Jean Aitchison is a professor in communication and language and has devised three metaphors in which she thinks that language change occurs and if it is a positive or negative thing.
The Infectious Disease Model:
This model looks at how language is changing. She looks at language change happening in terms of people 'catching' it from other then spreading that language 'like a disease'. It continues to change through social contact and people pick it up from others and then apply it to their own speech. This model has a descriptive approach and the language change is not seen as negative.
The Damp Spoon Model:
This model looks at language change being 'distasteful' and 'lazy' and described it as putting a damp spoon into a sugar bowl due to peoples laziness of not finding another spoon to use. An example of this would be dropping an apostrophe and contracting words incorrectly. This model is seen to have a prescriptive approach and is seen as negative due to language being used incorrectly.
The Crumbling Castle Model:
This model treats language as an old beautiful castle and presumes that at some point in time the language was perfect. This model looks at how the language needs to be preserved to prevent more language change from occurring. Overtime, some words or phrases may fall out of use due to those not doing anything to evolve language. This model has prescriptive approach and is seen as negative because of the fact that the language at some point in time was seen as perfect and is now not.
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