Late Modern English

Prescriptivism

Late Modern English refers to the period from around 1700 to 1900, it is characterised by the rise of prescriptivism and prescriptivist attitudes. Here are a few important individuals/organisations to know about for your exam:

Jonathan Swift

Swift was a writer (he wrote Gulliver’s Travels) and he was appalled at the state of English. He wrote about how spoken and written English was riddled with ‘abuses’ and ‘absurdities’.
He wrote a book about ‘Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue’.
Swift proposed that we eliminated ‘defective’ grammar and employed more archaic grammar systems.

Académie française

Swift's core argument, however, was that we employ a system like the ‘Académie française’.
This French institution controlled and limited what came into the French language – they confirmed or rejected new words and protected French grammar syntax.

Robert Lowth

Lowth’s grammar book became incredibly influential and many children were taught from it.
Lowth’s personal bugbear (and this was a personal stylistic choice) was that multiple negation (double negatives) should be banned.
Before this, double negatives were very much in use – writers like Chaucer and Shakespeare often used double negatives.

Multiple negation

Originally, the more negatives, the more negative the phrase. Many languages still use multiple negation for this purpose.
Lowth’s reason behind suggesting this stemmed from the fact that two negatives make a positive in maths and therefore our language should be the same.
He also believed that we should never start a sentence with a preposition.

Lindley Murray

Murray believed that we shouldn’t split infinitives.
For example, we should always use ‘to dance beautifully’ rather than ‘to beautifully dance’.

Industrial Revolution and the British Empire

The biggest driver for change in this period was the Industrial Revolution and later the rise of the British Empire.

Change

The Industrial Revolution saw change on a massive scale.
Geographical movement towards cities (e.g. the Liverpudlian accent was formed as a result of mass Irish migration) and away from countryside.
Vast improvements on technology (which leads to lexical change).
Greater emphasis on social class.

Empire

Towards the middle of this period, the British Empire began to rise.
The colonisation of countries led to English borrowing various terms from places like India (like ‘bungalow’).
Within this, we see the rise of America (but more on them later!).

Global language

At this point, English starts to become a global language – a language recognised around the world.
As we pillaged and imported global goods (and words), we exported our language. For more on this, see the section on ‘Global English’.
The important thing to note on this section is that standard use of grammar becomes pretty much fixed at this point.

1Language Levels

1.1Assessment Objectives

1.1.1Assessment Objectives

1.2Lexis

1.2.1Introduction

1.2.2Common, Proper, Abstract & Concrete Nouns

1.2.3Collective Nouns

1.2.4Adjectives

1.2.5Main, Auxiliary & Copular Verbs

1.2.6Dynamic & Stative Verbs

1.2.7Transitive, Intransitive, Active & Passive Verbs

1.2.8Mood of Verbs

1.2.9Adverbs

1.2.10Personal, Possessive & Reflexive Pronouns

1.2.11Relative & Demonstrative Pronouns

1.2.12Determiners

1.2.13Conjunctions

1.2.14Synonyms, Antonyms & Phonological Features

1.2.15End of Topic Test - Lexis

1.3Grammar

1.3.1Morphology

1.3.2Clauses

1.3.3Phrases

1.3.4Present Tense

1.3.5Past Tense

1.3.6Future Tense

1.3.7End of Topic Test - Grammar

1.4Semantics & Pragmatics

1.4.1Semantics

1.4.2Pragmatics

1.5Discourse Structure, Graphology & Orthography

1.5.1Discourse Structure

1.5.2Graphology & Orthography

1.5.3End of Topic Test - Semantics, Graphology etc.

2Language, The Individual & Society

2.1Children’s Language Development

2.1.1The Exam

2.1.2Phonemes, Vocal Tract & Articulation

2.1.3Writing About Phonemes

2.1.4Phonological Simplification

2.1.5A Child's First Year & Consonant Acquisition

2.1.6Beginning Stages of Language

2.1.7Lexical Development

2.1.8Stages of Development

2.1.9End of Topic Test - Child Language Development

2.2Children's Language Development - Theories

2.2.1Behaviourism

2.2.2Interactionism

2.2.3Challenging Interactionism

2.2.4Nativism

2.2.5Nativism - Exam Answer

2.2.6Cognitivism

2.2.7Social Constructionism

2.2.8Writing About Spoken Acquisition

2.2.9End of Topic Test - Development Theories

2.3Literacy Development: Reading

2.3.1Introduction

2.3.2Phonics vs Whole Word

2.3.3Debates in Reading

2.3.4Modelling Reading Acquisition

2.3.5Other Reading Theories

2.3.6End of Topic Test - Reading

2.4Literacy Development: Writing

2.4.1Orthography

2.4.2Kroll's Theory

2.4.3Barclay's Theory

2.4.4Creativity vs Accuracy

2.4.5Other Writing Theories

2.4.6The Exam

2.4.7End of Topic Test - Writing

3Language Diversity & Change

3.1The Importance of Gendered Language

3.1.1Writing About Gender

3.1.2Dominance Theory

3.1.3Interruptions - Zimmerman & West

3.1.4Deficit Theory

3.1.5Difference Model

3.1.6Difference Model - Men

3.1.7Diversity Model

3.1.8End of Topic Test - Gendered Language

3.2Social Groups

3.2.1Writing About Social Groups

3.2.2Social Class

3.2.3Social Class 2

3.2.4Age

3.2.5Age - Teen Speak

3.2.6Milroy’s Belfast Study

3.2.7Labov’s Martha’s Vineyard Study

3.2.8End of Topic Test - Social Groups

3.3Occupational Groups

3.3.1Writing About Occupational Groups

3.3.2Jargon

3.3.3Conversations

3.3.4Hierarchy & Power

3.3.5End of Topic Test - Occupational Groups

3.4Accents & Dialects

3.4.1Writing About Accent & Dialect

3.4.2Introduction to Accents & Dialects

3.4.3Accents - Matched Guide Experiment

3.4.4Accents - Received Pronunciation & Brummie

3.4.5Dialects - Dialectal Variations

3.4.6Accent & Dialect Case Study - London

3.4.7End of Topic Test - Accents & Dialects

3.5Language Change

3.5.1Writing About Language Change

3.5.2Modelling Change

3.5.3Modelling Change 2

3.5.4Lexical Change

3.5.5Semantic Change

3.5.6End of Topic Test - Language Change

3.6History of English

3.6.1Old English

3.6.2Old English 2

3.6.3Middle English

3.6.4Middle English 2

3.6.5Early Modern English

3.6.6Late Modern English

3.6.7Present Day English

3.6.8Global English

3.6.9American English

3.6.10Modelling Global English

3.6.11End of Topic Test - History of English

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