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The impact of technology on the English language
The relationship between language and culture
The relationship between language and culture
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Recommended: The impact of technology on the English language
Language changes; it grows and adapts similarly to the way that humans grow and adapt to the dynamic world surrounding us. From Old English with epic poems like Beowulf to Middle English in The Canterbury Tales, it progressed into Shakespearean, or Early Modern English, which eventually manifested into the incredibly complex language we refer to as Modern English. The journey English embarked on many centuries ago by expanding its territory to America has emerged through "borrowing" pieces of assorted languages, including, but not limited to Latin, French, German, Native American, Celtic, and Greek. Cultural integration has caused and will continue to cause the English language to gradually expand its linguistic repertoire, so it is interesting that an astoundingly intelligent professor and writer such as David Foster Wallace, in his essay Authority and American Usage, can make a claim to prescriptivism: a belief that writing while using traditional grammar and proper usage of English is unanimously superior to the way that modern Americans use it. While this approach does make him look educated, isn't language an expression of human personality? Personalities—like language, changes over time; for starters, you are not the same elementary school child you once were. Judith Butler, the author of Besides Oneself, reveals her liberal stance on the "prescriptivism versus descriptivism" language debate that is revealed in her unique, long-winded sentence. The English language lacks an official language academy, yet there is a massive number of English speakers worldwide. Without this central authority, the realm of the English language is basically a free-for-all (i.e. inconsistent dictionaries), so it's impractical to say that th...
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...ays changing, it is only natural to associate language with the same changes.
By seeing past the constricting lens of Prescriptivism, we can reevaluate our opinions on language. In doing so, we can unravel how we are weighed down by the thoughts of what is considered "traditional" instead of embracing the changes and using language to our advantage. I found it to be evident that Judith Butler was on the descriptivism side of things, which accomodates the changes that the world inflicts on language, whereas David Foster Wallace creates an unneccessary conflict by pushing his Prescriptivist beliefs onto his readership. However, this means that I stray from wanting what is conventionally correct. The bottom line is that language, along with technology, economics, and culture, is constantly changing, and we can either choose to complain about it, or embrace the change.
In the article “Do You Speak American?,” Robert MacNeil is trying to reach the american public, especially those who do not have a complete understanding of the ongoing changes that are happening to the English that is spoken throughout the United States. He uses a multitude of examples to prove this very fact. For one he wants to inform the people that one reason for this change is that average people now have more influence in the way language is spoken.Which to him is a good thing. He enjoys the new evolution that American English has undertaken. He believes that it is a step in the right direction. Another, example he uses are the changes different regions and/or group of people have made on the English language. He uses the different accents and dialect to show the growth and improvement that occurred. Even though, some linguist view these changes as wrong, MacNeil views them as necessary and as something that is unique to the United States. In essence, a necessary growth that only makes the United States grow into a better country. Thus, making it more diverse.
In “Do You Speak American?” by Robert MacNeil, MacNeil uses outside sources, personal anecdotes, and familiar diction in attempts to prove that the transformation of American English is a positive outcome and should be accepted.
Since it’s been a predominant topic of our discussion, let us talk about the infamous English language. We can be sure that it has painstakingly progressed throughout generations of reevaluation and modernization, and has thus become what it is today. It has gone in several directions to try and mesh with the various epochs of language, from the Shakespearean era to the common English slang we use now, we can all agree that English is a language that has been transcending and will continue to transcend into many
Finegan says this is something “living languages must do”. For me, I was raised in a military home in which we moved to a new region every couple of years. Coming from Germany, moving to Rochester, and then to Lowville, my dialect is a combination of all three speech communities. It is different than my parents, and will mostly be passed down to my children. As I age and move locations it is opted to change again as well. So it is not that I speak differently or incorrect than the rest of my family, my speech community is merely growing and changing as it is passed generation to generation. Richard Lederer stated in his article, “We are a teeming nations within a nation, a country that is like a world.” (150) He was portraying how our country, with a universal language, can be so diverted by each region’s version of the English language. I agree completely that although we all “sing” the same song of the American language, “we talk in melodies of infinite variety.” (150) The way our country was built was by different American regions doing their own work, for example, the south had plantations, where my ancestors were small town farmers who worked with manufacturing in mills and
1. In his chapter “On the Need of Some Grammar” found in Modern American Usage, Wilson Follett argues that we need grammar to govern our language.
Throughout the span of the past few weeks I have traversed the globe, visiting several countries and regions, only to realize that although new methods develop, language as a way of expressing ones self has remained the most effective. Despite this fact, language still has its pitfalls. Neil Postman, in his essay “Defending Against the Indefensible,'; outlines seven concepts that can be used to aid a student in better understanding the language as a means of communication. He describes how modern teaching methods leave a student vulnerable to the “prejudices of their elders';, further stating that a good teacher must always be skeptical. He urges teachers of all subjects to break free from traditional teachings as well as “linguistical tyranny';
Poststructuralists aggressively declares that we cannot trust linguistic systems to convey truth, the foundations of reality are unpredictable and the world of literacy as we know it begins to unravel...
This freedom has created the English we speak today. Although a little behind the times, Oxford changes the rules as to what is correct English due to what is being spoken. In English Belongs to Everybody, Robert MacNeil, feels that English has prospered and grown because it was able to accept and absorb change (140). So change in the English language helps it grow, yet the dialect of the inner city blacks in our country is looked upon as a problem. To those in charge, there is no more room for growth.
Birk and Birk explore the many processes that automatically and often unintentionally, take place during the gathering of knowledge and expression through words. In their book Birk and Birk break the usage of words into sections: Selection, Slanting by the use of emphasis, slanting by selection of facts, and slanting by the use of charged words. When words are used this way they reveal naturally occurring bias of the writer. Upon reviewing the selection from Birk and Birk’s book Understanding and Using Language it is clear that the essay written by Jake Jameson has examples of every principal Birk and Birk discuss. The Birk and Birk selection provides us with a set of tools that enable us to detect bias in the many forms that it takes. These tools reveal what Jamieson favors and make plain the bias present in his essay The English-Only movement: Can America Proscribe Language With a Clean Conscience?
In the essay “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell, the author states his opinion of the decline of the English language. Orwell discusses both its causes and what he foresees as its consequences. He states there is less innovation and coherency, which dilutes the power of the language. Orwell felt that people were using the English language inaccurately, relying on metaphors which are meaningless and used so the writer does not have to bother with creating their phrases. Orwell asserted “It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”
In Johnson’s preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, Johnson argues the importance of preserving language. Other dialects had a produced their own dictionaries, such as the French and Italians. Various writers of the eighteenth century were alarmed at the fact that there was no standard for the English language, since there was no standard it could easily become extinct. Johnson explored many points, such as how and why languages change as well as how many words are formed.
The English language has evolved remarkably. The Great Vowel Shift between 1400 and 1700 shows a great discontinuity in pronunciation alone. Different attitudes towards language reached a height during the 17th and 18th Centuries with Prescriptivists such as Defoe, Swift and Louth. Prescriptivists believe that there is an approach which sets out rules for what is regarded as correct in language. Some prescriptivist rules for English include not splitting infinitives, resulting in sentences such as 'to go boldly where no man has gone before', rather than 'to boldly go'.
Sociolinguists such as Eckert (2000) and Milroy (2004) have made provocative efforts to incorporate linguistic-anthropological concepts into sociolinguistic explanation (Woolard, 2008) and foundational studies by Creese (2008) include major works describing the paradigm. Rampton (2007), described the methodological tenants behind LE. LE research is yet a developing discipline that serves as a way of enriching a fundamentally linguistic project. In fact, the formulation of LE covers a large and older body of scholarship on language and culture (Rampton, Maybin, & Roberts, 2014), while simultaneously necessitating and interdisciplinary collaboration of theories and skills, thus blurring the boundaries between branches of variationist, sociological and ethnographic sociolinguistics (Tusting & Maybin, 2007). LE research on language change (Ekert, 2000) and a cultural model of cognition (Levinson, 1996) are worthwhile examples. However, the examples in the following sections serve more as a focus on contributions of LE to the field of
—. Language: Readings in Language and Culture. 6th ed. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
Several European immigrants are reported to have arrived in America during the 19th century and early 20th century. Notably, the first wave of these European immigrants is believed to have begun in the late 1820s largely sustained by the unrest in Britain. This wave of migration went on for almost a decade highly attracted by the dreams of creating a model utopian American society. This is in turn closely associated to some extent with the development of the American English. European immigrants immensely contributed to the development of American life and more specifically American English. Today, American English has become an omnipresent phenomenon in every aspect of the American society. British English, the main source of American English