"Terry's Bristolian language lesson"

Terry on YouTube is a "Bristolian" man, that gives tutorials on "How to be Bristolian"

We can see from Terry that accent is potentially influenced by social class.

We can also see that how strong your accent is fluctuates due to social situation. Terry might not necessarily  demonstrate this exactly point, but it's a general observation we all make. 

It often fluctuates between Reserved Proununciation and, for example,

Bristolian. The people you'd often see using Reserved Proununciation, are teachers/doctors/bankers and headteachers and you'd use it in job interviews.

But people that would use the Bristolian accent would be random, casual people on the street, or friends. And you would use this type of accent is used in casual/social situations. And example of this, is Terry.

The ability to fluctuate between Reserved Proununciation and Bristolian is called "Bi-Dialectism".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhgUeY1BExk

David Crystal-Accents

On a programme of Sunday Brunch, Davod Crystal and his son have a discussion with the presenters about accents.

He states how at the moment there is accent levelling across the country, the reason for accent levelling is because take London for example, people are moving in and out of London due to work and moving around, because of this, different accents get bought back into the city. This creates something like one big accent. As it is almost being shared around. This is the geographical movement for employment.

Crystal also states how, there is no such thing as one accent, e,t,c, "Bristolian". In Bristol, you have places like Hartcliffe, Whitchurch, Knowle and Clifton. In each of these different places, there are different influences to the "Bristolian" accent.

David Crystal has a web page called 

Yousaypotato.net

Here, you say potato into the website on a microphone, and it compares it to people all over the country. This is useful because you can compare different influences on words due to where you live.

We can also see that how strong your accent is fluctuates due to social situation. 

It often fluctuates between Reserved Proununciation and, for example,

Bristolian. The people you'd often see using Reserved Proununciation, are teachers/doctors/bankers and headteachers and you'd use it in job interviews.

But people that would use the Bristolian accent would be random, casual people on the street, or friends. And you would use this type of accent is used in casual/social situations. 

The ability to fluctuate between Reserved Proununciation and Bristolian is called "Bi-Dialectism

John McWhorter:'Txtng is killing language. JK!!!'

https://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk

This talk by John McWhorter is all about how texting is supposedly killing English language.

McWhorter talks about the overuse of 'lol' and how it has lost its significance, as in meaning, 'laugh out loud'. It is now used daily as almost a filler like 'umm' or 'like'. He then goes out to use some of these quotes;

"The idea is that texting spells the decline and fall of any kind of serious literacy, or at least writing ability, among young people in the United States, and now the whole world today."

"One thing that we see is that texting is not writing at all."

"If humanity had existed for 24 hours, then writing only came alone at about 11:07pm."

"Linguists have actually shown that when we're speaking causally in an unmonitored way, we tend to speak in word packets of maybe seven to ten words."

"Texting is very loose in its structure."

"Texting is...fingered speech."

"Increasing evidence is that being bilingual is cognitively beneficial. Thats also true of being bodialectal."

"Examine this linguistic miracle happening right under our noses."

Steven Pinker talk on language habits.

https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_language_and_thought

This is a talk by Steven Pinker on 'What our language habits reveal'.

In this talk, Pinker explains and points out what some of our language habits reveal. It quite literally is what the title suggests. How the way we speak may suggest what we are influenced by and how useful language really is.

Notes and interesting pieces I have drawn from the talk:

1: The Communication Model:

Sender-Message-Receiver

2) All spoken and written language is entirely dependent on social, historical and cultural context.

3) Slang and jargon all differ with historical change, dialect divergence and language formation.

4) Change in language:

    'Descriptivism and prescriptivism'

Prescriptivism is when standard English is the only way to write and speak, and it is the only correct way, prescriptivism is what makes the statement, "texting and social media is killing our English language".

5) Language is used as a window into the human nature.

It emerges from human minds interacting with one another.

It is visible in unstoppable change in language.

'Manspreading'

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/28/manspreading-men-oxford-dictionary-sitting-position-gendered

This article on 'Manspreading', written by Zoe Jewell, covers the issue of  how certain actions are unnecessarily gendered. She explains why its not fair as how can a sitting position be gendered, and says how its common to hear, "sit like a lady" if a moan is caught 'manspreading'. This article is very relatable to pretty much most girls/women.

5 different forms of FPA's

Diary Entry:
http://rhinegold.co.uk/downloads/catalogue_supporting_materials/Spring%20Term%201%202006_07%20-%20Holocaust%206%20Frank%20Diary%20Extract.pdf
Extract from Anne Franks diary;

• Form:Diary Entry
• Purpose:The purpose of not just this diary entry, but most diary entries in particular, are to note memories from the current day, and explain what has happened throughout the day. 
• Audience:The writer.

Music/Album review:
http://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/arctic-monkeys-am
Review of an Arctic Monkeys album;

• Form:Music/Album review
• Purpose:The purpose is to let the reader know what the new album consists of, what type of music it is, or the styles the artists/band are following. This will give them an insight to the music, and help them decide whether or not to listen to it/purchase it.
• Audience:The audience is anyone remotely interested in music in general, or the band itself.

News Article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/11867441/Kayak-duo-hit-by-whale-It-felt-like-a-bus-landing-on-us.html
News Article about people in a Kayaking accident;

• Form:News Article
• Purpose:The purpose is to inform the reader of current events and situations that may or may not be of importance to them.
• Audience:The audience it the reader of the newspaper.

Play Script:
http://www.william-shakespeare.info/act1-script-text-romeo-and-juliet.htm
Script for the play, 'Romeo and Juliet'

• Form:Script
• Purpose:The purpose is to inform the actors/actresses of what their lines are and what actions they need to carry out.
• Audience:The actors/actresses.

Advertisement:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=charity+advertisement&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=979&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAWoVChMI-sP2pbz7xwIVx7YUCh2UtAHy#imgrc=v7mprM-zbw63qM%3A
Advertisement for help on quitting smoking

• Form:Advertisement
• Purpose:To shock people and make them consider quitting smoking, showing them what resources are available to do so.
• Audience:Smokers, anyone affected by it.

https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/the-100-most-beautiful-words-in-english/
 This article lists the apparent 100 most beautiful words in English.

This article interests me because I noticed the words are not very common or widely spoken by youths. Such extravagant vocabulary like that, for some reason, doesn't find itself fitting into daily vocabulary. Reasons for this could possible be social media, on social media you are constantly shortening words to fit into limited spaces, or just to save time.

So, maybe this technique of shortening words to save time, has almost become embedded in youth's minds, causes vocabulary such as the ones listed in the article, to be more or less unused by todays generation.

Frameworks;

Phonetics, phonology and prosodics- how speech,sounds and effects are articulated&analysed.
Examples; onomatopoeia and alliteration.

Graphology, visual aspects of textual design and appearance- this includes form, purpose and audience.
Examples; font, punctuation and emojis.
Look at technology to study this.

Lexis and semantics- this means, words and meanings, looking at vocabulary of English, including social and historical variation.

Grammar- including morphology, structural patterns and shapes of English at sentence, clause, phrase&word level.

Pragmatics/meaning- the contextual aspects of language use.

Discourse- extended stretches of communication occuring in different genres, modes&context.
(How it looks)

Register- how language varies in relation to audience, purpose and context e.g. a formal letter uses a different register to one written to a friend.

Mode- how language may vary according to the channel of communication (speech,writing and mixed modes) e.g. how you would write something down as a message would be different from how you would pass it on orally.

Idiolect- the unique way one person expresses themselves due to their personality, belief systems, social experiment etc.

Sociolect- the way of expressing themselves that a social group have in common e.g. we could generalise the way teenagers speak, aristocrats speak, students speak etc.

Dialect- the variation in word choice and grammatical structure due to where someone lives e.g. "Cheers drive" is a Bristolian saying, as is the grammatical structure "Where's she to?"

This terminology/ these frameworks are to be used throughout AS and A level English language. So it is essential to become familiar with them.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/from-the-mouths-of-teens-422688.html
This link takes you to an article, talking about influences on language from places like Jamaica, London and the Caribbean.

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk%20news/article209405.ece
This link takes you to an article, talking about how slang has been taken from different cultures and has been applied to every day language, especially in teenagers, all over the country.

Both or these two articles explain how slang these days has originated from different cultures and countries/cities, from all over the world. Yet as they become more popular, and widespread due to social media and conversations through different groups of people, they become more widely used and accepted as a slang that can be applied to every day conversations.In both of these articles you can see how this slang is more common in teenagers, this may be due to how connected they are, with both the internet, and friends from not only their areas, but from all over the world.

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/quiz/2013/feb/04/grammar-punctuation-quiz-test

This link takes you to The Guardian webpage, showing a quiz on grammar for Year 6s.

http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/as-and-a-level/english-language-a-2700
This takes you to the AQA website and informs you about AS and A level English Language.