1 Page Linguistics Essay

1)

   

      Read the extract by Paul Roberts also titled “Speech Communities”

(attached)

2)         Answer the following question in approximately 300 original words.

   

With reference to Paul Roberts’ account of the way language change occurs,

how do you think American English and British English became different dialects?

Include examples of specific words, idiomatic expressions, or accents.

\
movê aw-ay. They move across the river or over a mountain and form
“.”,..- ü]!19″. Suppose the sepa – öi;of New Village have no contact Thelanguage of.both villages will cha lan_guage ot theù common ancestors. But the drift will not be in the same
direciigJr. In both villages there wiII be_new expressions and new pro_nunciations, but not the same on s. In the course of time the ian_guage.df Old Village anf \ew Vilage will be mutually unintelli$ùìL*ilh,l.:l1Ter”-S-” they both started-with. They will al’so be;;-t;lly
unintelligible with one another.

t /Speech
Communities

PAUL ROBERTS

divides itséllf and half the people

The concept of speecl.ttr”a¡”i-íi dth”i.;;i
communities is basic to an under-

o, a¡atåtll íî’riïfiäland sociat oariation in tanguage,
::t;#ri”ïizn{;!rË:”;j’rt:{;H””!::k:rtÍ
f l;:;U|i:å:’i#”W::#::,1::,::”,:n”;*
,^pr,oii,,i ;;î’,;å;::lu| w.ith.in those communities. He
i:iî;;:!*i#::,f,,:úî:,’:í”0″,,i,”:|;::;..r#;
peopte. 1 often really oalue judgments abottt

, .An interesting thing-¡and one for which there is no perfectlyclear explanation-is thalthe ¡ate of change wilr not o.ai”*ily üãii-,å
:.””,” jor. both villages. The language of

“Ota
Village “h;”t*;;rt*than. the language of New vinage-. oáe might expect that the oppositewould be rrue-thar the emigrã4ts, placeà’in nåw ,”*”ir;d;;’, “Jnew conditions, would,uld.1g9 móre rapid language .t””;”i i”ìhistory reports otherwisè. Amè-rican English, fo, “îu.ipt., ù”.”p-; il;violence and agony and confusion to ;hich the demands oË u nl*continenr have subjected it, iíprobabry essentially croser to the laì-guage of Shakespeare than Lonàon fngtisn is.

Suppose one thing.more. Suppose-Old Village is divided sharplyinto an upper class and a lower aåss. tt¡e so.r, irrd a”ugt t”r, oiääupper class go to preparatory school and then to the un-iversiry; thechildren of the lower class gô to work. The upper_cluæ p”opt.,í””rnto read and write and develop a flowering literature; the lower_classpeople remain illite¡ate. D^ialects derrelop,”ar,à the speech of af,. *oclasses steadily diverges. O.ne might suppose that *åJ;ï,h”;;;;would go on among the illiteratt tnui it ” upper_class p”opt”, “oi_scious of their- heritage, would tend to p..r”*” the foås ;”á ;;;_nunciations of their ancestors. Not só. The opposite is true, Inspeech, the educated tend to Þe radicar and the uneducated conserva-live. In England one finds Eliz-abethan forms and sounds “;i ;;;”gQford and Cambridge graduates but among the people of backwardvillages.
A village-is a fairly simple kind of.speech community_a group ofpeople steadily in communìcaüon with one another, ,,å¿iùï””íins’o.ne another’s speech. But the v’rage is uy

“o means the basic unit..Wi*h’.” the simplest village llr*” lli -” i;;”-il”r;;-:;;p,”;based on age, class, occtr-pation. All these’grãups play i”d’;;t”if ;îone another and against òne anothe¡, and”a language that seems at’first a coherent whole yil l* out on,inspectioñ to”Ue .o-po””ã oimany differing parts. Some forces tend to make tf,”se pais’aiue.g.;other forces hold thesr together. Thus the ru.tg.rug” continued in ten- ‘sion.

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