English Language-Investigating Language Change

Looking at Language Change by Investigating Bill Bailey's Parody of Geoffrey Chaucer




Analysis of Transcript The data I chose was a transcript of Bill Bailey's Parody of Geoffrey Chaucer. Bailey's aim is to modernize the poem by inserting lexical phrases that are more common, along with the language that Chaucer used when he was alive in the 14th Century.  I chose this particular data so I could examine how far language has come in the last 7000 years, & what theories I could then link to the text.

What I found was that Bailey has to use a lot of French, because at the time, England was under the invasion of the Norman’s, who spoke predominantly French.  Language change either evolving slowly for the better of society, or decaying. Norman Fairclough argues that English Language has begun to decay because most people now talk with an informal tone. In Chaucer, Fairclough’s theory is proven correct, although it is only proved correct when Bailey uses modern English. Before Bailey has even begun, when he states “The realm of Geoffrey Chaucer”, we assume that the mode will be formal, but instead we get Chaucer talking about women in pubs, talking about their love life. The quote “Ello darlin’ you fancy a drink?” is an example of modern day informal English.
However, Chaucer does use “Heroic Couplets” throughout the poem, which is a traditional form of English Poetry that was pioneered by Chaucer,
which is used for epic & narrative poetry.
Jean Aitcheson argues that this is down to a “Damp Spoon Syndrome” where he argues that language change is due to laziness, and explains that slow speech which is jerky & careful usually means that we miss out words that that we see unnecessary to convey.  
To carry out on investigation, I would analyse the Bailey "Pubbe Gag" and a text that was written by Chaucer, and another piece of Chaucer that has been translated. I would investigate how the language has changed over time, what interesting features that are located in the Chaucer text, & how certain words or phrases may be lost within the modern day translation. I shall call the investigation "How Language has changed since Chaucer".