What can i investigate within the English language?

I have to investigate a topic within the English Language and collect data for it by questionnaire and interview. Does anyone have any ideas what topic i can research? ( It can be an topic on anything) e.g. accent + dialect, slang, jargon, occupational uses of language, child language development etc etc


Pleaseee help me xx

What can i investigate within the English language?
How about whether children's speech follows parents' or friends'?
Reply:What about words which only exist in certain areas of the UK? Such as in North East Scotland there is a dialect known as Doric where there is a word for "the pain you feel in a wound when it feels like your heart beating" - stoonin'. It would be interesting to find out what words are unique to different areas and why people use them instead of the normal english equivalent.
Reply:Does coming from a bi-lingual family advance or retard a childs knowledge of English?


or something about how text/email speak has affected the range of vocabulary?


Tricky one that.
Reply:I think you can explore the development of the current text language and its effects on the the users as well as others. There will be a lot of people who don't approve of it, and others who will not use anything but text language. You can argue that this really makes a mockery of the way correct spelling should be used coupled with the fact that today many 16 year-olds leave school with very limited literacy skills.
Reply:Do sociolinguistics, ie the study of how different people from different regions say different things. Ie) I'm from the South of England and i call a bread roll a "roll" some people say "bap" some say "cob" etc. There are some books i used at uni that'd be very helpful if u chose to do this topic! If u like that idea let me know and I'll find out what the books were for you.
Reply:there are many possibilities (and some good suggestions already)...one i could suggest would be colloquialisms and how many of them have made it into everyday language...a word / phrase has to become used frequently by joe public prior to it being entered into a dictionary...who would have thought back in the 70s that the word 'sick' would mean something positive for example?





or better still, cockney v. mockney...how many people claim to be true cockneys as opposed to the public school types that pretend (mockneys..) good luck! hope you find something...
Reply:Oh that first idea is good. Or how about the meaning behind sayings and their origin....mind you p's and q's, etc.
Reply:The history of punctuation is quite interesting, such things as commas, colons, semi colons etc have evolved over the years.





What I come across most often, as an English tutor, is how written language is changing; for example words such as 'you', 'what', 'would' are often seen as 'U', 'wat' and 'wud'. Should we rebel against these new, shortlened (text) words or embrace them?





Good luck with whatever you choose!


mrben
Reply:investigate cockney rhyming slang - who devised it? how did it come about? has use of it diminished/increased? if so, why?