Read the text below and work out an outline to highlight its main ideas.

           LANGUAGE

On January 1, 1800 there were approximately 140 million native speakers of English in the world. Two centuries later that figure has almost tripled to nearly 400 million. Add to them about 100 million who speak English as a second language. Consider how English has become the international language of commu­nication, both conventional and digital. Think, moreover, of the massive increase in literacy since 1900, the legacy of the spread of universal education in the 19th-20th centuries. The English language is in an unprecedented number of hands.

In that same period, the world itself has changed beyond rec­ognition. In 1900, no powered heavier-than-air craft had left the Earth's surface, a hundred years later we started looking in com­placency at pictures of the Earth taken from outer space; various forms of electronic communication have brought all corners of the globe into instantaneous touch with each other. The old Eu­ropean colonies have become independent nations, a clash of empires, East and West, has risen and subsided- Sigmund Freud and his successors have delved into the recesses of the human psyche. The computer has grown, and shrunk, from a set of wink­ing throbbing cabinets big enough to fill a room to a miniatur­ized component of everyday life, holding the threat of and the promise of the future in its microcircuits. Given all that, it would be astonishing if the vocabulary of English had not grown sub­stantially. And so it has.

Words are a mirror of their times. By looking at the areas in which the vocabulary of a language is expanding in a given peri­od, we can form a fairly accurate impression of the chief preoc­cupations of society at that time. The new technology of cars, aircraft, radio and film dominated lexical innovation in the 1900s (aerodrome, wireless, cinema), along with the vocabulary of psy­chology and psychoanalysis (libido). In the decades of World War I and World War II, they were, not surprisingly, overshad­owed by the broad spectrum of military vocabulary (gas mask, shell shock, tank, Blitzkrieg, black-out, gas chamber, kamika­ze), but the return of peace brought other concerns to the fore: reconstruction and the nuclear threat (Marshall Plan, superpow­er, the bomb). The 1950s saw the first significant burgeonings of youth culture (beatnik, teen), which in its various manifestations has continued to be a prolific contributor to the English language. In the 1970s, concerns about the destruction of the environment became a long-term source of new vocabulary (green, global warming), and the language of political correctness and its pro­ponents began to get into its stride (chairperson). The 1980s were the decade of money, typified by the lifestyle terminology of those who made and enjoyed it (yuppie, dinky). The major new player on the 1990s lexical scene was the Internet (cybernaut, web site).

But it is not only the areas of activity characterized by high vocabulary growth that give us clues about the direction the hu­man race is going in. Our changing modes of social interaction have a lexical fingerprint too. Take, for example, the 20th centu­ry's rehabilitation of the notorious "four-letter words", formerly so beyond the pale that no dictionary would print them. As their common (and often euphemistic) epithet "Anglo-Saxon" sug­gests, they have been around a long time, and no doubt have been used widely in casual speech, but the taboo imposed on them means that printed examples from the 19th century and earlier are quite rare. It appears to have been the great melting pot of World War I, bringing together people of all classes and backgrounds, that encouraged the spread of such words (fuck off). You still ran a great risk if you printed them, though: be­tween the wars, the likes of James Joyce and Henry Miller had their work banned when they tried to, and as recently as 1960 in Britain the use of "Anglo-Saxon words" was one of the main is­sues in the trial of the Penguin Books edition of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover for obscenity.

What does this revolution in usage tell us about changes in English-speaking society? It certainly seems to be part of a more wide spread tendency to upgrade the status and acceptability of spoken English. Up to at least the 1960s, the notion of "Standard English" was based exclusively on written English, and the col­loquial language was regarded as an irrelevant but occasionally embarrassing and annoying offshoot that needed to be kept in its place. Now this is no longer so, and colloquial usages (both lex­ical and syntactic) are widely accepted in situations (including quite formal writing) where they would once have been consid­ered inappropriate.

On the other hand, there are a good many usages, which we now dare not allow to pass our lips. In the 19th century, it was socially acceptable, if not positively desirable, to be fat, and there was no stigma attached to the word "fat". Now, however, thin­ness is fashionable, and to call someone fat is a monstrous insult. We have evolved a range of euphemisms, from the colloquial chunky to the ponderous circumferentially challenged, to avoid the direct accusation.

It sometimes seems as if the 20th century was the century of euphemism. Much of the doublespeak is counterbalanced by ar­eas in which frankness has lately become the rule, but there is no doubt that there are many areas which English speakers have become embarrassed to talk about in the last hundred years. The one with highest profile is probably racial differences. The frag­mented history of English words for black people down the de-cades illustrates this. Terms such as black and nigger fell under a taboo in the middle part of the 20th century. They tended to be replaced by negro, but this went out of favour in the 1960s. Back stepped black, revived by blacks themselves as a term of pride. In the US it was joined by Afro-American and later African-Amer­ican, in Britain by Afro-Caribbean. The politically correct lobby enthusiastically revived the 18th century person of colour, and added its own rather unwieldy member of the African Diaspora. Then in 1980s US blacks subverted the whole process by re­claiming nigger, in the assertive new spelling nigga.

By what mechanisms did English expand its vocabulary in the 20th century? There are fundamentally five ways in which neologisms are created: by putting existing words to new uses (mouse in computers); by combining existing words or word parts and forming what is called blends (motor + hotel = motel)-, by shortening existing words and forming what is called initials (GP, NHS) or acronyms (AIDS, NATO), by borrowing words from other languages, which are known as loan words or barbarisms {pizza, anschluss, fuhrer, glasnost and perestroika); by coining new words out of nothing (Teflon, quark).That leaves a tiny residue of strange coinages which sometimes catch the public imagina­tion by their very outlandishness. A famous example of such coin­ages is the word "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".

Taken from an introdution written

by John Ayto to WORDS.

Notes:

1. Blitzkrieg — a period of sudden heavy attack espe­cially from the air;

 

2. The Marshall Plan — a programme established by the US government in 1947 to give economic help to Europe after World War II. It was named after George C. Marshall, who was the US Secretary of State. Thousands of millions of dollars were provided for rebuilding cit­ies, roads, industries;

 

3. anschluss – the taking over of Austria by Hitler's Germany in 1938;

 

4. quark – an extremely small piece of matter that forms the substances of which atoms are made;

 

5. beatnik – in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a per­son who showed opposition to the moral standards and ways of life of ordinary so­ciety. People often think of beatniks as young people with long hair and dirty clothes;

 

6. yuppie – Young Upwardly-mobile Professional, a young person in a professional job with a high income, especially one who enjoys spending money and having a fashionable way of life. In Britain, yuppies are seen as young people who earn a lot of money without necessarily working very hard, they are more concerned about enjoying their lifestyle than having a family or help­ing others in society. In the US, yuppies are thought of as being slightly older and as being insensitive, ambitious, and too interested in material goods;

 

7. dinky – Double Income No Kids Yet, one of two young married people in professional jobs who do not yet have children and who are both earning quite a lot of money;

 

8. supercalifragilisti cexpialidocious – (1949) wonderful, fantastic. The word first appeared, recognizably but in slight­ly different guise, as the title of a song by Parker and Young. It was made popular by the Walt Disney film.Ма r у Poppins in 1964. At the end of the century it was still familiar enough to be adapted punningly in a national advertising campaign in Britain ("As far as we know, Sainsbury's of­fer more kinds of alliaceous vegetables (onions, shallots, garlic, leeks and chives) than any other supermarket. Which must make Sainsbury's the most supercalifragilisticexpialidocious supermarket in the country" (1997)

 

Working in pairs, compare your outlines and exchange informa­tion to decide on the best possible wording of each point.

Tasks to the text:

1. Prove that the English language is in an unprecedented num­ber of hands.

2. Find facts to prove that the world has changed beyond rec­ognition in the past two centuries.

3. Explain what the author means by saying that "words are a mirror of their times". Do you agree with his point of view? Why? / Why not?

4. Explain the difference if any between:

          a) political vocabulary and the language of political correct­ness;

          b) politically correct words and euphemisms.

5. Account for the spread of "Anglo-Saxon words" and collo­quial usages.

6. Point out the areas with the highest profile of doublespeak.

7. List the ways in which neologisms are created.

8. Give your own examples of the new vocabulary in the fol­lowing areas:

 technological

 psychological

 military

 youth

 environmental

 political

 social

 the Internet

Decipher the following abbreviations: GP, NHS, AIDS, NATO.

Find out who/what Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Henry Miller and D. H. Lawrence were. Prepare short reports about these people to deliver in class.

Compare the representatives of different types of youth cul­ture: a beatnik, a yuppie and a dinky.

Exercise 1

Reread the text and write a summary of approximately 100- 150 words.

Exercise 2

Translate the following sentences into Russian, paying special attention to the italicized structures.

1. Given all that, it would be astonishing if the vocabulary of English had not grown substantially.

2. By looking at the areas in which the vocabulary of a lan­guage is expanding in a given period, we can form a fairly accurate impression of the chief preoccupations of society at that time.

3. It appears to have been the great melting pot of World War I, bringing together people of all classes and back­grounds, that encouraged the spread of such words.

Exercise 3

Find in the article the words that answer the following defini­tions.

NOUNS

the state of being able to read and write —

something passed on or left behind by someone —

a feeling of satisfaction with oneself or a situation without good reason —

a broad and continuous range of smth —

a feeling of shame or dishonour —

a new stem or branch —

 

VERBS

to make smth or smb appear less important —

to make smth fit for use again —

 

ADJECTIVES

 producing many works —

widely known for smth bad —

expressing strong opinions, showing a confident belief in one's own ability —

difficult to use —

Exercise 4

 Explain in English the following word combinations related to language. Give their Russian equivalents.

conventional and digital language

lexical innovation

to have a lexical fingerprint

casual speech

to upgrade the status and acceptability of language

formerly beyond the pale

Exercise 5

Translate the word combinations into Russian. In what context are they used by the author?

legacy of the spread of universal education

to rise and subside

to delve into the recesses of the human psyche

in various manifestations

to bring concerns to the fore

burgeonings of youth culture

to get into the stride

to subvert the process

politically correct lobby

Exercise 6

   Look at the ways of saying that

1. numbers, amounts, prices diminish:

 to decrease, to go down — in general

to decline, to slide — to diminish gradually

to fall, to drop, to plunge, to plummet — diminish quickly

2. feelings, qualities become less strong:

to lessen, to subside, to wane

3. substances become smaller in size: to shrink, to shrivel, to recede

Now use the verbs mentioned above in the following sentences.

1. My love for the countryside has never_____.

2. Exports of oil, cotton and minerals have_____.

3. Depending on how quickly political tensions_____, aid could begirn to flow.

4. The stock market _____ 30 points when the news was broadcast.

5. His popularity has _____ among the voters but it is still high.

6. The number of candidates _____ from 120 to 70.

7. The number of households without a car _____ to 12 %.

8. Public interest in World War II could easily _____ among the young.

9. The grapes are left in the sun to _____ and become raisins.

10. Prices will continue to _____ reduced.

11. During the 1960s, football attendance from _____1 million per week to 600,000.

12. The editor was concerned about the newspaper profit _____.

13. As the threat of a nuclear war _____ other things began to worry us.

14. If the British were to say: "No, we think war is unjustified", the American people's support for military action would _____.

Exercise 7

In what context was the verb "to subvert " used in the text? Look up in a dictionary the following verbs ending in - VERT.

SUBVERT, CONVERT, REVERT, PERVERT, DIVERT, AVERT, INVERT

Fill in the gaps with these verbs. Translate the sentences into Russian.

1. An accident _____ by his quick thinking.
2. My daughter finally _____ me to pop music.
3. The local authorities _____ additional government resources to the inner cities.
4. She caught the insect by _____ her cup over it.
5. All this violence on TV _____ the minds of our young children.
6. He has stopped drinking now, but he may _____ to it again.
7. All those on trial had used their official positions to _____ the government.

Exercise 8

Translate the sentences into English using the studied vocabu­lary.

1. Без всякого сомнения, уменьшается количество языков, находящихся в активном употреблении и служащих сред­ством универсального общения, в то же время увеличивается стремление малых народов сохранить самобыт­ность своих наречий и диалектов.
2. Некоторые слова и выражения прежде находились дале­ко за пределами общепринятых норм.
3. Небезынтересно и происхождение терминов: их специ­альное научное толкование неизменно восходит к значе­нию данного слова в повседневном разговорном языке.
4. Постепенно исчезающий язык, тем не менее, оставляет лексический след в языке, идущем ему на смену, зачас­тую даже оказывая влияние на формирование его грам­матической основы.
5. К. в своем трактате «Об ораторском искусстве» писал: «Когда слова, взятые для выражения соответствующих мыслей, хорошо упорядочены и образны, то особое до­стоинство придает им древность»:
6. Значительно реже взаимодействие двух языков приводит к их полному взаимному вытеснению и появлению со­вершенно нового языка, имеющего собственные грам­матические и лексические особенности.
7. По мнению лингвистов, особенности красноречия и сло­варного запаса, а также манеры изъясняться, сокрыты в тайниках человеческой души.
8. По мнению социологов, одним из проявлений возросше­го уровня жизни в стране стал настоящий литературный бум и существенно увеличившийся спрос на книжные издания и другую печатную продукцию.
9.  Представители прессы отметили, что небрежная речь дипломата свидетельствовала об отсутствии у него по­нимания политкорректности.
10. Повсеместное укрепление демократии и политических свобод выдвигают на первый план новые задачи, в том числе совершенствование избирательной системы и за­конодательства о выборах.

 

Exercise 9

Write out and learn the definitions of the following linguistic terms.

ACRONYM, BLEND, COINAGE, DOUBLESPEAK, EUPHE­MISM, FOUR-LETTER WORD, INITIAL, NEOLOGISM, TERM, LOAN WORD

New technology does not only affect the language but it also changes our speech habits. Read the text below and try to understand what groups of people are concerned about the new language developments.

    THE COMING GLOBAL TONGUE

It is, says Jacques Chirac, "a major risk for humanity". AIDS? The bomb? Over-eating? No: what frightens the pres­ident of France is what the Internet may do to language, not least his own country's language.

The spectre haunting the president of France is not new. In 1898, when Otto von Bismarck was an old man, a journalist asked him what he saw as the decisive factor in modern history. He replied: "The fact that the North Americans speak English".

This Bismarckian alarm, says Geoffrey Nunberg, of Stan­ford University in California, now has a new significance. For the electronic media that bind the world together are essentially carriers of language. To work efficiently they need a common standard. The personal computer (PC) has one: Microsoft's op­erating system, Windows. The Internet has another: TCP/IP, its Esperanto or transmission protocol, which allows computers any­where in the world to hook into it, whether they are PCs or rival Apple Macs. The English language is now the operating stan­dard for global communication.

In fact, electronic communications have affected, and will continue to affect, language in three distinct ways. First, they change the way language is used. Secondly, they have created a need for a global language — and English will fill that slot.

Third, they will influence the future of other languages, which people will continue to speak.

Start with the simplest sort of change: the way English is used in electronic converse. The language of electronic chat is splattered with abbreviations that make it not just faster to type hut also impenetrable to the novice. Plenty of activities have vocabularies of their own, badges of identity for the cognoscenti: think of motoring enthusiasts. So, too, with electronics.

Technology is, after all, fertile ground for vocabulary. Tech­nology and science, including medicine, together account for 50- 60 % of the new words in the addenda pages of Webster Third New International Dictionary.

Not only is the vocabulary of electronic communication dif­ferent from ordinary English; so is the way in which it is used. In his magisterial "Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Lan­guage", David Crystal argues that broadcasting has already cre­ated some novel language forms.

One is for sports: "Because commentary is an oral reporting of ongoing activity, it is unlike other kinds of narrative (which are typically reported in past time)". Indeed, it is unlike any other kind of speech. A radio commentary is a particularly odd creature. Charles Ferguson, an American linguist, describes it as "a mono­logue ... directed at an unknown, unseen, heterogeneous mass audience who voluntarily choose to listen, do not see the activity being reported, and provide no feedback to the speaker".

     WEIDER YET AND WEIRDER

Other kinds of speech have been created by electronic com­munications. The answering machine, or voice- mail, has prompt­ed new versions of the monologue. The telephone itself made common something that had previously been a rarity: a conver­sation with somebody you cannot see. Like talking in the dark, it encourages speakers to confide. For the listener, concentration on the voice alone, stripped of misleading body language, can be far more telling than a face-to-face conversation. One study found that it was easier to detect when a person was lying in a telephone call than either in a video-call or face-to-face.

Electronic media have created another novelty: the written conversation. Charles Evans of Chyden Net, a company based in Virginia which retails software electronically around the world, describes the style: "There's no social pressure to avoid the bro­ken sentence. The key word is "bandwidth" — which implies that the Internet will collapse if you use flowery language, but really just means "Get to the point". Hence the staccato style of much electronic exchange. And getting it right first time is less important than in a letter or a fax: "The cost of clarifying later is low".

A written conversation has one great advantage over the spo­ken word: writers can refine their words before "speaking" them. But it also lacks a key quality of speech: the tone of voice that conveys emotion. In electronic mail, says Mr. Evans, "I find we all have a tendency to apologize for the fact that we can't see the other person's expression or hear their tone of voice. You wouldn't do it in a letter. It's because we're thinking of it as a conversation".

At one point, some users solved this problem with the "smi­ley", a use of punctuation to express delight by J and sorrow by L. Other symbols represent other basic responses. True cyberians now dismiss such typographical fancies.

Being passe on the Internet is a hideous offence, as socially ghastly as speaking with the wrong accent at the Ritz. To help the parvenu avoid insults and attack a whole collection of books offer advice on "netiquette".

To foster such clarity WIRED, a magazine much read by the digerati, recently produced its own style guide, grandly called "Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age". It is rather odd, therefore that the guide seems notably uninterested in being com­prehensible to those whose first language is not English — or, indeed, to some of us who had thought that English was our mother tongue.

            A NEW LATIN

But in spite of the best efforts of the geeks to give English "freedom from the shackles of grammar", the development of the Internet will be one more fillip to the development of English as a world language. The result will soon be extraordinary: a language spoken by more people as a second tongue than a first.

At present, the United States contains four times as many English mother-tongue speakers as any other country. Britain is next. Between them, these two countries have 70 % of the 320 m people whose first language is English. But far more rapid growth is taking place in the number of people who speak English as a subsidiary language. Peter Stevens, a Cambridge don who wrote unit the rise of world English, predicted a time when "English will be taught by mostly non-native speakers of the language, to non-native speakers, in order to communicate mainly with non- native speakers".

This is an extraordinary state of affairs. Carl Mills, professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, says nervously: "It will be the first time in the history of the world that the language is not ours any more. If a language is no longer the property of its .native speakers, it will change, and it's not clear what the consequences will be".

Comprehension and discussion questions:

1. Why does I. Chirac see the Internet as a major risk to hu­manity? Do you share his concern?
2. Why was Bismarck worried about the fact that way back in 1898 the North Americans spoke English? Were his premo­nitions justified?
3. Why are modern British and American linguists not very happy about the developments in the English language? Are there any grounds for their fears from your point of view? Why? / Why not?
4. What are the three distinct ways in which electronic commu­nications affect language according to the article?
5. In what way do electronic means of communication affect speech habits? Do you see the effect as beneficial or perni­cious? Why?
6. What may be the consequences of the fact that the English language is no longer the property of its native speakers?

Exercise 10

Think of the word, which best fits in each space. Write only one word.

Through the centuries, people have continued to develop faster and (l) _____ efficient ways of communicating. These various methods have developed to the (2) _____that we can communicate with people anywhere in the world at the (3) _____   of a button.

In the past, fires or beacons lit on hilltops (4) _____ used to warn or signal to others. Pigeons, which can (5) _____ depended on to return to their place of origin, were trained to carry messages, and human messengers, (6) _____ on foot or on horseback, allowed people to (7) _____ in touch with loved ones — or enemies (8) _____ were far away. Surprisingly, one of the most reli­able (9) _____ of communication is also one of the old­est. The postal system, which has existed (10) _____ the 7th century B. C., was originally a Chinese creation based (11) _____ a system of messengers and couriers. As travel and commerce expanded, so (12) _____ the postal system, and advances in transport and technology, (13) _____ as the telegraph and airplanes, were utilised.

In this century, the rate of development has increased dra­matically, especially with the introduction of the telephone. This has not _____ enabled us to speak to each (14) _____ in our houses or offices, but has also led to the development of a new generation of communication technology. The fax, the mobile phone and the Internet are all dependent on the telephone system and allow us to communicate instantly, (15) _____ we may be.

Exercise 11

Render the following article into English.

Слова имеют огромную власть над нашей жизнью, власть магическую. Мы заколдованы словами и в значительной сте­пени живем в их царстве. Слова действуют, как самостоя­тельные силы, независимые от их содержания. Мы привык­ли произносить слова и слушать слова, не отдавая себе отче­та в их реальном содержании и их реальном весе. Мы принимаем слова на веру и оказываем им безграничный кре­дит. Общественная жизнь отяжелевает от рутины слов. Как много значат и как сильно действуют слова «левый», «пра­вый», «радикальный», «реакционный», и пр., и пр. Мы за­гипнотизированы этими словами и почти не можем обще­ственно мыслить вне этих ярлыков. А ведь реальный вес этих слов не велик, и реальное их содержание все более и более выветривается. Я слышу, как говорят: это очень «радикаль­ный» человек, подавайте за него голос. А этот «радикаль­ный» человек — адвокат, зарабатывающий 20 ООО руб. в год, ни во что не верящий и ничему не придающий цены, за ра­дикальной фразеологией скрывающий полнейшее обще­ственное равнодушие и безответственность. Качества лич­ности вообще у нас мало ценятся, и не ими определяется роль в общественной жизни. Поэтому у нас так много со­вершенно ложных общественных репутаций, много имен, созданных властью слов, а не реальностью. В обществен­ной жизни совсем почти не происходит естественного под­бора личных характеров. А в жизни государственной явно происходит подбор характеров, негодных и недоброкаче­ственных. При помощи условной фразеологии у нас легко превращают людей глубоко идейных, с нравственным зака­лом характера, чуть ли не в подлецов, а людей, лишенных всяких идей и всякого нравственного закала, высоко возно­сят. Более всего не терпят людей самостоятельной и ориги­нальной мысли, не вмещающихся ни в какие привычные рутинные категории.

/ Николай Бердяев «Судьба России»/

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