Overly prescriptive prescriptivists who are dead inside

When the only answer you've got to someone who argues with you is to point out the flaws in their grammar, then you've lost the argument. This piece in the Guardian looks at the winner of the inaugural 'Bad Grammar' award; a letter written to Michael Gove disagreeing with his plans for curriculum reform.
Check out what sentence parsing superhero Nevile Gwynne had to say on the phrase 'too much too young':

"Presumably they mean something like 'demands too much when children are too young to be ready for so much', but, as worded, it simply is not English," he said. "In that sentence as worded, 'too young' can only be two adverbs, 'too' qualifying the adverb 'young', and 'young' qualifying the verb 'demands', as would, for instance, 'soon' or 'early'. But 'young' is an adjective, and cannot ever be an adverb. And it certainly is not doing the work of an adjective in that sentence, because there is no noun that could be 'understood' and which would turn that sentence into English."

Not English? Please. This is nothing more than petulant error spotting, and tells us more about the people doing the spotting than the quality of the original argument. 

Shared answer 13D

Click here - and get going! I'm going to lock this for editing in a few hours - after that, I'd like you to take the work that you've completed together, and use it for the basis of your own essay. Obviously there'll be bits that you don't like, bits that you want to add, bits that you want to re-order... you get the picture. Also, while  I've got your attention, I'd like you to have a look at all these ideas / concepts / keywords that I've lifted (in order) from this book. Over the next week, it'll be up to you to make sure that you identify anything that you aren't too sure about, and make sure this is taken care of. (I'm not saying buy the book, by the way - but be aware that there are one or two copies floating about).

Edit - the 13C collaborative answer can be found here

Any problems, questions, Bell & Ross watches - send them my way.

Welcome to all my Arnold bros

Just a quick post to say hello to all the Arnold language boffins who could well be looking at this for the first time. I thought I'd take a minute to recap what we covered in class this week, and point you in the direction of some interesting sites that will be of benefit to you in the coming weeks.

First up, we've looked at some of the ways to boost some of your AO2 understanding in your answers; we looked at the ideas of hierarchies within texts or attitudes, and how to spot them, and some of the pressures that push or pull language along the standard / non standard continuum. We finally looked at Cameron's ideas about prescriptivism, which are worthwhile keeping in mind as I'd hate you to fall into the trap that some 13s do (not ones I've taught, obvs) where prescriptivist views = bad, and descriptivist = good; it's often a little more complicated than that...

Just in case you've lost them already, here is the first story we looked at (all about the Twitterbot), and here is the second - Matthew Engel's hilarious, defeatist, whingey racist nonsense. You should know the jobs I've given you - get in touch if you aren't sure. (Oh, and if you're on the Mail website, you really ought to check out the comments section. Makes my day, every day).

Talking about getting in touch, whilst I'm a big fan of the email, if you have a question that is subject based, ask it in the comments section; often someone else has a similar question or misunderstanding, and it'll save me a bit of time to answer it just the once.

Finally, if you fancy some swotting up before the exam, head off to Dan Clayton's infinitely superior blog, where you'll find all sorts of useful material. Don't worry if it seems a little daunting at first; a good place to start for you monkeys would be the ENGA3 tag, but I'm sure you'll figure it out.

Any problems, questions, issues or Bell & Ross watches, send them along to the usual address.

It's back!

Since starting my new job, I've neglected this site a little, but from Easter I'll be back in the KS5 fold, and so I'll be posting as regularly as I can manage.

I've noticed that I've had a heap of pageviews recently, particularly on the model answer posts. If you want me to rummage around for any more, just let me know which year and month (either June or January) in the comments section below, and I'll see what I can find. Obviously I'll let Mrs Cox know, so you don't all take 'inspiration' from the same source!

Terry, Ferdinand and language change

"When someone calls you a c***, that's fine," Ferdinand said. "When someone brings your colour into it, it takes it to another level."


From following the John Terry trial, you'll find, summed up in one sentence, a fantastic example of how language (and associated attitudes) change, often within a generation. I remember watching 'Only Fools and Horses' when I was a nipper, and being a little surprised to watch both Del and Rodney describing a shop (and its owner) as a "paki" shop. What is interesting to see is how societal offence at racial insults has shot up in the last twenty years, whilst offence at the dreaded C word seems to be reducing - among professional footballers at least. 


While considering this increased aversion to racism, it might be worthwhile looking at what contemporary society does find acceptable to have a pop at. We looked at people with lower social economic status (when we looked at the Urban Dictionary definition of 'Meff', which I can't link to here), and you can find a great discussion of the word 'Chav' here, along with a lot more links that I'd like you to read through.


Just so you can use your brains - start looking at the 'Gypsy' series of programs on Channel 4. What might some people find offensive about these programs? What counter arguments might be made?

Get going with Bragg - I'm not joshing, either...

Here you go kids - a quick update of things to be getting on with, plus a few useful links. 

First up, you'll need to watch and take notes on the documentaries from Melvyn Bragg about the history of the English language - they can get a little dry at times but it's really important that you understand the process of how English became English. Your homework for this week is to watch the first two (about and hour and a half all in) and take notes, which I'll ask to see on Tuesday 10th July.

Secondly, if you've got time, then have a look at this that I wrote a while back - it describes how a word starts off as edgy and cool and hip, and eventually works its way inwards (think of the circle model) until it is part of the mainstream, at which point young hipsters go off searching for other words that mark them out as being different from the uncool, un hip language of 'the man'. Man.  After you've done this, head over to the superior SFX blog and check out the article on development of the word 'Swag', which provides another model which we'll look at before the end of term.

As ever - any questions, comments etc etc, send them to the usual address.

Revision / Round up

Like a harassed DJ responding to requests, I've been seeing people and speaking to them about areas they want to brush up on before the exam. I thought I'd post some links here that might be useful to everyone, as I've noticed that a few requests are overlapping.
First up - Jean Aitchison's Reith Lectures - you can download them all here. The first one, 'A Web of Worries' will give you much more detail on her ideas about damp spoons, crumbling castles and the like, but the other ones are really useful, too. (I search for a lot of podcasts in iTunes, and download them directly there).
Whilst we're on podcasts, if you've got an hour or two to spare, head over to the British Library website and check out some of the podcasts from their Evolving English exhibition. David Crystal's is really good, but also is Steven Pinker's, where he dicusses the evolutionary process of words.
Still on podcasts, you can also check out two interviews with Henry Hitchings from the Blackwell site (or better yet, search for Henry Hitchings in the iTunes store - there are two really good podcasts there; one 19 mins long, the other 11). Again, really useful, but no substitute at all for reading the book, which I still recommend you do before the big day.
And finally, you can still find more stuff then I could ever dig up by wandering over to the Eng Lang SFX site - I've been banging on about this for 2 years now, so I'm certainly not going to stop now.
As ever, any questions, comments, Bell & Ross watches, send them over to the usual address