Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

5.2 Change and linguistic media
Unit 5 Language and time
Section 2 Language variation

The main linguistic media - the media in which verbal language is used - are speech and writing (see Unit 22, Speech and narration), together with various other technologically enabled forms (language can be broadcast, recorded, telephoned, e-mailed, texted, etc.).

5.2.1 Writing

Before the seventeenth century, written texts varied enormously in terms of spelling and punctuation. This arose partly from the lack of a central standardization of spelling, partly from the variability and rapid changes in pronunciation, and partly from typesetting practices such as the symbolic use of capital letters to indicate importance and the insertion of letters to fill out a line. From the seventeenth century onwards, however, printed texts began to look more like modern English texts because standards were instituted that still hold. One of the results of this is that, while spellings have stabilized, pronunciations have continued to change, so that spellings that once corresponded to pronunciation no longer do so. This is one of the many reasons for the difficulties that all English speakers encounter when writing, since, when English spelling was formalized, it resulted in a rift between the way words were spelt and pronounced in the seventeenth century and the way the pronunciation of words changed over time.

5.2.2 Speech

It has only recently become possible to record speech as sound; our evidence for how English was spoken in the past is generally in the form of: (a) the reports of contemporary linguists; (b) transcripts of speech, as in trial transcripts; (c) representations of speech in literature and drama; (d) indirect evidence from sound patterns in literature (e.g. rhymes); and (e) indirect evidence from informal writing such as diaries and letters.

Speech seems to change more rapidly than writing, partly because it is not codified in the same way, and partly because it is open to much wider cultural variation. Youth subcultures generate a large number of new terms and phrases to mark membership of groups, and more importantly to mark non-membership. Such subculture words and phrases filter into mainstream spoken English or into the written standard only very occasionally. Consider, for example, the word ’wicked’ as meaning something exceptionally good, which appeared in mainstream pop music via African American youth subculture groups several years ago; today, however, the term no longer appears in the mainstream, except parodically. American Valley girl expressions such as ’Whatever’, as a response that displays a bored, cool indifference, were initially restricted to youth subcultures; but they are now used in the mainstream (but no longer among youth subcultures). In the 1960s’ subcultures, one of the key distinctions was that between ’heads’ (those who took drugs and shared a set of radical beliefs about the world) and ’straights’ (those who did neither of these). Today, these terms seem archaic and, indeed, ’straight’ has now changed its reference to mean ’heterosexual’.

5.2.3 Twentieth-century technologies and linguistic change

New technologies have brought new ways of using English. This is most obvious with specialized languages such as those used for short-wave radio or for telegrams. It is also true, however, of linguistic practices developed for talking on the telephone or on the radio: so-called ’BBC English’ was a pronunciation standard developed for radio and television.

Electronic mail has resulted in a number of changes mainly centring on questions of register. Because e-mail messages are generally short and sent immediately, a style of writing has developed that is more informal than letters or memos and that does not include formulae such as ’Dear Sir/Madam’, ’Yours faithfully’ and so on. Grammatical and typographical errors are often left uncorrected in e-mail messages. E-mail style has more in common with informal notes left for friends or family, and this informality seems to be used even when the person you are addressing is not known to you. This new informality very much accords with recent work by Norman Fairclough, which suggests that within British English in general the use of more informal and seemingly more personalized forms of expression is becoming more widespread (Fairclough, 1992). However, other commentators have begun to complain about the supposedly detrimental effects on language usage of ’e-mail English’.

Text messaging, because of the technical limitations on expression, has generated a particular style where it is permissible to leave out words and to use shortened forms. A host of shorthand symbols, such as ’gr8’ for ’great’, have been developed by users to enable them to send short messages without having to use many keys.