LING 1F25 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Linguistic Prescription, Phoneme, Sociolinguistics
Document Summary
Prescriptive language: the language which should be used, standard english and values. Descriptive language: the language actually used by people. Language any set of conventional symbols and rules for their arrangement that one user of the language employs to place thoughts in the mind of another user of that language. Non-standard variations: i like it and he like it in east (england) contrasting, i likes it and he likes it in parts of the west and north (england) English is the world"s lingua franca used by 300 million l2 speakers, learned at school by billions and dominating international communications. English is the only language whose l2 speakers and learners far outnumber its native speakers. The more a language allows us to differentiate, the more subtle its powers of communications. Increased differentiation in a language is generally positive and decreased differentiation is generally negative. Differentiation and orwell: many social changes, lifestyle, family structure, race relations, sociolinguistics.