Tuesday 10 May 2016

David Crystal Plenary at IATEFL (British Council)

Who would of thought it? The English language 1966-2066

Watch / listen to David Crystal's lecture here

Session details: Complaints about a supposed decline in standards of English continue to be made, with increasing frequency, in the British press. Although these are nothing new - as the long history of use of would of for would have illustrates - they do draw attention to the way we seem to be going through a period of unusually rapid language change. This paper illustrates the main changes in pronunciation, orthography, grammar, and vocabulary, discusses the chief factors involved - social mobility, globalization, and the Internet - and compares the changes that have taken place in the past fifty years with those that are likely to take place in the next fifty.

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