To what extent has SE changed since the turn of the century?

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.