Words that changed or acquired meanings over time

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/words-literally-changed-meaning-through-2173079


The above Mirror article is an informative piece that lists some words which have changed meanings over time. The complexity of the article is quite low, suggesting it aims to encompass a non-specialist audience who are perhaps interested in language features. The primary purpose is to inform, and the secondary purpose is to entertain, as the article informs the reader on interesting language features. The form of the piece is a listed article on a webpage. 

The author is looking at language change, more specifically how specific words have evolved over time to change meanings, many of which almost change to an entirely opposite meaning. Possibly the most well-known and relevant example of this today is the term gay, which used to mean something comparable to 'joyful or colorful' but now is used to refer to a homosexual person.

One technique the author uses is that they refer to themselves and the reader within the same pronoun: 'we'. For example, 'So which other words have we got wrong for so long they are now right?'. One would hope that the author of an article in The Mirror, a well-known publication, does not in fact misuse words with the same frequency that the average reader might do. Instead, it is more likely that the author wishes to put readers at ease with the informative content of the article, by grouping themselves with the reader, the reader may be more inclined to feel like they are on the same intellectual level as the author on this topic, and so need not worry that the content of the article will be difficult to fully comprehend.

The article is written in quite a polite, but informal register. The author uses jokes at certain parts in the text, in order to entertain the reader whilst also informing them on language issues. The informative nature of the text means that for the most part the language used is rather clinical, particularly where word definitions are concerned, as a single word out of place can change how the reader understands the definition drastically. 

The writer makes use of conventions, by formatting the article as a list of headings with a few sentences between each one, descending in alphabetical order. This means that the information is very simple to navigate for the reader, as it brings an easily discernible order to the text.