On David Crystal's "Language developments in British English"

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Introduction to the Integrated Language Studies, language: English, abstract: David Crystal's essay “Language Developments in British English” deals with recent changes of the English Language and its causes. Throughout the text, Crystal points out that Language changes alongside culture and society. Moreover, he alludes that they do not only change to a similar extend, but that they also have a strong impact on one another. The author collects arguments in favour of language change and against it. The following text seeks to discuss the text by David Crystal against the background of the given statement by Jonathan Swift, moreover it will be carved out whether the arguments which oppose language change outweigh the ones which support it.