Exam-style question 15.1

Exam-style question 15.1

Text A is an excerpt written by Edward Berens. Written in 1832, the excerpt is associated with the Late Modern English period as it ranges from 1700-1900. The text is a letter of advice from an uncle, or Edward Berens, to his nephew. It includes advice to a young man upon ‘First Going to Oxford’. It can be assumed that Berens is the Uncle speaking to his nephew as the text is written in the first person. The text is very conversational and personal as readers are opened into Berens feelings towards his nephew. For example, ‘himself’ and ‘home’ and ‘you’ are italicized, showing an emphasis on the words by the Berens to allow readers to feel what he is also feeling. 

The language used in Text A is very similar to Modern English that is currently used today. For example, Berens uses the word ‘Profanation’ to describe the mentioning of things about ‘their home’ as ‘a sort of profanation’, or in other words, debasement. Here, the Theory of lexical Gaps can be seen. This theory is based on the idea that a word will be invented, converted or borrowed in order to fill a gap in usage as well as a phonological gap in our language. The word ‘Profanation’ was once referred to as an ‘act of violating sacred things or treating them with contempt or irreverence’ in the 1550s. This is from the French profanation, or directly from Late Latin profanationem meaning ‘render’, ‘unholy’, or ‘deprive of sanctity’.  Berens usage of the word was during the 1800’s; therefore, a clear language change of the word ‘profanation’ can be seen. This is because today, its meaning is ‘the act of profaning; desecration; defilement; debasement.’

Text B is a collocate chart that shows the top five collocates of adjectives for ‘taste’ and ‘judgment’ from the British National Corpus between the 1980’s through 1993. The chart shows that ‘taste’ was associated with bad, good, bitter, first, and personal, while ‘judgment’ with clinical, professional, dissenting, better, and final. These are in relation to Text A as they are similar to the 21st century language used today, yet there are still some clear differences. For example, the word ‘coxcomb’ from Text A originated in the mid 16th century, being a variant of cockscomb. Its original meaning was ‘the crest or comb of a rooster’. However, it's descendant ‘coxcomb’ means ‘fool’ or a ‘jester’. This is used in text A to describe Berens nephew if he were to talk about himself too much. ‘Coxcomb’ has undergone a semantic change as the original variant was spelled ‘cockscomb’, the change in language can clearly be seen here. While this word may not be used as relevantly today, it had a much greater usage in the late 1800’s. Compared to text B, the adjectives used to describe ‘taste’ and ‘judgment’ are from the late 1900’s; therefore, the words would most likely be identical today as the chart. 

Text C is an n-gram for the phrases ‘are apt to be’, ‘are likely to be’ and ‘tend to be’ from (1800-2008). The phrase ‘are apt to be’ was used in text A to describe young men having a tendency to be guilty. The n-gram shows that its peak was between 1900 to the beginning of its decline in 1950. In text A, are ‘apt to be’ is being used in 1832. Text C shows the usage of the phrase as practically zero percent during this time period. Therefore, Berens is using language ahead of his time. Text C also involves the phrases ‘are likely to be’ and ‘tend to be’. The n-gram shows both of these phrases experiencing an increase around 1920 and progressively becoming used more frequently. During the years around 1940, the graph shows these two phrases to be almost head to head in usage, while ‘are apt to be’ is beginning to decline. It can be argued that the words ‘likely’ and ‘tend’ in place of ‘apt’ are much easier and quicker for one to say. While the word ‘likely’ may be more known amongst the population, ‘tend to be’ succeeds ‘are likely to be’ in 1950 and on. This may be due to the fact that ‘are likely to be’ includes more syllables for one to say, while the word ‘tent’ practically combines the words ‘are’ and ‘likely’. This can also be argued as part of the Functional Theory by Michael Halliday as the language changes are according to its user needs.

Text A demonstrates several changes in grammar and syntax. Berens uses commas in the entirety of the excerpt. In the opening sentence, there are five commas in total that are used within the single sentence. Today’s grammar would not include as long of sentences or so many commas within a text. While this contributes to the syntax of the text, Present Day English is much more formal and includes more compound and complex sentences rather than ongoing sentences.