Language change

Language change (Grafmiller, 2019) Language change is diachronic (changing over time), revealing linguistic patterns across different points in time (Clayton and Giovanelli, 2018) “Language change is not arbitrary, but exhibits patterns that are driven by sociocultural changes.” (Halliday) Systemic functional linguistics (SFL): study of the relationship between language and its function in social settings; follows the principles that language is used to make meaning that is influenced by the social and cultural context in which the language is exchanged, and that using language is a semiotic process that fundamentally allows users to make meaning by choosing. - Ideologies, attitudes and behaviour influences/reflects language, and vice versa Terminology for historical development of English: 1) 450-1100AC Old English 2) 1100-1500AC Middle English 3) 1500-1800AC Early modern 4) 1800AC-present Modern English - Vocabulary affected by vast social and technology changes since the industrial revolution, the interest is influencing the speed at which new words are entering English - Unprecedented growth of scientific vocabulary (scientific and technical terms now comrise ⅔ of the English vocabulary) - British empire at its peak covered ¼ of the Earth’s surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries - American English continues to grow as a dominant variety due to the emergence of the US as a leading economic power in the 20th century Factors for language change: 1) New concepts that need to be named in new cultures - Borrowing from other languages (to fill a referential gap to refer to notions and things that have been newly introduced to English speakers) “Blush”, the cosmetic product used to colour cheeks was first called “paint” as recorded from 1660. Those days, both men and women of higher social classes painted their faces to show their high status. In 1753, the term “rouge” meaning red was borrowed from French and it displaced “paint”. “Rouge” remained the usual word for the product for around 2 centuries before an advertisement in 1965 coined the term “blusher” for the product. The term “blusher” displaced “rouge”

in everyday speech and it underwent back-clipping to form the term “blush” that is commonly used today to refer to the same cosmetic product. - Coinage: social change giving rise to new concepts, the naming of new technology and innovations, etc. The Covid-19 pandemic gave rise to the coinage of new terms that we are all familiar with today, initialisms such as “WFH” meaning work from home and compounded phrases such as “safe-distancing” were introduced and heavily used by institutions globally. To label things that existed previously but were not of focus, the term “teenager” was only coined in the 1910s but became popularised as a marketing neologism in the 1950s. 2) Political/economic/religious motivations: driven by new needs, new technologies, new fields of knowledge - Blending: combining existing concepts to describe overlaps and innovations across industries Economic changes resulted in “fintech”, “bitcoin” - Change of meaning “POV” no longer strictly means point of view, it is now used on social media as an interpersonal discourse marker to introduce a familiar experience or life event, like “POV you go to Costco and end up with a haul”; Also serves a sociological function because it is associated with the posting of memes, so when “POV” is used the watcher is psychologically primed for something funny, such templates including “me when” or “that feeling when” serve similar purposes making memes using these phrasal templates more successful

(Social factors affect rate of change. A person simultaneously belongs to a particular age group, region, and social group so change may spread through diffusion.) 3) Ideological changes - Political correctness: avoiding offence and being impolite “Disabled” or “Handicapped” is increasingly viewed as unacceptable, “Person with disabilities” is the PC term for this group; can be linked to (Pinker, 2003) Euphemism treadmill and Identity-first labelling - Speaker attitudes towards causes (such as inclusivity) The push for more gender-inclusive pronouns has led to the coinage of new gender-neutral pronouns such as ze/zir and the increase in use of the pronouns they/them even when referring to a singular person. Additionally, the creation of the honorific “Ms” to be used in place of “Miss” or “Mrs” was to resist the convention of women to declare their marital status publicly - Group identity: maintenance and expression of group identity (Boomers, Gen Z, etc.) (Labov, 1963) Martha’s Vineyard study: On Martha’s vineyard, an island off the north-east coast of America, a small group of fishermen began to exaggerate a tendency already existing in their speech (more frequent use of the centralised diphthong). They did this to establish themselves as an independent social group with superior status to the despised summer tourists, who they claim disrupt their way of island life. A number of other islanders regarded this group of fishermen as the representation of old virtues and desirable values, and subconsciously imitated the way they spoke. The new pronunciation, seen as an innovation by the other islanders, became the norm for those living on the island and the way of speaking established itself as a dialect. - Markers of distinct ethnic identities 4) Social change driving speaker preference - Informalisation of discourse: process by which language forms traditionally used for close personal relationships are now used in much wider social contexts (Fairclough, 1994) “Professional encounters are increasingly likely to contain informal forms of English; they are now becoming conversationalised” - Prioritise convenience and efficiency “God be with you” shortened to “Good-bye”, initialisms “FBI” “BBC” “CD”, blending “sitcom”

- Words that are simply less used and becomes obsolete “Bridegroom” evolved from the word “brydguma”, literally meaning “bride-man” but the word “guma” eventually dropped out of use and became obsolete. The loss left the second half of “brydguma” isolated and a mystery to English language speakers who understood the bride part without difficulties. Trying to make sense of it, they altered it to the similar sounding “bridegroom” because “groom” was a word familiar to them; Although “groom” meant somebody