Language Change

Adrian Beard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415320559
• eBook ISBN: 9781134360673
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Intertext series has been specifically designed to meet the needs of contemporary English Language Studies. Working with Texts: A Core Introduction to Language Analysis (second edition 2001) is the foundation text, which is complemented by a range of 'satellite titles. These provide students with hands-on practical experience of textual analysis through special topics, and can be used individually or in conjunction with Working with Texts.
Language Change:

• examines the way external factors have influenced and are influencing language change, focusing on how changing social contexts are reflected in language use
• explores the attitudes, values and assumptions that shape the way we use language
• looks at how language change operates within different genres, such as problem pages, sports reports and recipes
• provides lively examples from everyday communication, including letters, emails, postcards and text messages
• includes a unit on how new words are formed and features a full glossary.

Unit three
Interpersonal communication genres and change

In the previous units you were introduced to the idea that language change is inextricably linked to social contexts, generic conventions and ideological attitudes. Changes in language use both express and reflect changes in social practices. In Unit two we looked at texts from commercial publications which involve widespread readership. In this unit we will explore aspects of language change by looking at person-to-person communication produced in private contexts.

WRITING HOME

The first piece of data to be explored in this unit looks at the messages sent on some holiday postcards. Postcards were first used in Britain in 1869. They were a new form of communication in a number of ways: they were ‘open’ in that the message could be read by anyone; they were pre-paid; they cost less than letters. As with many new forms of communication, they were amazingly popular, with 76 million sent in the first year of their production.

Picture postcards were first produced in Britain in 1902, and Britain was the first country to divide the back of the card to allow both a message and the address. This meant that a holiday postcard, a kind of sub-genre, allowed you to send a picture of where you were and a short greeting.

Holiday postcards have certain generic features, including: they are essentially phatic in purpose, rarely giving any meaningful news or information, and they are often part of a social routine, rather like the sending of Christmas cards. Below are four postcards, two sent in the 1950s and two in the 1990s.

Activity

Look at Text 11: Holiday Postcards. What aspects of interpersonal communication remain constant across the four cards, and in what ways can you say that the two later cards are more informal than the first two? Can you find any other differences between the earlier and later cards?

Text 11: Holiday Postcards

a Jersey – 1958

Had very enjoyable trip down – up to time – weather above the clouds glorious sunshine. Wet yesterday – fine today but dull. Spent evening with our friends from Durham and met some local people. Bus tour this afternoon so now know a little of the island. 6pm now and sun is shining so hopes are high for the rest of the week. Hotel good and all are well.

Love

Jim and Katie

b Sidmouth, Devon 1958

Shirley and I are having a lovely holiday here and the weather has been quite good and much warmer than at home. Hope you are well and that we may see you soon. With love from us both.

Lily

c St Anton, Austria 1998

Have now arrived in St Anton after having a lovely week in Kitzbuhel. The weather has been hot (almost too much for A.) and sunny. Walked for 5 days and cycled for one day – guess which bit felt numb. I’m going to ring you later so you’ll have this news before you get it!!

Love Alan and Sheila

Spectacular thunderstorm with lots of lightning last night.

d West Cork, Ireland 1997

This is the view from a nice bar near our house with live music early evening. Lesley’s tanning whilst I study. Nice walks and terrific food – Michael, the local, brings mussels and has just dropped off some pork chops from his just slaughtered pig – that’s Ireland.

Rod and Lesley xx

Commentary

While it would be dangerous to generalise about language change on the evidence of only four postcards, cards (a) and (b) have some things in common with (c) and (d), and some things which differ.

All of the cards show the generic tradition of ellipsis by omitting words, although this is most prominent in (a) and they all have terms of approval such as ‘enjoyable’, ‘lovely’, ‘nice’. The genre does not conventionally allow holidaymakers to say they are having a bad time. All of them refer to the weather, although (d) only does so by implication.

One set of differences is in the way the personalities of the senders (and receivers) are acknowledged much more in the later cards. So there is a saucy reference to sore bums, the fact that some like it hotter than others, some study while other sunbathe, bars are visited and local culture appreciated. These are travellers with little anecdotes they are willing to share, aware that cards serve no real informational purpose at all, especially when they arrive after a phone call. Texts (a) and (b) though are much more formal in the sense that they say so little that is distinctly personal. Note too that (c) adds some late news after signing off. The writer of this card shows a playful awareness of various narrative possibilities, and in that sense is similar to the way some people use emails and chat-rooms.

Extension

1. To explore further some of the issues raised with the postcards above, find your own postcard data. In addition to postcards sent to you, you could also find postcards sold in antique markets or collections belonging to family members.
2. Many electronic postcards are available on-line – a quick search will lead to lots of examples. These postcards and their sites can themselves be researched. It should also be possible to acquire some examples of correspondence in this format, and compare the way people use electronic cards to the way they use the ‘real thing’.

FORMALITY AND INFORMALITY

One way in which the written texts above were compared was in their level of formality. It was noted that the two cards sent in the 1990s were more informal in their register. Sharon Goodman (1996) notes that we are living in a time of increased informalisation. This word is used to describe the process whereby the language forms that were traditionally reserved for close personal relationships are now used in much wider social contexts such as education, business, politics etc. Referring to the work of Norman Fairclough, she notes: ‘professional encounters are increasingly likely to contain informal forms of English; they are becoming in Fairclough’s term “conversationalized”.’

As with most aspects of language change, attitudes to such informalisation differ (see Unit five for a discussion of attitudes to change). Some would argue that a more informal English in a wide range of contexts breaks down barriers between ‘them’ and ‘us’. Others would argue that the barriers remain, but that we are more liable to be manipulated if they appear not to be.

Text 12: Headmasters’ Letters shows two texts with a formality of register which would seem very unusual in contemporary texts, especially when written by two people who are reasonably well-known to each other. As has been stressed throughout this book so far, no simple conclusions about language and time can be made on the evidence of a few short (usually written) texts. The context of the two letters which follow is:

• both are men and headmasters as they would have termed themselves, writing in 1953;
• they are headmasters of selective schools, O.W. Donaldson of a public school and B.F. Wood of a grammar school (names of people and institutions have been changed);
• they have had some social as well as professional contact.

Activity

Read the two letters shown in Text 12: Headmasters’ Letters. What features of these letters suggest a high degree of formality compared with what we might expect in a communication nowadays? You could include in your answers reference to:

• greetings/modes of address;
• openings and closures;
• use of vocabulary and idioms;
• attitudes and values that the writers show.

Text 12: Headmasters’ Letters

Dear Donaldson

I expect that as soon as you get back to school you will be very busy, so don’t bother to reply to this letter until things have eased off.

I am trying to persuade my Ladies Working Party not to present the school with a sound film projector (price about £200) for Coronation Year, but to let us have a tape recorder (very much cheaper) instead, in the hope that they might let us use the difference for certain other purposes near to my heart.

Despite my efforts, they still remain unconvinced as to the value of a tape recorder as against a sound film projector. I have told them that what worries me is that I may not be able to use a sound projector as much as they think I should. They insist, quite rightly, that they want something that every child in the school can enjoy and participate in.

You I know have a tape recorder which you value highly. Am I looking a gift horse in the mouth and being rather silly about things? What do you think I should do – accept the sound film projector and be thankful or try to re-inforce my suggestion for a tape recorder?

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely,

Dear Wood,

Before I waver in the decision you have asked me to make – the advice you asked me to give – let me say firmly (I shall regret this later) that I should go for the sound film projector. This is clearly a thing you will never regret having and it will open the way to a greater number of films etc. at your discretion and it will be difficult at any time to lay your hands on such a sum of money as would be needed. On the other hand, while the tape recording machine is expensive, round about £70, it might not be impossible to raise this money – or again, the price may well come down within a year or two.

Put it how you like, while the recorder would be of immense interest and value, I think it probably your duty to have the sound projector as a school possession. These days a headmaster can hardly hold his head up if he has to confess a lack of such a thing!

We must meet soon and talk about Italy. I was very glad to get your card.

Kindest regards to you both

Yours sincerely

Commentary

When considering aspects of change over time, it is worth bearing in mind the modes of communication available when the text was produced, and the means by which the physical text itself was produced. In 1953 two options were available to Wood – he could write a letter, which he would almost certainly have dictated to his female secretary or he could have made direct contact with his colleague by telephone. It should be remembered though that in those days the telephone was not used lightly or frequently.

It is hard to imagine letters like this being written nowadays. Did people really write at such length about such trivia? Did headmasters have nothing better to do? Nowadays a quick email, or phone call would surely do the trick. The letters here seem formal and distant – perhaps because they are accessed by the secretaries doing the typing and so the writers are aware that the letters are not strictly personal.

The formality, especially in the first letter, is because there is so little sense of the sort of ‘conversational’ writing that we are used to now. There is the contraction ‘don’t’ in the rather odd first paragraph, and occasional uses of dashes and questions, but the careful organisation and precise structuring of ‘Despite my efforts, they still remain unconvinced as to the value of a tape recorder as against a sound film projector’ sound very stiff and formal. Indeed the consistent failure of Mr Wood to shorten the noun phrase ‘sound film projector’ is unusual for modern ears, but can possibly be accounted for by the fact that a model suitable for schools was a recent invention at that time. (Mr Donaldson does contract the phrase once to ‘sound projector’ and in the process shows off that he is a bit more aware of modern technology.) The way the two ‘friends’ address each other by their surnames also sounds strange now, when first names are so much more common.

Both letters begin unusually for modern readers, although perhaps here there are attempts by both men to sound relaxed and informal. The closures, though, are different from each other. Wood asks a series of questions which he wants answering, Donaldson makes a gesture towards something more social – although it is very tentative. Both letters conclude with the routines of formal letter writing, although the respective secretaries have different views on how to punctuate them.

The term ‘idiom’ refers to commonly used expressions which are usually metaphorical in structure. Because they are not literal in their meanings, idioms can have a limited life span. Expressions such as ‘near to my heart’, ‘look a gift horse in the mouth’, ‘hold his head up’ which might have sounded quite informal when used, now seem dated.

There are a number of attitudes and values which can be seen here. Some involve gender such as the use of the term (and the existence of the organisation) ‘Ladies Working Party’ and the implication that only men (i.e. ‘headmasters’) run schools. Meanwhile these senior schools have children not students. There also seems to be something rather sly and conspiratorial going on here: what are the ‘certain purposes’, and does Wood really want the tape recorder for himself? He is told it is his duty and the fashion to have a projector, not that it is actually a good thing educationally. The expression of personal desire seems constrained by the format of the letter and the nature of the relationship between the two men.

TELEPHONE VOICES

One obvious vehicle for spoken communication which is not face-toface is the telephone. Hopper (1992) has identified the following pattern of opening routines which often, but not always, take place in landline telephone calls. (The routine can alter depending upon various contexts.) In doing this he shows that in conventional phone conversations greetings are not the first exchange when people talk, as they are in face-to-face conversations.

1. There is a summons–answer sequence in which the ring is the caller requesting to speak to the answerer, which is followed by the answerer saying that they are responding i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Unit One: Context and Language Change
• Unit Two: Genre and Change
• Unit Three: Interpersonal Communication Genres and Change
• Unit Four: Visual Representation and Change
• Unit Five: Attitudes to Language Change
• Unit Six: Internal Aspects of Change
• Answers and Commentaries
• References