To what extent do you agree that the status of Standard English has changed since the turn of the century?

Since the turn of the century, I agree to a certain extent that the status of  Standard English has changed massively. Over the past century, there has been various changes in our society which shapes the way we speak and how frequently Standard English forms are used nowadays. Due to the inventions of new technology and neologisms, there has been an increase in abbreviations and new 'slang' languages have been formed on various social media sites. Adding to this, due to the multicultural country we now live in, this has caused the formation of new languages - also known as creole languages. Although the status of Standard English no longer holds its original prestige and power, research shows that it is still considered to be as important as it used to be.

Over the past few decades in particular, there has been various technological advancements which includes the invention of social media websites and text messaging. These inventions are resulting in a large majority of people to begin abbreviating words - generally due to laziness. Many of these abbreviations are seen internationally on social media sites, meaning people are bound to pick up the language of others and use it for themselves. For example, a well known abbreviation would be 'lol' which many of the younger generation would understand to mean 'laugh out loud'. It could be argued that these abbreviations are only used due to the fault in some social media sites such as twitter, which restricts the amount of words used by putting a 148 character limit, causing many people to have to shorten their words to fit the limit. Gradually, as more and more younger children are downloading these sites, they are exposed to these sorts of words which are then added to their vocabulary. By doing this, children are not learning the 'proper' and 'standard' way of spelling and using words, which could potentially cause problems later in education. These abbreviations are generally down to laziness which could end up being the cause of the downfall in the use of Standard English. Additionally, on the new forms of technology such as text messaging, there is now predictive text and auto-correct which prevents the person from learning how to spell the word. As the individual will be so used to having the words spelled for them, when it comes to writing on paper, they will find it of greater difficulty.

Additionally, through looking at the different classes in our society today, it has become noticeable that an individual's social class determines their view on Standard English. The two divisions of social classes are the working class and middle class, with a small percentage being of the upper class. Stereotypically, an individual who is labelled as 'working class' generally would have an job of a cleaner or a rubbish collector. These types of jobs involve less skilled individuals who generally come from a lower educated background, meaning their English is considered to be worse than that of the middle class. In contrast, a middle class individual would stereotypically have a higher level of education as many of the middle class occupations include teachers, lawyers and administrators. It is argued that people in the middle class who generally use received pronunciation look down to people of the working classes. Research to support my view is through the primary research I carried out on teachers. The overall view was that the majority of the respondents thought the status of Standard English had decreased yet still recognised its importance. On one question, all but one of my respondents thought that Standard English should be taught to children which suggests that they realise the importance has decreased and needs to be changed. On a separate question with the choice of two sentences as to which one they thought was 'better' all of the respondents chose the sentence which was written in Standard English rather than the less formal sentence. Many will argue that there is not a specific way people should speak as language varies depending on their regional dialect, but the teachers are all part of the same discourse community all hold the same view.

There is also evidence of people using non standard forms through either written or spoken mode. To this day, there are still many people using grammatically incorrect phrases such as 'I were' rather than 'I was'. These phrases could be either picked up by peers or just through their primary socialisation. The sociolinguist Paton argues that many GCSE students do not realise the difference between the correct and incorrect forms. A survey by Cambridge showed that 59% of GCSE students were not aware of the grammatically correct way to speak which causes them to continuously use phrases which were incorrect such as 'it wasn't me who done it'. These phrases used by students could be spread among their peers in their social groups,causing a large majority to use these incorrect phrases.

Furthermore, as we now live in a multicultural society, we gradually pick up the language used by people of a different ethnicity. After the industrial revolution in particular, there was an influx of different languages, meaning new creole languages were formed. In particular, in schools, there is a mix of cultures - causing students to change their language to fit in with the group they are in. Social bonding and social time is a key factor in the decrease of standard english, as many people spend so much time socialising with other people, they begin to pick up new words. Not only ethnicity, but also the mix of people of different ages, gender and social/educational background is also very influential on how an individual speaks. Gender is massively influential in how someone speaks. A sociolinguist Lakoff (1975) would argue that women around that time would not speak standard English. Instead, they would use things such as tag questions which is stated by Holmes, empty adjectives, precise colour terms and intensifiers. These aspects of language do not compare to that of standard english which would be used more by royalty nowadays - however, it is argued that women do use more received pronunciation forms of language compared to men. Trudgill argues that men are the opposite of women in language as they are stereotypically known to use more non standard forms. Spencer supports Trudgill and argues that the reason behind these non standard forms is mainly for the benefits of social groups and social bonding. The status of Standard english has changed since the turn of the century because of the mix of gender, ages and ethnicities in education.

In contrast to these views, to some extent i disagree and think that Standard English still holds its original power and has not changed the amount it has been made out to be. My primary research shows that the Standard English is still favoured by many. 75% of my respondents argued that our English language is constantly evolving and should continue to do so, whilst others contradicted this view and argued it is getting worse. Due to all the reasons previously listed, Standard English is no longer used as much. In 1974, Trudgill estimated that in Britain, only 3% of the population were received pronunciation speakers. This suggests that although it might not be used on a large scale, the results from my research show that people still believe it to be the correct form. It could be argued that as all my respondents were adults and my sample was only of 18 that it can not be representative of the attitudes on a wider scale as my results show a general overview. My research could also be considered biased as all the respondents were teachers whos English is generally of a higher register compared to students or those from different backgrounds. If this questionnaire was based on the individuals’ language during social times, the answers may have been completely different.

Overall, since the turn of the century, the status of Standard English has changed. This is due to many reasons such as the new languages as a result of our multi-cultural society, the new technology advancements in a world that is constantly evolving, the division of social classes and the differing in gender, background and class.