david crystal

Question 1

what does david crystal celebrate about language?

Answer 1

• the fact that language is changing and linguistic playfulness, we can adapt language to our needs and is always evolving.
• he argues technology encourages us to be more playful with language.

Question 2

what does david crystal praise teenagers for?

Answer 2

• he praises teenagers for utilising a a diverse number of platforms/social media and alternating their language usage accordingly (they are the driving factor of language change).
• examples: slang and neologisms such as “brat summer”, “canon event”, “mid”, “twitterverse/sphere”, “mewing.”

Question 3

what does he think are the 3 driving forces for driving language?

Answer 3

1- the need for intelligibility.
2- the need for identity.
3- the most important is to play with it and enjoy language for its entertainment value (to create puns and jokes) e.g. “I wanted to buy a camouflage shirt, but I didn’t see one.”

Question 4

does Crystal believe language change can be controlled and directed?

Answer 4

no: linguistic playfulness.