Paper 3 Question 1

Text A is an excerpt from Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford. This is written by Edward Berens. Because this was written in the year 1832, I knew right away that it was Late Modern English. Late Modern English is one of the big stepping stones that made our language the way we know it so well in our modern-day and age. Looking at the date, you can assume that there have been a lot of changes from then to now, and just the fact that this is a letter that we are reading shows that it has changed a lot with letters being one of the rarest ways to communicate as we have access to technology at all times. 

There are multiple different areas in Text A that show how English has changed over the years, some words that were used that would not be used very often in society today are “coxcomb,” meaning foolish, “profanation,” meaning to desecrate, and “You will.” Now you may be asking what is so weird about the words “You will?” Well, it is very rare to start out a piece of writing like that, and in Late Modern English, this was one of the most popular ways to start a paper. This really shows how language has changed over time. Another example that I would like to bring up is when the author uses the term “Apt to be” which is a phrase that I am not familiar with at all and is a piece of language that has not been used in recent language much at all. It uses a variety of words that happen to be outdated and is simply not used much anymore in terms of present English. These are a few of the many examples that show an example of this language change. 

Now, I will be taking a closer look at text B. Using taste we see the words “good,” “bad,” “bitter,” “first,” and “personal.” These words help us see the judgment of what is happening and help us to better understand the way it was explained. Judgment helps us see the way in which we rate something. This shows a lot of change in the ways that words are used and is a big part of the way that we see things. 

Text C is used as an N-Gram that is for the phrases “apt to be,” “are likely to be,” and “tend to be.” What this shows is the use of the words from the specific time period of 1800 to 2008 and how the language has been used and how often it has been used from the start date to the end date. “Apt to be,” showed that it was used at a rate of .0001% and it has since even declined more zinc then meaning that this word is very rare and is not used much at all if ever. The other two phrases that were used, “tend to be,” and “are likely to be,” showed a bit of an increase in their language because of the fact that people were starting to use a more modern way of using language compared to the more formal language. In the present day, writing is a lot more casual than it was and a big part of that is due to the use and introduction of technology the people. The Functional Theory is a theory that shows language will change based on technological changes and because technology is more casual, so will our language. This supports the theory and proves it to be true.