Tuesday 23rd February 2021

Think of the implications of each of these discourses, answering the questions below for
each one:
1. How do they shape the way we might think about language, about what it is and
how it changes and varies?
2. How does it affect the ways in which we might view the users of language?
3. Which particular words or phrases in each example helped you to match the view
with the discourse? Watch out for these in future texts and see if you can notice
patterns of language emerging.
Decay:
1. The term ‘Decay’ could dyspeptically imply that language is being lost, replaced by a
new variant, a new force if you will. Standard English is not the only abbreviations of
language people can make connection as those connections can be on various levels-
as demonstrated through Creoles English, MLE etc. Anti-evolutionary understanding.
More prescriptive.
2. People can draw between positive and negative views and stereotypes of these
individuals, groups who share different abbreviations/communications of language
as seen in recent years- Letting language rot
3. The adjective “crumbling”, “collapse”
Purity:
1. The metaphor idea that language (specifically standard English) is a holy, correct
form of language use. We may think of the different cultural languages in the world
and the shared communities that take part it.
2. We many view language as this perfect form, something skilled and technical
3. “Cross breed”- suggests that humans can do, what the animals cannot.
Conflict:
1. The conflict supports the idea that language is being taken over by a new, non-
standard variant. Promotes a negative and slanderous view. Promotes the idea that
we have to ‘take sides’ when it comes to language and fits with the
prescriptive/descriptive dichotomy
2. Language is at odds with other 'non-standard' forms of communication
3. "State of war"
4. What other common language discourses have you come across when looking at different
change and diversity topic areas?
1. People make connections between accents and the region from which they derive
from-Somerset (Countryside-Positive)
2. It was once common for pidgin and creole language to be corrupt, imperfect
varieties of other languages
3. Attitudes: Socially cultural and intellectually inferior to speakers of original languages
4. Strongly associated with black youth culture.
5. Language spread across the nation mainly due to Londoners moving away from the
capital, or it being considerably more fashionable amongst younger speakers.
Task 2:
a) Identify and categorise the WHAT of each text i.e., the type of English that is being
commented on e.g., women’s language, regional accent and dialect, younger
people’s language.
The writer of the text comments on the use of non-standard abbreviations used within the
workplace reinforced by some of its young employers and the reception that it has received
from some of its customers.
b) Consider whether the text producers are drawing from a discourse that you are
familiar with (eg decay, invasion, conflict, purity, morality, pollution, deficiency,
disease) or whether it offers a different perspective.
I believe that the text producer draws onto the idea of decay suggesting that language is
being lost or replaced by a new variant. What is reiterated in the text is that much of their
younger employees use expressions such as ‘hiya’, ‘see ya’ etc, which are non-standard and
simplified abbreviations of ‘hello’, ‘bye’ which is being slowly replaced by this new form that
is gradually being considered as the norm.
c) Highlight any parts of the text that develop the discourse.
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