Historical Changes to the English Language and Generational Differences in Spoken Discourse

ENGLISH LANGUAGE
STUDIES

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
SECTION 1.....................................................................................................................................3
Historical changes to the English Language................................................................................3
SECTION 2.....................................................................................................................................4
Generational differences in spoken discourse.............................................................................4
SECTION 3.....................................................................................................................................5
Spoken Discourse........................................................................................................................5
SECTION 4.....................................................................................................................................6
Scripted Speech...........................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10
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INTRODUCTION
English is an Indo-European language. Today modern English is widely considered to be
one of the most commonly adopted anguage of the world is one of the most standard language to
be spoken, written and adopted in wide variety of fields that includes international business,
coding, higher education and many other fields. If history of English is analysed then it can be
said that till today various kinds of historical chances have occurred within this English language
in relation to grammar, phonology and lexicon. There is Generational difference in spoken
English in terms of social influences, register, grammatical and phonological change. Due to
these different kinds of spoken English is used for conversation. This report will lay emphasis
upon historical changes within English language, Generational differences in spoken discourse,
Spoken Disclosure, and analysis of Martin Luther King’s speech ‘I have a dream’ with its
strengths and weaknesses of the speech in detailed.
SECTION 1
Historical changes to the English Language
From the time of 1950s to 2020 English language have changed considerably. This
language change consist of changes in phonology, lexicon and in terms of grammar. This can be
said on the basis of two videos of different times consisting different languages. Language has
changed in terms of length of consonantal length in language and along with this, English
language has also gained phonemic voiced fricatives and over this time language has also
developed contrasting word stress. Along with this lexical changes have also taken place in
English language in which meaning and use of words have changed over shift of a generation
and this also have changed preference of one word or phrase over another (Ibrahimova, 2021).
This means that either words in language disappear or their meaning or for what they are used
changes. Grammatical changes involve understanding of grammar and changes in regularities of
that characterise a language. In times of 1950, language was perfectly systematic and grammar
was completely accurate, however this is not the case in 2020. In 1950 grammar was used
correctly to make a strong influencer through words, in present times conveying message is
important and grammar is not appropriately considered. In addition to what is shown in videos,
an example of grammatical change over generation involves that “Have you got any coin” and
“Do you have any coins”. These two sentences have same meaning but through these changes in
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