Is the English Language being killed by Text Messages?

How many times have you thought about what you were really trying to say when sending that text message? All of the time, and do you know why? That is because writing, but in this case texting, is deliberate. When you send a specific message you calculate what you’re meant to be saying, you’ll make sure that it is interpreted in a certain way. However, this is completely different with speaking. Speaking is largely subconscious and rapid.

Because of how easy it is to get something across to another person, texting has surged in the past few years, and has especially grown up younger people. A study which took place in 2014 showed that younger people are more increasingly prone to texting and shy away from taking and making phone calls. This can be seen as an issue because phone calls are way more direct than texting. However in the eyes of those who were tested, they argued that phone calls are less permanent than texting.

Everyone has developed their own kind of grammar for texting. For example take “OMG”, when you break it down OMG is actually an abbreviation for “oh my God”. This isn’t used literally anymore, and has progressed into a more enlightened abbreviation.  OMG is often used now to express emotion. For example someone could say “why did Jason do that to me? OMG” this clearly is expressing the writer’s emotion of what Jason had done.

Recently, there has been an alarming spike of claims from many primary and secondary education teachers who have claimed that they have concerns for children who cannot properly read or write or they have seen an increasing drop of literacy levels. Many of this is blamed because of the increase technology and how accustom these children are to these, most of the time relying on “spell check”.

However, a recent survey taken place in 2008 on abbreviations argues against this. This survey, which may seem outdated by now, actually showed that the older that a teenager becomes the more unlikely they are to use “lol”, but actually lead into a more mature “haha”. Therefore, this is a counter argument used by many linguistics that the usage of abbreviations in texting is not actually ruining the English Language, but it is actually innovating and enriching the language instead.

Furthermore, Tagliamonte found that in instant messages there is “an infinitesimally small use of short forms, abbreviations, and emotional language.” Therefore, this completely rules out the idea of the English Language being killed, or ruined by the use of shortened language.  His data accounted that 3% of all language found was stereotypical teen language.

http://blog.dictionary.com/shortening-english/

http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/25/is-texting-killing-the-english-language/

By Harry Hepworth

Are Americanisms ruining the English language?

Are Americanisms ruining the English language?

 

It’s clear to see that Americanisms have made a huge impact on the English language over the last few years, it’s made very apparent on popular social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Although these sites have never been acclaimed for their literary skills in terms of grammar, spelling and punctuation I feel that this could be down to the rules of e-communication and ‘text speak’ as opposed to the use of American slang in English language which I feel is a much bigger problem.

I know that the media has a big influence on everything that goes on in my generation’s lives, and their language is clearly no exception. The excessive use of American English that we are shown on our screens every day is having detrimental effect on our historically profound language, teenagers and even older people now are getting so caught up in the ‘norms’ of today’s society that they are losing all essence of their identities as English people.

While scrolling down my twitter feed the other day, as I do several times in one day I began to notice how excessive the use of these Americanisms are, and all from people born and raised in England? Things such as ‘goddamn awful’ and ‘I feel like I’m going to vomit’ are always creeping onto my timeline, now although these Americanisms that have somehow gotten into the English language do grind my gears, they’re not as easily noticed because they’re heard on an everyday basis from things such as TV programmes, celebrities etc. you just forget that they are intruding on a great language and let them pass.

One thing however I have noticed that I cannot tolerate is the use of the proper noun ‘Mom’ as opposed to ‘Mum’ as it was intended to be in the English language. I know the two words mean the exact same thing but that’s the problem? Why change how the English have written the word for years just because of a TV show or whatever other media influence that has corrupted the English language.

According to Webster's New World Dictionary (1991) there are roughly 11,000 words in British English that can trace their heritage to the USA, showing that the invasion began quite a while ago. It’s hard to tell now which words do actually originate from English and differentiate them from those that do not, every day we must hear and read so many of these American English words and not even acknowledge it because it’s so common in today’s society.

Even the BBC have written an article on Americanisms in English language, prompting thousands of the general public to send in examples that they have noticed, several were seen time and time again: "Can I get a...", "gotten" and "A half hour" as well as many more, proving that it’s an issue noticed by many but also something that has gone unnoticed by the majority.

As much as it pains me to say it, there’s nothing anyone could do to prevent this from happening, the media is a much too powerful, influential force to overcome and without the use of many of these Americanisms the English language wouldn’t be what it is today, American English forms much more of our day to day language than we realise and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, Who knows?

 

Shannon Cavie.

“Swearing is emotional language”

When I asked my dad about his view on swearing, he said "I used the c-word when I was younger and I got into a lot of trouble". From this I decided to do some digging around for 2 reasons: 1) "the c-word" and 2) "when I was younger". Taboo language, or more commonly known as swearing, have been around since the Anglo-Saxons in the 5^th Century, but it seems as when time went on, swear words have become more offensive. "Fuck" has been abbreviated to the "f-word", and others go as far as "see you next Tuesday".

Richard Stephens, a senior psychology lecturer at Kew University did an experiment on this: how long can people hold their hand in ice cold water. One group were able to swear their heads off to see if it eased the pain whilst the other group used neutral words, this was carried out over a dozen times and the same result occurred: people who used swear words kept their hand in for longer. Another example is a personal story from Richard where he explained that when his wife's labour reached the 20 hour mark she started getting really bad contractions. When this came on she would scream and swear. From this it's obvious that swearing can be used as a way to decrease pain.

On the other hand it can also be used in a more positive way, for example in the Olympics they interviewed a windsurfer when she unexpectedly won a bronze and she responded with "I feel fucking amazing". So swearing is emotional language.

"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do" is something I, and no doubt others, go by. 0.7% of the words a person uses in a day are swear words, which doesn't sound like a lot but we use them at the same rate as pronouns. So despite taboo language being seen as unacceptable, we still do it. It seems like the older generations more frequently abbreviate swear words as they were brought up that way, whereas this generation supposedly know at least one swear word before the age of 2.

So what is it about swearing that makes it so satisfying? The phonetics of the words could have something to do with it. One thing they have in common is that they emphasise fricatives: /f/ /s/ and /ʃ/. "Fuck", "shit", "piss" etc have these sounds, so I could potentially make up some words including these emphasised fricatives and turn it into something nasty. If I can create a word with no meaning but with fricatives, for example "shiseff", this could be just as satisfying because you can put feeling, emotion and passion into the emphasised letters.

Or maybe it could be down to meaning; regardless of the phonetics, the meaning of the word "fuck" is more powerful than the sound alone because it has a sexual connotation. Overall, swearing can act almost like a guilty pleasure, no matter what the place, time or scenario. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2625581/Swearing-emotional-creative-language-say-researchers-claim-GOOD-you.html

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/10/nine-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-swear-words/

Alex Bingham

Mistake commonly by English learners

Even though English has become the global language, there are still many mistakes people make when speaking it. I've researched the mistakes that Germans and Pakistanis commonly make when speaking English.

Q: What did the German clockmaker say to the clock that only went "tick tick tick"?
A: Vee haf vays to make you tock
Why is it that when people are telling a German joke or trying a German accent, they always pronounce /z/ instead of /th/ or /v/ instead of /w/? The German alphabet has the same 26 letters as the English alphabet and additionally it has the four umlauted letters: ä, ö, ü, and the ß. However, the German phonetic alphabet doesn't contain the /th/ sound, therefore, Germans say 'zis' instead of 'this'. Another mistake commonly made is the mispronunciation of Englsh words with the /w/ sound. The /w/ sound is often exchanged with a /v/ sound, eg 'vine' instead of 'wine. The /w/ sound is in German phonology but is used differently than in English. There are several words beginning with /w/ in German, such as 'Wald' (woods/forest) or 'Waschmaschine' (washing machine), however, these words are pronounced with a /v/ sound instead of the /w/ sound. German words that begin with /v/ are often pronounced with an /f/.
The link below is more detail on the exchange of sounds in different words. http://german.stackexchange.com/questions/1754/w-%E2%86%92-v-v-%E2%86%92-f-why-do-german-speakers-wrongly-transpose-rather-than-shift-when-sp

English has an extensive vocabulary, especially compared to the German language. In English, people tend to be more specific about nouns. For example, in English people might refer to a pillow as the pillow on the bed and refer to a cushion as the cushion on the sofa/armchair. However, German only has one word for both things. So they would refer to them both as 'das Kissen' (literal translation: pillow). Germans will often find it difficult to choose the right noun.

Germans will often make the mistake of using the wrong preposition. For example, Germans might say, "I work by the post office", instead of "I work at the post office". Germans use the English 'by' as a homophone to the word they would choose in German. Another example is "I make my homework every day".  Instead of saying I do my homework, they use the literal translation from German (Ich mache meine Hausaufgaben = I make my homework).
Another mistake similar to this is that, in English, the word visit is only used to visit people. It is wrong to use the verb to say 'I visit the museum' or 'I visit the cinema'. The Germans use 'besuchen' (to visit) for people and places, unlike the English, which is why they commonly make the mistake of saying "I visit the cinema".

People from Pakistan also make mistakes when speaking English. Even though one of the official languages of Pakistan is English, along with Urdu.
A mistake that is commonly heard is the misuse of pronouns. A Pakistani might accidently call someone a he or a she no matter of their gender. For example, when referring to a male cat, they might call it a she without realising their mistake. This is because in Urdu the same pronoun is used for he, she, it and they (woh).

"Yesterday I have to go to work"
This is another mistake that some Pakistanis will do. There are very few words in Urdu, which have two different meanings in English. For example, 'kal', can mean both yesterday and tomorrow. When used in Urdu, other Urdu speakers will know which 'kal' they mean because of the tense they use. However, when speaking English, they often choose the wrong one 'kal' translation while using the right tense.

A Akhtar

 

References:
http://german.stackexchange.com/questions/1754/w-%E2%86%92-v-v-%E2%86%92-f-why-do-german-speakers-wrongly-transpose-rather-than-shift-when-sp
http://londonschool.de/top-english-mistakes-made-german-learners-volume-1 http://www.urduword.com/lessons.php?lesson=pronouns_and_possession
Brinkmann, Hans   Practise Avoiding Mistakes, Part 2: Choice of Words (Diesterweg)

Pet Talk

Is talking to our pets like they're babies scientific, or just stupid?

 

Let's be honest, we've all done it. Talking to our pets as if they're babies is a common thing. In fact in a survey, 91% of people spoke to their household pets like babies. But what is the real reason behind us talking to our pets in such a language?

 

The reason behind this is because for example; in dogs, they  are limited to one noise, a bark. Therefore they rely on the tone of other dogs to understand them, such as; a nervous dog would have high toned bark, whereas if they were alarmed or threatened they would bark in a low tone, or they can stay into the middle at a medium tone bark to express 'happiness'

 

So still why the baby talk? This is because they recognise the medium tone as a 'happy voice' therefore when you are talking to them like a child they respond positively. But, this isn't the only reason we associate baby talk with animals. We relate animals and children the same way. They both share the same characteristics, therefore we respond to them with simple gestures, such as smiling to show a secure environment. Where the different between pets and babies is that the pets will need to learn the important words, such as 'No, Stop, etc' where as babies will grow to learn a much wider vocabulary.

 

The language we use in 'Baby talk' is identified as infant-directed speech (Motherese and Parentese are more precise words) We use baby talk as we would speak normally but with and increased pitch. It includes using shortened and simplified words. This is to show affection to your animals by 'emulating' fondness. Whereas, when we talk to a pet it is change to pet-directed speech.

 

Two researchers from University discovered that baby talk is a universal language, used within cultures and religions everywhere. But in order for a baby to collaborate with their parent the parent must slur and fabricate some of their speech in order to encourage the conversation. We then use rising intonation in our voices to excite the animals, as they respond to that as their 'happy voice'.

 

"Other researchers contend that it is not universal among the world's cultures, and argue that its role in helping children learn grammar has been overestimated. For evidence to back up their claims they point out that in some societies (such as certain Samoan tribes)"

 

Another theory is that in seriousness, animals tend to also love it. Who doesn't love the way their eyes widen as your pitch increases, and happier they get it's just something they enjoy themselves too! I mean who doesn't like to be treated like a baby sometimes? No one! Not only that, but also  how dependant on us animals actually are, much like babies. We need to feed them, clean up after them, play with them, making it a lot more easier to relate them to each other.

 

So, in summary baby talk could be scientific or stupid dependant on your views, is that going to change the way you talk to them? No! people train their animals in different ways, and people will continue to do that whether includes calling their dog "cuddly wuddly fur ball please go away" or "stan, leave!" if completely dependent on the person. But, as the next time you talk to your animals, ask yourself, do you baby talk them?

By Lilly Colville

“How many instruments of murder do you suppose there are in this room?”

 

Ian Brady has always interested me. Everyone knows his letters and mannerisms are all about control and manipulation however we still let him have 'one up on us'. I find his letters very carefully crafted, the way he uses language to create power over his reader. He uses French and Latinate lexis within his letters to appear more educated and therefore gain authority. He also uses extremely complex language, language that isn't used in people's everyday vocabulary. This is an example of Goffman's divergence theory. Brady also tends to uses passives in his letters to shift the blame or hide what's happened.

Brendan Pittaway is in regular contact with Ian. He has noticed when exchanging letters just how orderly his messages were, each one was sent in an envelope with his initials 'ISB' beneath the seal. His style of handwriting never varied, neatly joined up with a slight slant to the right. However, in mostly all of Ian letters there would be spelling mistakes suggesting his highly educated persona wasn't true. Brendan was trying to gather fresh information out of Brady in particular as to where Keith Bennett's body is hidden. On the other hand Brady was trying to use Brendan to reshape his face in the media.

Whilst Brady has been inside, he is still trying to gain control over authorities, the families of his victims and Myra Hindley. When Brady confessed to his crimes, it wasn't out of remorse but revenge. This clearly shows he has no guilt. Brady's playing a power game; he won't say where Keith's body is. "Keith Bennett's unfound body is very important to Ian Brady. He has one actual murder which he can consider to be perfect." Spoken by Dr David Holmes, Criminal Psychologist. Brady believes Keith's killing was 'perfect' and therefore would only hurt himself if he was to confess as to where it is. He has however written a letter that can only be opened when he dies, researchers believe this withholds information as to where Keith's body is located. The fact he has put a condition as to when the letter can be opened is another attempt to gain power and also have power when he dies.

In 1999 Ian Brady decided to go on hunger strike as he wanted to die. His commands to die were refused by the judge and he was force fed through a tube. They concluded that his wish to die through starvation was an 'obsessive need to exercise control.' However, you might find the force feeding unnecessary as every morning he eats toast and soup. Poor Brady is too embarrassed to admit this though, so everyone morning the nurses knock before entering his room so he has time to clear away his food.

Abi Millen

OK! vs The Daily Telegraph

We all love a good bit of gossip here and there but we always need some sanity from the world at one point of another, don't we?

But, you can never read something that is not only juicy with the celebrity gossip but also contextual with the daily welfare of the world, whys that you ask. It's because of the two different types of language used to differentiate them from one another.

OK! Magazine was first launched in April 1993 and the headline for that was "HELP ME, I'VE MADE A HORRIFIC MISTAKE" using a quote from a very famous Kerry katona about her life. The original writer also used capitalization, not only to make the headline to stand out more to its target audience but to also imply that whatever has happened in Kerry's life is tragic as its presented to us as if she is shouting.

This British magazine specialising in celebrity news also uses, dare I say it, a lot of taboo language which could get some into trouble.  But, giving them their credit they do tend to use a couple of asterisks in the slang words, for example one headline was "Helen blasts aisleyne as a 's**g'" this is something that catches the audiences eye as it will be more interesting to know that taboo language has been used in an article.

OK! Magazine is an informal magazine is it based on celebrity gossip rather than news on the physical and more local world such as the daily telegraph which is the UKs English language broadsheet.

In the daily telegraph there is a lot more serious news that is enquired, very formal indeed. Its first issue in May 2012 was an imperative sentence of "Cameron, MP" very short and snappy; this is a form of getting a message straight across as there is not much need to leave a cliff hanger for a headline for a newspaper based on such serious events where as OK! Will either use a quote from a celebrity who will be featured in the article, or will start with a cliff hanger.

The telegraph will more likely stick to what's safe and only use certain nouns as they would need to keep their audience safe as over 50% of the time is their news about politicians. The phonology used in the daily telegraph will also be very contextual with all diphthongs and vowels using the 'queens English' which would have no elision or ellipsis where as in OK! It would be filled with abbreviation. The telegraph will also tend to use more Latinate lexis to be able to appeal to the older people with more knowledge of more complicated noun phrases and clauses.

But OK! Will probably use borrowing words more often as they are more likely to abbreviate words such as 'LOL' and 'OMG' to make their articles more gossipy and will use more conjunctions rather than prepositions as the more conjunctions used the more chatty the article will sound.

These two types of news resources use different styles of language to make them appear differently to their different genres of audience, coming to the conclusion that a celebrity magazine will be informal and a local newspaper will be intellectually formal.

By Jade Hendy

Sent from Windows Mail

Is the development and popularity of social media slowly destroying the art of language or gently restoring it?

When Timehop was launched in 2011, what we thought was our long lost, never-to-be-viewed-again Facebook comments and tweets buried deep in our social archives, were in fact found. Yet here, when they began to be regurgitated over our news feeds - with the intention for you to reminisce over past events, all we are reminded of, was how we decided the choice of three extra vowels at the end of each sentence looked cool or the overuse of old-school letter-punctuation emoticons between :L every XD word =) was an accurate portrayal of our emotions. As this recent reflection of how we represented ourselves on-line as young adults inflicts great embarrassment and with the help of these nostalgic apps, we have seemed to, whether it being subconscious or comes with growing up, slowly returned back to the Standard English we were taught at school.

Only until recent years has the alpha-numerical word combinations been less frequently used in multi-modal language, appearing more often in ironic backlashes to arguments or to portray certain feelings on social media, where sarcasm is not as misinterpreted as it previously had been. If you are seen to make an obvious spelling comprised only of consonants teamed with numbers, one must assume you were held back from expressing your full opinion within Twitter's 140 characters available or not quite adjusted to how technology and text-talk has evolved.

The lexis that was commonly used within texting and on social media has drastically phased out amongst the younger generations, however the acronyms such as 'LOL' are still often heard as well as read, although more often than not, used sarcastically. Through social media increasing in popularity, sites such as Twitter have too, evolved their own lexis, 'dpmo' as 'don't piss me off' and 'smh' meaning 'shake my head', often seen when the author is upset or in despair, often at another user's post.

As David Crystal states, "All the popular beliefs about texting are wrong. It isn't just used by the young generation," emphasises the common difficulty younger generations find with the elder generation's multi-modal communication, whereby they try to minimise the amount of characters they need per message, whether in an email or SMS which often results in messages with a lack of punctuation and grammatical sense.

Due to the introduction of mobile applications that allow quick access to social media sites without the need to sign in each time and the autocorrect software installed in our devices - although often spewing out unimaginable suggestions for our spelling or grammar mistakes, we are able to use Standard English on-line at ease. Not only does this rectify the time spent on searching for the 8 to minimise the characters needed in 'late' per text or tweet, but restoring the use of full words, correctly spelt.

By Rosalie Pugh

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/25/facebooks-timehop-nostalgia-is-just-a-way-to-exploit-emotions-for-data

http://ww.davidcrystal.com/DC_articles/Internet16.pdf

https://www.brandwatch.com/2013/05/research-shows-twitter-is-driving-english-language-evolution/

Nice to Tweet you

In this modern age of technological wizardry it seems as if we spend half our lives in the virtual world of social media. With the possibilities seemingly endless and millions of people just a click away it is no wonder that social networking is at the forefront of this technological revolution. Perhaps the most powerful player in this new and evolving industry is Twitter. With some 645 million registered users and a whopping 500 million tweets sent everyday it is no wonder that Twitter is taking control of social media. With so many 'tweeters' sharing thoughts, experiences and ideas every second it is undoubtedly a spectacular opportunity to take a closer look at the difference in language use between its users, more specifically between its male and female users. Is there really a difference in the way the genders use language on twitter?

Firstly let's take a look at differences in male and female language use, a subject on which much has been written and explored. Though arguably out of date and somewhat inaccurate Robin Lakoff's studies into female language provide some interesting observations that can still be seen today. Such an example would be her proposal that women tend to use more intensifiers as well as having a special lexicon with more words for certain things than men for example a man may say "It's good to see you" whereas according to Lakoff a woman would say "It really is so lovely to see you" evidently showing some difference in language use of males and females.

Further investigation into the differences of language use have also been done by Deborah Tannen who summarised six main contrasts between how males and females use language, the most relevant to tweets being 'Information vs Feelings'. According to Tannen males are likely to use language to convey useful information whereas females will use language to express feelings. This may be able to be seen in tweets as men will tweet about information such as "Just been for a run" whereas women will tweet their emotions and feelings. So that's the effect that gender appears to have on language but how has the internet affected language use?

Although the internet is relatively new it has already developed its own lexis and language style. Acronyms such as 'LOL' and 'YOLO' are now frequent in all different forms of language. Even Twitter has developed its own language. This is mainly because of its renowned 140 character limit which has led to ellipsis and abbreviations becoming regularly used weapons in the battle to remain below that vital limit. David Crystal even goes as far as saying "the 140-character limit of Twitter is changing our ways of thinking."

With both gender and the internet having such drastic effects on the language we use it's no wonder that tweets on Twitter are barely recognisable from what has been familiar as recently as in the last decade. Who knows what the future holds.

By Jamie Barber

How do children learn to speak?

It’s always as special moment when a child produces their first word, but how do they reach this point? Children learn through imitating what they hear around them everyday, whether it is animal noises, their parents speaking or sounds from the television. Soon enough, the uninterpretable babbles turn to clearly formed words, and these words soon form phrases.

There are many different theories surrounding the language of young children, as well as how their language develops. There are the more whacky theories, such as Chomsky’s theory of language acquisition devices, whereby every human has knowledge of grammatical rules common to all languages pre-programmed into them. There are also theories that are easier to understand such as the learning perspective. Skinner argued that adults shape the speech of children by reinforcing the babbling of infants that sound most like words, by doing this, we encourage the child to repeat the babble and develop it further until it becomes more and more like the word the adult felt it was similar to.

Why is language important for your child?

Language will allow your child to communicate with others, learn, build friendships, and make sense of the world around them. Later on, a weaker understanding and fluency of language may hold your child’s education back, slowing their progress. Therefore, providing your child with a developed vocabulary and understanding of grammar could help them be successful in their future

So how can you help your child learn to speak?

Talking to your child, and babbling back to them encourages your child to respond. The more they babble the more their language will develop. In a recent study, psychologists from Stanford University discovered that the more a parent or carer talks or babbles to their child the faster their language and vocabulary grow.

Reading with your child exposes them to more vocabulary, but also begins to show them the links between pictures and text. As your child gets older they can read to you, and if reading has been part of a child’s routine since a young age it is less likely to be a chore when they begin school.

If your child starts a conversation through talking, gesture or behavior, respond to it, making sure you stick to the topic your child started. This will help to teach your child about relevance within a conversation, a tool useful for their future.

Introduce new vocabulary to you child frequently. Use toys to allow your child to associate words with objects, for example teach them the names of animals using farmyard toys. This process will also develop their motor skills if they choose the animal themselves. Children learn best through play so why not have fun but increase their vocabulary at the same time?

 

http://languagedevelopment.tripod.com/id15.html

http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/21820_C01.pdf

Lucy Bassett

Sexism

A father and a son are in a horrible car accident that kills the dad. The son is rushed to hospital; just as he's about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, "I cannot operate this boy is my son!" why is it that most people reading this would assume that the surgeon is a man? It seems that women have always been referred to as the 'weaker' sex, they have always had the 'less' important jobs. Even this riddle shows us that 'man' is considered the norm. But why can't a woman do what a man does?

Even from the beginning the etymology of women is sexist; it is a compound of wife and man. In fact it suggests a female servant. This shows us that women cannot even have their own word without it having an emphasis on men or being downgrading towards what some see as a woman's role.  As well as this the use of the male pronoun 'mankind' makes me wonder why the human race is not called womankind. There are just as many women in the world. But doesn't this simply suggest the patriarchy society we live in?

Sexism starts from a young age. As children, it is normal for girls and boys to play with toys 'appropriate' to their gender. Parents bring marketing gender into their child's life as soon as they're born. They choose to let girls follow the footsteps of mum and let boys help dad. Maybe this is the reason jobs are stereotyped, maybe this is why women are restricted in their work force. If a man was to enter a room and say he was a nurse, people would judge him simply because this is seen as a 'woman's' job.  A job which has a lower status, in the public eye the man should be a doctor, the one with higher authority. There are many examples of this and there are many jobs or hobbies which women are unable to do because it is not seen as 'right'.

Sexism doesn't only happen in the work place, connotations of words also degrade women. Many words used to describe men suggest power and toughness. For example a man can be called master but the opposite of this for a woman suggests a lower status. If a woman is called a mistress, it has the connotations of affairs and prostitution.

I believe people should be more politically correct when talking about women, the way people speak about women  I find insulting, being a woman myself I hate it when people make sly comments such as 'those woman drivers' what does this achieve? I hope there is a solution to the male dominated society we live in, and even though women have come such a long way I still don't believe men and women are equal. Is there a solution and if so what is it?

By Calista Woods

Development 2 Interaction: The Language of Two Year Olds.

When a child says their first word, they begin to learn that they will get praised and rewarded for doing so. This starts them on a journey of learning and developing their language and soon they learn how they can use this to interact with others.

Let’s skip ahead to when the child has reached the age of two. At this point, they’re probably running around and letting out full blown sentences to tell the people around them what would make them happy, not that these sentences always make sense to anyone other than family. Not only do two year olds understand practically every word you say, they also take in a lot of it. Their internal word bank is reaching fifty and growing rapidly. Three or four word sentences become five or six words and pronouns are starting to be introduced. By this stage, the young one is very aware of the concept of “mine” and this shows in the way they ask for things; “I want to see my mummy”, or “Juice is mine, daddy”. This development, while maybe creating havoc for parents who have to teach their child that not everything belongs to them, is a vital stage that the child needs to go through to further their understanding of the language and how to use it efficiently.

(Source: https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/toddler/Pages/Language-Development-2-Year-Olds.aspx)

Two years is a milestone in a child’s social development. At two, they really begin to branch out from their parents to search for children of their own or similar ages to interact with. They don’t often want to be around adults and who can blame them? At that age, adults are big, scary creatures that are a lot louder than them and are very intimidating. All toddlers are different of course, some will babble on and on to strangers about their newest toy or what they’re doing but in most cases, children want to stick with other children and their mummies and daddies. Meeting a host of older people can be very overwhelming for young children but they’ll soon learn that these people aren’t scary monsters and soon enough, they’ll be chattering away to them like they do with their family at home.

(Source: http://www.babycenter.com/0_toddler-milestone-socialization_11742.bc)

There are debates about whether or not a child’s ability to vocalise and learn language is a consequence of nature or nurture. The Learning approach in Psychology, suggests that language is learnt in children through the imitation of what they hear their parents or siblings saying (which explains why children end up occasionally swearing at people). Famous psychologist, Skinner, agrees with this point of view and states that through positive reinforcements and rewards, children learn that verbalising their wants and needs is a good thing and therefore they do it more often. On the other hand, ‘Nativist’ psychologists such as Chomsky, claim that all humans are born with the innate ability to learn and develop their language without influence from imitation or parental rewards.

(Source: http://www.decodedscience.com/first-language-acquisition-development-theories-nature-vs-nurture/7247)

By Emily-Rose Cordingley