Standard English Essay

English Language Essay-Standard English

I think that the status of Standard English has changed since the turn of the century to some extent; this is due to advancements in technology (smartphones, text messages etc), social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc). It isn’t just technology that has caused an impact, its abbreviations of words and the use of slang words and social class is also a factor. However, Standard English hasn’t lost its status as it is still accepted and used within the society.

Standard English has changed due to people using word abbreviations, for example using ‘lol’ instead of laugh out loud, ‘brb’ for be right back and ‘l8r’ for later. People may use these words as it saves time and is easier, however is can make people become lazy when using technology. These words wouldn’t be used in everyday speech just in texting or on social media. Some examples of slang words are bee’s knees, quid (money), telly (television), skiving (skipping school), chap (man), dodgy, ace and many more. Aswell as word abbreviations and slang words, new words have been introduced such as bae and selfie, these words are used by mainly teenagers and have become a trend due to the amount of people using them and putting them on social media. These new words and meanings that have been introduced can cause people to make up words and use them or people have used words and made different meanings.

I think that technology has had a major impact on Standard English. Hundreds of years ago there was no technology available so people had to either write or use typewriters. One example of this is text messaging which is a quick and easy way to communicate with friends but it can cause people to become lazy due to using word abbreviations and emojis. Emojis are used in order to express someone emotions through a small picture icon. There are loads of emojis including laughing, crying, kissing, hugging, shocked, angry and many more. This is a simple and easier way to express emotions. These are widely used on texting and social media by millions of people. They have become the latest trend. Text messaging has auto correct which changes the word if it is spelt wrong to the correct spelling. This causes people to just type without actually looking at how the word is spelt, so this may cause them to forget how to spell a word if they haven’t got auto correct, if they are writing. Also in text informal language is often used, for example people shorten words – gonna, tryna, wanna ain’t etc. This causes a decline in Standard English as people are not saying the whole word and not saying it correctly.

Due to the invention of social media such as Facebook, twitter, Instagram etc, Standard English has changed. Social media is another way for people to communicate with their friends. However there are some cons to these, one con is that on twitter many people decided to follow the latest trends which cause them to use informal language because it is easier and more casual when using social media. Hashtags and certain words that friends/famous people use can become a trend causing loads of people to use them. Social media allows users to use swear words which isn’t a good idea because this causes people to get aggressive and make a bad impressions. This also impacts on getting jobs as if your employer wants to look on your social media site and they see this then they may think that this person isn’t right for the job if they say things like that. Many arguments are caused due to social media and informal language is used a lot in these arguments.

Peter Trudgill explored the dialect of Norwich by analysing the –ing e.g. shopping/shoppin’. He found out that working class speaker and men used this non-standard variation. This implies that social class has an impact on the change of Standard English. Standard English is known as the Queens English and is spoken by people of an upper class – they use Received Pronunciation. The features of RP are CURE lowering which is the use of /Ο:/ vs. the diphthong /Υ≅/ in words like sure, cure, pure, tour, Europe, etc, also /r/ is the use of linking and disturbing /r/ in phrases like far/r/ away, India/r/ and China, another feature is withdraw/r/al which is  the use of the affricates /t/ and /d/ for /tj/ and /dj/ in stressed syllables, making Tuesday sound like choose-day and dune like June and finally T voicing - the use of a voiced tap for intervocalic /t/ in e.g. British, a lot of.  Each social class has different ways of saying different words, for example people from middle class would say a tour whereas upper class people would say a towa and people from working class would say an ouse whereas people from middle class would say a house. Furthermore, social class and status has changed the use of Standard English. People that work in manual employment belong to the working class and to work in this employment minimal demands of literacy and educational qualifications are needed and it was not paid very well. Belonging to the middle class are teachers, lawyers, administrators etc, for this occupation a high degree of literacy and educational qualification are needed and this was better paid. Due to increased educational opportunity and economic wealth, more and more young people are exposed to Standard English than ever before.

I think that nowadays, it is common for people to use non-standard forms of English rather than Standard English forms. Some of the examples of non-standard English used is I ‘were’ instead of I was, ‘them’ books instead of those books, he ‘done’ it instead of he did it and he ‘ain’t’ finished instead of he hasn’t finished. This type of speech could have been influenced by upbringing, education or social class. This is proved by Graeme Paton who said that “Many GCSE English students did not realise that phrases such as "get off of" and "she was stood" were grammatically incorrect. Also in the latest study by Cambridge Assessment with more than 2,000 teenagers in 26 English secondary schools surveyed. This survey found out that only 41% of these teenagers realised that an adjective had been used in place of an adverb in the phrase "come quick" and around a quarter of GCSE students failed to spot errors in the phrases "it wasn't me who done it", "couldn't hardly move", "Tom had gotten cold" and "three mile". This means that 59% of teenagers didn’t realise that these sentences were grammatically incorrect – this is a large variety. Peter Trudgill said that people of a lower socio economic status are more likely o use non-Standard linguistic variants than people of a higher socio-economic status.

Finally, Standard English is changing whenever speakers come into contact with each other. People from different geographical places speak differently and there are variations according to a speakers, age, gender, ethnicity and social/education background. Due to interaction with these different speakers, new words, expressions and pronunciations are introduced and these are used into our own speech.

To conclude, Standard English has changed dramatically due to social media - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc, texting - using emojis and word abbreviations making people become lazy and social class – this influences the way in which people speak. Standard English may carry on changing in the future as technology may develop further and more people from different countries will interact with eachother.