Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Power and Authority that affects English Language Essay

All languages change over time, and vary from place to place. In my opinion, English language is the most influenced by the change. I must say lots of factors affect language. It may be because of political or social pressures, such us invasions, imigration and colonisation. It may also change because of latest inventions, such as transport, domestic appliances and industrial equipment, or new sports and entertainment, because they also need new vocabluary. But, language can change by less obvious things. Language changes whenever speakers come into a communication with each other. Every person speaks differently from others, everybody has there own ‘idiolect’. There are no people who speak identically: people from different geographical places clearly speak differently, but even within the same small community there are variations according to a speaker’s age, gender, ethnicity and social and educational background. English language was changing from the days of Roman empire. Then anglo-saxon invasions also affected it bringing every day life words like: woman, house, loaf, then Christian missionary came in, bringing latin language and using some of its words. After that, Vikings came along bringing thousands of new words. Inavasion of William the Conqueror in 1066 brought many new words to English language from French. The 100 year war against France that happened after, also changed English language a lot. As we all know William Shakspeare about 2000 words and phrases. Shakespeare showed the world that English language was a rich and beautiful language, with limitless expressions and emotional power. It was a huge affect on English language was when in 1611 King James made a new translation of Bible so everybody will read and understand it. In 1660’s there were a lot of scientists in England and it brought a whole new words to the language. The English people started to explore the world and travel, where they found new words. Then british went to America and invented new words for new animals and things they found there. Then the new technologies took place. New inventions like radio, television, fridge needed new vocabluary. Speaking of a technology, their role in our lives is astonishing. Its effect on the way we communicate has changed the English language forever. The way we speak today is really different from the way we spoke before the internet became so widely used. Phone calls, to my mind, changed little: we still use the same methods to  greet and say good bye, for example. What is deffinitely different, however, is the way we write today. That is the area where technology has had a HUGE impact. It brought with it a whole new etiquette, as well as new conventions and new abbreviations, such as IMO (in my opinion) and FYI (for your information). And it introduced the idea that WORDS IN UPPER CASE MEAN WE ARE SHOUTING, while lower case writing is the accepted form. Mobile phones has had a much bigger impact. The way we write our text messages is now so widely accepted that it has become a mainstream: OMG (oh my God), idk (I don’t know), Ikr (I know right), and etc. And then we have the sudden rise of blogging. There are now millions of blogs worldwide. Add to that the even-more-baffling growth of the key social networking websites – Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook. So, to sum up: email + texting + blogging + social networking sites = people writing more how they speak and less like they used to write. Writing correctly still happens when it is either for your Boss, parent or a teacher. After people started using Television almost everywhere, language started changing depending on what TV shows are you watching or what channels are you watching. It might be a BBC News or Royal Family News where they all speak RP(recieved pronuanciation) to be more clear to people or it might be for example a cooking programme when people start using cookers terminology. Inventions like radio and iPod also made music more available to everybody. So the type of music you listen will affect on how your language will change. Popular singers are icons mostly for younger generation, so they have the authority to change language. New technologies made it more easier to communicate with outside world: trains, plains, ships made it much easier to travel and communicate with a wide range of different people, which obviously has a different idiolects and diolects. Also our language changes depending on to whom, where and why we speak. Through our interactions with these different speakers, we encounter new words, expressions and pronunciations and integrate them into our own speech. For example when you speak to your parents, your speach is more  formal and correct. But it is much different when you speak to your friends or peers. Your speach and words are more informal and pronouncation of words is different. The type of school we’ve studied in, also affects our language. In private shools, because children are from higher social classes and their background is more wealthy, they speak more posh and ‘correct’. When people from public schools speak more ‘chavy’ and use more slang. Also your ethnicity and the area you live or lived in: urban or city area, has really big affect on our dialect. Ethnicity affects because your dialect changes depending on who your ancestors were and what is your actual language. For example if you are french you have a specific accent and dialect. Also if you live in a city the way you speak is different than if you were from an urban area. Because in city there are much more people more influences, tourists bring different words and traditions, fast pace of life, they have own technical or city jargon, when in rural areas they a kind of country language, things take long time to change. This affects language change. The job or your interests change dialect, the words you use and how you say them. Because different jobs use different terminology and some people may use them in their everyday lifes and create a kind of new slang. Scoial class plays a big role aswell. The higher the person is on the social ladder, the more educated that person is likely to be. With a better education, a person will likely speak more properly. His or her sentences will be well formulated and slang will be at a minimum. The lower person is on a social ladder, the less educated a person is likely to be. And with less education, a person will likely speak with a looser form of a language. But it doesn’t happen always, people can be different. All of this things change our language. Language always changes and Every successive generation makes its own small contribution to language change and when sufficient time has elapsed the impact of these changes becomes more obvious. But will the same things change our language in future, and how fast it will change. Will language be completely different from the one we speak today, or will it change a little. We don’t know what people in future will think how is correct to say and write. Language is the most unpredictable and rapidly changing thing and the way it changes depends on us.

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