To what extent do you agree
that the status of Standard English has changed since the turn of the century?
To a certain degree I agree that the status of Standard
English has changed massively since the turn of the century for many reasons.
New developments in technology for example have taken a great impact on this
change. Also, the different counties
that have come together have made the accent and dialect change, due to the new slang that’s developed
from other cultures and people have come up with has become more commonly used by the majority of people.
An example of a way in which technology has had an effect on
the language is through things like social media, messaging, emails and text messages.
These kinds of messaging/communicating techniques were designed to be a fast way of communicating to people
and due to quick new way of talking to people its reason to abbreviate words
and phrases in order to make the process even faster. This can be put down to
pure laziness and the determination to get their point across as quickly as
possible so shorten or change words in order to speed up the process. This way of communicating and talking is being used more and becoming
more of a common thing the more technology is developing. The shortening and
changing of words has become so well-known and is currently being used in
everyday language and is seen by many as their normal way of speaking or
communicating to many people. This has therefore decreased the profile of the English language
when people become too lazy to write words correctly and the use of dialect is
poor as this is now what people are used to. New and modern technology like smart phones and computers there’s
predictive text and auto correct for if you are spelling words incorrectly it
changes them for you automatically, this may be seen as helpful it means that people then
will begin to no longer realise that they are spelling words with the incorrect
spelling and on paper it will become a struggle to write and spell simple words as people are used to always being corrected without knowing. In addition,
something that is the main reason to why there is a change in Standard English
is social media websites. There are many social media sites that are easily
accessible through smart phones and computers. For example, Facebook, Twitter, Snap chat,
Instagram and many more that are all used by thousands of teenagers or young
adults. These sites are used in most countries around the world millions of
times a day and where on sites like Twitter you can only write a particular
amount of words its forcing people to write in such a way that they can fit
their whole point causing them to constantly abbreviate words, even simple
words like ‘later’ is changed to ‘l8tr’. Furthermore, on social media sites you
can add friends and follow people that you may know or like such as celebrities
and people can follow or add you in the same way. This means that you watch how
people are writing and tend to write in a similar for. Also people are
resulting to social media and developments in technology as their only way of
talking to people instead of going out and meeting them, this then concludes to
the decline of Standard English because it becomes that natural way of writing and
communicating.
After looking at social classes and the way in which they
speak, it becomes clear that the standard form of English that is taught to
upper and middle classes is of a higher status. Also it can be argued that
influences like other regions dialect is having too much of an influence on SE and
is causing too many changes. This is also taking toll on people like young
adults because they become used to the use of slang words which is having a bad
effect as they are being brought up amongst it all and are being encouraged to
speak in this way. Peter Trudgill made the assumption that only upper class
people such as royalty used ‘proper’ or ‘Standard’ English. He came to this conclusion
from looking at passed years there are more people falling into lower class and
more people have become poor, showing that less people were clarified as middle
or upper class, implying that many people won’t have a high status of Standard
English which is another representation or example of the decline of Standard
English. In recent looked at and completed surveys it shows that almost all
students who took part believe intensely that ‘the Queens English’ is the
correct way to speak or the ‘proper’ way to speak in the English Language. This
represents that all of the participants are from a similar back ground or
upbringing and have been brought up amongst slang words as they think that the language
spoken by the Queen is the best way to speak over any other forms. This shows a
social scale in which the Queen is at the top and everyone seems to believe in
this hierarchy which highlights a change in the status of Standard English.
As a result or conclusion, my thoughts would be that
Standard English has changed since the turn of the century. The change is
represented through new cultures and countries combining, developments in technology
or the expansion in knowledge and new words being made such as slang words that
then become popular and used by many eventually, because of all of these
reasons I feel that there are pros such as how advanced technology is and that
we can communicate to people so far away so quickly but overall I feel that there
is a major decline in standard English and its caused many issues and
stereotypes.
