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The ages of English
Why do we farm cows but eat beef? It's just one of the side-effects of the journey from old to modern English.
Listening to the voices
BBC Radio 4 speaks in tongues. Join Dermot Murnaghan as he reveals the discoveries of the Voices project in Word4Word, and find out more about the series.
Related programme
This analysis of the interview looks at accents, use of vocabulary and grammar, style, the origins of words and how we talk about language
Talking about language
Like most people, the Doyle family have a sophisticated knowledge about language, understanding the differences in the ways that different groups of people use language and how we are all capable of adapting the way we speak according to who we’re with or how we feel about ourselves. Several interlocking themes emerge from the interview:
We choose a variety of language not just to express ideas but to express our own identity and to distinguish ourselves from other groups of people.
For example:
Peter: I’m a Scouser. I’m proud to be a Scouser… I could talk like a Woollieback [a rural person], but I wouldn’t want to!
Peter: If you went to work in a pub in Widnes and someone come in and you’d say, “What would you like mate?” they’d say, “What you going on about? I don’t know what you are saying”. But, say you were in Speke and you know how to talk in Speke, then that’s easier.
Lynnie: ‘Basically it depends on how the person is and whether they are proud to be who they are…how they feel about themselves. …Josie and Pat our friends, they’ve lived here for 50 years but she’s still as Irish as they come, and she’s like a pensioner now but hasn’t lost her accent at all.
However, we can all vary our language according to the situations we find ourselves in and how much we really want to communicate.
For example:
Stephen: In the workplace I’ll speak different to what I do with me mates.
Stephen: The older generation, they haven’t got a clue about what we are talking about half the time and we haven’t got a clue about the words that they come out with.
Lynnie: Some of the things [the young people]’re going, you think, “What are they going on about”? and you have to say, “What does that mean?”
Over time, the language itself changes and some ways of speaking start to die out with the speakers.
For example:
Karen: The old people say, “Me smalls”, for their underwear, don’t they? “I’m going to go and rinse me smalls”, like, and they say, “I’ve got to go and get the groceries.”, instead of the shopping. ...They wouldn’t say pants, they’d say trousers. They wouldn’t say skirt, they’d say petticoat for underskirt. ... They’d say overcoat, they’d say jacket, they wouldn’t say coat. They’d use the way they were brought up with it.
See if you can spot similar comments about language in your own interviews, or whether some additional themes emerge...
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Content last updated: 08/07/2005
