This was the area where most of you fell down in the ‘changing and breaking’ essay. EXEMPLIFICATION Remember that you have to use language terminology and examples to support your evaluation of different theoretical positions

Let’s practice this Clear engagement with topic To suggest that English is ‘breaking up’, there must be an agreed sense of a standard from which English must have broken; however, as Milroy argues, a standard suggests prestige, and no one language variety inherently has prestige. Instead, prestige is applied to a language variety by a powerful group of users. Historically, this would have been those in administrative or governmental power; in India, for instance, England would have been associated with British colonial rule and would have been associated with power. English would therefore have been predominantly used by L1 speakers; however, over time, non-standard forms such as applying progressive verb forms to stative forms (such as ‘I am being’) or (‘I am hating’) were used more frequently by L2 speakers, often as a result of transliterating from Indian languages. Over time, and as this variety increased in use as more speakers attempted to gain prestige through using English, while these forms became a norm in and of themselves; this is what Schneider in his dynamic model would term ‘endonormative stabilisation’. Indeed, Mesthrie argues that language is constantly evolving and is a process of communication that is constantly being adapted by its user, rather than a static product. Therefore, to suggest that language is ‘breaking up’ is pejorative and fails to account for the idea that different users adapt language for their specific contexts. Theoretical position Explanation of example Applying language levels Explanation of example Theoretical position Theoretical position Intermediate conclusion

Approaching Paper 2 Section B This paper is called ‘Language Discourses’ – therefore you are asked to look at ways of thinking about, talking about, arguing about and describing how we feel about language. Henry Hitchings argues that ‘All attitudes to language can be classified as either prescriptivist or descriptivist’, although you might argue that this is a little reductive...

How to approach Paper 2 Section B Q3 It is best to identify the discourse(s) first, and then use your language levels to explain HOW this discourse is presented. E.g. The writer represents English as possessing an idealised standard; the active, progressive verbs ‘corrupting’ and ‘messing up’ suggest that a standard English is pure, and this purity is something that we are duty-bound to protect: such abstract nouns as ‘guardian’ and ‘protector’ highlight this role, while also using the metaphor of language uses almost represented as armed soldiers preparing to fight off unwanted external forces such as Americanisms. Indeed, the rhetorical question ‘Will you stand as guardian of the English language?’ directly addresses the reader, implying their agreement with this view, while synthetic personalisation through the deictic second person pronoun makes all readers equally responsible for protecting English against change. Which language levels are explored here?

Starter: Can you group these headlines into ideological positions? Explore the metaphors that enable you to make these decisions.

This is an extract from a text you will be looking at this lesson How would you describe THIS language discourse? How does the writer use language to convey this discourse? But it is time to fight back. The battle is almost certainly unwinnable but I am convinced there are millions of intelligent Britons out there who wince as often as I do every time they hear at witless Americanism introduced into British discourse.

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