Politicians and lies

Josh Corbin

 

Politicians. To quote Stephen Fry, “Like them or loathe them, you’d be mad not to loathe them.” With the amount of political sleaze going on in today’s ‘democratic’ system, it’s easy to see why the title of politician has practically become a dirty word. The question is; how on earth do they get away with it all?

There is, of course, no one simple answer. The ability to blatantly deceive and lie can be attributed to a multitude of factors: Poor accountability, structural failures of the political system. Whatever, it’s clearly obvious that politicians are about as good at their job as the England football team, and about as expensive to keep on the payroll, too! Manipulation of the English language, however, is perhaps one of the most prevalent ways in which politicians manage to consistently fail at their jobs and not get fired as one would if one were to fail any other profession as miserably as some politicians do theirs.

 

The problem is not just with British politicians. Corruption and conniving is practically a prerequisite of politics worldwide. Take President Nixon, for instance. When confronted on his crimes of the Watergate scandal, where he invaded the privacy of the Democrat’s offices, he eluded accountability by answering scathing yes-or-no questions with a torrent of vague drivel.  For instance:

“You got caught up in something and it snowballed?

It snowballed, and it was my fault. I'm not blaming anybody else. I'm simply saying to you that as far as I'm concerned, I not only regret it. I indicated my own beliefs in this matter when I resigned. People didn't think it was enough to admit mistakes; fine. If they want me to get down and grovel on the floor; no, never. Because I don't believe I should. On the other hand there are some friends who say, "just face 'em down. There's a conspiracy to get you." There may have been. I don't know what the CIA had to do. Some of their shenanigans have yet to be told, according to a book I read recently. I don't know what was going on in some Republican, some Democratic circles as far as the so-called impeachment lobby was concerned. However, I don't go with the idea that there ... that what brought me down was a coup, a conspiracy etc. I brought myself down. I gave them a sword, and they stuck it in and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I'd have done the same thing.”

 

Nixon was asked a direct yes or no question, yet chose to answer with a lengthy rationalisation for his actions. This practice of blatantly flouting Grice’s maxims, namely the maxim of quantity, achieves a number of things.

 

Firstly, it lets the politician in question take a scathing question and diffuse the criticality of it by waffling on until the question is forgotten, leaving people to try and make sense of the superfluous answer. They hide from accountability behind their long words and complex, pre-prepared responses. They try and make their mistakes or wrongdoings seem practically logical by portraying themselves as the experts by holding the floor and using negative politeness strategies.

 

But, of course, politicians aren’t always like Nixon. They don’t always own up to mistakes, but quibble over the pettiest of details to try and change their failures from a searing indictment of failures by corrupt politicians to a total success of the system; a proof of the total success of government. Such instances are seen with the current coalition government, such as when Cameron hiked up higher education tuition fees. Instead of apologising for breaking yet another coalition promise, he focused on why he broke it and on the hypothetical boons of raising tuition. In this sense, politicians are like children in trouble.

 

They break trust and lie in order to get their way, yet when they’re asked to say sorry for being naughty, they try and justify their actions instead of apologising; an act of face-saving. This begs the question, why haven’t Cameron and others of his ilk been put on the naughty step?

This selfsame question is raised in the works of George Orwell, not only in his fictional works such as 1984, where he calls political language ‘Doublespeak’; A modified language designed to absolve and glorify political acts, but also in one of his many research papers, "Politics and the English Language", in which he says "Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

There is no question. Politicians are often manipulative and untruthful, and they use the English language as a tool through which they deceive and excuse themselves of blame.

 

References:

Websites-

http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/sep/07/greatinterviews1

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-says-he-does-not-have-to-apologise-to-barack-obama-over-failure-to-secure-vote-on-syria-8791655.html

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-speech-on-education

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1337020/Tuition-fees-vote-Coalition-Nick-Clegg-Lib-Dems-punished-increase.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language

Books-

1984, George Orwell

Seo é a blog post about code-switching

Mallorey Fennessy

I grew up in a multilingual household. We speak between us a total of five different languages (French, English, Irish Gaelic, Farsi (Persian), and German) and all of us speak at least two fluently. As you can guess we tend to switch around languages quite often. It’s not too uncommon to hear me yell something upstairs along the lines “Loic, Cá bhfuil tu? Get down here, J’suis dans le cuisine!” Now if you need a translation, I’m hardly surprised, because in that one sentence I simultaneously spoke Irish, English and French. I was asking my brother, Loic, Cá bhfuil tu? Or in English Where are you? Switched to English and then switched to French, by telling him I’m in the kitchen all in one sentence.

This linguistic phenomenon has been dubbed Code-Switching or Code-Mixing and was typically attributed to sub-standard language and was often said to have little consistency, however in the last fifty years it has been properly studied. Recent studies show various factors influence code switching such as social context, emotional charge, levels of language proficiency, and relationship with the recipient.

Social context is quite an obvious factor,  Gumperez (1964) and Hernándas-Chavez (1972) studied Mexican-American families and the situations they code-switched in households where all household members spoke both English and Spanish. They both found that when talking about topics outside the home, families spoke English, and personal affair were spoken in Spanish, often switching from one to the other.

Emotional charge also holds a factor as changing language halfway through a sentence can often occur for emphasis. This one is very prevalent between my mum and I, especially if we are joking about someone or something, as the utterance really stands out. Alternatively my mum will tell me off in English, and once she switches to French I really know I’ve got on her bad side.

I speak better in Gaelic than I do in English and my brother speaks better English than Gaelic, this often results in me speaking to him primarily in Irish with spurts of English vocabulary or phrases to get the point across to him, sometimes certain phrases are better to express certain ideas, those phrases often happen to in a different language but they pop up anyway.

In a grammatical sense, descriptive words and phrases often tend to the ones that get the switch. Toribo (1978) found that amongst Latino children in Arizona, that adjectives and especially colours were most code-switched. Function words also tended to be changed quite often with prepositions and determiners making a large percentage of the change.

While not too much is known about the mechanics of code-switching, táim ábalta (I’m able) to say that it is a very interesting phenomenon in today’s multi-cultural world where bilingualism is quite prevalent I think it is sábháilte a rá (safe to say) that it will be better understood and will no longer be perceived as the nonsensical phenomenon it once was.

 

 

 

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Scanned by iCritical.

Psilent Letters

Ateka Gomaa

It's kind of awkward when you're trying to look clever by using a long word only to get some other person to tell you that actually you missed the silent 'h' in 'silhouette' and you think 'well it's a silent letter, who cares about it anyway?'

The intentions of scholars who introduced many irregular spellings was to show the etymology of words. So they added some silent bs and gs to some words such as 'doubt' and 'reign' and everyone knew that these words were  borrowed from Latin, and their mission was complete. And nowadays when Latin has become an unknown language, that brilliant plan to clarify the etymology by confusing the orthography seems to have backfired and has resulted in many spelling mistakes and irritated people who don't see the point of a silent 'b' in debt because they don't speak Latin.

Then came a plan to simplify spelling. Silent letters were added to words that had the same sounds as words with them. For example 'gh' was added to words such as 'delight' because they rhymed with words such as 'night' which originally had a silent 'gh'.

Some irregular spellings were introduced to show the differences between homophones. It may look like other attempt to mess with the already chaotic (or should that be caotic) English spelling system, and in some ways it is and in others it's not.  It may be a lot easier to fully understand a text when you can distinguish between the homophones visually considering they would sound identical when spoken. Then again even if a word was misspelt most of the time you would probably be able to tell what was being said.

For example:

The knight rode through the night.

If this was written as:

The night road threw the knight,

 You would be reading about some nobleman being hurled about in the darkness, though if you had heard the sentence you would probably have understood the meaning.

Some words show etymology without even meaning to. Their orthography once reflected the phonetics. 'K' in words like or 'knee' and 'gh' such as in 'daughter' (pronounced similarly to ch in loch with a Scottish accent) were pronounced centuries ago. Yet over time these sounds became silent and the language became softer and resembled the way we speak now, however the spelling remained unchanged.

 Or after Britain was invaded by the French, changes to Old English appeared due to French influences. The 'qu' was introduced, replacing 'cw' (for example 'cwen' to 'queen') amongst other changes also introduced; thus showing us that these words were of English origin, influenced by French.

So it seems that silent letters didn't mean to cause all that confusion or embarrassment when you were corrected because you missed them out. Some of them were forced into our words without even needing to be there whilst others were once 'normal' letters too.

Find out more here

Londoners' language!

Difference between teenage and adult dialect and accent in London

People around the south east tend to believe teenagers are the reason for the image created of Londoners and of how they speak. But is this the case?

It is not surprising that teenagers' and adults' dialect and accent truly depends on the social group and location they are surrounded by. For example teenagers will tend to use the convergence style of speech when around their own age group and most likely use divergence when around different age groups. This because they what to fit in with their friends and show their difference from older people.

 

An author named Arthur Hughes believed that the accent and dialect choices between a working class adult and teenager differs due to social, urban and work surroundings. "The traditional working- class London accent informally termed 'cockney' is, of course, a southern accent."

 Teenagers that are based around London tend to have an accent but usually change their dialect more for example around their preferred social group.. A UK magazine called "pappZD!" recorded a conversation between two teenagers that lived in London. They tended to use the word "alright" pronounced as "/ɑɪt/." But when speaking to and older respectable figures, author Peter Trudgill realised a teenagers' commonly used /f/ than /θ/ change due their social surrounding this could also be due to making an good impression or fitting in with their peers.

 

Something I found whilst doing my research is that teenagers change not much their accent but their lexis on a social basis whilst adults that have lived in the area for years had a strong accent. After reading a book by Paul Foulkes and Gerard Docherty, teenagers' accents are not as strong as a working- class adult Londoner. "Younger accent is not as strong as that of the older male speaker."

 

Me being born in London myself I think this point is true. This is because not being sixteen years of age means I have not been in London for many years. Now living in Eastbourne, my Londoner accent is not as strong as it used to be and my accent now is affected by the local Sussex accent. At first, this was a case of convergence because I didn't want to stand out. But now it is not a conscious decision.

 

This shows teenagers' and adults' English have been heavily impacted by where and whom they live and can easily change over time.

 

Samson Odubade

Why do people misspell?

Why do people misspell? 

Jonathan Bond? 

Over the years, the English language has evolved to become the second most spoken language worldwide. This directly raises the question, why do people misspell? There have been many arguments over the years.

The main argument is that words in the English language are not spelt how they sound. For instance, with the word "information" many people would assume it is spelt "informashion" by the way it is pronounced. The fact that words often do not sound like they are spelt causes havoc for people that are new to the language, such as children and foreigners. Many critics argue that the English language is irregular because words are not spelt how they sound.  These critics use the "ghoti" argument which states 'ghoti' can be translated into 'fish'. The 'gh' in 'cough' is pronounced 'ph'. The 'o' in 'women' is pronounced 'I'. And the 'ti' in 'information' is pronounced 'sh', thus forming the word "phish".

Another common argument for misspelling is age. Lise Abrams, Meagan T. Farrell, & Sara J. Margolin from the Florida University found in some recent research (http://www.psych.ufl.edu/~abrams/Research/abrams_farrell_margolin_10.pdf) that middle-old age adults misspell more commonly than young adults. This could occur because old age adults sometimes acquire mental illnesses such as dementia. This research obviously discounts children because they have not yet required a firm grasp of the language.

Something that I found during my research on language on the internet is that people purposely misspell words. The main purpose, that I found, of misspelling was to achieve a humorous effect. Recently on the internet, and especially on video games, people have been using the phrase "get rekt". Many find this phrase humorous because the word 'wrecked' is shortened down to 'rekt' but is still pronounced the same way. The phrase "u wot m8?" has also become famous because of the way it is spelt. The fact that a number is used in a word, yet it is still pronounced the same, achieves a humorous effect and is also easier to type.

Related to the point above, another reason why people misspell is because of the internet. A government study in 2013 found that 83% of British households had access to the internet, which proves the internet takes up so much of our lives. Therefore, with the rising number of people purposely misspelling words, it makes it difficult for children using the internet to get a true understanding of spelling. 
One common assumption when looking at spelling is that if you are intelligent you should automatically be adept at spelling. However, this is not the case. Spelling is not related to intelligence. J. David Houser found that, in a recent study (http://www.jstor.org/stable/994410), many intelligent people could not spell as well as first assumed. Houser gave people 25 words each to spell, no homophones or deliberately misleading questions, and he found that intelligence does not affect spelling ability, at least not in this case.

In conclusion, there are many reasons for people misspelling words. Sometimes it is done on purpose for a comedic effect but sometimes there are deeper reasons to why people misspell words.

Ever wondered where your accent came from?

Sophie Reynish.

Accents. They're a weird thing. Both my parents are Welsh, my mums partner is Scottish and my dad's partner is Slovak so, I pretty much live around different accents each day and it gets me wondering WHY?  Why are there different accents? Where did they come from? Who had the first accent and where did he get it from?

A person's accent shows their regional and social groups. Although nowadays, its less common for people to live in one place their whole lives so this results in 'mixed' accents, a hybrid, and so it becomes harder to identify people in that way. Usually if a person moves somewhere where there is a different common accent, they adopt some norms of pronunciation used by the new community in order to be accepted and respected.

Received Pronunciation, also known as 'the Queen's English' or 'BBC English', can be an indicator of their educational background and it soon became an indicator of a good educational background and high position in society. RP is the only accent that is taught to foreigners and so it is widely used abroad. There are more foreign speakers of RP than mother-tongue users in Britain as only 3% of British people actually speak it even though most English dictionaries now give phonetics for RP pronunciation. RP speakers pronounce 'H' at the beginning of words such as 'hurt' and avoids it in words such as 'arm' and doesn't pronounce 'R' in 'car' and 'heart and uses the long 'a'. But cockney speakers do the opposite.

Accent identification is used very widely. For example, 'American' 'Australian' 'British' 'Irish' 'welsh' etc. but they are also be more specific to counties or cities – 'Yorkshire' 'Lancashire' 'Liverpool' 'New York'. Even with these general identifications, an accent can be influenced by its neighbouring areas. For example, the vowel system of Northern Irish closely resembles Scottish English, the South Wales accent is very much influenced by its neighbouring areas such as Bristol and the West-Country, Mid-Wales' accent has a strong comparison with that spoken in places like Shrewsbury and North Wales has a strong resemblance to Merseyside and also Liverpool (which has low prestige). For example, 'Foot' and 'Strut' and have the same vowel: /ʊ/ and /p, t, k/ are heavily aspirated (fricated).  But /t/ coming out like/s/ is not Scouse influenced: /dɔːtsər/ (daughter). However, this is not always the case, the Scouse accent has little in common with those used in the neighbouring regions of Cheshire and Lancashire.

In East Lancaster, 'Nurse'  and 'Square' are pronounced with /ɜː/ and areas that border Yorkshire are more likely for 'There' 'Where' and 'Swear' to be pronounced with / ɪə / so it rhymes with 'Here'.  The closer you move to Manchester, the less roticity there is.

There is also such a thing as 'Foreign Accent Syndrome'. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_accent_syndrome) This is where a person develops a foreign accent or sometimes a whole different language from places they have never been to or have only briefly visited. This is usually a result from a head trauma or a stroke of some sort. (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=foreign+accent+syndrome)

Scottish (Gaelic) descended from Old English. Speaking Scots and Standard Scottish English has become blurred: 'Wee' for 'little', 'does nae' for 'doesn't', rhyming 'house' with 'goose' and 'house' with 'heed'.

So it sucks that no one will ever know who had the first accent and where he got it from but this is the most useful information I could gather. If this interests you as well as me, a good book to read is David Crystal: The English Language. It has some really interesting stuff about pronunciation across the UK.

The Language Of Advertising

Michaela Pretorius

 

Everyone hears it, everyone sees it. Everyone's a victim. You can't escape it. It's on the train, in the car, on your TV, on the radio, on the bus shelter, on your clothing, on buildings. It is everywhere. It surrounds us with a tight grip around our necks, keeping us conscious enough to listen but not letting us breathe.

Advertising is a type of communication, used to persuade the audience to buy, or interact with their items. Most advertising is very loud and in your face as the companies want to stand out from the others. It is common that the most annoying adverts are the ones you remember the most. Such as the 'Go Compare' adverts with the large singing man. Advertisements are usually paid for by the sponsors such as Vauxhall are advertising themselves on the English Football teams' kit as it reaches a wide audience and strikes their target audience.  Advertisements feature in many different places such as newspapers, magazines, television commercials, radios, outdoor advertising, and the Internet.

There is always a frequent use of adjectives and adverbs, especially evaluative adjectives such as new, clean and improved.  Hyperbole is also used to exaggerate and make things seem more exciting than they are. This can also be seen in the tone used by the narrator of the advert, shouting and singing is more exciting them a monotone tone of voice. Neologisms are also used to give a novelty impact and have a fun play  on words which can be seen as humorous by the audience such as 'tangoed' or 'wonder fuel'. Humour can feature as both visual and verbal. Short sentences are also a feature as they are abrupt and impact on the reader, such as a bold heading or slogan printed across the product advertisement such as 'half price' or 'brand new'. Ambiguity is common also. This is what makes a phrase memorable and re-readable. Ambiguity may be syntactic (the grammatical structure) or semantic (the way it sounds such as puns for example).

Weasel words are used but not as commonly. These are words which have an underlying meaning without actually being direct. There is an open comparative: "Toms Football is Better" (which makes you question what it is better than). With the other type being the bogus superlative: "Toms Footballs are The Best" (which also makes you wonder what it is in comparison with). There is also the use of imperatives: "Buy Toms Football Now!" I believe that these words would mainly feature on advertisements targeted at children as children always want what someone else has. SO the use of the weasel words talk the child into wanting what is being advertised which is then pushed on to the parent as they want the best for their child.

Many advertisements make sure to avoid the negatives such as emphasising only the good side. For example Marmite is a brand that is known to either be loved or hated. But the advert only focuses on the loving side of the marmite.

Simple and Colloquial language is also used such as, "It ain't half good" to appeal to ordinary people, though it is in fact often complex and deliberately ambiguous. Along with the use of familiar language which is the use of second person pronouns to address an audience and suggest a friendly attitude.

Advertisements just seem simple and obvious to us as we see it everywhere but the most annoying thing is that it is not easy and a lot of time goes in to us being cornered into spending our money…

 

LINKS:

http://www.putlearningfirst.com/language/19advert/advert2.html

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weasel%20word

 

“I knowed it!”

How and when do children learn grammar?

Gaby Emson

Don't you find it intriguing when you hear a child using a complex morphological structure? How do they do it? Where did they learn these structures?
Something that has always fascinated me is children's acquisition of language and particularly their acquisition of grammar. I find it incredible that a child born into any environment can pick up any language. Currently, I'm studying A-Level French so I understand just how challenging it is to learn a new language and the importance of making mistakes along the way.
According to David Crystal, children partly use imitation to learn grammar and vocabulary. This allows them to develop an understanding of grammatical patterns. However, of course, they are going to make mistakes. But something I find even more interesting is how the mistakes made by children are actually very clever…
For example, the study by Alan Cruttenden in 1979 divided the acquisition of inflections into three fundamental stages which are explained in more detail within Cruttenden's book: "Language in infancy and childhood". According to Cruttenden, during the second stage of development, children will usually show awareness of grammatical principles or rules. However, when words require an irregular inflection often mistakes are made. The common mistake made by a child is known as overgeneralisation. Therefore, the child will apply the same rule to every word not taking into account the irregular exceptions.
For example, if they were asked the plural form of 'foot' usually they will say 'foots' rather than feet. This is because they are able to recognise that usually, to make a noun plural they must add a suffix of '-s'. Which is actually really smart.
This is also evident with mistakes a child makes with the tenses. They understand that typically, the normal rule to make a verb past tense they must add an 'ed' suffix. So, an example would be 'to run', of which they would change to 'runned' rather than ran. Again, something which is actually very smart, because they understand the normal rules. They just need to learn the irregular forms.

During 1958 Jean Berko carried out an investigation exploring "The Child's learning of English morphology". Within Berko's experiment, she was able to conclude that children between the ages of two and half and five years old were able to show awareness of grammatical rules. This was achieved by showing children images of fictional creatures named 'Wugs'. The children were shown the picture (displayed below) and told, 'this is a wug'. Next, the children were shown a picture of two creatures and told, 'Now there is another one; there are two of them.' The children were then asked to complete the sentence 'there are two….' .


Berko found that children aged three and four replied with 'Wugs'. This therefore proved that even though a word unknown to them was used, they were able to apply their grammatical understanding and give the correct form. So, next time you here a young child using or making mistakes with grammatical structures, remember just how clever they actually are.

The Language of the Internet and Texts.

Technology is taking over the world. And with any sort of conquering, a new language follows. If you can't understand it then prepare to be called a 'noob'.

With an increase in technology, specifically laptops and smartphones, accessibility to the internet has never been easier. One can go on the internet, essentially, whenever and wherever. However, back in the days when the internet was first becoming popular, usage of it was very limited. Those born in the mid 2000s and after have never heard of the most commonly used phrased whenever someone was using a computer: "GET OFF THE INTERNET, I WANT TO GO ON THE PHONE!" Back then, time on the internet was precious and you could say this was why internet slang/speak exists. (Probably not, but seems plausible!)

In the early days of the internet, around the 90s, what one could do on it was very limited. The thing that really took the world by storm was instant messages. The internet offered you the chance to talk to anyone anywhere around the world, without being on the phone and without using 'snail mail'. In a bid to save time and effort on chat rooms and instant messaging site, internet slang/speak was born.

At first internet slang was just merely abbreviations and initialisms. For example, instead of constantly writing 'I've got to go now' to a random stranger or friend, time for going was extended with the initials 'GTG'. But if you were talking to someone you were going to talk to again, 'BFN' (bye for now) or 'TTYL' (talk to you later) were used.

This simple, quick and easy language was so revolutionary to the way everyone spoke on the internet, that it quickly became the language for texting on those clunky old Nokias with the dial keys being the keyboard. With texting being very frustrating, annoying and slow on these RETRO phones, internet slang was very fitting. Commonly used initials and abbreviations on phones were: 'HRU' (how are you), 'BRB' (be right back), 'thx' (thanks) and more. If you didn't understand this then you're looking like a fool. My Nan thought she understood textspeak and when hastily sending a text in response to a miss call from my dad, she informed us she was at funeral, "lol!" (She thought it meant lots of love… #AWKS!)
                                                                                                                         

But is this new written language taking over the way we speak? There are elements that are being incorporated into spoken language. For example, instead of laughing, some people just say 'LOL' (laugh out loud) and when in shock, some say 'OMG' (oh my god).

Some people are worried that this new way of speaking is ruining the English Language and that many young people are not using Standard English. David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics, says that when you analyse a text but when you actually analyse it you find they're not using this new language. He adds, however, that Standard English is a necessity that should not be dropped!

By Matthew Harrison

Is child directed speech (CDS) a good or bad thing?

Laura Boyce

Have you ever noticed how you speak to children? I'm sure I can't be the only one who thinks baby talk is strange yet quite amusing. Come on, if you heard someone speak to an adult the same way they speak to a child you would think they were mad. But when you use repetitive, slow, clear and simple language with children it is completely acceptable and no one would think you are weird. This got me thinking about the effect that CDS has on children and whether hearing this "baby talk" all the time is a bad thing or not.

CDS is not essential for language development as in some cultures there is no such thing, but it has actually been proven that children prefer to listen to CDS than normal everyday adult speech. The use of high pitch, long pauses and exaggerated intonation seem to attract and hold the child's attention. The pauses also allow them more time to process the information they are hearing, which could aid language development as they grow, as it is thought that children learn correct grammar skills from hearing examples in adult speech. Also pausing after a question is asked, helps to introduce children to the rules of conversation. Children become used to the idea of turn taking which again aids their language development.

Other characteristics of CDS include repetition, frequent question asking and use of diminutive forms, for example, 'moo-moo' instead of cow and 'din-dins' instead dinner. This use of doubling a single syllable makes it simple for the child to understand and also easy to pronounce. A linguist called Noam Chomsky stated that children are born with an innate knowledge of language and learning of their native language is at high speed when hearing it from others. So by having this natural understanding already, some would argue that CDS actually interferes with language development because it provides children with an inaccurate and distorted version of normal speech.

Research by Clarke-Stewart in 1973 found that children whose mothers talk more have a larger vocabulary. However research in the same year by Katherine Nelson found that children whose mothers corrected them on word choice and pronunciation actually advanced more slowly than those with mothers who were generally accepting. Both pieces of research argue that CDS does help children learn language but it appears more to help parents communicate with children and that its purpose is social rather than educational, but does that make it a bad thing?

So whether baby talk makes language more accessible for children or if it interferes with their language development by teaching them babyish words, that's up to you to decide. But even if it is a bad thing, I still find it amusing when I hear an adult using baby talk!