Origins of English paragraph

Shakespeare uses the rhetorical interrogative 'how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seems to me all the uses of this world?' to describe his character Hamlet's wishes to take his own life. At the time this play was first shown, suicide would have been seen as a great sin as Catholicism was followed in such an orthodox fashion. It is likely due to this context that this would have left the audience very shocked that such an act was spoken about so casually. It could be argued from this that the expectations of text consumption are being fulfilled as the nature of such a text would be to entertain and use of such a taboo topic would have certainly caused unrest and entertainment. It could also be argued that for the same reason the expectations of the text are not being fulfilled because it is probable that many of the audience members wold have been outraged about such an act being somewhat normalised by a play. Furthermore, the phrase 'uses of this world' connotes a certain selfishness in that it refers to taking from the world as oppose to giving. This is likely to have further, shocked an audience who were likely to be religious and therefore brought up to believe in a giving, worshipping environment.  

article comparison

Article comparison

Section of an article that displays language change negatively

Section of an article that displays language change positively

Teens these days do not use their thumbs for hitching rides on the side of the road. They use their thumbs to text rapid-fast messages to their friends on their cellphones. But, because keypads on cellphones are so tiny and typically thumbs are not, and each number key represents multiple letters, the tight maneuvering can lead to quite a few spelling mistakes.
Mistakes that can lead to hilarity—and to neologisms.
That’s right. The rapid-fast world of text-messaging has lead to the coining of new words. Well, new slang words.
For instance, did you know that pwn means own and that noobs means newbies?
But how can a spelling mistake become a word added to our common lexicon? It has to do with staying power. And these days a slang word is more likely than ever before to stick around. That’s because of where the slang is being used—in the cybersphere—it has more chances to reach across age groups, demographics, cultures, and societies. It can permeate. It can get picked up in the main stream and suddenly, what was once a spelling mistake can now be overheard in conversations on the street being held by parents, business professionals and even grandparents.
But do we have to worry about how slang and short forms is affecting teens’ language development? Not if they are able to use whole forms and demonstrate complete and competent language skills in areas that they need to, like in proper speech or on an essay. This viewpoint on teens and text-messaging is a departure from our opinion of text messaging and language development in children who are in the lower-level grades and who are still are acquiring their language skills.
According to Katherine Barber of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, the fact that teens are developing new slang words is a good thing. “If the kids are picking up new words and new meanings then that means that they’re playing with the language,” she says. Spelling mistakes and the slang words that develop from rapid-fast thumb texting mean that kids are thinking about words, spelling and meaning, and that teens are playing an active role in language development.
Teens thinking about language and new words? They deserve two thumbs up.

Comparison

It is interesting that the two articles are both stating that he same thing is occurring but one states that it is negative and the other that it is positive; I think that the difference in grammar is a big reason for the change in tone across the two articles. The first article has a common use of more compound and complex sentences such as ‘adjectives such as ‘fantastic’ and ‘disastrous’ are rarely heard, and when they are the speaker is often referred to as posh’ (compound). This appears to create a more descriptive, factual and less upbeat tone in comparison with the second article which uses more simple sentences and sentence fragments such as ‘teens these days do not use the thumbs for hitching rides on the side of the road’ (simple). This common use of more simple grammar is creating a more, relaxed, accepting tone, furthermore, by using more simple grammar it appeals to the audience by showing that simple (and perhaps different) language to what you would find in an article is not a Bad thing.

It is also relevant to consider lexical differences across the two texts, in contrast with the grammatical difference, the second text appears to use much more complex lexis than the first one, it could even be argued that a linguistic-based special lexicon is present due to words such as ‘neologisms’ ‘common lexicon’ and ‘demographics’. By using this exclusive lexis, it gives readers the idea that there is more evidence to support the idea that slang and young people’s language change is not a bad thing. It could even be argued that in this context the language is used as a phatic token, giving status and an educated tone to what might be thought of as a poorly supported argument.

 

 

‘Young readers should be corrected whenever they make a mistake’

‘Young readers should be corrected whenever they make a mistake’

Early in the transcript there is evidence to support the idea that young readers should be corrected whenever they make a mistake; George struggles to pronounce the concrete noun ‘sandbags’ this is likely to be due to the fact that it is low-frequency lexis and appears to be an example of a consonant cluster with the letters ‘d’ and ‘b’. After his mother asks him to sound out how to correctly pronounce it, praise is given. According to Skinner’s operant conditioning theory, by using the terms ‘well done’, George’s mother is positively reinforcing his linguistic behaviour. By doing this he is more likely to repeat this behaviour, this shows that by correcting young readers it leads to better language development and therefore supports the question. However, it could be argued that it was the praise that George’s mother gave that is causes language development as oppose to the correction, therefore contradicting the statement in the question.

Linked to my first point is the idea that modelling and scaffolding causes development in linguistic ability. Later In the transcript George's mother models how to say the word 'sandbags' by splitting it into the two morphemes 'sand' and 'bags' and asking him to repeat what she says. This is evidence of the primary caregiver providing scaffolding to help the child reach Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. in essence, bridging the gap between what George does know and what he can know. Therefore, by George's mother scaffolding for him when he makes the mistake of mispronouncing the word 'sandbags' his linguistic ability is being developed, thus, supporting the phrase in the question.

Certain theories (with evidence from the text) appear to contradict the statement in the question, The fact that we know that George is 7 years old allows us to see the stage he is currently at in developmental theories. One such developmental theory is Piaget's critical stage hypothesis; according to Piaget's theory George is in concrete operational stage of language development. This is an innate stage of development which can't be effected by correction from making a mistake. At this stage George would be expected to think in a rational way but lack understanding of abstract or unclear topics and ideas. There is evidence from this in the text in that George spells words out phonetically to understand them but lacks understanding but often reverts to local topics and basic phonetics when he isn't sure on how to pronounce a word such as when he says 'upstairs' instead of 'upset'. because Piaget's theory is so well supported, this contradicts the statement in the question.

In summary, there is evidence to support and contradict the statement 'young readers should be corrected when the make a mistake'. It could certainly be argued that development of language is more innate and that correcting a child does not aid their linguistic development. Theorists such as Piaget and Noam Chomsky show this. However, it could also be argued that without being corrected, children will continue to make the same mistakes, evidence from George using correct forms after being corrected in the text shows this and it is further supported by theorists such as Skinner and Vygotsky

Word that has changed in meaning

Word that has changed in meaning

The adjective ‘awful’ used to have the complete opposite meaning to what it does now. The word awful used to describe something which is simply ‘full of awe’. This means that it would describe something positive, similar to the way that we use the adjective ‘awesome’ in modern day English. The word has changed to mean something which is ‘so terrible that it is worthy of awe’. This therefore means that prejoation has occurred as the word has become more negative.

Exemplified, nowadays if we used the phrase ‘that t-shirt looks awful’, we are saying that we very much dislike the t-shirt. However, many years ago if you were to say that the t-shirt looked awful, you’d be saying that you really like the t-shirt; similar to if you said you thought the t-shirt looks awesome nowadays.

The term has prejorated so much that it has become unheard of in modern English and would lead to great confusion if used in the way it used to be.

1600 comparison

1600’s Shakespearian	Modern English
He doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus; and we petty men walk under his huge legs, and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves	He walks on the narrow world like a giant, and petty men like us walk under his huge legs and look forward only to dying dishonourably.

 

This is an extract from the Shakespearian play ‘Julius Ceaser’

Firstly, the context should be considered; the play is action-orientated and based on a leader who was known for being strong and brutal, therefore, Shakespeare might well have used language that sensationalise the tension and feeling of awe in the extract. The use of the verb ‘doth’ is a variation of the modern day verb ‘to do’, this is placed before the objective verb ‘bestride’ to increase a sense of majesty and vastness. In modern English we don’t use either of these verbs and instead would just use the one verb ‘walks’. Therefore, it would be fair to say that the phrase ‘doth bestride’ has become obsolete in modern English.

Interestingly, in the Shakespearian text, the word Colossus is used as a singular, common concrete noun. Although, this is sometimes still used in modern English in this way but the term Colossus is perhaps more commonly used a proper noun to describe a company such as Colossus Computers or Colossus Comics., this is an example of semantic shift and I believe it to be broadening.

Finally, the Shakespearian text uses the phrase ‘peep about’ where in modern English we use the phrase look forward. There is a correspondence in that both texts use a variation of the verb ‘to see’ (‘peep’ and ‘look’). However, the Shakespearian text uses the present tense preposition ‘about’ whereas in modern day English we use the future tense adverb ‘forward’. I feel as though this phrase has become amorliated in a semantic sense, because by using a word to do with the future you are connoting a sense of positivity.   

children's writing

Children’s writing

1) Pre–Phonemic stage

• Children write incoherent squiggles which aren’t separated into words

 

 2) Semi-phonetic stage

• They start to produce some form of letter shape, some are invented and some are mirrored from what they’ve seen.
•  It’s often not split into words

 

3) Phonetic stage

• They write words using phonetic spelling
• It refines as they develop and bad spelling shouldn’t be criticised, the communication should just be rewarded

 

4) Transitional stage

• They start to learn some key patterns, even some digraphs (two letters making one sound)

 

5) Conventional stage

• They learn to spell most words

• They then start to get an awareness of punctuation as their writing and reading begins to improve
• They start to use conventions of the different words they know
•  They start to become aware of differences in formality with reading and writing

Another theory of writing development by Kroll (1981)

Stage 1: Preparatory stage

• Masters the basic motor skills needed to write
• Learns the basic principles of the spelling system.

 
Stage 2: Consolidation stage (age up to 6)

• Child writes in the same way it speaks.
• Uses short declarative sentences which include mainly ‘and’ conjunctions.
• Incomplete sentences as they don’t know how to finish the sentence off.

 
Stage 3: Differentiation stage (age up to 9)

• Child becomes aware of the difference between speaking and writing.
• Recognises the different writing styles available e.g. letter, essay.
• Lots of mistakes.
• Use writing guides and frameworks to structure work.
• Write to reflect thoughts and feelings.

 
Stage 4: Integration stage (12+)

• Child develops a personal style.
• Child understands that you can change your style according to audience and purpose.

virtuous error is when a child makes a mistake because they've never learned the correct way.


These are examples:

Insertion - adding extra letters 

Omission - leaving out letters

Substitution - substituting one letter for another

Transposition - reversing the order of letters in words

Phonetic spelling - spelling words according to the standard phonemes that graphemes make

Over/undergeneralising of spelling rules - applying or not applying rules in inappropriate contexts or one specific context

Salient (key) sounds - only including the key sounds

Child's text


'Bird of prey


Bird of prey mean that
A bird of prey hunt's
thats why it has a pointed beake
A bird of prey is very special Bird
there Just not like any sparrow becous there bigger
a better and protective but not as loving


Bird of prey fliing'


- The child sometimes fails to pluralise some key words such as 'mean' to 'means', this is an example of omission.
- The child adds 'e' onto the word 'beak' creating the word 'beake', this is an example of insertion
- the child uses the determiner 'there' instead of 'they're'. This is an example of overgeneralising words
- the child says the word 'fliing' instead of 'flying' this shows phonetic spelling


   

Introduction of investigation

Introduction of investigation 


I chose to investigate names and terms of address after reading Richard Hudson's article on the online English and Media magazine. He describes how every name and term of address has a different social message and I want to discover whether people perceive this to be true. Grice's maxims of conversation link to this argument; Grice's maxim of quality states that we shouldn't portray information for which we have no evidence, does this mean that by calling someone by a title without first asking them what that title is would be flouting a maxim of conversation? I wanted to look deeper into this idea so I chose to investigate the hypothesis 'people's positive face needs are effected when they are being referred to by the wrong title'. To investigate this I used a questionnaire in which I will find out how/when people are offended by being called the wrong title (if at all).