Coverage  

of 

 IATEFL Birmingham 2016 Conference

Day (2)

Professor David Crystal's Plenary:

What Would of Thought It? The English Language 1966-2066 

 One of the most prominent sessions on the second day of IATEFL 2016 is Professor Crystal's plenary. As in all in his lectures and speeches, Professor Crystal is able to address all the mentalities starting from the common people to the language professionals.His plenary flowed smoothly and explained uncomplicatedly how the English language has been changing since the 1960s.He clarified how many English words that were utilized in the sixties vanished and new words have been popping up on the global arena , as English has become‘lingua franca’.

Professor Crystal began the first part of his plenary by citing some words that existed in the past and the new words that we have been recently dealing with. He mentioned that online texts can never be trusted if one desires to track the English grammatical changes all over certain period of time or times. He talked about the modals and how some modals are diminishing in their usage and other modals are taking their functions.He tackled the issue of the trend of using the progressive form with static verbs that has started in the sixties with ‘Macdonald’ slogan although that this form is against the English grammar .Then he targets the recent rejection of using the relative pronoun , which, and that ‘ that’ highly replaces it.

With the shaky file in regards to the different English accents,Professor Crystal reveals that the people’s acceptance of different accents and dialects penetrates our lives ,unlike in the past when the unusual accents or dialects were entirely reprehensible. He strikes an example of how BBC could not accept British regional accents until 1980s. He refers to the unconscious changing of people’s accents because of the social factors ,He strikes the example of Her Majesty the Queen of the UK who is noticed to have changed her accent.He added how some foreign accents have been introduced into the UK and that would normally influence the English pronunciation in the UK.He noticed the disappearance of the periods with the abbreviation like BBC.

Professor Crystal believes that the English internet language,is used today, tends to abbreviate and shorten the words and use symbol will dwindle.

 Q &A Session with Professor David Crystal 

Professor Crystal poses , though the questions of the audience, a critical issue related to whether the distortive inclinations English language learners between learning British English and American English.In fact, the issue is open for many solutions

 Professor David Crystal’s Interview with Nik Peachey 

Nik Peachey ,IATEFL presenter, asked Professor Crystal about how collected the materials that were tackled in his plenary. Professor Crystal answered that he grounded his plenary upon the works of lexicographers , dictionaries and personal efforts of keeping records of any linguistic changes.

 Professor Crystal mentioned that he made up ‘Dictionary of Shakespearean Pronunciation’.When he was asked about how it was made up , he answered that he referred to the Shakespearean texts where jotted down all his observations about the nature of the texts. He also referred to a rare ‘Hamlet’ quatro that had been found and circulated among Shakespeare scholars for the best decade. This is available on the professor’s website at: www.davidcrystal.com 

Finally, Nik Peachey expressed his astonishment about Professor Crystal’s capability of authoring four books simultaneously.