BBC Radio 4 - The Reith Lectures - Language Change

BBC Radio 4 - The Reith Lectures - Jean Aitchinson: The Language Web: 1996

Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Oxford Jean Aitchison delivers five Reith Lectures examining the power and the problem of words.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00gmvwx
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1996_reith1.pdf

Key Notes:
Lecture 1: A Web of Worries:

'The Language Web is the title of all these lectures. Webs, especially cobwebs, may entangle. But webs themselves are not a tangle. They have a preordained overall pattern, though every one is different in its details. Nature forces humans to weave the language web in a particular way, whatever language they speak.'

' humpbacked whales alter their songs every year and no-one has complained.'

'Of course it isn’t. Over 100 years ago, linguists - people who work on language - realised that different styles suit different occasions, but that no part of language is ever deformed or bad.' 

'In practice upper and middle class speech was often praised as “good”, artificially supplemented by precepts from logic and imitations of various Latin usages. These invented rules often get confused with genuine language rules.'

'All languages have their own “rules” in the sense of recurring subconscious patterns.'

'But it is pointless to judge one language by the standards of another.'

'But genuine “rules” or “patterns” need to be distinguished from artificially imposed ones. For example, an old and illogical belief that logic should govern language has led in English to a ban on the double negative, as in “I don’t know nothing”, which is now standardly: “I don’t know anything”. This is odd, because in most languages of the world, the more negatives, the stronger the negation.'

'In 1985, bad English, whatever that might be, was even linked to crime by Lord Tebbit, then a key government figure' - 'Again and again etiquette, morals and speech are confused

'This tangled web of worries around language shows that many people, including some of those who rule our country, are back in the dark ages over understanding how it works.'

' “damp spoon” syndrome'

'The “damp spoon” image comes from a newspaper writer, who has a “queasy distaste” for the “vulgarity” of some current usages, “precisely the kind of distaste I feel at seeing a damp spoon dipped in the sugar bowl or butter spread with the breadknife”. She implies that sloppiness and laziness cause much of language change.'

' "crumbling castle view"

' This treats the English language as a beautiful old building with gargoyles and pinnacles which need to be preserved intact' - ' Language should be treated like “parks, national forests, monuments, and public utilities . . . available for properly respectful use but not for defacement or destruction”. '

'  “beautiful building” '

'And the “beautiful building” notion presupposes that rigid systems, once assembled, are better than changing ones. This is untrue. In the animal world, flexibility is a great advantage, and animals which adhere to fixed systems often lose out'