Evaluate the view that language change can be controlled and diversified (30)

Evaluate the view that language change can be controlled and diversified (30)

Language change can be controlled and diversified by prescriptivist institutions of power, but only to a small extent. It can be applied to areas of spoken discourse like taboo lexis, lexis used in high-profile situations (e.g. politics or BBC News) etc. but cannot be controlled in all situations. This is due to the increasing use of English as a lingua franca (globalisation), the use of reclamation in today’s politically correct society and many other factors that mean language is too significant and used in too many situations to completely control.

The reflectionism theory (strongly linked to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) is the idea that language simply reflects the needs and ideas of the people who use it, meaning the way we think controls our language. This suggests that language can be controlled, but only if you change the attitude of those who use it. In today’s politically correct society, a lot of language change has enacted not in favour of institutions of power. For example, the use of reclamation of language, this has occurred through certain ethnicity groups re-calming the ‘n-word’ as a way of expressing pride of their race, and certain LGBT+ groups re-claiming the adjective ‘queer’ to express pride for their sexuality. Both of these lexical choices used to be considered offensive and taboo, and to an extent they still are, but due to changing attitudes of people who are now in favour of equality, they have come to mean something different. This suggests language change can be controlled, but only by changing the way people think, which is extremely challenging and almost controlling in itself.

An example of attempting to control language change through instrumental power is OFCOM. This is the institution of power that dictates what lexis can be used on TV before 9pm and what language cannot. This example of language determinism is a prescriptivist view that is attempting to prevent children from hearing swear words or offensive/insensitive insults on TV before they go to bed. It also enforces the view Standard English and RP are the superior and standard forms of English that children should aspire to, suggesting that language change is being controlled. Despite this, our language is still becoming more informal. In 2019, you may see newspapers using mild swear words (e.g. ‘piss’) which you most definitely would not have seen 20 years ago. This is interesting as studies have shown that using taboo lexis actually suggests a wider lexicon and is healthy in terms of pain relief. This shows that despite attempts to control language, people have naturally gravitated towards what is easier and healthier for them and so language change has not been controlled.

Another area in which the English language has not been controlled is the use of English as a lingua franca. This is due to increasing globalisation which means that English has become a common language that people from many different countries are all able to speak. This has led to English integrating with other languages to form lexicons like ‘Hinglish’ or ‘Konglish’ that combine two different languages to make it easier for non-native speakers to speak. Attempts have been made to control this, e.g. at the French language centre where they determine what lexis can and can’t go into the dictionary and be used by people. They have consistently decided against integrating English words with French words, suggesting they dislike the idea of another language combining with theirs and damaging their identity. However, because English has become a global language, this has proved impossible to avoid, suggesting language change cannot always be controlled.

One attitude towards language change is the beautiful building view. This is the idea that the English language is as beautiful as an old building and so must be upheld with rigid systems that are better than changing ones. This suggests language change must always be controlled. This is supported by the ‘damp spoon syndrome’, which emerged from the words of a newspaper writer and compares society’s current use of English as ‘the kind of distaste I feel at seeing a damp spoon dipped in the sugar bowl’. This is reflected by the pre-modified noun ‘foul-mouthed’ which demonstrates society’s view of swearing. ‘Foul’ has connotations of dirt, suggesting taboo lexis is a threat to the clean English language. This implies language change is something to be looked down upon, and so something the institutions of power can easily control.

However, one factor they blame for said language change is sloppiness and laziness, implying that language change is a result of negative actions. This is a view that has often been used to label young people and their changing use of slang. A school in Croydon attempted to control this by banning what they labelled as ‘urban slang’. ‘Urban’ implies a racial and class bias, as well as an age one. 

This suggests the perceived laziness is actually more of a hatred of the people who use it than the actual language itself. This is further strengthened by the institution of power ‘Ofsted’ only approving of the school once they had controlled language. However, Vera Regan, an actual linguist, labels slang as something positive that young girls (the ‘movers and shakers’ of language) enact to make language more relevant to today’s society and more fun and accurate for the people who use it. This suggests that language can be controlled to an extent in places like schools, but never in people’s every-day, general use of it as they will always gravitate today’s the positive changes which have been created to make it easier to use.

To conclude, both prescriptivists and descriptivists offer differing views of whether or not language can be controlled. It is evident that there are certain situations where only certain lexical choices are acceptable, but this cannot be applied to all situations and so language change cannot be completely controlled, only in differing aspects of life depending on the context.