pupoture

While some changes to language are roundly condemned by pedants, purists and prescriptivists - creaky voice, rising intonation, split infinitives and literally not actually meaning LITERALLY AT ALL -  new words often get an easy ride. People generally like new words and can see why they appear in the language, even if some of them seem a bit silly (A wesome sauce and amazeballs ? Really?) or likely to last as long as a David Cameron promise on tax credits ( dadbod and mantihose ?). In fact, new words now get wall-to-wall media coverage. So, this week we have seen the latest additions to the Collins Dictionary feature in pieces such as this (from the Dictionary-makers themselves), this from The Guardian ,  this from the BBC and this from the Daily Fail. But among the hype and the celebration of an evolving and vibrant language, naysayers complain that some of the new entries are just trendy fads, too ephemeral to be included in esteemed dictionaries. As Robert Lane Greene e...

The recent news stories about Scrabble are a gift to A2 students revising Language Change and Discourses, so have a look at these links for some good stuff on new words, and lots of "OMG, how can that even be called a word?!" reactions. Here's Ben Farren of  The Guardian listing lots of them. Here's The Daily Telegraph looking at both sides: from Sue Bowman of the Association of British Scrabble Players who reckons it's "an abuse of the English language" to Gyles Brandreth, founder of the National Scrabble Competition who says "hang loose and get down on the street ".  Yeesh! Meanwhile, Elaine Higgleton offers a staunchly descriptive defence of the new entries in this Radio 4 clip. Language change hit the headlines a little while ago too in the aftermath of a thinly-disguised marketing exercise for a new Samsung phone, with several articles looking at how older generations claim to feel completely bamboozled about young people's new slan...

Recent Language Change questions on ENGA3 have featured pairs of texts (one old, one contemporary) on the same topic and offered you the chance to analyse how they use language to create different representations of whatever it is they are focusing on: rugby matches, the city of Bradford or coffee, in recent years. You are also expected to think about how the times the texts are from might have influenced their language. It's worth remembering though, that this isn't the only type of question for ENGA3, so you might want to think about some others. Remember too, that any topic that turns up in Section A of the paper can also appear on Section B as a Language Discourses question. Political correctness (PC) is worth a look at as a language change topic. It's a movement to change language and redress some of the perceived inequalities in how language represents traditionally less powerful groups in society, but it's always controversial. A question on PC could offer you ex...

You might have missed it, but there was a General Election last week. While many of us in Sixth Form Colleges are still weeping, wailing and gnashing our teeth - not to mention drowning our sorrows in red red wine - at the prospect of another 5 years of underfunding and fragmentation, at least the election gave us some good stuff to look at for language analysis. Every cloud has a silver lining... Anyway, here's a quick round-up of things that you could look at for English language A level related to the recent campaign. First off, it's the rise of the hashtag #Milifandom. For a while, it looked like people might actually vote for Miliband, and the rise of the Milifandom hashtag seemed to crystallise the feeling among a (clearly deluded, in hindsight) minority that the time of the geek had come. Obviously, it hadn't... Accommodation was also under the spotlight: not the kind of accommodation that we need - you know, houses and stuff - but accommodation in the form of Howar...

Yesterday's Word of Mouth on Radio 4 had a really good discussion of how language change around the world - and not just in English, but other languages, including Arabic - is being led by young women. It's definitely worth a listen if you're revising gender for ENGA3 Language Variation or even Language Change and reasons for change. You can find it here . The focus on women as linguistic innovators is also picked up in this 2012 New York Times article , which suggests that features as diverse as vocal fry (or 'creaky voice'), high rising terminals and new slang are all driven by young women. It's not just in spoken language that women are having an impact; in this Slate piece from 2013 , Amanda Marcotte looks at how language styles on Twitter are often related to gender and speculates on how this might lead to men adopting a more 'female' style (more emojis, ellipses and exaggerated punctuation).

If you are interested in swearing, profanity and the myriad, foul-mouthed joys of rude words, the Strong Language blog will be right up your strasse. Featuring articles on the wonderful pubic wig known as the merkin , DIY oath-making and a hugely impressive - nay fan-f***ing-tastic - resources archive , it really is the bee's knees, the mutt's nuts, the dog's bollocks and the ultimate shiznit.

Benedict Cumberbatch - a famous actor whose face has been likened to that of an otter  - has apologised for causing offence by his inadvertent use of the term 'coloured' to refer to Black people. In an interview (ironically) about opportunities in acting for non-white actors, he dropped the c-bomb (not that one...) when he said, "I think as far as coloured actors go, it gets really different in the UK, and a lot of my friends have had more opportunities here [in America] than in the UK, and that’s something that needs to change." (from The Guardian ). 'Coloured' is a strange word and one that causes a degree of confusion to a lot of people. The Civil Rights movement in the USA was often supported by the organisation NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) but in South Africa 'coloured' was a term used to segregate anyone who wasn't white but who wasn't entirely black.  For a lot of older/middle-aged people in the UK...

While sitting at home, feeling sorry for myself with a bout of man-flu , this article about a curious phenomenon called manterrupting popped up on Twitter. Apparently, manterrupting is when males interrupt women in meetings and/or co-opt (or bropropriate* ) their ideas as their own. It's a man-word like these explained here by Stan Carey on the MacMillan Dictionaries blog and makes use of the man- prefix that has become so productive in recent years. So far we've had... mansplaining : patronising explanations delivered by men to women of things that women probably already know more about (Urban Dictionary definition here ) manspreading : sitting on public transport and spreading one's sweaty flannels in order to secure more seat space (Collins Dictionary definition here ) manscaping : removing unsightly body hair to make oneself more attractive (Oxford Dictionaries definition here ) manslamming :aggressive pavement action involving a man barging into people (often women)...

Following yesterday's post about other top tips for articles about language, Tony Thorne of King's College London sent this link to a whole range of articles he has gathered on the topic of slang . There's plenty there for anyone studying Language Change and Variation at A2 and lots of good stuff to read. Thanks very much, Tony .

Just a quick post to flag up this nice clip from the excellent Ben Zimmer talking about technology , language and fears about language change. If you're doing your ENGA4 investigation at the moment (and you blinking well should be if I teach you) this is the sort of thing we'll be spending more time on after Christmas as we start to look in more depth at Language Discourses. Meanwhile, if you're an AQA B teacher, this is the sort of debate that will feature on the new AQA English Language spec that's coming in from September 2015.

Language debates are all over the media again and rarely seem to be too far aware, which is great news if you are an A level English Language student and looking for material to analyse, ideas to glean and references to add to your notes. This article from Christian Rudder in The Huffington Post offers an analysis of Twitter language in response to the perception that social networking is degrading and/or destroying the English language. It's a common argument and one that has been knocking around for centuries. Ever since there has been technology to communicate - the pencil, the printing press, the mobile phone - there has been someone complaining about its disastrous effects on English. This article challenges the declinist discourse and suggests that far from dumbing us down and forcing us to communicate very little in 140 characters, Twitter is not that different to other forms of communication: A team at Arizona State was able to reach beyond word count and length, and into...

It's just one day until ENGA3, so here's a quick post to wish you luck and to offer a few suggestions to make your examiner look upon you favourably. Quote helpfully  You should be using quotations from the texts you're analysing in your answers, but make sure they're helpful quotations. What's the difference between 1 and 2 below? The writer uses the noun phrase "the foul degradation of our language continues apace" to support his prescriptive view of language change. The writer uses the noun phrase " the foul degradation of our language continues apace" to support his prescriptive view of language change. In short, 1 is wrong and 2 is right. That's because the quote used in 1 isn't actually a noun phrase, but a whole simple sentence/independent clause, while the quote in 2 actually specifies which bit is the noun phrase. I don't doubt that the person answering in the first one knows what they mean, but they're not making it eas...

Today's tediously titled top tips will focus on analytical frameworks for ENGA3, in particular the Section B Language Discourses question. As I was saying in yesterday's post about Section B, the key difference between the two sections on the paper is that Section A deals with language as it's actually used - in different times, different places and by different people - while Section B deals with language as something to be discussed, argued about and debated. So, in terms of analysis, you can apply many of the same frameworks - word, phrase, clause and discourse analysis - to texts in both sections, but Section B really lends itself to a Critical Discourse Analysis approach. In effect, this means that you're using language analysis to work out the ideological position a text producer is taking in discussing a language issue. So, this could mean you're using language analysis to work out how a writer is using the following: pronouns to address the reader and posit...

And another quick link to a BBC Radio 4 Today clip about the changing language of children . Here, the OUP language expert Sam Armstrong and comedian & writer Charlie Higson discuss the influence of popular culture and video gaming on young people's language. While the presenter is keen to get them moaning about young children using terms like minion , nether , LOL and OMG , the experts are good at seeing the benefits to young people of new forms of language and their ability to code-switch. Take that, Radio 4 curmudgeons! Nice stuff on lexis, morphology, word formation processes and the joys of technology, too.

Just a quick link to a potential Language Discourses argument about the use of literally and beyond (as in "It was beyond awful") from Radio 4's Today programme . Warning! For listeners of a sensitive disposition and sound mind, Simon Heffer is featured.

To carry on the boring naming convention established earlier this week, this is part 4 of your ENGA3 June 2014 revision tips. So far we have looked at a bit of Section A Change and a bit of Section A variation, so now it's time for Section B Discourses. One of the first things to remember is that Section B is different from Section A. In Section A the texts are based on language in use (language being used in different times and in different varieties) but in Section B the texts are about language . They will raise questions around how people feel about language and the way it changes and varies from time to time and person to person. Last year's question was on Language and Gender, setting two extracts from a text which gave a very simplistic, difference model-style, interpretation of how women and men talk. It was there as a starting point for discussion, a springboard for offering a critique of such reductive models. If you 'd read Deborah Cameron's Myth of Mars and...

So... here's a post to help you revise for ENGA3 Section A Language Variation. And if you're wondering why I'm starting this post with so , starting everything with so is apparently undergoing a boom. Just look here for something on this from 2010 and here for something even more recent. And how is this relevant to your ENGA3 exam? Well, the questions on Language Variation don't have to be about regional or national variation - or even variation according to class, ethnicity or gender - as they have been in the last few years; they can also be about the ways in which language varies in other ways, like rising intonation (uptalk or HRT) , the use of vocal fry or even something like so , or innit , or this is me . All of these are recent variations in the ways people use language to communicate and what's interesting about them is that they represent the intersection between so many different factors. We're no longer in a world of language study where we say t...

Today, we will have a quick look at Section A Language Change questions. The last two ENGA3 exams have used pairs of texts in this section of the paper. So, last June we had an advert from the 19th Century to look at alongside a Caffe Nero webpage*. The January paper of that year (the last time a January paper was set) had a rugby match report from The Scotsman in the 19th Century alongside a web version of The Scotsman reviewing a similar game. While it's quite possible that such a question will turn up again, there's a chance it might be a different type of question, so be prepared. Political Correctness is an interesting topic for Language Change as it is the kind of "change from above" that we rarely see (or at least, rarely see working) in English. To revise this topic you might want to think about some of the reasons why words become viewed as offensive - how they pejorate and how changes in society lead to different meanings being viewed as offensive. A good ca...

There's just over a week to go before the ENGA3 exam, so my plan is to do a short post each day with advice about how to approach this difficult (but rather splendid) paper. Seeing as there is still a whole week of half-term in which to revise, the first tip I'd offer is to read a couple of books. Yes, whole books. First off, read Henry Hitchings' The Language Wars . It covers pretty much every Language Discourses question you could hope to get and it's a damn good read. We've covered it here on the blog lots before (like here and here ) and I did an interview with the author for emagazine a couple of years ago. Click here to visit the emagazine website and use your school/college log-in to find it under Language Topics: Attitudes to Language Change: At War With the Pedants . Secondly, if you haven't already looked at it, Jean Aitchison's Language Change: Progress or Decay? is a fascinating read. It's got many of the things you'll no doubt have co...

Anyone with an interest in English who has been following the news over the past week can't have missed the storm over the exam board OCR's plans to include the language of Russell Brand, Dizzee Rascal and Caitlin Moran in their proposed Language and Literature A level specification. The Guardian ran the story on Tuesday, claiming that a "DFE insider" had already slammed the syllabus as being "immensely patronising" and "rubbish". The Telegraph was also up in arms about it and The Daily Fail was predictably splenetic, splashing large pictures of Brand, Mr Rascal, Grayson Perry and Michael Gove all over their article to reinforce the horror of what was being proposed. After all, these figures - bar the eminent Mr Gove, of course - are enemies of mainstream British values: Russell Brand is a former heroin addict (and therefore, as a drug user, no longer a human being with a valid opinion on anything), Dizzee Rascal is young, black, working class a...