ASSIGNMENT NO.

1
Language Change

Submitted By
Abdullah
Roll No. 17281

Submitted To
Mr. Sajid Iqbal
(Lecturer in English)
Department of English

Government College Peshawar

Assigned On: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 Course: Sociolinguistics

Due Date: Sunday, May 26, 2019 Semester: Six, Spring 2019
Submitted On: Thursday, May 23, 2019 Program: BS – English
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Abstract

Language is a unique human quality that distinguishes us from other organism. Although,
other living organisms have certain kind of language, but it is not as much developed as that
of the humans. In addition, human language is productive and a person can produce millions
of different expressions for a single set of alphabets. On the other hand, animal language is
very much limited and only composed of specific sets of signs and symbols. Language has
played an important role in the development of human race. The modern world would be not
possible without language. All kind of knowledge is spread through language. Language is a
medium of communication through which people exchange their ideas and experiences. This
exchange helps the human race in the development process. However, language is also
subjected to change over time from its original form. Every age in the history of human race
had changed the language in its own. Language adopts variations from every age and these
variations cause new languages to emerge from a pre-existing language. Then, those new
languages again had gone through the process of variations. Thus, every single language in
the world had change from its original form. This chapter discusses changes in the language
and why they happened over time and what cause them, and how they developed the
language.
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Introduction

Why do languages change? Given its crucial nature, historical linguists have been concerned
with this question over the last two centuries; answers provided are sometimes quite brilliant,
and discussions of the causes of language change often start with a list of imaginative
theories, the most popular being breathing efforts in mountain environment as a possible
cause for the first sound shift in Germanic. Even without reviewing such proposals, current
theories of causation in language change are quite disparate, and, depending on the
perspective from which they are seen, may also look rather unlikely. Ultimately, one’s views
on the causes of change are inextricably connected with one’s general assumptions on
language and on the real object of linguistic research. Language changes for a variety of
reasons. It may be due to large-scale response to social, economic, and political pressure.
Language change can also be fueled by foreign invasions, colonization and migration. In this
modern world, a number of other factors can cause a language to change. Language change
affects the life of people completely and it is the main cause of what is called generation gap.
It is also the main obstacle in the way of effective communication.
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Contents

 Language change

 Variations and changes

 Post-vocalic {r}- its spread and its status

 The spread of vernacular forms

 Koines and koineisation

 How do changes spread?

 From group to group

 From style to style

 From word to word-lexical diffusion

 How do we study language change?

 Apparent time studies of language change

 Language change in real time

 Reason for language change

 Social status and change

 Gender and language change

 Interaction and language change

 Research paper review

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Language change
It is very easy to demonstrate to English speakers that language changes over time. At the
point where English spelling became relatively fixed by printing, the printers recorded the
pronunciations current at the time. In reality, it is not so much that language itself changes, as
that the speaker and writers change the way they use the language. Speaker innovation is a
more accurate description than language change. Speakers innovate’ sometimes
spontaneously’ but more often by imitating speakers from other communities. For instance,
the word “nice” once meant ‘precise’, and before it meant ‘fastidious’ and earlier it meant
‘ignorant’.

Variations and changes

Language varies in three major ways which are interestingly interrelated-over time, in
physical space’ and socially. Language change- variation over time- has its origins in spatial
(or regional) and social variation. The source of change over time is always current variation.
In monolingual community, there is small area for variations and mostly the language is not
very much different, but in small towns where population is a bit more, the language change
is very obvious and there are variations in vocabulary and pronunciation. A good source of
information on language change can be found in the ‘letters to the editor’ section of a
newspaper. For instance, Mob was once condemned as a vulgar word, bus was once regarded
as a vulgar shortening of omnibus , ’otel was once considered the only acceptable way of
pronouncing hotel , and the vowel sound in go has changed quite radically in the speech of
BBC newsreaders over the last thirty years. In addition, there is certain pronunciation, which
has prestige in New York, but interestingly no prestige in London.

Post-vocalic [r] – its spread and its status

The pronunciation of “r” in English speaking communities provides a wealth of examples of
the complexity of linguistic variation and language change, as well as the arbitrariness of the
forms, which happen to be standard in any community. While “r” –less speech is the
prestigious form which is still spreading in England, in some parts of America it is the rhotic
variety, which is interesting. Accents with post-vocalic [r] are called ‘rhotic’. In large areas of
England, rhotic English accents are regarded as rural and uneducated. In large parts of the
USA, on the other hand, post-vocalic [r] is alive and well and extensively used. A survey in
the 1960s found that rhoticism was increasing in New York, where it was regarded as
prestigious. Post-vocalic [r] was used by almost all New Yorkers in their most formal and
careful speech, and young people from the upper middle class pronounced it even in their
most casual speech – a sure signal that it was spreading.

The spread of vernacular forms

It is easy to understand that a pronunciation that is considered prestigious will be imitated,
and will spread through a community. But there are also many examples of vernacular
pronunciations, which have spread throughout speech communities. Not all linguistic changes
involve adopting new forms from outside the speech community. Nor do they always involve
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forms which people are conscious of as prestigious forms. For instance, the people of
Martha’s Vineyard centralized vowels in words like ‘light’ and ‘house’. The centralization of
vowels became the identity of Vineyarder people and it was an unconscious change in
language. Also, Vineyard is a tourist spot and people from all over the US usually visit here.
So, the people of this island gradually started decentralization of vowels in words, because
the outsider prefer decentralized vowels in words and the economy of the island was based
upon those outsider. Thus, they change language to suit their purpose.

Koines and koineisation

Previously, we studied the process of creolisation: i.e. how a new language emerges as a
result of contact between people who speak different languages. Something similar often
happens when people who speak different dialects come into contact in monolingual
communities – a new dialect or variety emerges. This language change process is called
koineisation, and the result is a koine, a variety that is the result of dialect contact. The koine
will typically have some features from each of the contributing dialects, with most features
typically coming from the dialect of the largest group of speakers. So, in Milton Keyes, an
English town designated as a New Town in 1967, people moved into the town from many
different regions, but most came from the east end of nearby London. Consequently, many of
the features of the koine, or new dialect, which developed in this town, such as the “tag
innit”, could be traced back to Cockney, the variety used by Eastenders, people from the east
end of London.

The koineisation involves two main linguistic processes i.e. leveling and simplification.
Leveling is a process, which eliminates marked variants while in simplification the simple
form wins out between two different dialects.

How do changes spread?

A language change can spread in three ways:

From group to group

Many linguists have used the metaphor of waves to explain how linguistic changes spread
through a community. Any particular change typically spreads simultaneously in different
directions, though not necessarily at the same rate in all directions. Social factors such as age,
status, gender and region affect the rates of change and the directions in which the waves roll
most swiftly. The wave metaphor is one useful way of visualizing the spread of a change
from one group to another.

From style to style

In the speech of a particular individual, it suggests the change spreads from one style to
another (say from more formal speech to more casual speech), while at the same time it
spreads from one individual to another within a social group, and subsequently from one
social group to another.
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From word to word – lexical diffusion

It seems to be the case that sound changes not only spread from one person to another and
from one style to another style; they also spread from one word to another. Sound changes
typically spread through different words one by one. This is called lexical diffusion. When a
sound change begins, all the words with a particular vowel do not change at once in the
speech of a community.

How do we study language change?

Language change can be studies in the following ways:

Apparent-time studies of language change

A great deal of linguistic variation is stable, but some is an indication of linguistic change in
progress. A steady increase or steady decline in the frequency of a form by age group
suggests to a sociolinguist that a change may be in progress in the speech community,
whereas a bell-shaped pattern is more typical of stable variation. For instance, [r] was a
prestigious pronunciation in New York, since higher social groups used more of it than lower
social groups. It also seemed likely that it was spreading through the community, because
younger people were using more of it than older people.

Comparing the speech of people from different age groups can be a useful clue, then, to
language change. This has been called the apparent-time method of studying change.
Differences between the speech of older people and younger people are interpreted as
indications of changes in progress. Younger speakers tend to use more of the newer or
innovative forms, and the older speakers use more of the older or conservative forms. It is
much more difficult to identify a change when it involves the introduction and spread of a
less prestigious form, a vernacular form – and these are by far the most frequent kinds of
changes in any language.

Language change in real time

The apparent-time method of studying language change is a useful short-cut for sociolinguists
who generally cannot afford to wait around for twenty years to see what happens in real time.
Sometimes, however, it is possible to build on the work of earlier linguists when studying
change. Dictionaries, which provide the date when a form was first noted can assist in tracing
changes in vocabulary over time. The study of language change from centralization of vowels
to decentralization in Martha’s Vineyard is an example of language change in real time,
which had occurred on the island over a period of twenty to thirty years.

Reasons for language change

Following are the reasons for language change.
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Social status and language change

There is still a great deal of research and discussion about which social groups introduce
linguistic changes. One answer seems to be that a linguistic change may enter a speech
community through any social group, but that different types of change are associated with
different groups.

Members of social community having higher social status and prestige can introduce changes
in language. So upper-class London speech has prestige in the eyes of many people from
outside London. Middle-class people in Norwich who visit London regularly are therefore
likely to introduce prestigious new London pronunciations or ‘in’ words from London to
Norwich.

Lower-class speakers are more influential in spreading less conscious linguistic changes.
Lower-class men in particular often adopt speech forms from nearby local workers to express
solidarity, rather than status or prestige. Interestingly, it is not the people at the bottom of the
social heap who tend to innovate in this way, but rather those in the middle of the pile.

Gender and language change

Differences in women’s and men’s speech are another source of variation which can result in
linguistic change. Sometimes women are the innovators, leading a linguistic change, and
sometimes men. Women tend to be associated with changes towards both prestige and
vernacular norms, whereas men more often introduce vernacular changes.

Interaction and language change

Interaction and contact between people is crucial in providing the channels for linguistic
change. Interaction among people – or lack of it – has affected the progress of linguistic
changes in a number of communities.

Linguistic change generally progresses most slowly in tightly knit communities, which have
little contact with the outside world. There are plenty of examples of places where isolation
has contributed to linguistic conservatism. Scottish Gaelic has survived best in the Western
Isles of Scotland. The far north and East Cape of New Zealand is where Maori has survived
best. Little mountain villages in Italy, Switzerland and Spain are places where older dialects
of Italian, French and Spanish are preserved. Sardinia is another example of a relatively
isolated area, which is renowned for its conservative linguistic forms compared to other
Italian dialects such as Sicilian.

On the other hand, too much interaction of people having different origins and language can
also induce change. Pidgin and creole often resulted from the too much interaction of diverse
people. Thus, interaction causes language to change so that it can serve the purpose of
communication,
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RESEARCH PAPER: Television can also be a factor in language change:

Evidence from urban dialect
By JANE STUART-SMITH (University of Glasgow)
And GWILYM PRYCE (University of Glasgow)

This article considers two instances of rapidly accelerating linguistic change in Glaswegian
vernacular, “th-fronting” and “l-vocalization”, both typically associated with the Cockney
dialect of London. Both changes have been underway for some time, but took off during the
1990s. In this article, we consider a range of factors that are contributing to the rapid
proliferation of these forms in the speech of inner-city Glaswegian adolescents. The
multivariate analysis shows very strong effects for linguistic factors, as well as strong
positive correlations with social practices relating to local Glaswegian street style, some links
with dialect contact with friends and family living in England, and—perhaps surprisingly—
also positive correlations with strong psychological engagement with the London-based TV
soap drama EastEnders. Our results suggest that the changes are being propelled by several
processes: ongoing transmission and at the same time continuing diffusion through dialect
contact; the local social meanings carried by these variants for these speakers; and strong
engagement with a favorite TV drama. For this community at least, engaging with a favorite
TV drama is an additional accelerating factor in rapid linguistic diffusion.

This study has considered two instances of rapidly accelerating linguistic change in
Glaswegian vernacular. Both changes have been underway for some time, but took off during
the 1990s. Their proliferation in the speech of apparently non-mobile youngsters led to
speculations that the changes were being caused by watching popular TV shows set in
London. The features were found to occur in the characters of the dramas, though with
different rates and linguistic and social constraints from Glaswegian speakers (and also even
from Londoners). Thus, Mass Media can hugely affect our language, which can lead to
language change.