Tuesday, 18 March 2014

Language Change: 'Little Women' Extract



Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
Extract Sourced from Chapter 2: A Merry Christmas

In spite of her small vanities, Margaret had a sweet and pious nature, which unconsciously influences her sisters, especially Jo, who loved her very tenderly, and obeyed her because her advice was so gently given. 

“Girls,” said Meg seriously, looking from the tumbled head beside her to the two little night-capped ones in the room beyond, “Mother wants us to read and love and mind these books, and we must begin at once. We used to be faithful about it, but since Father went away and all this war trouble unsettled us we have neglected many things. You can do as you please, but I shall keep my book on the table here and read a little every morning as soon as I wake, for I know it will do me good and help me through the day.”

Then she opened her new book and began to read. Jo put her arm round her and, leaning cheek to cheek, read also, with the quiet expression so seldom seen on her restless face.
“How good Meg is! Come, Amy, let’s do as they do. I’ll help you with the hard words and they’ll explain things if we don’t understand,” whispered Beth, very much impressed by the pretty books and her sisters’ example. 

“I’m glad mine is blue,” said Amy, and then the rooms were very still while the pages were softly turned, and the winter sunshine crept in to touch the bright heads and serious faces with a Christmas greeting. 

“Where is Mother?” asked Med, as she and Jo ran down to thank her for their gifts, half an hour later. 


This extract from ‘Little Women,’ written in 1868, does have many features that suggest significant language change, in comparison to later literature. Of course, as this extract is an example of formally written, represented speech, it may not accurately indicate natural language use. However, in reference to written language use, it does give us an interesting insight into how much language use has changed over 150 years.  

Perhaps most obviously, it appears that the structuring of sentences may differ from later texts. Although these long sentences, some with 6 clauses or more, may be the author’s individual writing style, it could also be assumed that this elongated sentencing structure may be typical of texts written over a century ago. By looking at the first sentence of the extract, for example, we can see this formal and elongated structure. However, when conveying natural speech Alcott uses a more colloquial tone and this does seem to bring the character voice to life. With the sentence, ‘Mother wants us to read and love and mind these books, and we must begin at once.’ it seems that the author is able to convey a sense of excitement with the repetition of the conjunction ‘and,’ and this seems to be a feature that we may expect in texts from the 2000s. 

Although the lexis within this extract is largely high frequency and, in terms of meaning, concurrent, ‘pious’ is one example of obsolete lexis that has had experienced semantic change. ‘Pious’ is most commonly known to mean religious, however, its archaic meaning is someone who is loyal and dutiful, particularly to their parents. Here, by taking contextual cues, it does appear that the more antiquated semantic for ‘pious’ is more fitting, as it aids in the portrayal of an idyllic family scenario. Furthermore, it seems that other lexis is able to show significant language change, as the word ‘seldom’ is not as frequently used in modern texts, as it had been at the time ‘Little Women’ was written. The graph below, sourced from Google Ngram, is able to illustrate the declining use of a word that had once been prominent in the English language, both spoken and within written texts. By looking at the adverb within the sentence, ‘quiet expression so seldom seen on her restless face,’ we can see that this word is able to use positive language, rather than modern alternatives that may use negatives, for example ‘not often seen.’ 

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