The influence of extra-linguistic phenomena on the development of vocabulary
Источник - Арнольд
Languages are powerfully affected by social, political, economic, cultural and technical change. The influence of those factors upon linguistic phenomena is studied by sociolinguistics. It shows that social factors can influence even structural features of linguistic units: terms of science, for instance, have a number of specific features as compared to words used in other spheres of human activity. The history of the social, economic and political life of the people, the progress of culture and science bring about changes in notions and things influencing the semantic aspect of language.
For instance, OE eorde meant ‘the soil’ (земля, почва) and ‘the world of man’ (мир земной) as opposed to heaven (мир небесный). With the progress of science earth came to mean the third planet from the sun and the knowledge is constantly enriched. With the development of electrical engineering earth means ‘a connection of a wire conductor with the earth’ (заземление). There is also a corresponding verb earth. E. g.: With earthed appliances the continuity of the earth wire ought to be checked (когда приборы заземлены, необходимо проверить целостность грозозащитного троса). The word space meant ‘extent of time or distance’ or ‘intervening distance’ (пространство времени или расстояния или промежуточное расстояние). Alongside this meaning a new meaning developed ‘the limitless expanse in which all material objects are located’ (безграничное пространство, где находятся все материальные объекты). And then appeared spacecraft, space-suit, space travel (космический корабль, космический скафандр, космическое путешествие). The tendency to use technical imagery is increasing in every language; for example, now the word ‘electric’ (электрический) used figuratively about a person of intense energy.
Social relationships are at work in the cases of elevation and pejoration of meaning. Sociolinguistics also teaches that power relationships are reflected in vocabulary changes. Apart from this, we need mention euphemisms. They are dictated by social usage, etiquette, advertising and political propaganda. «dead» - deceased (мертвый - покойный, почивший), «mad» - deranged (сумасшедший, безумный - душевнобольные, люди с психическими отклонениями). Air raids are officially called protective reaction (защитная реакция), although there is nothing protective about it. Countries with a low standard of living - underdeveloped (неразвитые), but it seemed more tactful to call them developing (развивающиеся).
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Differences in vocabulary are one aspect of dialect diversity which people notice readily and comment on quite frequently. They are certainly common enough as markers of the differences between geographical areas or regions - for instance the fact that "a carbonated soft drink" (газированный напиток) might be called pop in the North and West of the United States, soda in the Northeast, tonic in Eastern New England, and cold drink, drink or dope in various parts of the South. Or the fact that a person who was "tired" or "exhausted" (устал или изможден) might describe themselves as being all in if they were from the North or West, but wore out or give out if they were from the South.
Let be back to semantic changes. Semantic changes motivated by psychological factors, which account for another group of language-external causes of sense development, are all pervasive and – paradoxically – frequently remain unnoticed, as they are generated almost unconsciously by language users, who have been mostly brought up and taught to maintain a good rapport with other members of their speech community. Thus, speakers’ own individualities and sensitivities influence the language they use to facilitate interpersonal and social exchange by taking account of their interlocutors’ idiosyncrasies of the same type. An extreme example of such a deliberate approach, verging almost on selfcensorship, is the notorious principle of political correctness. As insightfully observed by Grzega (2002):
The notion of “political correctness” is on the edge of societal and institutional reasons and could theoretically be subsumed under these two. However, political correctness is, first of all, a term that is so well embedded in modern thinking and, second, a notion that stands out because it refers entirely to human beings (and derivable terms) that it should be listed as a separate motive [of lexical choices]. When speaking of “nigger”, for instance, political correctness can be regarded as the modern form of taboo (Grzega 2002:1036).
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Grzega (2004:21) expounds that taboo refers to the desire of avoiding [sic] a specific (growingly stigmatized) designation for a concept with “undesirable” aspects. Having no intention to embark on yet another discussion of the widely known examples of major types of taboos below we shall focus our attention on two major taboo oriented motivations of semantic change, that is political correctness and religion.
To discuss a most illustrative example of the motivation by the political correctness taboo, let us consider the history of English adjective/noun gay.
Although it is politically correct to approve of homosexuality as another equally valid and justifiable form of human sexual behaviour, on a par with heterosexuality, the very term homosexual has become deemed offensive and ostracized, i.e. underwent a pejorative semantic change (which is surprisingly inconsistent from the gay-oriented point of view). Consequently – as stipulated by the proponents of the semantic field theory,– another lexical item had to fill in the gap in the conceptual field, and the word gay became the socially acceptable term of reference with the same intended meaning.
Political correctness (adjectivally, politically correct; both forms commonly abbreviated to PC) is a term that refers to language, ideas, or policies that address perceived or actual discrimination against or alienation of politically, socially or economically disadvantaged groups. The term usually implies that these social considerations are excessive or of a purely "political" nature. These groups most prominently include those defined by gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation and disability.
The principal applications of political correctness concern the practices of awareness and toleration of the sociologic differences among people of different races and genders; of physical and mental disabilities; of ethnic group and sexual orientation; of religious background, and of ideological worldview. Specifically, the praxis of political correctness is in the descriptive vocabulary that the speaker and the writer use in effort to eliminate the prejudices inherent to cultural, sexual and racist stereotypes with culturally neutral terms, such as the locutions, circumlocutions, and euphemisms presented in the Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook (1993) such as:
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• “Intellectually disabled” in place of mentally retarded
• “African American” in place of Black and Negro, in the United States
• “Native American” in place of Indian, in the United States
• “First Nations” in place of Indian, in Canada
• Gender-neutral terms such as “firefighter” in place of fireman and firewoman, “police officer” in place of policeman and policewoman
• Value-free terms describing physical disabilities, such as “visually impaired” in place of blind and “hearing impaired” in place of deaf
• Value-free cultural terms, such as “Holiday season” and “Winter holiday”, in place of Christmas
Political correctness often is satirized, for example in the Politically Correct Manifesto (1992), by Saul Jerushalmy and Rens Zbignieuw X and Politically Correct Bedtime Stories (1994), by James Finn Garner, presenting fairy tales re-written from an exaggerated PC perspective. In 1994, the comedy film PCU took a look at political correctness on a college campus.
Other examples include the television program Politically Incorrect, George Carlin’s "Euphemisms" routine, and The Politically Correct Scrapbook. The popularity of the South Park cartoon program led to the creation of the term South Park Republican by Andrew Sullivan, and later the book South Park Conservatives by Brian C. Anderson.
British comedian Stewart Lee satirised the oft-used phrase "it's political correctness gone mad". Lee criticised people for overusing this expression without understanding the concept of political correctness.
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Semantic analysis of words.
Источник -лекция
A number of meanings a given word is used in are commonly discussed under the name of lexical-semantic variants.
- English happens to be not only a language with immense and powerful literary tradition, but it is also used internationally by an enormous number of people.
- Hence (таким образом) the polysemantic nature of its irregularity but of working out a reliable pattern of semantic analysis.
The overall meaning of the word is approached, according to ad. Vinogradov, in terms of nominative, nominative-derivative, colligationally and collocationally conditioned and phraseologically bound meanings (Vinogradov, 1975)
The nominative meaning- i.e. the basic meaning of the word which refers objects of extralinguistic reality in a direct and straightforward way, reflecting their actual relations- can be correlated with referential/ denotative / factual objective meaning in Crystals's frame of reference. (Table)
The nominative meaning' also has the following 'free' authentic equivalent in English: essential, central, domain, primary, focal, pivotal, common, usual. Butthis line of synonyms is mostly used to avoid repetition in speech and not as technical terms.
- The core or prototypical meaning is believed to be readily translatable, into other languages as distinct from the word's peripheral meanings which are least translatable. (Mc. Carthy, 1990).
2) The nominative-derivative meaning comes into being when the word is 'stretched out' semantically to cover new facts and phenomena of extralinguistic reality (table- таблица)
- By association the speaker uses the word metaphorically, thus extending its content. A new fragment of the outer world is incorporated into the word's semantic structure by virtue of certain similarities between things being observed by the speaker and consciously made use of.
- A case in point is, for example, sweet in the nominative-derivative meaning of pleasant, attractive: sweet face, voice, singer, little boy.
- We can speak here of semantic variation which is caused by the polysemy of the word. Semantic variation implies that the identity of the word remains intact (целостный) as it is used in different meanings.
- In Do you like your tea sweet? and What a very sweet name! the different between the lexical-semantic variants of the word (its direct nominative and nominative-derivative meanings) is not great enough to split it up into two different units.
There is a marked difference between the basic nominative meaning of the. Word and its derived figurative or transferred meanings. It is quite natural that speakers use words metaphorically- the outer words in infinite whereas the resources of even the richest languages are limited.
- Such uses are then registered in dictionaries if they are apprehended as habitual, frequent, regularly occurring.
- for example, cool, chilly, frozen, hot-denoting grades of temperature (the nominative meanings are easily transferred to acquire emotive connotations (the nominative-derivative meaning) : Her gaze was decidedly cool; The speech was met with a chilly reception; I was frozen with terror; The Watergate investigation eventually became too hot to handle.
The nominative-derivative meaning finds no exact equivalent in the classification presented by D. Chrystal, except, probably, fir the term 'connotative meaning' which is used with the reference to the emotional associations which are part of the meaning of a lexical item. (Chrystal, 1985)
3) colligationally and collocationally conditioned meanings are not free but bound ones in the sense that they are determined by morpho-syntactic nod lexical-phraseologically combinability of words respectively.
Thus, the verb to tell when used in a passive construction displays its colligationally conditioned meaning to order, to direct: You must do what you are told. He was told to start at once.
Too. I like it too. Itwastoomuch.
Фразовые глаголы- морфосинтаксическая сочетаемость
There are meanings which depends on the word's association with other lexical units (collocation= lexical phraseological). Here again we come across the idiom principle because the co-occurrence range of the word is determined not only by its meaning, but also, to a great extent by the conventions of its use:
- for example, milk is never rancid but sour. A word does depend for the realization of its meaning on its syntagmatics, or the so-called collocability.
Сильный дождь, сильный ветер, сильный снег- heavyrain, strongwind, heavysnow.
Thick, tense- плотный, густой (thick hair)
- As McCarthy puts it collocation "is a marriage contract between words, and some words are more firmly married to each other than others" (1990).
To come to grief, make a contribution, put smb off
Cats and dogs,
That's a horse of different color- это совсем не то- почти that's another pair of shoes. Better to be a live dog than a dead lion. To separate the sheep from the goats. To go to the dogs- испортиться. Somebodyintheknow- кто-то кто в курсе чего-то.
Idioms are word-combinations or multi-word units (the term in the British tradition) which reveal in their semantic and syntactic structure the specific and peculiar properties of a given language.
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