Guide Navigation
- Introduction to ENGA3 Revision Guide
- ENGA3 Answering the Language Change Question
- ENGA3 Language Change Question June 2012
- ENGA3 Language Change Question June 2012 Exemplar Response
- ENGA3 Answering the Language Variation Question
- ENGA3 Language Variation Question June 2012
- ENGA3 Language Variation Question June 2012 Exemplar Response
- ENGA3 Answering the Discourses Question
- ENGA3 Discourses Question June 2012
- ENGA3 Discourses Question June 2012 Exemplar Response
- ENGA3 Exam Practice Feedback
The following points need more work to make them into full, accurate and worthwhile analytical points in response to the ‘Variation’ question on regional dialect. What is worth keeping in each of these points? Does anything need to be removed or replaced? What could you add to make them decent points?
- Ebenezer doesn’t speak Standard English. The writers shows us this by using sentences like “Fish she was very particular about.”
- The common concrete noun “Ormers” seems to be an example of dialect lexis.
- Ebenezer is reminiscing about his past, describing how things used to be. He seems to enjoy his memories, as everything is presented in a good light: “She’d be singing hymns all the time and you could hear her all over the house.”
- The main factors that affect people’s use of regional dialect are location and how long they’ve lived there. If you’ve just moved somewhere, you won’t use the dialect of that region immediately (or maybe not at all). It depends on whether you’re proud of where you come from or not. If a proud Geordie moved to Liverpool, they probably wouldn’t lose any of their Geordie speech, but if they weren’t proud of it, they might try to fit in more, to accommodate.
- Prescriptivists don’t like variation as it means people aren’t all using the Standard English forms. Descriptivists, on the other hand, recognise that language varies and changes and there is no point trying to stop it.
