AQA A-Level English Language: language diversity and change, a complete overview

What this area actually demands

Language diversity and change asks how English varies across regions and social groups, and how it has changed over time. AQA expects you to apply named theorists and studies to data and to discursive essay prompts, taking a broadly descriptivist stance that treats all varieties as systematic and valid. The skill being tested is using theory to explain patterns of variation and change, not just describing them.

This guide covers the five sub-topics in order, then the exam patterns. Each has a dot-point page with practice questions; this overview ties them together.

Social and regional variation

Variation is patterned and meaningful. A dialect varies in vocabulary and grammar; an accent varies only in pronunciation. A sociolect is a social group's variety and an idiolect is an individual's. Standard English and Received Pronunciation carry overt prestige, but Labov and Trudgill showed that non-standard forms can carry covert prestige within a group. Use these studies to explain why speakers use particular varieties.

Language and occupation

The workplace shapes language through specialist register and jargon and through discourse communities (Swales): groups with shared goals, terms and ways of communicating. Drew and Heritage analysed institutional talk as goal-oriented and often asymmetrical, and Koester studied workplace genres. Occupational language both includes insiders and excludes outsiders, and it carries power and identity.

Language change over time

English changes at every level. Lexical change adds words through borrowing, neologisms, compounding, blending, affixation and conversion; semantic change shifts meanings through broadening, narrowing, amelioration, pejoration and metaphor. Grammatical and orthographic change also occur, slowed for spelling by standardisation (Caxton's printing press, Johnson's dictionary). English moved through Old, Middle, Early Modern and Present Day phases.

Attitudes to language diversity

Attitudes range from prescriptivism (judging against rules of correctness) to descriptivism (describing usage without judgement). Aitchison's metaphors (the damp spoon, crumbling castle and infectious disease) capture prescriptivist complaints about change, while Crystal defends change as normal. Negative attitudes to accents and dialects can become prejudice, a debate you analyse from a linguistic viewpoint.

Theories of language change

Named models explain how change spreads. The wave model describes geographical spread; the S-curve model describes the rate of adoption over time. Halliday's functional theory says change meets users' needs and fills lexical gaps; Hockett's random fluctuation theory attributes change to chance; substratum theory explains change through language contact. Apply these to data rather than naming them in isolation.

How this area is examined

A typical AQA profile for diversity and change:

• Discursive essays. You evaluate attitudes and theories, for example arguing whether language change is decline or natural development, using named theorists.
• Data analysis. You apply the levels and relevant theory to unseen diversity or change data, including older texts and transcripts.
• Synthesis. Strong answers weigh competing models (deficit versus difference, prescriptivism versus descriptivism) rather than backing one uncritically.
• Accurate examples. Marks reward precise examples of variation and change with the right terminology and rough dates.

Check your knowledge

A mix of recall and application questions. Attempt them, then check the solutions.

1. Distinguish dialect, accent, sociolect and idiolect. (3 marks)
2. What is covert prestige? Give one study. (2 marks)
3. Define a discourse community. (2 marks)
4. Name and explain one of Aitchison's metaphors for language change. (2 marks)
5. Explain the difference between the wave and S-curve models. (2 marks)
6. Give one example each of semantic broadening and pejoration. (2 marks)