Analysis of Sandi Toksvig article

As the article was written for The Telegraph the audience is most likely traditional, older readers who probably have a prescriptive attitude to language change. This article strongly suggests that Toksvig has a descriptivist view and therefore she must mitigate the ways in which she talks about her opinion as it is conflicting with her audience.

The anecdote about a Q&A session ties in prescriptivists and descriptivist attitudes. You could suggest that the anecdote symbolises the common fight between these two viewpoints. She starts off with “…I was roundly scolded by a woman…” The use of the verb “scolded” seems to decrease the power which Toksvig has; the verb ‘scold’ can be associated with parents and their children. This may be to paint a picture of prescriptivists to the audience which may make them subconsciously agree with her. She describes this woman as irate; perhaps symbolising the ways Toksvig believes prescriptivists behave towards language change. She said that, “Naturally I felt terrible…” in response to this woman’s accusations, she allows the audience to see that she wasn’t aware of what was happening and that no one was right or wrong. She seems to remain neutral throughout the article; she does not comment on the woman in a judgemental manner. You could suggest that as her audience may be prescriptivists this subtle way of expressing her opinions does not openly criticise the view point others may hold. Her readers may not want to agree with the ‘irate’ woman because this is describes as an angry and negative opinion to hold.

The use of facts help her article to remain fairly neutral. After her comments on the Q&A session she says, “Ever polite, I didn’t feel the moment was right to remind the irate woman that English is actually a West Germanic language.” Her opinion here is wrapped up in facts. The adverb ‘actually’ could be read with a sarcastic tone suggesting that Toksvig thought this woman was perhaps less knowledgeable than her and that her opinions were based on false ideas. But the use of a fact to back up the point almost gives Toksvig the right to use a sarcastic tone, or to call her irate. This suits the audience and purpose of the article as the prescriptivist readers may not be offended and they may in fact be persuaded by the fact used. The use of a fact that any town which ends in “gate” was created by borrowing the Danish word for “street” “gade”, may debunk some prescriptivists opinions. They may have said “Margate, “Ramsgate” etc… but been unaware how these proper nouns had been formed and been perfectly accepting of the word itself. Following this with a joke, “You can just imagine the Q&A session 1,200 years ago when some poor writer would’ve been help responsible for the ‘wretched Vikings’ coming over here and ruining our perfectly good words for ‘road’,” seems to state that those who are against language change are wrong. By backing up the joke with facts suggests that it is funny that people reject language change. But her audience cannot disagree unless they have been openly unaccepting of many towns names.

 

Pidgins and Creoles

A pidgin language is nobody's native language. It often arises when two speakers with no common language try and have a makeshift conversation. Lexicon usually comes from one, structure from the other. The prestige of Pidgin languages is very low due to slavery and colonialism for example. Many pidgins may only exist for one speech event.

A Creole is a stable natural language which has developed from a pidgin.

Conventions of Online Dictionaries

• Gives the phonetic spelling.
• You can listen to the word being said, this allows you to understand how to pronounce the word or perhaps if you have heard it before but did not know its meaning.
• Gives the word class it belongs to and how you can make it plural increasing your ability to re-use the word.
• Often it shows where the word originated and how it has changed.
• It gives a range of examples of the word being used in a sentence.
• Often it gives synonyms and antonyms.
• May give examples of how it can be used informally.
• Often they give you translations to other language or the ability to translate the word.

Father:
 
The world father has a range of meanings such as, a male parent of a child, an important figure in history responsible for the creation of something; "the father of abstract art." The founding father. It can be a verb: to father someone. In Christianity the father refers to God.  Father is the name given to a priest. It can also be used to show respect:  the oldest members of a society, the fathers. (Elders, leaders)
 
The word "father" can be traced back to the Latin word 'pater'.

There was a process called "the great consonant shift" which meant that related languages began to change and letters such as 

"p" began to be pronounced as "f" or "v",

"t" began to be pronounced as "d"

 

This explains why the Latin word "pater" translates so similarly into various European languages as:

vater - German

faeder - Old English
padre - Italian & Spanish

Middle English: Father

Widespread phonetic shift in Middle English that turned -der to -ther in many words

Attitudes to Language Change

Prescriptivists: Believe that language has to be accurate, right or wrong.

Descriptivists: Notice Language Change objectively.

Three metaphors used by prescriptivists to talk about language change are; the ‘damp spoon’ syndrome, the ‘crumbling castle’ view and the ‘infectious disease’ assumption.

• The ‘crumbling castle’ refers to how the English Language was once a magnificent castle but over the years it has crumbled away. Jean Aitchinson disagrees with this stating that as a language is constantly changing there could be no single point at which it was magnificent. “No year,” she said, “can be found when language achieved some peak of perfection.”

• The ‘damp spoon’ suggests that language change is due to laziness. Aitchinson disagrees again saying that, “The only truly lazy speech is drunken speech, where alcohol affects coordination, and English is not getting like drunken speech.”

• The ‘infectious disease’ suggests that ‘bad English’ is like a disease which is spread. Aitchinson says that this is technically correct but it is no disease.  Douglas Bush says that, “…the disease metaphor falls down… people pick up changes because they want to.”

There is an argument which suggests that the changes in our language are similar to the changes in our fashion. However a Guardian article by David Shariatmadari suggests that this is not the case. He explores the debated which language change creates, “Fashions come and go too, but it's hard to think of clothes that excite the same hot-under-the-collar debates.” He mentions the bad grammar award nominations which suggest that many still take a prescriptivist attitude to language. 

Bibliography:

David Shariatmadari. (6th Mary 2014). Is language like fashion, or the weather?. Available: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/06/language-fashion-weather-speak. Last accessed 29th Feb 2016.

Anthony Rea. Language Debates. Available: https://languagedebates.wordpress.com/tag/jean-aitchison/. Last accessed 29th Feb 2016.

CLA Test

1) Stages in order; Cooing, Babbling, Holophrastic, Two word, Telegraphic, Post-telegraphic.

2) 
Bruner- Interactional
Lenneberg- Critical Period
Chomsky- Nativist
Piaget- Cognitive
Skinner- Behaviourist

3) Overextension is where a child may see similar objects and overextends the word they know to include these objects, such as a child referring to apples, oranges and grapefruits as "ball".

4) Underextension is where a child does not relate words she knows to other things for example she may refer to her boots as 'shoes' but will not use this term to describe any other shoes, apart from her own.

5) Overgeneralisation is where someone applies regular verb rules to irregular verbs. For example a child may say, 'I falled over,' or 'I runned away'. Links to Chomsky's lad (virtuous error.) 

6) A child says 'Daddy go work' as her father leaves for work. We may suggest that the child is at the telegraphic stage, the child has used the verb to go but has missed the auxiliary verb 'is' going to change it to, "Daddy is going to work."

7) A child says "Me like ice cream." They have used the 1st person object pronoun "me" instead of the 1st person subject pronoun (I). However the word order is correct (correct syntax)

8) A child says 'timney' instead of 'chimney'. This is substitution- simpler t sound instead of ch sound.

9) A child says 'ca' instead of 'cat'. This is deletion- last consonant sound t.

10) A child says 'nana' instead of 'banana'. Deletion of unstressed syllable- ba.

11) Halliday's functions:

Instrumental

Language to express needs etc… “I want…”

Personal

Language which expresses individual identity.

Interactional

Language used to develop social relationships.

Regulatory

Language to influencing the behaviour of others. Indicating “Do as I say.”

Representational

Language used for exchanging information.

Heuristic

Language aimed at learning and exploring the world around them. A “tell me why” feel.

Imaginative

Language to tell stories, jokes, to create imaginary worlds/story telling.

12) Jean Berko: "wugs". She presented pictures of imaginary creatures to children and given labels such as "wug". They would then ask what 2 of the creates were, i.e. this is a "wug" what are these? Young children had difficulty but 4/5 year olds could usually label the plural "wugs". The natavists have long ued this example as evidence that language is not memorized. 

13) Concrete nouns are probably the most common word class in the average child's 50 first words. This may be because concrete nouns are the physical things around them, local topics, which they can easily understand.

14) In order to establish turn-taking between a carer and a child the carer may set up a question and answer structure to make it clear whose turn it is.

15) The ways in which a parent/carer can make their use of language easier for a child to understand.
Child Directed Speech:

• The use of diminutive for baby-talk: "doggie"
• Higher pitch
• Softer/gentler speech
• Gaps between words
• Talk about local topics
• Scaffolding
• Interaction which is enjoyable
• Open questions
• Echoing 

16) Genie was a feral/wild child who was discovered by social workers. At 13 her vocabulary was extremely limited she only had around 20 words. This case is used to support the critical learning period hypothesis, as Genie was never able to fully acquire language.

17) Jim was the son of deaf parents and the only oral language he had was through the television. His parents hoped he would acquire language this way. However his language was limited until a speech therapist was enlisted to work with him. It is used to support the interactive theory.

18) Other theorists include David Crystal, Cruttenden and Aitchison. 

19) LAD stands for language acquisition device.

20) At the telegraphic stage children combine content words in the correct syntax but often miss out determiners (a.the) and auxiliary verbs (is doing, am running.)

Michael Halliday: Functions of Language.

Function	Example
Instrumental	Language to express needs etc… “I want…”
Personal	Language which expresses individual identity.
Interactional	Language used to develop social relationships.
Regulatory	Language to influencing the behaviour of others. Indicating “Do as I say.”
Representational	Language used for exchanging information.
Heuristic	Language aimed at learning and exploring the world around them. A “tell me why” feel.
Imaginative	Language to tell stories, jokes, to create imaginary worlds/story telling.