Get geeky

Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I've come across this site which pulls together linguistics lectures from across the internet. I've not had time to use it yet, but there are links to lectures on language acquisition, swearing and language evolution, so they should be good for anyone interested in English Language and Linguistics.

At least be consistent

People have always complained about others' language use and it's probably part of human nature to find the accents, vocabulary and mannerisms of another group of people - Geordies, Brummies, Yardies, Americans, teenagers, poshos - upsetting and annoying. But when commentators set themselves up as linguistic authorities and tell other people that their language use is "wrong", they'd better make sure that they are actually right.

Kevin Myers, writing in today's Irish Independent, is not one of those people. In his article Omigod, this linguistic gibberish is, like, so gross he gets quite upset about what he calls the spread of "pseudo-American" English among the Irish middle classes and their teenage offspring, but he's initially exercised by the "common and lazy usage" of different than as opposed to different from, something he praises Michelle Obama for getting right while all around her everyone else is getting it wrong.

That's fair enough in many ways. Historically, there's been a pattern of usage that suggests different from is preferred to different than in formal English. However, that's changing and there appears to be a gradual shift taking place - perhaps through slips and errors, but perhaps through analogy with other, similar structures - towards different than. Language change is often a slippery beast and it can happen for all kinds of reasons.

Where Myers is on shakier ground though is in his insistence that "(Michelle Obama) correctly used the preposition rather than the relative conjunction, which -- for example -- the comparative adverb "better" would have attracted: hence, "different from" and "better than"." The problem here is that amid all his seemingly knowledgeable grammar talk, he comes up with a word class - relative conjunctions - that just doesn't exist. We've got relative pronouns (words like which and that, used to introduce relative clauses) and we've got conjunctions (and, but, because, if) but there's no such thing as a relative conjunction.

You could say that this just doesn't matter and I'd be tempted to agree. But if you're trying to come up with a rationale for a "rule" you follow - and more importantly, a prescriptivist rule you seem to want others to follow too - at least get it right.

For more on similar arguments about language usage (Language Discourses on ENGA3), you could have a look at this post about Simon Heffer's terrible Strictly English and this post about Henry Hitchings' excellent The Language Wars.

My get-out clause, before anyone points out any grammatical shortcomings in this (or any other) blog post, is that I'm not telling other people what they should or shouldn't do.

ENGA1 June 2011: language development questions

Here are the titles of the essay questions set since June 2009 on spoken language development:

Jan 2011
To what extent does acquisition of language depend on children’s experiences of the world about them?

June 2010
How important is interaction between children and adult speakers in the process of language acquisition?

Jan 2010
Discuss the ways in which children develop their grammatical skills.

June 2009
Discuss what you have learnt about language acquisition from children’s early uses of words and meanings.

If you're looking for possible essay titles for June 2011, it's probably a good idea to look through the questions set on the old A spec which are very similar to what's on the current spec. You can find a set of them here.

ENGA1 June 2011 language development

Following on from this week's first revision post on ENGA1, here's a link to the collected language development posts on this blog for the last few years. You'll find revision and exam tips, as well as snippets of new research and links to discussions about theory and case studies.

Lecture next week in Manchester

Hoy on the horizon

The swag-curve model

Slang tends to spread in particular ways. First, a new slang term will appear in the language, perhaps coined by a smallish group of people; it might get picked up by a few more people - usually this will depend on the novelty value, flexibility and impact of the word itself, along with the influence of the original creators - and then it will spread (or not) to an ever-increasing number of users. Charles-James Bailey's wave and s-curve models represent such a spread over time very clearly, even if they were originally used to measure pronunciation differences as they spread across a country.

Of course, as the word gets picked up by a wider base of users, the original users of it, the originators, may stop using it. Once slang terms achieve mainstream usage, they often lose their appeal, their covert prestige, among the original users. Look at it this way: if your mum is talking about bling (and she is - I heard her on the bus to Peckham yesterday) then you probably won't be. Slang gets rinsed out. Bruv. Or is it cuz. Or should I say fam. Anyway, moving swiftly on....

The slang term will probably then reach a peak of use - the top curve of the S in Bailey's model - before flattening out and dipping down. After a period of time - it might be 5 years, 10 years or longer - the only person left saying the word will be your mum and your English teacher.

So, is this what has happened to swag? In this article by Jason Richards, the rise and rise of swag is charted and the question asked (of linguist Geoffrey Nunberg) if it will stay popular (like cool) or die away. His response is interesting:

Almost all of these words come in and then disappear. Because that's the point—high school freshmen and young management consultants spin off new words so that their language sounds different from [that of] the old boys. Obviously, some of them do persist, but it's very hard to predict which ones will.

What's odd about swag is that while it now has very positive connotations - to get your swag on is clearly a good thing by most people's standards - it had a previous life not that long ago as a derogatory term. Back in the mid-2000s, swag meant rubbish, crap and useless. As Urban Dictionary entries from 2006 and 2007 reveal, it wasn't a term of approval at all, and I remember SFX students (always leaders in lexical innovation) using it in this way from around that time.

But it's clear that there's now been either a shift, or (more likely) a completely new meaning, bulldozing  the older and more restricted usage of swag as crap into dust. Perhaps the usage of swag as crap was geographically restricted, or it never achieved the same level of acceptance among people with covert prestige to catch on more widely. Perhaps there was a word occupying that slot already that prevented swag from catching on as a derogatory term (perhaps waste, or moist took the title). Maybe, the support of the likes of MIA and Puff Daddy/Diddy/whatever he's called gave swag as stylish, good, cool the push it needed to take it into an upward trajectory. And the rest is history, but for how long?

Edited on 14.10.11 to add links to two Nancy Friedman pieces on swagger, swag and schwag