Jenna Ilett 06 Workshop 3: How has language evolved?
inspire@sjc.ox.ac.uk
sjcinspire.com
Katie Inwood 07 How has the English language evolved? (English)
Carolyne Larrington 12 How is technology changing our language? (Technology)
Maren Fichter 16
Cryptography: How do we keep our words secure in the digital age? (Computer Science) – Adrian Earle
21 Problem Solving (Critical Thinking)
Alfie Dry and Ima Lyer
22 How are languages invented? (Linguistics)
Kaya Bergeron-Verma
25 How have words been adapted by artists? (Art)
Johannah Latchem 28 Should we preserve regional dialects? (Linguistics)
Sophia Topf Aguiar de Medeiros 31 Social media’s influence on the spread of ‘black slang’ (Sociology)
Chloe Riley 34 A language for the universe? (Maths)
Samuel Lewis 37 Should we embrace language changes? (English)
Chloe Riley 40 The Linguistic Turn: The Death of History? (History)
Henry Stewart Dilley 44 Tolkien, Language and the Pub (Oxford Spotlight)
Welcome
TO INSPIRE CRITICAL THINKING 2025
Pause for a moment, read these words out loud, and think about what is happening! Your eyes are focussed on a row of little squiggles.
These register as images on the retina at the back of your eye which converts them into electrical impulses sent by your optic nerves to a part of your brain. Here your mind interprets them as words whose meanings you learned in childhood that have been strung together by a set of rules into a sentence. The sentence informs you of something that I wanted you to know. Should you wish to, you can now convert into sound your own words chosen from those stored in your brain, emit them from your vocal chords through your mouth, and in this way inform me of what you think about the sentence. You are using language: you are performing what is by the far the single most important characteristic of humans.
Welcome to St John’s College’s 2025 Inspire Critical Thinking programme, which is all about language: what it is, where it came from, and the varied roles it plays in our diverse and complicated social lives.
Our information comes via language from many sources, newspapers and broadcasting, the internet, social media, and advertising. Some are truthful and balanced, some biased towards one point of view, and some deliberately aimed to mislead and misinform. To understand the world and make it a better place for you to live in, you must learn to critically assess rather than unthinkingly accept what you hear and read. Nothing is more important to you as you face the problems and hazards the world will throw at you than how to understand and make the best use of language.
You will be offered four successive workshops, each presenting you with a variety of different aspects of language, ranging from the humanities, the arts, medicine, maths and science. They have been written by my St John’s College colleagues, some of them established world-renowned experts in their field, others up and coming young students.
Enjoy it!
Tom Kemp: Associate Editor
How to submit a superchallenge
There are some activities that offer a chance for you to win an Amazon voucher! Your entry should be emailed to inspire@sjc.ox.ac.uk, saved as a PDF document where possible. In your email, please let us know:
■ Your name
■ Your School
■ Your year group
■ Whether you are happy for us to share your work on social media.
Submit your super challenge piece by the end of the month for a chance to win. You may only enter one super challenge per workshop.
What are critical thinking Skills?
Think about the last time you read a new piece of information. Perhaps it was a news article, a page in a textbook, or a social media post. Regardless of the content, you may have approached the information in similar ways. You may have questioned the author’s intent, whether the information is reliable, or if you agree with the argument being expressed. Critical thinking skills can often be automatic and are important across all contexts. Using critical thinking skills can help you make sense of the world around you. But what do we actually mean when we talk about critical thinking skills?
Critical thinking is an umbrella term that includes many different types of skills. We have identified the most important of these skills, and developed a framework of five key Inspire Learning Skills. These have been broken down into simple criteria, so you know exactly what to do to work on any particular skill.
Opportunities to develop these Inspire Learning Skills have been embedded across the four Critical Thinking workshops in a variety of ways, including polls, quizzes and super challenges. Any opportunity to develop one of the 5 skills will be indicated by a coloured icon, with a specific skill highlighted in the
corner of the article page. By engaging with these activities, you will have the opportunity to develop skills that will help you solve problems, understand information from a range of sources, make informed judgements based on evidence, and share your opinions confidently. There are also resources to help you independently explore the topic in more detail. These skills will be useful throughout your time at school, but also beyond, as you make decisions about your life, education and careers.
How has language evolved?
But this evolution in language stems from far more than technology. Trade and migration have facilitated language blending, enriching vocabularies and spreading linguistic structures. While phonological shifts, semantic changes, and grammatical simplifications have continued naturally over time, language development has accelerated in the past five hundred years. WORKSHOP 3
Have you ever heard someone talking and they pronounce a word differently to you? Or perhaps your parents have asked you what ‘rizz’ means when you’ve used it in front of them? The differences in the way we speak, the words we use and when we use them all form part of our identity which we may choose to adapt or embrace, depending on our social setting. Certainly, the way we speak and use words now is changing rapidly with our use of technology – some might argue we are becoming lazier with our language!
?
The advent of the printing press in the 15th century played a pivotal role in standardising languages, particularly in Europe, by codifying spelling, grammar, and vocabulary in printed texts. This era also saw the rise of national languages like English, French, and Spanish as dominant forms of communication within their respective countries, often displacing regional dialects.
From the 17th Century, colonialism and globalisation introduced vast linguistic exchange. European powers spread their languages worldwide, influencing and borrowing from local languages, resulting in hybrids like creoles and pidgins. From this English emerged as a global lingua franca, while some smaller languages face extinction. Should we seek to protect all languages?
Technological innovations in the 20th and 21st centuries, such as radio, television, and the internet, accelerated the spread of dominant languages and introduced new forms of communication – slang, texting, memes, emojis. Will there be a time when there are no ‘real’ words anymore?
How are languages even created? Why do some words mean different things to different people? How can we protect our words? Why can’t academics agree on the purpose of language in their subjects? This workshop will help you consider the impact of an evolving language and encourages you to question how soon this will change again.
Katie Inwood Editor
BEOWULF
CHAUCER
Evolving English
How has the English language evolved?
Author: Professor Carolyne Larrington, Tutorial Fellow in English Literature, St John’s College
Evolution occurs in culture as well as in the natural world. One example of this is language evolution. All languages change over the course of time, for a whole range of reasons. We can broadly divide the causes of language change into internal and external factors; below I’m going to consider the evolution of English to illustrate this point.
External Change Factors
The earliest records we have of the English language go back to the eighth century, where we can find single words, ‘glosses’, written in Latin manuscripts to explain the meaning of individual Latin words. Like other Germanic languages, Old English had gender and cases; nouns could be masculine, feminine or neuter and a noun’s function in a sentence was determined by its ending. Old English was subject to three major external influences: contact with the Christian Church, the immigration of Scandinavian-speaking settlers, particularly in the North, and the Norman Conquest. Words were borrowed from Latin (the language of the Church, such as mass, bishop, priest), Old Norse (scum, law, egg, die) and from Norman French (mutton, gaol, pork, dungeon, guardian). Sometimes
a language acquires new words to express newly imported concepts or objects, such as Church terminology. Sometimes language borrowing works to split up a semantic field (a group of related meanings) to make meaning more precise. Thus, Old English had foam, but contact with Norse speakers allowed a new distinction between clean and dirty bubbles: foam and scum Old English did not have a separate term for the meat from an animal (it just stuck the word flæsc ‘flesh’ onto the end of the animal name, as in modern German). It was the Norman aristocrats who were eating the meat that their English serfs were rearing, so they called it by its familiar Norman French names: beef and pork. The peasants kept to the old words: swine, sheep, ox and cow. In other cases, the borrowing of new words seems quite random. Old English had perfectly good words for ‘law’, ‘egg’ and ‘to die’: æ, ey, and sweltan (compare this to ‘it’s sweltering hot’), so it’s not clear why the Norse words should have been adopted instead.
Internal Changes
Internal changes were also underway in Old English. The old case system began to disappear; noun endings that had been quite distinct, such as -a or -an or -as, started to coalesce around
-e, -en and -es (with e pronounced as a kind of [uh]) sounds. Would this change have happened anyway, or was it a consequence of Old English speakers coming into contact with Old Norse speakers who used a different, but related, set of endings? We can’t be sure, but the immigration of Norman French speakers certainly accelerated the demise of the different case endings.
Later Changes
The same patterns of change have continued through the history of English. New words have come into the language through cultural contact with other language speakers, particularly as a consequence of imperial expansion (karaoke, bungalow, ketchup, avocado) or exposure to new kinds of knowledge or technology (syndrome, optics, existentialism). New words have been coined or invented to express new concepts: the Old English thrifaldness was invented to express the concept of the Trinity, but was eventually replaced by a Latin-derived term; language purists often used to complain about television because it combines a Greek prefix with a Latin stem. Calque is a term for a word or phrase that is a literal translation of a word that originates in another language: flea market; masterpiece; pineapple; antibody; stormtroopers. Internal language change has continued too. Noun endings finally disappeared (with a couple of exceptions – plurals and genitive -s); the verbs simplified so that only the third person singular -s was retained in regular verbs; nouns lost their grammatical gender, or, rather, the idea of gender became associated with
nouns denoting only male or female people or creatures: girl, ram, actress, chairman. Rather oddly, ships and some countries became identified as female; there is much speculation as to why. The second person singular pronoun thou (with thee, thy and thine) vanished except, for a while at least, in addressing God when praying. This was a consequence of the originally plural form you becoming first the polite, and then the only form for addressing one person – unlike French and German which retain the tu / vous, du / Sie distinction, or Icelandic which has abandoned the polite form and only has a singular / plural distinction in þú and þið. This development has left standard English without a clear second person plural pronoun; consequently, some varieties of English have filled that gap: Irish and Scouse youse or Southern US English y’all
Changes in Speaking
Above all, English pronunciation has changed. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a change known as the Great Vowel Shift occurred (this is the main reason why our spelling system is so far from being phonological, or why words are often pronounced so differently from how they are spelled). The long vowels in English mostly moved higher and further forward in the mouth and new diphthongs (two sounds sounded together) were created. Have you ever wondered why in English we have the same vowel for a short ‘i’ as in most other languages, and yet the long vowel sounds radically different? Think about pin and kind, for example. The vowel in the second is clearly not a longer version of the first; the long vowel
became diphthongized as part of the Great Vowel Shift.
Changes in pronunciation are still ongoing. If you listen to the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts from the early years of her reign as opposed to her last one, you will see how much her usage has changed over the years. One marked tendency in pronunciation change is spelling pronunciation. People used to pronounce waistcoat as ‘weskit’ (you might still hear this with very old speakers); golf would be pronounced to rhyme with oaf by upper-class speakers. The first syllable of constable and Covent Garden were pronounced if the vowel were a ‘u’ rather than an ‘o’; in fact the Cambridge Dictionary gives the ‘u’ pronunciation as standard British. Underway at present is a change in forehead from something like ‘forrid’ to pronunciation in line with spelling; so too worry is undergoing what linguists call ‘unrounding’: the o, formerly pronounced as ‘uh’ (as in cut) is becoming ‘o’ (as in pot). If you check the Cambridge Dictionary pronunciations for these words, you’ll see that the Dictionary has not caught up with these two changes.
Queen Elizabeth II in 1959 and 2015
While writers and scholars celebrated the arrival of exciting new words and hastened to use them, others complained that they did not know what these words meant.
Complaining about Language Change
People have been aware for centuries that language is evolving. William Caxton, the pioneer of printing, noted in 1490: ‘And certainly our language now used varieth far from that which was used and spoken when I was born’. In the early modern period, a huge number of new borrowings came into English with the rediscovery of Greek learning. While writers and scholars celebrated the arrival of exciting new words and hastened to use them, others
complained that they did not know what these words meant. Prototype dictionaries, called ‘Lists of Hard Words’, subsequently became very popular. Later still, intellectuals began to worry that language change meant that Shakespeare and Milton would become as obscure and difficult to understand as Chaucer, and they looked for ways of fixing language.
In his ‘Plan for an English Dictionary’ (1747), Samuel Johnson claimed that such an undertaking might produce ‘a dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened’. By the time he came to publish the Dictionary in 1755, he had discovered that language change was both inevitable and
impossible to prevent: ‘tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language’, he urged.
They often find new words offensive: slang, shortenings, acronyms, or new pronunciations, especially when the variant is associated with a particular social class or group. But, as Johnson discovered, language is in a constant state of change.
Language Evolution Now
Was Johnson right about English degenerating? Nowadays, linguists see their work as descriptive, rather than prescriptive; they investigate how language is actually used in practice, rather than producing rules about how language should be used. This does not stop many non-linguists from complaining about other people’s usage. They often find new words offensive: slang, shortenings, acronyms, or new pronunciations, especially when the variant is associated with a particular social class or group. But, as Johnson discovered, language is in a constant state of change.
Or does language evolution imply language improvement? English’s openness to change in terms of wordborrowing has given it a much bigger vocabulary than many other European languages – although of course other words have simply dropped out of use. Amateur critics argue that language used to be ‘better’ (usually in some unspecified way) in the old days. At the same time, we know that language constantly evolves to meet the communicational, social and creative
Caxton’s 1476 edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
requirements of the community that uses it. One thing is for certain: just like William Caxton in 1490, I know that the English we speak today has changed a great deal from the English spoken in my childhood – and the same will be true in fifty years’ time. How it will change though is another question. LINK >
● Video: Txting is killing language. JK!!!
SUPER CHALLENGE
Find someone your parents’ age or older, and ask them what words for common objects they used to use when they were young that they don’t use or hear other people using any more. For example, wood lice can be referred to as cheesy bugs, roly polies, woodpigs or even something else depending on where you come from. Some of these words may be dialect and not a part of Standard English; others may have fallen out of use. If you speak a different language at home, it might be worth thinking about the interaction between this language and English. Think about why these words may have fallen out of use, and produce a poster to share your findings.
Hindi words
Bandana
If you’d like to find out more:
● See if you can find a word that has come ino English from the following languages: Icelandic (NOT Old Norse); Greenlandic / Inuit; Malay; Australian Aboriginal; Nahuatl. You can see examples of Hindi words to the right.
● Semantic change is an important part of language evolution: words change meaning. See if you can trace the semantic change(s) undergone by: geek, silly, weird, box, beads, deer, fee.
● Video: How language changes over time on TED.com
● Web resource: Why does language change over time? on BBC Bitesize
● Web resource: Is English changing?
● Article: How the English language has changed over the decades
Bangle
Blighty
Bungalow
Cheetah
Chit
Chutney
Cushy
Dinghy
Dungaree
Guru
Juggernaut
Jungle Khaki
Karma Loot
Mantra
Nirvana
Pundit
Pyjamas
Shampoo
Thug
Typhoon
Veranda
Like this article? A course in English Language and Literature might be for you!
wifi podcast emoji EV selfie doomscrolling google gaslighting tweet lol text binge watch email red flag GOAT rizz lowkey jarring carbon footprint brain rot green flag
How is technology changing our language?
Author: Maren Fichter, MPhil in Linguistics from the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, Oxford
If you have read Carolyne Larrington’s article ‘How has the English language evolved?’, you will already know a lot about how language evolves, and in particular about how English has evolved over the last several centuries. But these days, language is changing faster than ever before—how many times have your parents (or even an older sibling) told you that they have no idea what you’re saying?
New modes of communication
Since computers started appearing in homes in the 1980s, we have learned to communicate with each other in entirely new ways. The most direct effect of this on language is the creation of new words to describe our new modes of communication. A great example of this is the shortening of the original electronic mail to E-mail, which has since contracted entirely to email. Much of the language around new technology uses metaphors like this, which express new concepts in terms of familiar ones. Some other examples are desktop, folders and cloud. The meaning of words like these has shifted drastically in the past few decades, and this is still happening: we are constantly developing new terms to describe new technologies and innovations. If you ask your grandparents what a story is, they are more likely to define this word as a narrative or anecdote rather than a short video you watch on Instagram or Snapchat—this is an indication of change in progress.
English as a global lingua franca
Because so many computing advances and social media networks have been made in English, the words we use to talk about our digital world also tend to be in English. This has accelerated the development of
If you ask your grandparents what a story is, they are more likely to define this word as a narrative or anecdote rather than a short video you watch on Instagram or Snapchat—this is an indication of change in progress.
English as a global lingua franca, or a shared language used to facilitate communication between speakers of different languages. Other languages have borrowed a number of words from English to describe the digital world: an Instagram story is likely to be a story no matter where you are in the world.
Throughout most of human history, the people you encountered and the community you were part of were determined by where you lived, the language spoken there, and your age, gender, class and other such characteristics. But with the increased mobility of the modern world, and with the advent of computers and the internet, people have been able to connect across greater distances in increasingly convenient ways. Given this increased level of connectivity, people can now encounter speakers of other languages more easily than ever before. This digital mobility has also contributed to
This digital mobility has also contributed to English’s role as a global lingua franca: communities on the internet are now shaped more by shared interests than geography, making for much more linguistically diverse communities.
English’s role as a global lingua franca: communities on the internet are now shaped more by shared interests than geography, making for much more linguistically diverse communities.
As such, not only do speakers interact with other languages more often, but the languages they do speak are influenced more and more by other languages. This is something you may have experienced yourself: if you or your close friends speak a different language at home than at school, you’re likely to find those languages influencing each other both in your everyday speech and in the way you use language in digital contexts (like texting or social media).
New ways of expressing meaning
But it is not just the need for a global lingua franca that has driven the development of English in recent times. Before the internet, we usually encountered language in
either spoken or written forms – in conversation with other people, in books, in films and so on. But in the digital world, we use language in entirely new ways: trying to convey emotions in writing leads us to using all caps or manipulating grammatical structures (such as in doge memes). Our friends understand perfectly well when we text them a string of emojis . Memes originally relied on humorous interactions between images and text, but can now be any form of internet-based cultural reference, which one linguist has argued is reminiscent of folklore.
With the internet, we have developed new communicative units that serve a similar meaning-making purpose to words: emojis, memes, hashtags and more. The way these units are put together (into Instagram stories, YouTube videos, Tumblr posts, etc.) is similar to the way words are put together into sentences. In this way, we are using the internet to blur the boundaries of what we traditionally think of as language.
Memes originally relied on humorous interactions between images and text, but can now be any form of internet-based cultural reference, which one linguist has argued is reminiscent of folklore.
These new ways of expressing meaning work because we as speakers assign meaning to language. Words don’t inherently mean things in and of themselves; it is only the agreement of a community of speakers that gives a word the power to mean something. Young people are particular drivers of language change in this regard –because they adopt new technologies and social media more quickly and holistically than older people, they are the ones generating new meanings for words like story.
And the evolution of English hasn’t stopped there: the internet has birthed a variety of new language games that play with sounds and syllables (Benedict Cumberbatch memes are a great example). We now say “lol” and “omg” out loud.
The search-engine based structure of the internet itself has even led to the linguistic ploy of Voldemorting, a means of confusing search engines through synonyms and misdirection. These are all examples of language crossing the boundaries between the traditional and the digital worlds, and in the process changing how we use language to interact with those worlds.
So what will English be like in the future? With all the changes and developments underway now, it is hard to say, but what is clear is that language has never evolved as quickly and dramatically as it is evolving now. Many people find this a cause for concern, but others are rejoicing in the creativity and identity-affirming freedom this allows speakers all across the world.
SUPER CHALLENGE
Oxford University Press, chooses an annual ‘word of the year’. Here are a few recent examples of the Oxford words of the year:
Year Word of the year Notes
2020 unprecedented The English language, like all of us, has had to adapt rapidly and repeatedly this year. Given the phenomenal breadth of language change and development during 2020, Oxford Languages concluded that this is a year which cannot be neatly accommodated in one single word.
2021 vax
From vaccination. It has generated numerous derivatives that we are now seeing in a wide range of informal contexts, from vax sites and vax cards to getting vaxxed and being fully vaxxed, no word better captures the atmosphere of the past year than vax
2022 goblin mode ‘Goblin mode’ – a slang term, often used in the expressions ‘in goblin mode’ or ‘to go goblin mode’ – is ‘a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.’
2023 rizz
If you’d like to find out more:
● A linguist explains the grammar of Doge. Wow.
● Will we all speak emoji language in a couple of years?
● A linguist explains the rules of summoning Benedict Cumberbatch
● Welcome to Voldemorting, the ultimate SEO dis
● We will have meme folklorists
2024 brain rot
2023 marked the era of personal – and professional – PR. And what does it take to command attention? A whole lot of charisma, or the shortened form, ‘rizz’. Pertaining to someone’s ability to attract another person through style, charm, or attractiveness, this term is from the middle part of the word ‘charisma’, which is an unusual word formation pattern.
Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.
You can see that these are quite different to what we might usually think of as ‘words’. Use the hyperlinks in the table to read more about how they selected the word each year. What can you conclude about the OUP’s approach to choosing a ‘word of the year’, especially in terms of what it means for something to be defined as a word?
What 5 words might you shortlist for 2025? Have your say in our forum.
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Digital security
Cryptography: how do we keep our words secure in the digital age?
Author: Adrian Earle, Head of Computer Science at Holyport College
If we accept the premise that language is powerful, then it must also be important to protect our use of language. To that end there are various means and methods of securing communication. We will explore some of the more basic versions of Cryptography, the process of algorithmically changing plaintext based on a key to render that text unintelligible to people who do not have the correct key to decrypt the ciphertext.
Encryption has been used in some capacity for thousands of years with some of the earliest known uses being 1900 BCE in Egypt, 1500 BCE in Mesopotamia and Hebrew scholars making use of substitution ciphers in 600 BCE. More recently, encryption is used in computing and computer communications to avoid hackers from intercepting anything, from everyday WhatsApp messages to military research. It is also used for nefarious purposes in ransomware.
Caesar Cipher
The Caesar Cipher uses a numeric key and applies that key as a shift to each letter in a message, replacing the original letter with a letter that appears later in the alphabet. For example using a shift of 10 we encrypt the phrase
“Et tu, Brute” Turning it into “Od de, Lbedo”
We can do this with the wheel shown, which is already turned to the correct setting, by replacing the letters in the message, going from the outer wheel to the inner wheel. A becomes K, B becomes L & C becomes M and so on.
In order to decrypt a message, replace each letter in the message going from the inner wheel to the outer wheel.
As the order of the letters in the alphabet are the same, there are only 26 possible keys, and one of those isn’t particularly useful as it wouldn’t change any of the letters. E = O T = D T = D U = E
Mono-Alphabetic Substitution Cipher
A mono-alphabetic substitution cipher is a simple cipher that establishes pairs of letters, for each letter in the original message, replace it with its partnered letter.
Using the above we could encrypt the the sentence
“Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
Turning it into “Bzfqq kds gqqc d rqkfqb, ny bwj jy bzqv dfq pqdp.”
As the letters in the key are scrambled, it means that there are 26 factorial (approximately 400,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) possible keys, and therefore will take much longer to try every combination to crack the cipher.
Digraph
A digraph is another encryption method of encryption that focuses on digrams - a sequence of two letters. It maps the 676 possible digrams in a table, where the new letters are in the intersection of the old.
Using the Digraph below, to encrypt the word “Encryption” we split the word into digrams - “EN”, “CR”, “YP”, “TI” & “ON” and use the first letter of each digram to identify the column and the second letter to identify the row.
EN looks at column E & row N and becomes UL
CR looks at column C & row R and becomes UK
YP looks at column Y & row P and becomes OP
TI looks at column T & row I and becomes UQ
ON looks at column O & row N and becomes DO
Final result: “ULUKOPUQDO”.
Notice how the Ns are different depending on what letter they are paired with, this makes the Digraph cipher more secure than a simple Mono-alphabetic substitution cipher.
Decryption Techniques
Even without knowing the key there are still methods that can be employed to decrypt a secured message. Many of the methods mentioned would take human beings a long time, but they can be rapidly solved with modern day computers. The best encryption techniques take modern computers a long time to solve too.
The simplest, crudest, way to crack a message is through brute force. Try
every possible key until the message makes sense. This might work for a simple Caesar Cipher, where there are only as many possible keys as there are letters in the alphabet, but for more complex encryption this would take even the most powerful computers millions of years!
Another method that can be used for Substitution Ciphers, especially Mono-Alphabetic ones, is looking at traits of language. Some letters are used more commonly than others. Certain words are more common. Some words have specific traits. For example
• The only one-letter words in English are “a” and “I”, so any letter on its own is probably “a” or “I”
• Some of the most common twoletter words are “of”, “to”, “it”, “is”, “so”, “or”, “do”, “if” & “an”
• Very few letters can appear after an apostrophe “He’s”, “Hadn’t”, “We’d”, “She’ll” “You’re”, “They’ve” and “I’m” are all examples.
These traits of language make identifying some letters easier, which in turn gives clues for other letters. The longer the message, the more data you have, the more possible it is to use the frequency of letters to help break the code.
SUPER CHALLENGE
Decrypt A Caesar Ciphered Message
The below text has been encrypted using a Caesar Cipher. The key is 5. Use the provided wheel to decrypt the text by going from the inner wheel to the outer one.
● Article: NHS cyber-attack: GPs and hospitals hit by ransomware
Like this article? A course in Computer Science might be for you!
SUPER CHALLENGE
Decrypt A Mono-Alphabetic Substitution Ciphered Message
Decrypt the message below. The vowels have been given to you to start. You will need to work out the key as you go.
HYLRLK’ KFUUSC RO RCU FUOFIU: YOWBEK, SOLERYAWUE, BED IOGUYK, CUBY WU NOY WA SBLKU, BED HU KVIUER, RCBR AOL WBA CUBY. HUIVUGU WU NOY WVEU COEOLY, BED CBGU YUKFUSR RO WVEU COEOLY, RCBR AOL WBA HUIVUGU. SUEKLYU WU VE AOLY QVKDOW, BED BQBTU AOLY KUEKUK, RCBR AOL WBA RCU HURRUY PLDMU. VN RCUYU HU BEA VE RCVK BKKUWHIA, BEA DUBY NYVUED ON SBUKBY’K, RO CVW V KBA RCBR HYLRLK’ IOGU RO SBUKBY QBK EO IUKK RCBE CVK. VN RCUE RCBR NYVUED DUWBED QCA HYLRLK YOKU BMBVEKR SBUKBY, RCVK VK WA BEKQUY: EOR RCBR V IOGUD SBUKBY IUKK, HLR RCBR V IOGUD YOWU WOYU. CBD AOL YBRCUY SBUKBY QUYU IVGVEM, BED DVU BII KIBGUK, RCBE RCBR SBUKBY QUYU DUBD, RO IVGU BII NYUUWUE? BK SBUKBY IOGUD WU, V QUUF NOY CVW; BK CU QBK NOYRLEBRU, V YUPOVSU BR VR; BK CU QBK GBIVBER, V COEOLY CVW; HLR — BK CU QBK BWHVRVOLK, V KIUQ CVW.
Digraph Cipher
Encrypt this extract from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar using a digraph cipher. As you encounter new letter pairs, fill in the provided digraph table with the replacement.
Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Critical thinking –problem solving
Author: Alfie Dry, Human Sciences graduate of St John’s College, Oxford
Problem solving is a vital skill for you to have because it helps you to navigate challenges, make decisions, and adapt to new situations. Whether it’s academic struggles, relationship issues, or career planning, effective problem-solving fosters independence and confidence. This type of critical thinking encourages you to analyse situations, identify root causes, and develop practical solutions. By learning to solve problems, you build resilience, turning setbacks into opportunities for growth. It also enhances creativity, as you explore different perspectives and innovate solutions. Strong problem-solving
skills prepare you for future roles in work and society, where you’ll face complex and evolving challenges, typically as part of a collaborative effort within a team.
Problem solving is not easy and so Ima Lyer has outlined key steps to take when addressing any problem (whether academic, professional or personal). A good suggestion would be to try out this framework when you next get a test result that was lower than you expected.
Ima Lyer Problem solving
How are languages invented?
Author: Keya Bergeron-Verma, Experimental Psychology Student at Christ Church College, Oxford
Mostnatural languages, sort of like biological species, arise gradually and evolve over time. English, for example, originated in around the 5th century from other languages in northern Europe and was brought to Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers. The English then would be almost unrecognizable by English speakers today, and the same is likely to be true of English speakers hundreds of years in the future. New words are constantly making their way into the language (for example, ‘cosplay’ and ‘simp’ were added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2023), and old words, styles and pronunciations are lost over time. Languages do not develop in a vacuum – they are the products of centuries of cultural and linguistic influences and additions, ever changing.
It seems almost impossible then, that someone could invent a whole language in just a few decades, or even years. And yet it has been done countless times. Tolkien’s elves speak Sindarin and Quenya, aliens in Star Trek communicate in Klingon, and High Valyrian from Game of Thrones has more learners on Duolingo than ‘real’ languages like Norwegian and Vietnamese. Language invention isn’t limited to fictional worlds either. In the late nineteenth century, L. L. Zamenhof created Esperanto, intending
Tolkien’s elves speak Sindarin and Quenya, aliens in Star Trek communicate in Klingon, and High Valyrian from Game of Thrones has more learners on Duolingo than ‘real’ languages like Norwegian and Vietnamese.
for it to be an international auxiliary language – a universal language used to communicate around the world without the political and cultural associations that often come with natural languages. Judging by the fact that very few people became Esperanto speakers, this was not hugely successful. Nevertheless, the scale of these constructed languages (or conlangs), with thousands of root words, special scripts and even some etymology is an impressive feat.
● Video: Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na’vi real languages?
What sets these languages apart from something like ‘pig Latin’ or the occasional invented words in a book?
One important part is that they are more than just a code for an existing language. Taking every word in English and translating it to something else would not result in a separate language. Anyone who knows more than one language will know that there are different rules for joining words together, talking in different tenses and talking about other people. For example, in English you might say ‘the fat cat’ whereas in Spanish you would say ‘el gato gordo’ – the adjective follows the noun. The rules that determine these are called grammar, and these are usually specific to their languages. For something to count as a conlang, it has to have both a substantial vocabulary (list of words belonging to a language) and a defined grammar (the rules for combining these words together to form expressions and sentences). Usually, they would also have rules for pronunciation and speaking – Klingon in particular has dozens of special sounds.
● Video: What is Pig Latin?
The way in which these aspects of a language are constructed can vary, however. A posteriori languages often have elements based on existing languages. This might make it easier for some people to learn them than others, depending on the languages they already know how to speak. Esperanto has often been criticized for its Eurocentrism, being based on European languages, despite its supposed goal ’ to be the global language of communication. A priori conlangs on the other hand, are not based on natural languages, for example Dothraki and Solresol, a language constructed out of sequences of notes.
Linguists often disagree on whether conlangs actually count as full-fledged languages, or whether they are too limited and undeveloped. Some might argue that conlangs are not in fact so different from natural languages – they just haven’t had the chance to evolve with culture and history in the same way that languages that are in common use have done.
If you’d like to find out more:
● Article: The process of inventing fictional languages
Are languages like elvish and Klingon real languages?
Vote now!
● Video: Esperanto Explained
L. L. Zamenhof creator of Esperanto
Example of a Klingon from Star Trek
Tolkien’s Elvish Quenya poem
Words of art
Drapetomania (2022) Johannah Latchem, copyright the artist
How have words been adapted by artists?
Author: Dr Johannah Latchem, Inspire Programme administrator, St John’s College, Oxford
Visual artists sometimes work with the language of the written and spoken word. Text and spoken word support a range of different objectives for artists, the artwork pictured on page 25 highlights how language can be dangerous when used by those in power to maintain social hierarchy and oppression. ‘Drapetomania’, was a term named by the American physician Samuel Cartwright in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, 1851, was a form of mania supposedly affecting enslaved people in the 19th century; an uncontrollable impulse to run away from their white enslavers, preventable by whipping. The word is derived from the Greek Drapeteusis – meaning an escape and mania – madness. The term Drapetomania is listed in The Oxford Dictionary of Psychology, which indicates that the medical report from where it originated is often cited as a fanciful case of psychologism.
The work by artist Johannah Latchem ‘Drapetomania’ (2022) addresses how this word may have perpetuated the system of enslavement by legitimising it through a medical term, conditioning thinking across the wider population, and pathologising the human subject. It resonates with twentieth century instances of individuals wrongly convicted to asylums sometimes for no legitimate reason and raises questions of what maintains these systems. The typeface for the work was carefully chosen, Latchem first explored obsolete 19th century fonts that resonated with an obsolete 19th century word, some typefaces in use today even have a history of colonial connotations. The decision was made to print in Baskerville in keeping with signifying a dictionary typeface. Typeset and printed in letterpress using metal type and wood type first, the colour mixed, and paper chosen, before being digitally reproduced 15x12 feet on paper affixed directly to the wall like a billboard, with a cautionary public message writ large. As well as its Greek etymology, the letters contained in the word Drapetomania itself yielded the emergent words printed below it, words directly resonant of the consequences of attempted escape and the brutal
punishments meted out. The work was commissioned as part of an exhibition at the University of Oxford Bodleian Libraries These Things Matter: Empire, Exploitation and Everyday Racism featuring contemporary artists who responded to contentious artefacts from the Bodleian Library’s collections. It explored the long-term effects of the British Empire and shows how everyday communications maintained the British Empire and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Maps, letters and even The Bible were edited deliberately to manipulate millions of people and to justify the value of trading enslaved bodies.
Susan Hiller’s Monument (198081) is a memorial to heroism and self-sacrifice. The installation comprises forty-one photographs of memorial plaques the artist came across in Postman’s Park, near St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Each commemorates an ordinary man, woman or child who died while performing an act of heroism. Sarah Smith, a pantomime artist who died while attempting to save the life of her companion when her inflammable dress caught fire; Elizabeth Boxall aged 17 of Bethnal Green who died of injuries received in trying to save a child from a runaway horse on
June 20th, 1888, and 39 others. In the middle tile someone has more recently added graffiti that reads “strive to be your own hero”. The photographs are arranged in a diamond shape on the gallery wall, in front of which is a park bench.
In the Woolworths Choir of 1979 artist Elizabeth Price presents the viewer with news reportage of a tragic fire on the second floor of a Woolworths department store in Manchester that left ten dead. Raising questions of how information is presented and consumed in relation to historic events, images are doubled and mirrored using a split screen and text, sound - the chorus of women, moving image - an amalgamation of Youtube clips, old news reels, silence and the spoken words of grieving interviewees.
These artworks challenge the viewer with the written and spoken word, addressing the notion of heroism as well as the themes of death, memory and representation. They potentially have the power to question historic acts, alter our point of view about historic events and even humble us.
SUPER CHALLENGE
Find an artist’s work that contains text and image through which they question the maintenance, or promote the dissolution of, social hierarchy. Produce a poster with your analysis.
Elizabeth Price’s Turner prize-winning video The Woolworths Choir of 1979
Author: Sophia Topf Aguiar de Medeiros, Classics graduate from St John’s College, Oxford
How does your language use compare to the way that other people you know speak? Do most of the people in your area sound similar to each other, or are there different words, phrases, and accents? Dialects are forms of language specific to the region or social group that uses them. Whereas an accent refers primarily to pronunciation, dialects have distinct vocabulary and grammar in addition to pronunciation. The UK alone has around 40 different dialects; can you name any?
What do you call a bread roll where you come from?
Have your say in our forum.
Where do dialects come from?
Dialects can offer a glimpse into a country or region’s past. For example, the Geordie dialect has traces of Old English still recognisable from a time when the north-east was Anglo-Saxon territory, whereas the Yorkshire accent has traces of Old Norse left from a time Vikings resided in the area. Dialects typically originate due to their region or community’s relative isolation. Language is constantly changing, and where one area’s language is changing independently of the surrounding areas, it will become distinct enough to become a recognisable dialect. Before globalisation, this was commonplace. It is also notable that dialects in neighbouring areas of different countries can be much more similar to each other than one might expect based on the ‘standard’ dialects of those countries. For example, “Plattdeutsch”, spoken in Northern Germany, closely resembles Dutch. This demonstrates how contact between neighbouring societies is not necessarily limited by countries’ borders, even though we often think of distinct languages as defined by the country they are officially spoken in.
How can your dialect impact your life?
Often, there is one dialect which is regarded as a country’s ‘standard’ dialect. In the UK, this is Received Pronunciation (RP), also known as “The Queen’s English”. In Germany, it is “Hochdeutsch”, which means “High German”. Although the term originated in reference to the German highlands where it was originally spoken, you can see how both “Hochdeutsch” and “The Queen’s English” carry associations of social elevation. The fact that these dialects are the primary ones used in their respective countries’ media and official communications reinforces the notion that they have a higher social currency. Accent and dialect are markers by which humans judge if someone belongs to their social group or not. As an evolutionary trait, this practice served to keep members of a group safe from external threats, but in the modern day, it can lead to unconscious bias, prejudice, and discrimination. Dialects can become associated with stereotypes, often rooted in past social disparities that require active efforts to be overcome. For example, RP evolved in upper-class boarding schools in the 19th century, giving it an association of poshness even before it was adopted by the BBC. Studies have shown that accent
can sometimes prejudice us against new people even more than their skin colour. Dialects can disadvantage people in a variety of social situations, from discrimination in hiring decisions to being ‘corrected’ for the way one speaks. This can be detrimental in day-to-day life, and is very dangerous for example in court cases, as one study showed that people with a Brummie accent were more likely to be judged as sounding guilty.
Are dialects dying out?
The social pressure to fit in may cause someone to change the way that they speak, either intentionally or subconsciously. “Linguistic accommodation” is the term used to refer to the practice of altering one’s speech to be better understood, and is thought to often happen subconsciously in situations where the speaker perceives themselves as having less influence than the person they are addressing, such as when speaking to their manager at work. Additionally, “code switching” refers to the practice of altering one’s speech to suit different situations. For example, students who speak with a regional dialect at home may continue to do so when they visit their families, while adapting their speech to sound closer to Received Pronunciation while at university. Code switching keeps the dialect “alive” while providing the speaker with some protection from being othered.
While social pressures don’t necessarily cause dialects to disappear, immigration and globalisation creates new blends of accents and removes the isolation required for the formation
of distinct dialects, resulting in a process known as “dialect levelling”. English is particularly affected as a global language that has been widely broadcast first by radio, then TV, and finally the internet. American English is the most widely spoken form of English globally and is typically taught in non-English speaking countries. The “Transatlantic” or “Mid-Atlantic” accent is peculiar in that it is an accent blending British and American English (both of which of course are umbrella terms and have their own regional variations), which was used in early Hollywood movies but does not really have an associated region of origin.
If you’d like to find out more:
● Article: Why does the UK have so many accents?
● Article: Regional Dialects and Accents in the United Kingdom: A Tapestry of Linguistic DiversityLanguageboat
● Article: Understanding the Rich Dialects of England: A Linguistic Journey | Dynamic Language
● Article: Where do accents come from? | Blogs | Leeds Beckett University
Should we all speak the Queen’s English or preserve our regional dialects? Vote now!
SUPER CHALLENGE
● Article: The Evolution of Dialects within the English Language, by Amelia Hope – Manchester Historian
● Listen to the speech samples at this link and see how much you can understand: A brief guide to British accents and dialects - Studio Cambridge
● Use the interactive maps and contribute to the dialect survey at Our Dialects
● Collect some data on the phrases/words people say differently in your family or class. You might want to start with questions such as ‘What do you call a bread roll?’ or ‘How do you pronounce bath and grass?’ or ask them if there are any words that a specific to their regional dialect. Send us your analysis of your findings.
What do you think the future of dialects in the UK looks like? What is your accent or dialect and how does it relate to your sense of identity? Have your say in our forum.
Social media’s influence on the spread of ‘black slang’ across continents and races
Author: Chloe Riley, PPE student at Somerville College, Oxford
In the last couple of years, you’ve almost definitely read, heard or even used language such as ‘slay’, ‘period’, ‘sis’/’girl’/’bestie’, or ‘serve’. Politicians and journalists across the world are condemning ‘wokeness’. ‘Cancel culture’ is frequently accused of damaging social media experiences or even freedom of speech. It may surprise you to learn that the origin of these terms lies with marginalised Black and Queer communities in America. In this article, we will learn about ‘African American Vernacular English’, how social media and the increasing popularity of shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race have led to its global usage and arguable dilution, and assess some of the potential issues this presents.
African American Vernacular English (‘AAVE’ for the rest of this article), historically known as ‘Ebonics’, is the dialect or language spoken predominantly by Black Americans across the country. There is an ongoing debate on both the historical origins of AAVE and whether it should be classified as a dialect of English or its own language – I won’t seek to answer these questions today, but if you would like to find out more, language-learning service Babbel has a comprehensive article. Most
identify its roots in previously-enslaved communities in Southern America. Before then it spread across the States during the Great Migration of the 20th century, where many black people moved to escape the racial violence and Jim Crow segregation of the South. Some of its distinct linguistic structures include the habitual ‘be’ – saying that someone ‘be eating’ to express that they eat a lot quite frequently, for example.
Historically, AAVE was contained within black communities. While other races could be native speakers from growing up in predominantly ‘black’ areas, this was fairly rare. AAVE was a sign of solidarity and community – much like local dialects in the UK, speakers would feel a sense of comfort from sharing this language with their family, friends and neighbours, while their oppressors were less able to understand it. However, it also became another source of discrimination, with society at large treating the language as ‘inferior’ and its speakers as illiterate, lazy and unintelligent, despite many linguists concluding that AAVE contained grammatically complex structures and should not be looked down upon (for an example, this article by Rickford and Rickford).
With the growth of social media,
suddenly people who previously would never have encountered AAVE were reading it almost daily. ‘Black twitter’ was frequently generating viral tweets and trends, and global brands would take and capitalise from its dialect and unique uses of language. Many of the phrases in the introduction of this article that have spread to such mass usage were used by online black communities that suddenly had large audiences on social media, who would (consciously or not) begin to copy the language that they were so entertained by. Its usage thus spread, and what is really language dating back to enslaved communities is now commonly labelled ‘internet slang’ or mocked as mere ‘Gen Z nonsense’ on shows as big as SNL.
The roles of the queer community and shows such as Drag Race are also important in this spread and dilution of AAVE across the world. Terms such as ‘slay’, ‘yes/yas queen’, ‘werk’, and ‘hunty’ developed in the underground Ballroom subculture of queer Black Americans, which was especially popular in cities such as New York, New Orleans and Chicago. The ‘Paris is Burning’ documentary famously provides a thoughtful insight into this culture. The drag and queer scenes have always been interracial,
but much of the language used in popular modern media such as Queer Eye and Drag Race has undeniably black origins. However, not everybody watching is aware of this, especially as the show’s international popularity has grown so much that many nonqueer, non-Americans who have never even heard of Ballrooms are engaging with it. Seeing queens of all races use the slang, it is understandable why many, especially many queer viewers would begin using it themselves – they don’t know the racial significance in its history. ‘Stan twitter’ is another popular online community (or conglomeration of fan communities) that frequently uses and even adapts AAVE and slang originating from queer black subcultures.
While language change is inevitable, and social media’s enabling of the spread of once-underground dialect has been fascinating to watch, several concerns have been expressed with the use (and frequent misuse) of AAVE by non-native speakers. A primary issue raised is that, while white people are able to use a ‘blaccent’ or AAVE online to gain popularity, they are able to remove any adjacency to blackness in the real world, and thus not face any of the negative social consequences Black people who speak AAVE in the real world, however, are seen as unintelligent and subjected to various forms of racism. ‘Code switching’ – the act of alternating between different languages – is essential for black people’s survival, while white people do it to gain popularity online As a white person, it is not my place to decide whether the use of AAVE is ‘cultural appropriation’ or valid grounds for getting ‘cancelled’, but the debate is an important one for the future of language. Will social media continue to lead to harmful misuse of
others’ language, or is it possible to use moral reasoning to prevent linguistic transmission?
If you’d like to find out more:
These two articles discuss how the terms woke and cancelled have gone from important AAVE terms against oppression to having inverted meanings following their mass usage on social media and eventually offline.
Christian Ilbury is a linguist who has completed much research on the use of AAVE by non-black queer people. This summary gives some important findings if you are interested in the intersection of the black and queer communities.
Is the use of AAVE and Ballroom slang cultural appropriation or appreciation? Could it be both?
Vote now!
Have you used some of the AAVE examples given in this article? Did you know their true origins? Where did you pick them up from? Have your say in our forum.
A language for the universe ?
Author: Samuel Lewis, College Lecturer in Pure Mathematics at St John’s College, Oxford
Whenwe think of language, we usually think of words used to talk, share ideas, and explain concepts. Mathematics swaps out sentences for numbers, symbols, and rules, and ends up being a contender for the most powerful language, helping us describe and understand the universe itself. Regular language can be unclear and open to misinterpretation, but mathematics is exact. “The car is moving fast” could mean different things to different people depending on their view on speed limits! However, “the car is moving at fifty miles per hour” is much clearer. This precision makes mathematics ideal for scientists, engineers, and anyone else who wishes to describe the world. We can predict the future weather or financial markets using mathematical models and solve problems such as designing a bridge or a rocket for space. We can even uncover hidden patterns in the spiral of sunflowers or the motion of planets. Like spoken
Mathematics swaps out sentences for numbers, symbols, and rules, and ends up being a contender for the most powerful language, helping us describe and understand the universe itself.
language, mathematics has evolved over time. Early humans used it to count and trade, then geometry was developed in building structures. Since trading for “nothing” didn’t really make sense, the concept of zero, and later negative numbers, was a turning point in humanity’s ability to conceptualise numbers. Today, computers are pushing mathematics even further and we can now use mathematics to describe everything from subatomic particles to entire galaxies.
New mathematical ideas must often by invented before theoretical scientists can describe their new discoveries. Back in the 17th century, Isaac Newton developed theories of gravity and motion but lacked the language to express his ideas! Out of necessity, Newton invented it and, in the process, birthed calculus, the mathematics of change. This is one of the most fundamental areas of mathematics today. On the other hand, sometimes the mathematics precedes the physical theory, as was the case for general relativity a century ago. Albert Einstein’s development of this theory was made possible by independent work of German geometers Gauss and Riemann. Because the language had already been developed, Einstein was able
to precisely describe the effect that objects such as planets have on the curvature of space-time.
However today we are mostly in the first case. Physicists have grand ideas about the fabric of reality but lack a way to describe and test them precisely. One such idea is string theory, a ten-dimensional model for the universe where everything is built out of little strings vibrating at different frequencies, but the maths required for this is highly complicated and incomplete. Even if string theory turns out to be the wrong idea, the mathematical concepts developed will still turn out to be useful in the future!
Invention or discovery?
● Video: Is Math discovered or invented?
Over two-thousand years ago, Euclid famously proved in his “Elements” that there are infinitely many prime numbers, that is numbers with precisely two distinct divisors.
Fast forward to October 2024 and the largest prime number so far has been discovered, having over forty million digits. But this number was not just created by mathematicians; it was discovered through algorithms that were developed to explore the patterns of prime numbers. So, is mathematics discovered as one would discover treasures, or is it invented like a tool? Did we create mathematical concepts to understand the world (the formalist viewpoint), or is mathematics the universe’s own language (the Platonist viewpoint)?
This has relation to the “nature versus nurture” debate: we enter the world with the capacity to perceive it, but to understand what we perceive requires tools that we need to develop. For example, Pythagoras’ theorem states that in every rightangled triangle the square of the longest side is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. This
would be true of a triangle on any fat surface in the universe, making it sound like something discovered – a universal truth. Yet to prove this fact we must be inventive and construct logical arguments, something that has developed over many centuries. Another example is the famous quadratic formula. This can clearly be viewed as tool to solve any equation of the form ax2 + bx + c = 0, but perhaps it was always true and just waiting to be discovered? On the other hand, we can think about some of the different number systems that have been in human history: our decimal system used today, the Mayan vigesimal system (counting with twenty fingers), or even the ancient Sumerians with a base sixty system. These are clearly inventions, but if we were to do the same sum in two deferent systems and then compare our answers, they would be consistent, so clearly something universal is at play.
“Logic leaves us no choice. In that sense, math always involves both invention and discovery: we invent the concepts but discover their consequences. In mathematics our freedom lies in the questions we ask and how we pursue them, but not in the answers awaiting us”.
(Steven Strogatz, 2012)
“Math is discovered. To be invented requires an inventor, but math exists outside of humanity. But ultimately, the laws of the universe will be reduced down to a single equation, perhaps no more than one inch long. This leaves the final question, where did that one inch equation come from?” (Michio Kaku, 2014)
SUPER CHALLENGE
Think of an everyday occurrence which can be described using mathematics. For your example, try to think of some variables that could be introduced to model the situation. Further still, can you think of an equation that may link your variables together? Here are some examples:
● Crossing a bridge during a commute, the bridge has some sort of maximal load it can take, the cars have a weight, and the speed of the car decreases the time the bridge is under load etc.
● Circular motion of bike wheels on the way to school, which variables are “balancing” to keep the bike from falling over?
● Boiling a kettle, what equations model the pressure/ temperature etc. inside?
If you’d like to find out more:
● Video debate: Is Mathematics invented or discovered?
Less flour Less Fewer loaves
Should we embrace language changes?
Author: Chloe Riley, PPE student at Somerville College, Oxford
Language has always been evolving and adapting, and these processes are becoming increasingly rapid with the rise of technology. Whether or not people view this change as ‘degradation’ depends on how they value the parts that are lost, and the parts that are gained. While the average person doesn’t tend to put much thought into whether the language they use is ‘proper’, ‘correct’ or ‘good’, there is an ongoing debate between scholars of language on whether people must all speak in a particular, standardised way or whether linguistic variety and change is desirable.
There have always been languagepurists who have lamented language changes in their time. In 1785 the poet and philosopher James Beattie declared: “Our language (I mean the English) is degenerating very fast.” 70 years before that, Jonathan Swift complained: “From the Civil War to
On the other side of the debate are ‘descriptivists’, who respect that language can be used in diverse ways, and that language changes are inevitable.
In modern language and linguistic studies, the name given to such language purists who are opposed to language change is ‘prescriptivist’.
this present Time, I am apt to doubt whether the Corruptions in our Language have not at least equalled the Refinements of it … most of the Books we see now a-days, are full of those Manglings and Abbreviations”. Indeed, in the 14th century Ranulph Higden complained that English had gone downhill after being intermingled with other languages by the Danes and Normans! Ironically, each of these writers would have had very different ideal versions of ‘the English language’ in mind and would have regarded the others as poor, or even illegible.
In modern language and linguistic studies, the name given to such language purists who are opposed to language change is ‘prescriptivist’. Prescriptivism is the side that argues for strict rules on language - it prescribes a standard way of speaking and heavily discourages divergence from these rules. It assesses linguistic diversity and change in a subjective manner, perceiving it as inferior. On the other side of the debate are ‘descriptivists’, who respect that language can be used in diverse ways, and that language changes are inevitable. They analyse language neutrally, rather than criticising how it differs from the norm.
Jean Aitchison is a Language and Communication Professor at the University of Oxford. She is a descriptivist who specialises in studying language change. In a 1996 Reith Lecture for the BBC, she described three common ‘metaphors’ of language change that prescriptivists
Jonathan Swift
often use when complaining about any developments they see taking place within their language:
● The ‘Damp Spoon’ metaphor sees language changes as a result of laziness and disrespect to the language, much like leaving a damp spoon in a sugar bowl instead of putting it to one side. This metaphor is commonly used by those who criticise modern changes within English, such as the growth of abbreviations or acronyms in text speak.
● The ‘Infectious Disease’ metaphor sees ‘bad English’ as spreading from one user to another without their consent or desire, with no ‘vaccine’ or way of stopping it. Aitchison dismisses claims of this nature, arguing that while language change certainly ‘catches’ and ‘spreads’, this occurs because speakers want to pick up certain changes.
● Finally, the ‘Crumbling Castle’ metaphor views changes as a sign of English being in a state of disrepair, declining from a once-great ‘Golden Age’ of correctness and perfection. This resembles the historical quotes used at the start of this article, where the language purists were complaining about English ‘degenerating’ or going downhill.
As a descriptivist, Aitchison does not agree with any of these outlooks, and in her lecture, she included a number of reasons to disagree with each of them, which you can investigate further if you are interested.
Despite this, they are still common narratives within prescriptivist and language purist arguments. As you read more of the articles for this week, try and identify if any of the arguments you are reading fall into the ‘prescriptivist’ or ‘descriptivist’ labels. If the article is based more on facts than on arguments, try and think about what a prescriptivist or descriptivist would say about the changes that are being seen.
Do you agree with the prescriptivist or descriptivist outlook on language change? Return to this question after reading some more of the articles for this week – did your initial opinion change? Have your say in our forum.
If you’d like to find out more: ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ by Lynne Truss is one of the most popular prescriptivist works. It combines humour with grammar education and complains about the frequency of punctuation errors in modern English usage.
Jean Aitchison’s 1996 lecture on the three models of language ‘decline’. She also discusses the ideas in more depth in ‘The Language Web’.
XDo you side more with the prescriptivist or the descriptivist outlook? Vote now!
Consider an example for the ‘Damp Spoon’, ‘Infectious Disease’ and the ‘Crumbling Castle’ metaphor. Design a poster/video that explores at least one of these with the example you provide.
SUPER CHALLENGE
The Linguistic Turn; the death of history?
Author: Harry Stewart Dilley, History student at Somerville College, Oxford.
This essay considers the implications of some theoretical evolutions in history since the 1960s and how the discipline has changed.
In the English language, ‘history’ is a word deceptive in its simplicity. On the one hand, it serves to describe events in the past: at school, you might learn the ‘history’ of the Norman Conquest, that is, the events associated with 1066. On the other hand, ‘history’ also refers to the study of those same past events: you do or practice history. Other languages seek to help us understand this dualityGermans might refer separately to Geschichte and Vergangenheit – but in English it is not so self-evident.
In the academic study of history, this has become a topic of great significance and debate. Indeed, since the 1960s, a debate has proceeded on the distinction between the two terms and, in fact, on whether we can separate ‘the past’ as an objective entity from its study at all. The origins of this debate were congruent with a wider postmodernist movement in the social sciences and have since been labelled the ‘Linguistic Turn.’
The basic principle of the postmodern theory of historiography is to reject the notion that historical writing refers to an ‘actual historical past’, independent of our
Indeed, since the 1960s, a debate has proceeded on the distinction between the two terms and, in fact, on whether we can separate ‘the past’ as an objective entity from its study at all.
representation of it. To be sure, through the study of sources we can still discover facts – the Battle of Hastings happened in 1066, William the Conqueror travelled to London – however, postmodernists argue that any further step towards the construction of a historical account is a literary rather than scientific exercise: it constitutes the interpretation and reproduction of written sources by historians.
Social scientists like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida abandoned the premise that history was the analysis of real people having real thoughts and feelings. They conceived of society, not as anything unified or concrete, but as an infinity of symbols without clear meanings. These symbols had to be ‘read’ by the historian or the social scientist: language was not only a part of society, it constituted society. Naturally, this had severe implications for history as it was known, which Georg Iggers explored in a chapter on the ‘Linguistic Turn’: “The end of History as a Scholarly Discipline?”
Importantly, however, though ‘Scholarly’ history has incorporated many of the ideas of the Linguistic Turn, it has not ended. In the main, this is because mainstream historians have resisted its most radical
implications. Rather than arguing that ‘reality does not exist, only language exists’, most historians today would argue that language does influence society, but it does not constitute it: language can affect social differences, but social differences can also structure language.
Nevertheless, the modern study of history has learned from many of Foucault and Derrida’s crucial insights, most importantly that every conception of history is constructed out of the subjective language of the sources and the historian. This focus on language and symbolics – aided by the influence of literary theory –is an antidote to the history of the early twentieth century which sought to represent the past in essentially material terms, dictated solely by socioeconomic imperatives. This initiated important developments in our understanding of class. In particular, classes might be more integrated by a shared language, ritual and symbolism than by shared socioeconomic status or interests. Likewise, it became foundational for our modern understanding of gender. Joan Scott, in a seminal essay from 1986, argued that gender is distinct from biological sex and constructed by language. This linguistic construction of gender served to subordinate and dominate women and was reproduced throughout society. As such, she argued, we must analyse all social and political structures through this lens – through the language by which they are articulated – and this will give us a better understanding of the nexuses of power by which they are constituted.
Therefore, the ‘Linguistic Turn’ should be understood as a backlash against social and economic
determinisms in history and the social sciences – an attempt to understand power through the language and symbolism by which it was articulated, not just the material means which enabled it. In the context of modern populist politics, we might find this useful in explaining the breakdown of class delineations and the success of figures like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. Politicians and commentators question the allegiance of the rural American voter to the rich, urbane Trump; however, perhaps we should see it more in terms of a shared language and ritual.
That being said, we should also consider what the Linguistic Turn leaves out, or obscures. Seeing the world through the lens of constructed language obscures the place of feelings and corporeality. Likewise, it might be said to give thoughts and histories a false coherence, which might not have been ‘spelled out’ so clearly: where is the place for confusion or irrationality, Lyndal Roper asks.
HISTORY
CONSTRUCTED OUT OF THE SUBJECTIVE LANGUAGE OF THE SOURCES
Michel Foucault
Jacques Derrida
SUPER CHALLENGE
Consider this extract in view of what you have learned above. How might we ‘read’ this event?
In 1730s Paris, apprentices lived and worked in the household of their master. They were overworked, underfed, and lived in Spartan conditions – sleeping on the floor, or in sheds. Masters cultivated a ‘proper’ separation between themselves and their apprentices: they did not eat together or work together. The apprentices might eat scraps or the leftovers from the master’s table. The masters were also known for their love of cats, and keeping them became a trend.
One night, a group of printing apprentices tortured and ritually killed all the cats they could find – including the favourite pet of their master’s wife, le grise. They proceeded to stage a mock trial of the cats, pronouncing them guilty and, after administering an impromptu last rite, strung them from improvised gallows. For the apprentices, a most hilarious story. It was re-enacted at least twenty times during the subsequent days and became a popular copie – a burlesque re-enactment which provided a major form of entertainment for the men.
Yet it strikes the modern reader as distinctly unfunny, if not downright repulsive. Despite this, as historians, whenever we encounter an imagery which we do not understand, we should see this as an opportunity. By ‘getting’ the joke of the great cat massacre, it may be possible to understand the basic ingredient of artisanal culture. (see Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre (New York, 2009), p75-104).
1) Consider how the massacre could have served:
- An attack on the master and his wife, especially the authority of the master?
- A response to the living conditions of the apprentices.
2) Why might the apprentices have chosen cats?
- Are cats symbolic in any other folklores, religions or symbolisms?
- What are cats’ role in society? How are they distinguished from other animals?
3) How might this be useful for understanding the French Revolution?
- Is revolution always rational?
- What can we learn about laughter? About Ancient Regime France?
Would it be better if we all spoke the same language?
Oxplore is an engaging digital resource from the University of Oxford and the ‘Home of Big Questions’. Their resources aim to challenge you with debates and ideas that go beyond what is covered in the classroom and invite you to consider alternative opinions.
Tolkien, language and the pub
OTLIGHT
Tolkien, language and the pub
Author: Professor Carolyne Larrington, Emeritus Research Fellow in English Literature, St John’s College
J.R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) is famous as the author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, though he was also a noted academic, both at the University of Leeds, and afterwards at the University of Oxford. He was elected Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Old English Literature in 1925; as Professor, he was a Fellow of Pembroke College, where an annual lecture about fantasy literature bears his name. He had studied at Exeter College as an undergraduate. But before he began life as a student, the young Tolkien was already enormously interested in languages. While still at school he had begun to learn Old and Middle English, Old Norse and Gothic, all belonging, like English and German, to the Germanic language group, and he
also learned Esperanto. He studied all these languages in addition to the more usual Greek and Latin and was admitted to Oxford in order to study Classics, Greek and Roman literature. However, Tolkien changed course from Classics to English after a couple of years; he had not done well in his first set of university exams, partly because he had spent so much time pursuing his passion for the languages that were not part of his study. Tolkien didn’t just restrict himself to dead languages. He also began to teach himself Welsh and acquired some knowledge of Finnish, a notoriously difficult language that is unrelated to almost all other European languages, with the exceptions of Hungarian and Estonian.
Tolkien’s academic work, teaching, lecturing, editing texts and writing articles about medieval English literature, ran side by side with his fascination with language-making. This was an interest that he had first started exploring as a teenager. Tolkien declared that for him, it was the languages that came first, and the imagining of the different cultures that spoke and wrote them came afterwards. In 1955, he wrote in a letter, ‘What I think is a primary ‘fact’ about my work, that it is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic
in inspiration. [...] The invention of languages is the foundation. The “stories” were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.’ The main languages Tolkien invented were Quenya, which drew strongly on Finnish morphology, and Sindarin, which takes its phonology from Welsh. These are both elvish languages, but as the world of Middle Earth developed, so too did its linguistic variety, from the various languages spoken by Men to the Black Speech of Mordor and the Khuzdul language of the Dwarves.
Language then was fundamental to Tolkien’s imagination, a passion that he shared with his friend, C. S. Lewis, and some of the other Inklings. This was a group of scholars and writers, who met regularly on Thursdays in Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen College between the 1930s and 1950s –membership of the group shifted considerably over the years. Tolkien and his friends would read one another’s work in progress. Tolkien explained that ‘our habit was to read aloud compositions of various kinds (and lengths!)’, but they would also discuss history, philosophy, religion and of course languages.
The Inklings would also meet more informally for a pint in some
Oxford pubs, in particular the Eagle and Child and the Lamb and Flag. These two pubs lie on either side of the broad treelined thoroughfare of St Giles in the middle of Oxford, facing one another. The Lamb and Flag is owned by St John’s whose buildings surround it, while the Eagle and Child is now owned by the Ellison Institute of Technology, who plan to reopen it very soon, preserving the famous Rabbit Room, the parlour at the back where Tolkien and his friends would meet on Monday and Tuesday lunchtimes. It was here in the Eagle and Child that C. S. Lewis showed the Inklings the proofs of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in June
1950, though generally the Inklings didn’t want to risk getting beer spilled over their manuscripts. The pub still has a plaque commemorating the Inklings meetings, which continued there until 1963. At that point, the pub was refurbished and the wall separating the Rabbit Room from the bars demolished; now the room was no longer a private parlour and so the Inklings decamped across the road to the Lamb and Flag instead.
Nowadays, thousands of people are interested in invented languages, known as ‘constructed languages’ or conlangs. As well as international ‘auxiliary’ languages (auxlangs) like Esperanto or Volapük, invented to help speakers of different languages communicate with one another, many languages such as Klingon, Dothraki, High Valyrian or Na’vi, as used in the Avatar films, are imagined as spoken in fantasy worlds. Tolkien had no enthusiasm for Esperanto or other auxlangs; in a letter written in 1956 he claimed that these languages were ‘far deader than ancient unused languages’, because no one had created any legends or mythologies in them. Would he have approved of Klingon? Or High Valyrian?
Klingon is not a poetic or literary language; its existing lexicon centres on the semantic fields of spaceflight and warfare. But High Valyrian, with its poems commemorating the Doom of Valyria, the annihilation of a civilisation through volcanic eruption, might well have appealed to the Professor. It would be splendid to have a pint with him in one of his favourite pubs and find out!
Coming up…
WORKSHP 4: WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF LANGUAGE?
Debate questions include:
Is English a universal language?
Has technology made us lazier with language?
Should AI write novels?
Should we all learn more languages?
And Ima Lyer explores how prediction and evaluation can help to build an argument.
