English Language Studies

Stefan Dollinger recently spoke about what the Oxford English Dictionary should do to account for the fact that English is now spoken by more non-native speakers world-wide than it is by native speakers:

http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Oxford+English+Dictionary+mulls+what+gets+what+stays/8781779/story.html

Anne Curzan, a linguist at the University of Michigan, talks about marking students off for “grammatical errors”:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/08/14/dinging-for-grammatical-errors/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

This blog entry is part of “Lingua Franca” of the Chronicle of Higher Education, a blog with a number of good entries.

The writer in The Guardian believes that the word literally should be set aside (at least for a while), not only because it is used in a sense directly opposed to its original meaning (i.e., meaning ‘figuratively’), but also because it is associated with (female) teenage speech and when it is used “properly”, it actually evokes surprise.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/13/literally-broken-english-language-definition

What do you think? Note that this usage is recorded in the OED going back as far as 1769.

Although the Urban Dictionary has “obvious limitations”, it has been used as a source of information on current slang in a number of court cases:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/business/media/urban-dictionary-finds-a-place-in-the-courtroom.html?emc=eta1

Here is a brief interview with John Simpson, outgoing editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/29/the-oxford-english-dictionary-the-original-crowdsourcer.html

Linguist John McWhorter argues in his TED talk that LOL is no longer used in its original meaning “laugh(ing) out loud”, but has come to be a marker of empathy with the hearer (used in contexts that are not particularly humorous). That is, it is used like a discourse markers such as you know or I mean:

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/30/opinion/mcwhorter-lol/index.html?hpt=hp_t5

Read Dennis Baron’s report on language change doubters (note date!)

http://illinois.edu/blog/view/25

The British comedians Armstrong and Miller have a wonderfully funny series of skits involving RAF soldiers in WWII speaking like 21st century British teenagers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwNQf08Kxsw

Listen to and read about Sali Tagliamonte’s research on Toronto English. Tagliamonte is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto who has been collecting sociolinguistic data on Toronto and more rural Ontario English:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/03/07/like_whatever_eh_u_of_t_prof_tracks

_evolution_of_canadian_english_across_generations.html