Paper 3 Question 1

    Text A is a mixture of ten letters that an uncle wrote to his nephew as we went off to college, Oxford. Edward Berens put together the letters from the uncle that was filled with advice to the nephew. The letters were written in 1832 which is the beginning of Late Modern English. This was the period of time were language change was happening because of social and scientific advancements, and the want for more rules in the English language. As this extract was written at the beginning of the advancements the change of form for a letter wasn’t developed yet. If a present-day letter was written it would be formatted differently from the letter in Text A. In present-day more people use different ways to communicate with each other, other than letters. This is because of the technological advancements that have been made over the years where people can talk to someone immediately. This shows how our language has changed substantially from what it was in 1832 to today.

There are a few semantic changes used in Text A. For example, the uncle uses ‘anecdotes’ to help advise that they are better than telling someone a long story. A theory that describes the semantic change in language is the functional theory created by Micheal Halliday. Micheal stated that language changes according to the needs of its users. In Text A the word ‘anecdote’ is used to describe a short story. In the etymology of the word, the word had a different meaning prior to how it was used. For instance, in the 1670s the word meant a secret or a private story. Over time as these secrets were shared the language and meaning of the word changed as they no longer were secrets but short amusing stories. This word is also barely used in today's language. In an n-gram graph, a line graph that displays the change in usage of words over a given period of time, it would show that the word ‘narrative’ is used more now than ‘anecdote’. The line of the word ‘anecdote’ spike at the beginning of the graph, the 1830s, but decreased as time goes on as more people started using the word ‘narrative’ to use as the meaning of a short story.

Text B is a collocates chart that lists adjectives that correspond to the words ‘taste’ and ‘judgment’. According to the chart, the word ‘taste’ correlated with the words ‘bad’, ‘bitter’, and ‘good’ between the 1890s and 1993. These words describe a type of food. ‘Taste’ also correlates with the words ‘first’ and ‘personal’. These words may describe how someone feels towards another person. As the word ‘taste’ changed over time its meaning of the word broadened. A theory that explains this is the Substratum theory. This theory was created by Wright who claimed that for language change to spread language and specifically, when applied to English, to the globalization of language as one variety of English is influenced by another through contact. As more and more people heard how the word ‘taste’ is being used to describe how you like a person the more it was used. The other word, ‘judgment’, is connected to words such as ‘clinical’, ‘dissenting’, and ‘better’. The meaning of the words changed over time as they became negative to positive or vice versa. For instance, the word ‘better’ is described as positive and effective. This connection shows the word took on more of a positive connotation over time, which is called amelioration. However, the word ‘dissenting’ is more negative and disagreeing. This shows the word took a negative connotation at some point, which is called pejoration. In-Text A it says, ‘...you never are guilty of such a violation of good taste and correct judgment.” In this case, the uncle was talking about ‘personal’ ‘taste’ towards someone and a ‘final’ or ‘better’ ‘judgment’.

In-Text C an n-gram graph illustrates the frequencies as of which the phrases ‘are apt to be’, ‘are likely to be’, and ‘tend to be’ are used over the time from 1800 to 2008. In-Text A the phrase ‘are apt to be’ is used when said, “...of which men are apt to be guilty.” According to the n-gram graph from 1800 to the late 1900s, the phrases ‘are apt to be’ and ‘are likely to be’ are steady along which each other. There is one point in the 1830s where the phrase ‘are apt to be’ is higher than ‘are likely to be’ which shows why in Text A the phrase ‘are apt to be’ was used over the others. All three phrases relatively mean the same thing however it is the users need the word as stated in the functional theory. This can be seen when the graph is the 1920s all three phrases go their separate ways. The phrase ‘are apt to be’ becomes out of date and less used as words have been shortened and replaced such as ‘apt’ to ‘tend’. The phrase ‘are likely to be’ is still used a relatively good amount but, the phrase ‘tend to be’ spikes above all of the phrases. The shortest phrase spikes as over time people become quicker with their words. A theory that backs up the n-gram graph is the S-curve theory created by Chen. Chen states that any language change starts in a limited way, then accelerates as more speakers adopt the change, before leveling off over time. In the graph, this can be shown as from the 1800s to 1900s the lines are steady until the 1920s hit and speakers are adapting the phrase ‘tend to be’ more than the others. At the very end of the graph, it shows the lines start to decrease which can be assumed that the phrases are leveling off.