Swift - A Modest Proposal

Q: How does the producer convey meanings and create representations? How do the attitudes and techniques suit the context?

When looking at Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’, perhaps what is most interesting is his depiction of children and how they are almost acting as a burden. One of the main ideas conveyed by Swift is that a potential way to stop children being a burden is to actually eat them. This is shown with the independent subordinate clause ‘that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious’, with the pre modifiers ‘young’ and ‘healthy’ being coupled with the adjectival phrase ‘most delicious’ perhaps being used as a form of hyperbole to disgust the audience. By using the pre-modifiers ‘young’ and ‘healthy’, Swift potentially wanted the audience to depict this image in their head which is then reinforced with the use of verb phrase ‘well nursed’. Only with this to be broken down with the metaphorical asyndetic listing of how he believes children should be cooked ‘whether stewed, roasted, baked...’. By using this asyndetic list and the use of the subordinating conjunction ‘whether’, it is almost as though Swift is claiming that there are several alternatives to how we can eat children. Although this is a vulgar and inhumane portrayal solution to the matter, Swift’s work is known to be satirical and humorous and therefore the audience may expect to see such conceptions in his work. Back in the 17^th century, the only way for authors to actually get their work published is if they had a unique voice and of course, if they were male. Therefore, because Swift is using this use of irony, then the audience are able to understand the satirical devices used.

It could also be proposed that Swift believes that women are almost required to look after children rather than their own choice, shown with the dynamic verb ‘forced’ in the independent subordinate clause ‘are forced to employ all their time..’. By combining the progressive aspect relative verb ‘are’ with the dynamic verb ‘forced’, this suggests that this process is on going, and that mothers do not actually want to tend for their children but are instead manipulated to do so. This could raise questions as to whether males only want children to help them with work, which could have been a prevalent idea in the 17^th century and the insurgence of labour work. The children are then portrayed as abandoned, shown with the noun phrase ‘helpless infants’ to further reinforce the negative perception of children. With the use of the derivational suffix ‘less’ in the abstract noun ‘help’, this could have been used to aid the humorous aspects of the text because it was likely that the mothers stayed at home whilst the father went out to do the work. Furthermore, the positioning of the adverbial clause ‘instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood’ in the middle of the clause could have been used by Swift as a way to explain an alternative for women. However, this could have been used by Swift as a way to mock women’s subordinate position in society, as in the 17^th century women were often known to be domestic workers, rather than working to earn money. Although this may have been seen as humorous to the audience of the 17^th century, audiences in the present day may not see any humour in this adverbial clause, as the gap between women and men is closing rapidly with the insurgence of the feminist movement.

Language Change questions

Language change questions – Joe Worgan

1.      What are the main reasons for language change?

·       Technology

·       Geographical and social mobility

·       Political correctness

·       Historical changes and war

·       Pop culture?

2.      What are the ways in which language changes?

·       How language is actually written – even a simple pen can be considered as technology and how we write

·       Semantics – what the words mean. This can be semantic conversion, pejoration, amelioration etc..

·       Lexis – what words have been coined? Rise of technology in 21^st century allowed for a insurgence in new lexical items

·       Grammar – the structure of sentences and how they are spelt and received.

3.      What are the key influential factors on the development of English as accessible to all?

·       Industrial revolution in 17^th century – English was the language for science and technology

·       The great vowel shift – the pronunciation of words started to shift

·       Standardization – English was made to be more consistent

·       Caxton’s printing press and how the language of the South perhaps started to become used by a wider range of sociolects.

4.      What is the difference between a prescriptive and descriptive attitude to language use?

·       Prescriptive – Someone who believes that language should be ‘fixed’, usually opposing the idea of ‘slang’ and ‘teenspeak’ also.

·       Descriptivism – Someone who embraces language change and believes it is a natural occurrence.

5.      What did Johnson think were the problems with his dictionary? Are these problems still evident in dictionaries today?

·       Language is ever-changing, so how can a dictionary be made to reflect all of the uses of language when new words are being coined potentially every day?

·       What Johnson may think is the meaning for one thing – may be thought as differently by another. So, who is Johnson to claim that a word has a definite meaning when it may be different on other regions or societies?

·       In fact, some dictionaries insert slang words as a way to cause controversy – a way for advertisement!

6.      What is a lingua franca, and to what extent is English one?

·       When English is seen as the primary language to use by two speakers whose native language is foreign.

·       For instance, a Spanish and Italian man meet in a bar and start talking English. Why? Because that’s the only language they both know how to speak.

7.      What are the prestigious forms of English now?

·       Because now there are so many different forms of English, then it is difficult to label one as ‘prestigious’.

·       Although it could be said that received pronunciation (RP) can conjure connotations of authority, some people may distance themselves from the accent as it can be seen as ‘snobby’ or arrogant

·       Although written language can be considered as the most prestigious and accurate form of English, technology has meant that a completely new form of English has been introduced

8.      How has politically correct language and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis influenced modern English usages?

·       Derogatory terms have perhaps become more apparent. The use of the word ‘gay’ to reference something negative perhaps represents someone’s negative thoughts towards homosexuality.

·       If we teach children at a young age that this use of vocabulary is correct, then they will adopt this language in the future and believe it to be acceptable?

·       Sapir-Whorf is the proposition that language not only reflects our thoughts, but also affects them too.

9.      Find three examples of obsolete English grammar that you can make reference to in the exam.

·       The use of the long ‘S’

·       The capitalization of nouns to depict something as significant and to add emphasis towards the subject

10.   Find three neologisms from the past five years.

·       Selfie – Concrete noun that has been derived from ‘self’ to indicate a photo taken from the position of the subject

·       Brexit- Blending of the Proper noun ‘Britain’ and the dynamic verb ‘Exit’ used to signify the process of Britain leaving the EU.

·       OMG – Initialism to signify ‘Oh my god’, used as an abbreviation from computer-mediated-communication.