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Review
Review
Last week we introduced the concept of register, and how language subtly changes depending on the nature of the topic, the audience, and whether we're speaking or writing. These aspects were called field, tenor and mode. We've looked at how changes in grammatical structure help us write in an academic register by depersonalising our language; specifically, we looked at nominalising verbs and adjectives, and using the passive voice. This week we will look at how word choice can also affect register.
Discussion
Discussion
- Imagine you are describing to a close friend something that you do well. Now imagine you're asked to do the same thing to a potential employer at a job interview. How does the way you describe this amazing ability change?
- Now imagine you got the job: it's a highly respected company in the capital city of your home country. Do you adjust the way you speak, your accent, choice of words? Or do you talk as you would in your own street in your home town?
What is prestige lexis?
What is prestige lexis?
All languages have different ways of expressing formality, respect and authority. This may be having a 'respectful' verb form that's used to address people you're less familiar with or when you're in a more formal situation, or when there's a difference in levels of authority. Occasionally though two separate languages sit side by side in the same place as a result of cultures having come into contact, sometimes willingly, and sometimes not. This is what happened with the English language that we speak today. In 1066, William Duke of Normandy (more commonly known as William the Conqueror) invaded England. For 300 years, Norman French was the language of power while Anglo Saxon lived in the shadows, and survived as a spoken language of the street and the home. When languages sit in close proximity in this way, the more powerful language (known in linguistics as the lexifier) has a strong influence on the other, and the most prominent impact is that words flow across language boundaries. English started to import words from Norman French.
These new French words really stood out in English, and this is because English and French come from two different language families. English is part of the Germanic family, which includes German (unsurprisingly), Dutch and the Scandinavian languages, whereas French is descended from Latin, alongside Italian, Spanish, Romanian and Portuguese. These belong to a group called the Romance family. We can hear the differences between the two families in words which talk about the same things. Sky and atmosphere for example both refer to the space above the earth where we'd expect to find clouds and aeroplanes, but they sound different, and they don't mean exactly the same thing. Sky sounds blunt and heavy; it has just one syllable, and talks about the sky that we can actually see. Atmosphere on the other hand has a longer, more meandering sound to it and has a much softer ending. Semantically, we would use atmosphere to talk about the space above the earth in a more abstract or scientific sense. We also use it to talk about general feeling or mood. We find this sense of abstraction associated with the French lexis, and so for academic writing we tend to encounter many more of them than we would do in everyday conversation.
So, English has its own diglossia: a situation where high and low forms of language exist in a society. It's not as pronounced as it used to be; the words from French have become woven into the fabric of English, but we can still hear the echos of the Norman invasion nearly a thousand years after William took the throne of England. For us as academic writers, these words can be powerful tools. The core words of English are still Anglo Saxon, but knowing their more prestigious counterparts gives us more expression to discuss abstract concepts and ideas, as well as to bring finer shades of meaning to our writing.
Discussion
Discussion
- Do you have a diglossia in your own country?
- Can you think of any examples of historical events which have affected your language?
- What imported words does your language contain? Are they seen as being 'prestigious'?
Task one
Task one
1. Click the link above to view the Indo-European family tree and find English and French.
- How many of the other languages do you recognise?
- What do you think they all have in common?
- What does the size of the leaves represent?
2. Look at the word pairs below. Try and identify which one is of French origin, and which comes from Old English.
Cuisine - Cooking Ask - Enquire Receive - Get
Encounter - Find Make - Create
3. What differences are there in meaning, and are they used in sentences in exactly the same way?
One of the online dictionaries that we looked at last week such as the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English will really help you here.
Task two
Task two
- Read the text above once more, and try to pick out five prestige words to record in your notebooks. Again, use the online dictionary to help you and ask: does it describe something abstract that we can't see or touch? Is it of French/Latin origin? (Scroll to the bottom of the dictionary entry to find this out.) If the answer to these two questions is yes, then it's likely to be a useful word to acquire. There are even several words in this box that could get you started!
- The Anglo Saxon words in the box below on the left all have 'prestige' equivalents in the box on the right. Can you match them all?
Review and practice
Review and practice
Exchange your diagnostic essays with the person next to you and see if you can find any opportunities to enhance the sound of the words. A good place to start is with the verbs. If you see that your partner has a lot of instances of the most common Anglo Saxon verbs like make, do, take and get, see if any of them can be 'upgraded' to a more precise Latin verb.
Language analysis - polysemic verbs
Language analysis - polysemic verbs
What are the most common verbs that we use in English? The top ten are: be, have, do, make, use, say, take, get, include and see. Eight of these are Anglo Saxon, and only two are Latin (can you identify them?). They are also among the first words we learn in any language because they form the foundations of most things we want to say. But what do they actually mean? If I ask you what the word take means, you'll probably think of some one taking a physical object in their hands, and maybe moving it from one place to another. In reality though, the word take is rarely used in this way. It's an example of a word that's become polysemic: literally, to have many different meanings depending on where it's used.
Task three
Task three
Look through the examples of take from the Sketch Engine for Language Learning.
- How many different meanings are there?
- What synonyms can be used?
- Do any of the examples refer to the physical act of taking something?
- Use the Sketch Engine to bring up examples of how the other most frequent English verbs are used. What patterns can you find?
Summary
Summary
- Being able to identify Latin words helps us develop the vocabulary to talk about subtle and abstract concepts and ideas more clearly.
- Many of the most common Anglo Saxon words have lost their physical meaning, and instead form part of phrases (e.g. to take place or take shape), whereas the Latin verbs are much less flexible and have more precise meanings.
- To develop as a writer, try to avoid overusing these Anglo Saxon words in their physical form.
Task four
Task four
The following is an excerpt of someone speaking about advice for travelling in London. Make notes, and re-draft the speech into an academic register. Here are some writing tips to remember:
- Depersonalise: use noun phrases/nominalisation/passive voice where necessary
- Avoid ‘colloquial’ lexis, slang and of course swearing!
- Try and utilise more precise Latin verbs rather than Saxon equivalents.
To be honest, getting around London can be really hard work. You have the tube of course, but this is usually crammed with loads of people and in the summer the heat just kills you. It gets expensive too. A four zone travel card is about a hundred and fifty quid a month. There’s the bus, but they’re prone to getting stuck in the crazy amounts of traffic. For me, the best thing to do is to get yourself a bike. Either buy one outright, or use the Boris bikes. Be careful though, it can get dangerous! You have to be a pretty good rider and fairly confident. Also, make sure you’ve got lights in the winter as it gets dark early.
Answer pad
Answer pad
Just for fun
Just for fun
Iceland is the western most outpost of the Germanic languages in Europe. Unlike English, it has imported very few words and has changed little since it was settled by Norwegian Vikings in the 9th century. Although today Reykjavik is one of the coolest cities in the world (literally and figuratively), the language people speak is pretty much as it would have been a thousand years ago. Click below to hear an old Icelandic folk song performed by the awesome band Kaleo. Although Icelandic is a cousin of the English language, it's difficult to spot any similarities at first. But you may be able to hear more in common with Anglo Saxon than Latin.
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