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Component 02: Dimensions of linguistic variation
Quick questions on Attitudes to language change: prescriptivism, descriptivism, Aitchison - OCR A-Level English Language
7short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What are aitchison's metaphors?Show answer
Jean Aitchison identified three metaphors that capture prescriptivist anxiety about change, and crucially rebutted each. Naming both the metaphor and her rebuttal is the high-value AO2 move.
What are descriptivist theories?Show answer
Two descriptivist accounts counter the prescriptivist view and explain why change happens.
What is a model attitudes paragraph?Show answer
"The columnist's lament that texting is 'destroying' English rests on the crumbling-castle metaphor: it assumes a once-perfect language now decaying. Aitchison's rebuttal is decisive, since there was no perfect past state from which to decline, and Halliday's functional account reframes the very features the columnist deplores as adaptations to a new mode of communication. The attitude is thus a recognisable prescriptivist stance, persuasive rhetorically but not well-founded linguistically."
What is a model evaluation paragraph?Show answer
"The text's infectious-disease framing, describing slang as 'spreading' and needing to be 'stamped out', constructs change as a contagion, but this misdescribes how change works: speakers adopt new forms by choice, for identity and function, not by infection. Set against Hockett's and Halliday's accounts, the attitude reveals more about the writer's anxiety than about language itself, which is the critical point the analysis reaches." This weighs the attitude against theory.
What is q1?Show answer
What is the difference between prescriptivism and descriptivism? [2 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
What does Aitchison's crumbling-castle metaphor describe, and how does she rebut it? [2 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
Evaluate the view that language change should be resisted, with reference to a text and relevant ideas. [18 marks]
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