim to “freedom of action and freedom from imposition,” and the
positive face, “the positive consistent self-image or ‘personality’ (crucially including the
desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants”
(Brown & Levinson, 1978/1987, p. 61). Brown and Levinson’s theory moreover introduced
two types of politeness strategies, which pay attention to the negative and positive face,
respectively.

Negative politeness strategies are intended to avoid giving offense and imposing one’s
own wishes on others. They include showing deference, using questions and indirect
expressions, apologizing, and hedging (e.g. “You wouldn’t be able to drop me off on your
way home by any chance, would you?”). They often get used to lessen the “threat” of a
request to the addressed person’s negative face so that they do not feel imposed on.

Positive politeness strategies, in contrast, are acts intended to make the other party feel
good about themselves, so that they feel that their positive face, their positive self-image
or personality, is “appreciated and approved of.” These strategies include, for instance,
compliments as well as the use of first names, titles, nicknames, jokes, in-group jargon or
slang and special discourse markers such as “please” (Nordquist, 2020b). Softening criti-
cism by also complimenting the other person before and/or after the critical comment is a
common positive politeness strategy (Nordquist, 2020b).

88
In summary, both positive and negative politeness strategies are tools to negotiate poten- Jargon
tially face-threating acts in conversations, i.e. acts that may threaten a person’s self-image The term jargon refers to
words and phrases that
or self-esteem, and they can, of course, also be used in combination. are used by particular
groups and are therefore
Some adversative conjunctions – connecting words such as “but,” “nevertheless,” and characteristic of these.
They usually comprise of
“however” that introduce a contradiction to or negation of what has just been said – can terminology and expres-
serve a similar purpose when they are used instead of more direct expressions, like “no” sions linked with certain
occupations, activities, or
or “I disagree.” By using them, speakers can thus make confrontations or disagreements
interests.
less threatening, and that can contribute to the common aim that every participant in the
conversation maintain their face. Slang
The term slang refers to
very informal, sometimes
Status plays an important role in people’s choice of strategies. It is much more common, rude and offensive, lan-
for example, to compliment a person when the participants know each other well and guage. It is similar to jar-
gon in that it is used by
when they are fairly equal in terms of power and influence. The success of a conversation certain groups of people
often depends on people being aware of one another’s status because confusion, misun- but differs from it in that
derstanding, and frustration could result from using an unsuitable politeness strategy. It it is never formal and
changes rapidly. Words
would seem very peculiar, for example, to tell a stranger “sweetie, I love your bangs” or to stop being slang when
ask a friend for a favor saying “I’m dreadfully sorry to bother you, but … you couldn’t pos- they enter majority
sibly help me with this, could you?”. usage.

Theories of Language and Self-Identity

Many researchers have put forward theories about how language acquisition is connected
with the development of a child’s sense of self and their self-identity.

As the studies of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget suggest, children grow increasingly less
egocentric as they grow older and their cognitive skills and their ability to use language Cognitive Skills
increase: Their perspective changes from a focus on themselves and their own needs, and This is an umbrella term
for the abilities necessary
they begin to perceive the objects and people around them as separate entities from to perform tasks “associ-
themselves. Every person, they learn, has their own mind, thoughts, wants, and needs, ated with perception,
and these are usually different from the child’s. Consequently, their cognitive develop- learning, memory, under-
standing, awareness, rea-
ment is not only linked to their language development, it is – by way of their growing soning, judgment, intu-
awareness of their distinctness – also linked to the development of their sense of self. ition, and language” (APA,
2022b).

The following theories are the key hypotheses that attempt to explain the connection
between learning language and developing a self-image.

Behaviorism

This theory is based on imitation and reinforcement. In the same way as children can learn
a word’s meaning by observing others, imitating their use, and being praised for demon-
strating understanding, they can be encouraged to display certain traits and discouraged
from showing others. Praise (for example for pronouncing a word correctly) may also lead
to increased self-confidence and a healthy sense of self-worth. According to behaviorism,
a child who believes in themselves probably acquired their self-esteem by being told they
are doing well (or giving encouragement in a non-verbal manner). The development of
their ideas about themselves is intrinsically linked with their language acquisition and the
development of other cognitive skills.

89
 Empiricism and innatism/nativism

Empiricism and innatism are two contrasting approaches to explaining the origin of
human thought.

Empiricism is a theory that assumes that the mind at birth is like a blank sheet of paper or
a blank slate. This is why it is also sometimes called the tabula rasa (Latin for “blank
slate”) theory. It dismisses the notion that there are any innate ideas, i.e. ideas already
present in the mind at birth. A person’s self-identity and their ability to speak a language
are hypothesized to develop exclusively through experience, and thus come from the out-
side, the environment. The basic idea that experience is the only way of gaining under-
standing has been around for a long time, but it was developed as a philosophical
approach by John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and others in the 17th and 18th
centuries (Quinton et al., 2020). This concept of acquiring knowledge through experience
is fundamental to science as it is practiced today. Carrying out experiments, for instance, is
an empirical method.

Innatism makes the opposite claim. It assumes that a person is born with ideas in their
mind. This line of thinking goes back to the Greek philosopher Plato (c. 428/427 –
c. 348/347 BC) and the French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist René Descartes
(1596 – 1650). Plato and Descartes proposed that thoughts and ideas were placed into
humans by a supreme being, such as a god. Removing the premise of such a being and
substituting it with the notion of a species-specific genetic makeup, the concept can be
applied to scientific fields such as genetics, psychology, and linguistics. For this, the term
nativism has been coined (although innatism is sometimes used synonymously). In
essence, nativism represents the nature side of the nature versus nurture debate. Noam
Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a nativist approach to child language
acquisition. Chomsky maintains that humans have an innate ability to learn languages
and that their capacity for acquiring grammatical systems is situated in the brain. Using
their LAD as a tool, albeit a subconscious one, in the context of and in interaction with
their social surroundings, children learn their native language, and in the process, they
also begin developing a (sense of) self.

4.2 The Relationship Between Language

and Social Identity
Every person has a unique way of speaking. No two people, even when they are siblings
who have grown up in the same family and region, speak entirely alike. These speech hab-
its include their vocabulary, phrases they frequently use, how they pronounce certain
words, their interpretation of word meaning (reflected in the contexts in which they use
them, or not), how they decide to string words together, and their intonation patterns.
This individual “dialect” is called an idiolect and it undergoes change at all times as a
speaker, for instance, adds new words or phrases to their personal range, stops using cer-
tain words or expressions, or adapts their pronunciation (for example when they want to
sound more like a person they admire).

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Although every speaker has their own personal way of using their language, there is also
of course a high degree of overlap with other people, especially when they share certain
characteristics with each other. Age, gender, interests, occupation, education, ethnicity,
beliefs, and social class are some factors that unify speakers in terms of their language
use. Any profession has, for instance, its own job-specific jargon and a particular level of
(in)formality between co-workers that influences how people speak to each other. Teach-
ers in a primary school talk differently to each other than, say, businesspeople, taxi driv-
ers, or academics. The term for a language variety that is shared by a social group is called
sociolect or social dialect. It is commonly juxtaposed with regional dialects. The English
sociolinguist Peter Trudgill defines a sociolect as “a variety or lect which is thought of as
being related to its speakers’ social background rather than geographical background”
(2003, p. 122). Yet, there is naturally some overlap between regional and social varieties as
some regional accents and dialects are strongly associated with a particular socioeco-
nomic status. An example would be the Cockney dialect. It is mainly spoken in London,
particularly the East End. At the same time, it also has social associations: It is a traditional
London working-class dialect.

A group of people who “share the same language, speech characteristics, and ways of
interpreting communication” is called a speech community (Nordquist, 2019). This term
can be used for both speakers of the same sociolect and speakers of the same dialect or
regional variety. In some contexts, it may also refer to the entirety of a language’s speak-
ers.

A speaker of any language, then, has an idiolect and is, by virtue of existing within society,
part of at least one large and many smaller speech communities. They speak several soci-
olects.

In addition to providing a sense of belonging and strengthening group identity, sociolects

are moreover an important element in defining and maintaining a speaker’s self-identity.
A person speaking in a certain working-class accent, frequently using expressions known,
in particular, in feminist circles, terminology from business studies, and cooking jargon
may thus identify themselves as associating with a certain social background and with
feminism, as being a business student and, probably, a passionate hobby cook or food afi-
cionado. Of course, their language use is context- and audience-dependent. They would,
for instance, probably not demonstrate their in-depth knowledge of marinating techni-
ques in a lecture on statistics. Then again, they might do so specifically in order to show
that their interest goes beyond being a simple hobby, that it is a passion, and plays a huge
part in their life. They would also perhaps come across as someone who is unembarrassed
to talk about what is important to them, or as someone who likes to go against expecta-
tions. Many other interpretations of their linguistic behavior would be possible. This
shows how language can be used to define and express one’s identity. The idiolect of the
person in the example would contain elements of various sociolects.

The interplay between sociolects and idiolects can also take a less deliberate form and be
based on a general desire to belong rather than personal interests. This can take the form
of (mostly) unconscious adaptation or be an intentional effort. People who move to
another city or country often attempt to sound more like the people around them. When
the adaptation is subconscious in adults, it is often minimal or takes an extended period of

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 time to become more pronounced. As a rule, they do not entirely lose their native accents;
they will, however, adopt local vocabulary and phrasing and experience slow adjustments
in pronunciation. In children and teenagers, even subconscious adaptations can be
extreme, and they may quickly sound local. This is also the case, of course, when the
change is intentional, in both adults and younger speakers.

Group Membership: The Language of Inclusion and Exclusion

Every person wants to belong, but not everyone wants to or can belong to the same social
groups. Options are limited in some respects (age, gender, location, and ability, for exam-
ple) but seemingly endless in others. Sometimes there is a choice. We can decide to join a
book club or a choir, a sports team, or a pottery class. We can take part in fandom meet-
ups or political demonstrations, visit science fiction conventions, or support a particular
team or band. Sometimes membership in certain groups is simply a fact of our lives, for
example being a woman or growing up in a part of town associated with low social status.
When this is the case, it is not always possible to decide how much – or how little – we
want to define ourselves through these groups. On the contrary, it may be decided for us,
from the outside.

Inclusion and exclusion are concepts often linked to dominance and influence. When a col-
onial power, for instance, seeks to exclude the local population from the group of econom-
ically well-positioned people with a high social status, they may do so using coercion and
political measures, part of which may be language policies (e.g. forbidding the use of
indigenous languages or prescribing the exclusive use of the dominant language in law
courts and schools, etc.) and/or segregation. Imposing the language of the colonial power
on local populations by less direct means, for instance by discouraging – though not out-
lawing – the use of indigenous languages, may achieve similar results: exclusion on the
basis of language. Minority language speakers have historically often been treated
unequally and denied opportunities for advancement because of not belonging to the lin-
guistic group of dominant language speakers. The discrimination against speakers of
Māori in New Zealand, especially during the first half of the 20th century, is but one exam-
ple of many.

Similarly, when people immigrate to another country and speak the dominant language
with a foreign accent, or when they speak a minority variety of the dominant language,
their variety or accent marks them as belonging, in linguistic terms, to a different group,
and they may get excluded from that of the language majority. Exclusion due to prejudice
and disadvantages ’caused by unfair treatment of minority language speakers remains a
societal problem today.

On the other hand, language can also function as a tool for inclusion. People’s accents and
linguistic choices function as identity markers: They speak the way they speak and choose
the words they do not only to communicate but also to express their identity. Returning to
the example of speakers of Māori, it is interesting to note that due to revitalization efforts,
the Māori language has developed into one of the pillars of New Zealand’s culture and
speaking or understanding (some) Māori is today a national identity marker for many New
Zealanders.

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Exclusion and inclusion are, in some ways, two sides of the same coin. For there to be a
group identity and group members, there also need to be individuals who are not part of it
and groups that are different. Members define and maintain their group’s identity and
their own self-identity in relation to it by, for example, using in-group jargon and slang,
which, by its very nature, excludes non-members, who are ignorant of the words’ mean-
ings.

Our collective awareness of the importance of language to self- and group-identity has
grown in recent years. This is the reason why, nowadays, politically correct terms substi-
tute many inappropriate words that were in common use before. Thus, issues of racism,
sexism, ageism, homophobia, ableism, and other discriminatory aspects (e.g. relating to
religion) that are entrenched in many languages are being addressed. Generally speaking,
people aim to make their language more inclusive, and limit the exclusion “side of the
coin” to interests and hobbies, i.e. contexts in which solidarity and identification with a
group usually leads to a more “harmless” type of exclusion that is largely self-chosen.
After all, everyone can join a pottery class should they want to.

Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT)

The way we speak is influenced by the situation and the people we speak with. There is a
difference in register and style, which depends on the purpose of the exchange, the rela-
tionship between the participants, and the degree of formality. In addition, we also adjust
to the other person’s speech. We may, for example, imitate their accent, intonation, and
speech rate, the frequency and length of their utterances and pauses, and their body lan-
guage (ELLO, n. d.). This is called convergence, and the opposite, making one’s speech very
different from an interlocutor’s, is called divergence. The Communication Accommodation
Theory is a communication theory developed by psychologist and linguist Howard Giles in
1973 that aims to explain how and why speakers change their manner of speech in this
fashion. It was first introduced as Speech Accommodation Theory (SAT) but was later
broadened to include non-verbal elements such as gestures.

Both convergence and divergence can function as a marker of identity – either the speaker
wishes to express their solidarity, similarity, and group membership or the opposite: their
“social difference and distance from and disapproval of the addressee and his/her com-
municative behaviour” (ELLO, n. d.). A person may, when meeting someone from their
hometown abroad, stress their solidarity and similarity by pronouncing their words in a
similar manner, even though they may have moved away from pronouncing them that
way in their day-to-day life. In the same situation, another person may use divergent com-
municative acts so as to distinguish themselves from their origins and from people who
speak in this particular accent.

Teenager language

A person’s teenage years are usually an important period in their identity formation, and
this is when large parts of their idiolect develop. Compared to adults, teenagers are often
exposed to a much more diverse range of styles because they are less likely to spend time
in homogenous groups, while adults – in part due to occupational choices – often spend
most of their time with people who share many of their characteristics, including linguistic

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 ones (Fridland, 2020). Adolescents usually use standard varieties in formal settings such as
lessons or to older family members, and a multitude of non-standard varieties in less for-
mal contexts. Some of the latter may include several types of slang and jargon, associated
with gaming, online activities such as social media, and specific interests, for example.
Due to their often intense use of computer-mediated discourse, teenagers may also have
greater contact with abusive language than adults do since it is a commonly seen phe-
nomenon on the internet. This exposure to a wide mixture of styles and language forms is
important as this helps them negotiate and define their group- and self-identity in con-
trast to and in solidarity with certain social groups. When people change from using one
variety to using another when they are speaking, this is called code switching. The ease
with which many teenagers do this – talking appropriately to their teacher one second and
just as appropriately to a classmate the next, or moving from digital to face-to-face conver-
sation – reflects their increasing linguistic capabilities. In each of these varieties they make
linguistic choices to test, create, and reinforce their identities and the different stylistic
options for presenting themselves.

Contrary to popular belief, young people’s unique way of speaking is usually not a sign
that their capacity for using the language in a competent, varied, and context-appropriate
manner decreases, and much less that they, as a group, are responsible for a language’s
degeneration. Quite the opposite: Their propensity for inventing new words and new uses
for old words may be argued to enrich the word stock and thus make the language ulti-
mately more “usable” in the sense that having the words to give expression to a wider
range of states, perspectives, and experiences increases its applicability.

Of course, not all words or phrases teenagers invent stay around for very long. Many in
fact, are used by one particular generation at most and many more fall out of use within as
little as a few months or years. More subtle changes, on the other hand, such as changes in
the pronunciation of certain vowels, are often trends that continue over generations as
teenagers move further and further away from the pronunciation of their parents. In some
respects, teenagers’ language attitudes appear to be instrumental in language change:
“[Y]oung speakers are leading the charge in most of the shifts affecting our vowel pronun-
ciation this century” (Fridland, 2020, para. 10).

Tagliamonte’s (2016) study of adolescents’ language argues that teen language can be
seen as an indicator of language trends. Because teenagers do not necessarily change
their pronunciation as they grow older, the “young” pronunciation variety may become
the new adult form. In other words, teenagers often take their pronunciation with them
into adulthood, which may thus influence the language at large. Tagliamonte concludes:
“Teen language is one of the most creative forms of talk and a key source of what is com-
ing in the future of English” (2016, p. 40).

Some specific features that characterize teenage language are the use of quotatives,
which are grammatical tools to introduce reported speech (e.g. “like” in “She was like ‘I
was right there!’”), intensifiers (e.g. “totally,” “absolutely”), and general extenders (e.g. “or
something,” “and everything,” “and things,” “and stuff”). Additionally, a mixing of certain
codes (i.e. language varieties or styles), for example using abbreviations originating from
online discourse (such as “LOL”) in speech, is common. This is probably due to adoles-
cents’ intense use of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Lastly, as already men-

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tioned above, teenagers tend to use a lot of slang and jargon as identity markers. Which
words and expressions they use and how they use them changes at a rapid pace. Hence it
may become difficult for some adults to keep track of the meaning of teenage vocabulary.
Yet, the tendency to represent teenagers as inarticulate and to blame them for “ruining”
the language is based on wrong assumptions. Just because their language is incompre-
hensible to some does not mean their use is in any way deficient. They are simply compe-
tent in many more varieties than most adults and often use language in a less conserva-
tive and more creative fashion.

Gender and language

There is a long history of inequality between men and women in almost all parts of the
world. For centuries, women were considered property in many societies – first of male
family members, then of their husbands. They had no right to vote, next to no decision-
making capacity in any area of public life, no or very limited access to education, and no
right to own property. Their roles were predefined and any alternative options (to being
wives and mothers) virtually non-existent. Any degree of visibility or importance they
could attain was usually linked to the men in their lives.

Considering the span of recorded history (roughly 5000 years), the first attempts towards
reaching gender equality have – shockingly – been made only very recently, starting with
the suffrage movement in the 19th century, i.e. not even 200 years ago, and progress has,
all in all, been slow. Today, women and girls are still treated differently from men and boys
in many respects, from stereotype expectations to the pay gap, and this inequality is still
being reinforced, for instance by sexist representation in the media and in advertising.

Talking about men and women

Gender inequality is reflected in the language we use to talk about males and females. For
example, “he” is still frequently used to refer to female and male people alike, convention
dictates that “he” is mentioned first in the combination “he or she,” and in many pairs of
gendered nouns, such as “master”/“mistress,” “prince”/“princess,” and “steward”/“stew-
ardess,” the male variety has different, often more positive, connotations than the female
one. It may be argued, moreover, that some female nouns suggest a different class of what
they describe, with the male form being the more generally applicable term. “Heroine,” for
instance, may be seen to imply that the person is thought of not as a “hero” – gender irrel-
evant – but as a female hero, suggesting this is a different, separate variety. Specifying the
gender highlights a factor that is immaterial when it comes to behavior.

The prejudice that girls and women are not as good at certain things as boys and men can
be found in certain common expressions that are in use today, for example “to throw/run/
push/slap/play like a girl,” and these stereotypes are often directly reinforced by oft-repea-
ted claims such as “I’m a typical girl, I’m not good at maths/science/physics/sports etc.”
The very expression “typical girl” can arouse various negative associations, such as trivial-
ity, weakness, and passivity, while the usual associations with “typical boy” are very differ-
ent. Additionally, words that describe females or are directly linked to femininity, for
example “girl,” “girly,” and “effeminate,” have multiple negative connotations and may
even be used as insults (“you are such a girl”). Several terms for the female genitals are

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 vulgar slang words and even “suffragette” and “feminist,” whose meanings should be
entirely positive, given that most people today would agree that women and men should
have equal rights, including the right to vote, retain negative connotations.

Other examples of the English language reflecting gender inequality are the facts that
there are some words English speakers use almost exclusively for female people, among
them “bossy,”“bubbly,” “frigid,” “feisty,” “bitchy,” and “frumpy” (Sanghani, 2017), that
adult women are much more often referred to as “girls” than grown men are called “boys”
(Wright, 2021), and that there are no male equivalents to some female-gendered nouns,
for instance “spinster,” “career woman,” and “working mother.” It has been pointed out
that it would be odd to use the description “career man” since “it’s culturally assumed
that men have careers” (Wright, 2021).

Men and women talking

In addition to the difference between how people speak about men and women, there is a
general belief that men and women speak differently from (and to) each other. Many of
these ideas are based on prejudice and stereotypes and there is no evidence whatsoever
supporting them. Others, however, are observable differences, which research has been
able to quantify. Genderlect is a term sometimes used to refer to a speech variety or com-
munication style associated with a certain gender (Chandler & Munday, 2011). Genderlects
are believed to result from differences in social roles. It is important to stress here that
variation between how men and women communicate “are about relative power in societ-
ies rather than about innate differences between the sexes” (Chandler & Munday, 2011,
s.v. “genderlect”, l. 10-11).

Researchers have looked at linguistic gender stereotypes and sought evidence for and
against each claim. The following table introduces some of these results.

Table 24: Linguistic Gender Stereotypes: Claims and Evidence

False or true? Evidence

Claim: Women talk more than false; in certain contexts the James & Drakich (1993)
men reverse is true reviewed 56 studies: only 2 of
them found that women talk
more than men, 34 indicated
that men talk more than
women; the remaining showed
no clear pattern.

Claim: Women gossip more partly A study by Robbins & Karan

than men (2019) found that men and
women engage equally often in
negative gossip and that women
talk more frequently about
other people in a neutral, infor-
mation-sharing manner.

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 False or true? Evidence

Claim: Men interrupt more fre- true, especially when speaking Zimmerman & West (1975): In 31
quently to women mixed-sex conversations, 46 of
48 interruptions were made by
men.
Hancock & Rubin (2014): Men
were 33% more likely to inter-
rupt in mixed-sex conversations
as opposed to same-sex conver-
sations.
Jacobi & Schweers (2017): Male
Supreme Court Justices inter-
rupt female Justices approxi-
mately three times as frequently
as other male Justices.

Source: Inga Birth, (2022).

American linguist Robin Lakoff’s influential work Language and Woman’s Place (1973) initi-
ated research on the differences between male and female language and identified the
power imbalance between men and women as the main factor in occurring gender speech
differences. Although her contribution has been criticized for a lack of empirical research,
her definition and description of “woman’s language” has served as a framework for later
studies. According to Lakoff, “women’s use of language tends to involve more verbal ‘fill-
ers,’ hedges, qualifiers, and politeness markers; being less definitive (‘perhaps…’); using
more justifiers (‘because…’); asking more questions; agreeing more with conversational
partners; not interrupting and not monopolizing topic choice” (Chandler & Munday, 2011,
s.v. “genderlect”, ll. 7–10).

The genderlect theory introduced by American sociolinguist Deborah Tannen (1990)

claims that the conversational style of men and women in Western societies differs on
account of their status and their roles in society. It contrasts men’s and women’s language
according to conversational motivations or aims:

• status vs. support

• independence vs. intimacy
• advice vs. understanding
• information vs. feelings
• orders vs. proposals
• conflict vs. compromise

The former in each pair is, according to Tannen, characteristic of men, the latter of women.
She suggests that misunderstandings between men and women are often a result of con-
versations at cross-purposes, with women seeking rapport, “a way of establishing connec-
tions and negotiating relationships,” and men seeking to “preserve independence and
negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order” (Tannen, 1990, p. 77). Tan-
nen’s work has been criticized for potentially contributing to the reinforcement and per-
petuation of negative stereotypes.

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 In more general terms, research seems to suggest that women tend to use more Standard
English than men (Trudgill, 1974), and that when it comes to pronunciation, “in the good
majority of cases, women are leaders in the process of linguistic change” (Labov et al.,
2008, p. 191).

Standpoint theory

Standpoint theory, a term coined by feminist theorist Sandra Harding (1991), stresses the
importance of women’s perspective and knowledge when it comes to studies about
women, such as research into women’s language. It argues that “people from an
oppressed class have special access to knowledge that is not available to those from a
privileged class” and that their “unique standpoint […] make[s] it easier for them to define
important research questions and explain social and natural problems” (Borland, 2020,
para. 2).

Muted group theory (MGT)

Muted group theory is a communication theory created by Edwin and Shirley Ardener in
1975. It hypothesizes that the dominant group in a culture controls the language and its
norms, while marginalized people are forced to manage with what they are given and are
thus being “muted.” Languages serve those best who were most involved in their “crea-
tion” as their structures naturally reflect the needs of their “creators.”

Cheris Kramarae, an American scholar in communication and women’s studies, applied

this framework to feminist communication studies. Women are, according to her “not as
free or as able as men are to say what they wish, when and where they wish, because the
words and the norms for their use have been formulated by the dominant group, men”
(Kramarae, 1981, p. 1).

Recent developments

In recent years, there has been a move towards more inclusive language. People make an
effort to substitute gendered nouns (“policeman,” “fireman,” “postman,” “spokesman,”
“chairman”) with gender-neutral terms (“police officer,” “firefighter,” “postal worker,”
“spokesperson,” “chairperson”/“chair”). This is a reflection of the fact that women are
today more widely represented in a variety of occupational fields, including male-domina-
ted occupations, and of changing attitudes in society. In addition to being inclusive of
women, this trend in language also reinforces greater equality for gender-diverse people,
i.e. “people whose gender identity does not correspond to binary norms” (Fütty et al.,
2020, p. 9). The increasing use of singular “they” for nonbinary people is another example
of this development.

Social class and language

Although social stratification has decreased over the centuries and is today decidedly less
clear-cut in most societies around the world than it used to be, say, in Roman times, the
Middle Ages, or the slave-trade-dependent era of colonialism, it remains a fact in most

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people’s life. Social class, the division of populations according to social status, is tightly
linked with inequality as it grants certain people access to opportunities from which oth-
ers are excluded.

In terms of language, certain accents and dialects are associated with a lower level of edu-
cation and its speakers may therefore be disadvantaged in job interviews or be treated
unfairly in social situations. In contrast, speakers of other varieties, such as the Received
Pronunciation accent, are often treated favorably. Linguistic prestige (or a lack thereof)
can lead people to make assumptions about others on the basis of how they speak – this is
called accent bias – and to let stereotypes and prejudice affect their judgement. It also
influences how people feel about themselves. Their awarenessof social class is a vital ele-
ment of their self-identity.

Accents and speech sounds

Speech organs are organs involved in speech production. They include the nasal and oral
cavities, the lips, teeth, tongue, the hard and soft palate (the hard and soft part of the roof
of the mouth), the uvula (the small, soft piece of flesh at the back of the mouth, above the
throat), the vocal cords (or folds) in the so-called voice box or larynx, and the glottis, the
space between the vocal cords. The part of the throat from the larynx to the lips is called
the vocal tract. It is where every single sound we can make comes into being. We more-
over, of course, need lungs to be able to speak, and, facilitating deep breathing, the dia-
phragm.

Different sounds require different speech organs. To produce a vowel, for example, air
needs to flow from the lungs, through the glottis and the vocal cords (which vibrate to
make a sound), through the mouth and nose, and past the lips. The shape of the oral cav-
ity and lips defines which sound is produced. Consonants are made by restricting the air
flow with lips, tongue, or teeth.

There are more sounds in the English language than there are letters in the alphabet,
which is why researchers use the International Phonetic Alphabet for the accurate repre-
sentation of speech. Using the IPA, they can, for instance, record and study (differences in)
accents and dialects.

Accents differ in the individual sounds used to produce them, the stress, and the intona-
tion (the speech “melody”). Their distinctness from each other also means that many
accents are easily recognizable and, when associated with a negative stereotype, may dis-
advantage their speakers. Speakers with accents from rural areas are for example often
seen as less intelligent people on account of their accents alone. This prejudice may stem
from historical associations with physical labor in agricultural jobs – as opposed to intel-
lectual occupations – which, of course, is entirely unrelated to intelligence. Additionally,
accents are falsely treated as signifiers of trustworthiness, respectability, likeability, and so
on. There are many studies that have found people usually share common attitudes
towards certain varieties, both with regard to sociolects and regional dialects and accents
(e.g. Trudgill, 1974, and Labov, 1966). As with language forms themselves, attitudes
towards them, naturally, change, too. In the past, Received Pronunciation was considered
an extremely prestigious accent, associated in particular with public schools and elite uni-

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 versity. While RP’s prestige is still felt today, it is not as widely and clearly aspired to as in
the past. Today, many regard it as an outdated and self-important style of speaking. Also,
there has been a noticeable shift towards using regional varieties with a new sense of
pride. Most Cockney speakers, for example, take immense pride in their dialect and in
being immediately recognizable as (East) Londoners. When an accent is very strong and
noticeable, identifying the speaker as coming from a certain region, they are often descri-
bed as broad. Broad accents are usually associated with a particular population, usually
from a rather specific location – such as London’s East End – and often the working class.
The label is sometimes contrasted with the term general accent, for example in General
American accent.

When people are aware of an accent’s prestige status, they sometimes aspire to acquire it.
The reverse is true for an accent’s low status: Speakers sometimes make an effort to elimi-
nate their native way of speaking. They may, for example, take elocution classes in which
they learn to neutralize their accent or to speak another variety. Neutralization aims to
turn a broad accent into a more toned-down, general-sounding one. Some people change
their accents to fit in at work or in social contexts, to evade negative stereotypes and/or to
benefit from positive attitudes towards certain accents (e.g. assumptions about respecta-
bility and intelligence). In some occupational contexts – sectors that rely heavily on image,
such as banking or real estate, as well as customer service that reaches a global clientele,
making intelligibility vital (e.g. call centers) – accent neutralization is common. Some-
times, companies want their employees to use a “global accent” that can be understood
by anyone who speaks English. Given the importance of regional accents and sociolects to
people’s self-identity, this can be problematic as stripping them of their natural way of
speaking could be argued to take away aspects of their self-image and social identity.

Recent trends in how people live and work, including online communication, globalized
business, and the growth of urban centers, have influenced the way people speak. For
instance, their accents may subconsciously be affected by varieties of English (and other
languages) they encounter in big cities, on travels, or while studying or working away
home. People may also intentionally change their accents to express their self-image.
Some English speakers’ accents have become less localized as a result of their lifestyle or
profession, while a general shift in society towards a greater acceptance of and respect for
regional dialects has contributed to some embracing their local varieties.

4.3 The Relationship Between Language

and Thought
Because our thoughts are essential to our sense of self – indeed, some would argue that
our thoughts are what most defines us – any investigation of self-identity and language
has to consider the link between language and thought.

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Is language a prerequisite for thinking? Do we even think in words and sentences? Or do
we think in images and wordless concepts before we “translate” our thoughts into strings
of words? Can language used in a targeted manner influence our perception, even our
decision to associate with something or create a desire to dissociate ourselves from it?

The following theories of language and thought deal with these questions.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, also referred to as the hypothesis of linguistic relativity,

Whorfianism, and the Whorf hypothesis, is, put very briefly, the claim that language influ-
ences thought. This idea was first expressed at least as early as the 4th century BC – by
Plato and Aristotle – and has repeatedly been revisited throughout the centuries, for
example by von Herder and von Humboldt (Penn, 1975). The hypothesis was named for
linguists Edward Sapir (1884 – 1939) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897 – 1941), a student of
Sapir’s, because they intensively studied the link between language and thought. How-
ever, the name is misleading since Sapir and Whorf never co-authored a work dealing with
language and thought, and, most importantly, did not even ever express their ideas on the
subject in the form of a hypothesis. While their studies were in part indeed concerned with
the extent to which our thinking is influenced by the language we use, the hypothesis
named after them is a product of various – even contradictory – interpretations of their
individual writing. There are two main readings, a strong and a weak hypothesis, which
have been termed linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity respectively.

Linguistic determinism is the idea that thought is determined by language, that we are, in
other words, “imprisoned” by the structure and word stock of the language we speak, that
we cannot think outside of its limits. If this were true, the meaning of words that have no
equivalent in another language or the different concepts of time and space – evidenced in
the uses of tenses and expressions describing spatial relations – in different languages
would literally be impossible to explain to a non-native speaker. This is clearly not the
case. For this reason alone, most people consider the strong hypothesis disproven.

The determinist view can moreover be extremely dangerous. The idea that some people
are incapable of thinking certain thoughts because their native language does not provide
them with the means to do so is obviously highly problematic, and related claims that
some languages are superior to others and that speakers of “lesser” languages are conse-
quently intellectually impoverished are inherently racist.

Linguistic relativity, the weak interpretation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, posits that lan-
guage systems influence – not determine – the way their speakers think about and perceive
the world. Deutscher (2010a, para. 5) summarizes the difference between the stronger and
milder “versions” like this: “if different languages influence our minds in different ways,
this is not because of what our language allows us to think but rather because of what it
habitually obliges us to think about.”

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 Because the “hypothesis” has been interpreted in different ways, studies designed to
prove or disprove the theory were often entirely incomparable (Schlesinger, 1991). They
simply did not ask the same question at all. Moreover, many assumptions made about
how speakers of different languages differ in their conceptualizations were flawed and
based on misunderstandings, mistranslations, or misinterpretations.

Linguistic Reflectionism

Linguistic reflectionism takes the opposite perspective in considering the link between lan-
guage and thought. It is the notion that language reflects the culture of its speakers and
suggests that languages are influenced by the thoughts (i.e. the world view and culture) of
the people who speak it, not (or not only) the other way around. There is ample evidence
to support this view, for example outdated sexist or racist elements in the English lan-
guage that were once considered normal but are nowadays perceived as utterly inappro-
priate and are therefore substituted with politically correct terms.

The Boas-Jakobson Principle

Israeli linguist Guy Deutscher (born 1969) coined the term Boas-Jakobson principle, refer-
encing linguists Franz Boas (1858 – 1942) and Roman Jakobson (1896 – 1982). This specific
form of linguistic relativity (or neo-Whorfianism as it is often called in relation to more
recent research) is based on Boas′ explanation “that the grammar of each language deter-
mines which aspects of experience must be expressed”; Roman Jakobson “turned Boas′
insight into a pithy maxim” (Deutscher, 2010b, para. 12): “Languages differ essentially in
what they must convey and not in what they may convey” (Jakobson, cited in Deutscher,
2010a, para. 5.).

The Boas-Jakobson principle can be observed, for example, when looking at grammatical
gender. Some languages require a categorization according to gender whenever people
speak. Others do not. This, as research has shown, “affect[s] things like memory, atten-
tion, association, even practical skills like orientation” (Deutscher, 2010b, para. 12). Speak-
ers of various languages with grammatical gender (German and Spanish among others)
have been shown to have different associations with inanimate objects depending on
whether the words are masculine or feminine in their respective language (e.g. Boroditsky
et al., 2003).

Universalism

The theory of universalism claims that all languages have an underlying universal struc-
ture in common, which is why they show similar patterns and concepts (verbs, e.g., are
found in all languages). Differences between languages are thought to exist on the surface
structure of languages only and universalists believe that these do not affect cognitive
processes, such as perception and memory. According to universalism, cognitive pro-
cesses are, as the name suggests, universal – the same for every human being.

102
Largely a countermovement against the ideas of linguistic relativity, which received harsh
criticism and ridicule in the second half of the 20th century, universalism became domi-
nant in the 1960s to 1980s. Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar is based on the con-
cept.

Universalists (e.g. Steven Pinker, Ekkehart Malotki, and Eric Lenneberg) maintain that the
meaning of words and sentences is the same regardless of the language used, making
translations from any language into any other possible. The same ideas or events are sim-
ply expressed by different means. Thoughts are considered to exist separately from lan-
guage.

The hypothetical language of thought has been termed mentalese, a meta-language that
is theorized to exists before it is “translated” into words. This theory is called language of
thought hypothesis and accounts for babies (and people with language-affecting brain
injuries as well as primates) being able to think although they do not have a language.

SUMMARY
Language is a tool for self-expression – literally. It is more than a vehicle
to express one’s thoughts. People’s lexical choices, i.e. which words they
opt to use out of the many options they have, their pronunciation, into-
nation, style, and so on communicates how they see themselves and
who they want to be seen as. Speakers of any language use particular
features as identity markers. They may define themselves as roller derby
players by using roller derby jargon, as an admirer of classical music by
adopting the speech styles of other enthusiasts, as Welsh by code
switching between English and Welsh, as a confident person through
their self-assured tone of voice, as intellectual by using styles and pro-
nunciations associated with educated people … There are uncountable
ways in which people may use language to express their personality and
uncountable interpretations of people’s linguistic behavior. Fact is, lan-
guage lets them define, maintain, and adapt their self-identity – begin-
ning with the interactions that help them acquire language and continu-
ing throughout their lives in relation to others, in conversations with the
people around them and social situations. Just as their identity is multi-
faceted, their language is comprised of a multitude of styles. This, the
sum of their individual speech habits, is called their idiolect, and it
shows how they relate to other speakers. Sociolects are varieties used by
particular social groups; they are where people’s idiolects overlap.

Language used to create group-identity is inclusive and exclusive at the

same time. It brings people together and lets them signal their similarity
and solidarity. On the other hand, it excludes non-members. This can be
entirely harmless when it comes to hobbies and interests or very prob-
lematic when it leads to discrimination and social inequalities.

103
 Language has been shown to influence the way we think about the
world. Gendered associations with inanimate objects in speakers of lan-
guages with grammatical gender are an example of said phenomenon.
This influence, however, is no one-way process. Languages are signifi-
cantly affected by what their speakers think. It is for this reason that
they reflect the value system of the speech communities they are used
in.

104
BACKMATTER
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 LIST OF TABLES AND
FIGURES
Figure 1: Loanwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Figure 2: A Section of the Indo-European Language Family (simplified) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Figure 3: S-Curve Model of a new Feature (hypothetical) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Figure 4: n -gram Line Graph Comparing watch (verb) and watch (noun) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Figure 5: Zone of Proximal Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Figure 6: The UNESCO Six Degrees of Endangerment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Table 1: The Periods of English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Table 2: Comparison of Vowel Pronunciation Before and After the Great Vowel Shift . . . . 16

Table 3: Pronouns of Address and Possessives: Early Modern English and Modern English
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Table 4: Overview of Verb Endings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Table 5: Words and Phrases First Used by Shakespeare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Table 6: Late Modern English Additions to the Lexicon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Table 7: Processes of Language Change and Related Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Table 8: Developments: Standardization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Table 9: Examples: Broadening and Narrowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Table 10: n -gram: children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Table 11: n -gram: phone and telephone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Table 12: Word sketch of fire as Noun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Table 13: The Main Stages of Early Language Developement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

109
 Table 14: Halliday’s Functions of Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Table 15: Support for and Criticism of the Imitation and Reinforcement Theory . . . . . . . . 50

Table 16: Support for and Criticism of the Theory of Innate Language Competence . . . . . 51

Table 17: Piaget’s Stages of Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Table 18: Managing Conversations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Table 19: Features of Unscripted Conversation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Table 20: Transcription Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Table 21: The International Phonetic Alphabet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Table 22: Loanwords AmE Borrowed from Immigrants’ Native Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Table 23: Lexical differences (AmE and BrE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Table 24: Linguistic Gender Stereotypes: Claims and Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

110
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