Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It may be hard to separate the 3 factors that come to mind:
1. higher volume of communication. (more people than ever write/read more than ever)
2. lower bar for observable/written down communication. (anybody can write publicly/permanently)
3. faster transmission of previously local slang. (more groups that previously would have kept their slang to themselves are interacting than ever, e.g. your non black friends ruining the word "ratchet" before 2014 ended)
and by slang here, I mean both verbal and grammatical
Just increasing the volume of people writing books and letters doesn't get you K5 or 4chan.
Just pick up any book that captures how people spoke in the 19th and first part of the 20th century. Language was sport.
Telegraphy promoted telegraphic style, typography promoted cliche and stereotype, the press itself both vernacular and literacy, along with notions of authorship as opposed to (classical) authority.
'normal' writing v text speak or leet speak would seem to be a better example?
For ancient civilizations (pre 3000 B.C) when it was all about the oral language, maybe.
We've moved way beyond that, and orthography is not a pure recording medium, but it's forms are historically tied to the language and its development (including borrowings from other languages). All kinds of continuity is lost if you "switch" orthography en masse (instead of organically).
And it's more like using guitars or synths, or B-3 vs Rhodes to play the same melody, than mp3 vs magnetic tape. The timbre when you change orthography is not the same -- something most poets, writers etc, would be quick to point out.
Moving to consistent spellings obscured the origins of English words maybe as often as it illuminated them.
which isn't to say that orthography (or fonts) aren't interesting.
Interesting hypothesis.
I don't think I do, and my assumption is that most other people don't either?
I learnt to speak well before I learnt to read and write. The process of speaking without any knowledge of the letters was deeply embedded in my brain.
People that are unable as adults to read or write, or have severe impediments to reading/writing in the same way that I do (e.g. dyslexia) don't speak any differently.
If I try to, I can picture how my spoken word is written down, but I'm pretty sure when I'm talking in a more "autonomic" fashion I'm not really picturing the words?
On the other hand, what strikes me as a contribution of Internet to the language is our capacity to communicate through videos and pictures. Which means that our vocabulary is narrower. I don't have to be so elaborate when describing my room; I can just take a picture, and tweet it.
Not really, actually. To illustrate, if someone asked me what "diarrhea" means, I would answer quickly that it's having a stomachache and runny shits, and it would be an adequate definition, even though I would have to take a moment to figure out its spelling and even then I won't be certain.
And that era was a primitive, oral tradition, era. Just because something emerged later doesn't mean it's not as deep, or even more important, than what was there previously. Else gestures and groans would be even "deeper" than language (they are with us for hundreds of thousands of years before language).
Also many would argue that orthography is not just "what font you use for writing code", but has deeper connections with the language (historical and etymological for one, orthography gives us hints about the meaning and etymology of words).
Text is king, people don't talk on the phone any more, we text each other. I think I type at least as many words as I speak every day, and on some reclusive days, many, many more.
And because people infer emotional content from subtle cues in text, orthography is important now.
You don't talk to anyone?
It's not just because orthography emerged later, but because it's entirely parasitic upon actual language. It's simply a representation, so the font metaphor is entirely appropriate. The representation can be changed in arbitrary ways that don't really affect the underlying structure.
Orthography is just the spelling part of the language.
But there's a lot of change to the vocabulary because of internet (new term adoption and foreign word travel are now much faster).
There are also several new syntactic forms (e.g. in memes etc) that might still appear "out of the language" for the more conservative, but are inevitable destined to become part of it as the generations grown with them mature (and they are already all over even "traditional" print media, books, etc. -- even bizarro forms like "doge speak").
And since english is the dominant web/movies/pop culture language, even more change has incurred in smaller languages, where turns of phrase and syntactic forms from english adopted wholesale by younger speakers ("anglicisms").
Also, I know German people who find it easier to have conversations on some subjects in English, even between native German speakers. I can't work out if this is the equivalent of chefs having to learn French; the language of technology is English, so if you want to talk about tech, you need to learn English. Or whether the world's language is becoming more Anglicised and so it's just easier to use English for modern conversations.
Do you have a source for this?
> There are also several new syntactic forms (e.g. in memes etc) that might still appear "out of the language" for the more conservative, but are inevitable destined to become part of it as the generations grown with them mature (and they are already all over even "traditional" print media, books, etc. -- even bizarro forms like "doge speak").
So there are new styles which appear which impose additional constraints upon language (e.g. doge speak). Such things have arisen at previous points in time (different poetry styles).
Again, I'm not saying that the things you point to aren't interesting or aren't worthy of study. But I think calling them 'language change' is a mislabelling.
The Intelligence podcast 2019-07-17, near the 14:08 mark. https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYWNhc3QuY2...
I have not read the book, I'm surprised it (or maybe just its title) is involved in making two opposing cases.
"“One type of writing hasn’t replaced the other,” McCulloch writes, taking care to emphasize that the situation between formal language and internet language isn’t zero-sum."
It's just that The Economist made this division much more explicit, and used it as the basis for their argument while the NYT relegates it to a single line at the end of the article...
It's also easier now than ever to self-correct. For instance you can use a search engine to find the proper term for anything imaginable, so there is no need to introduce unnecessary words. (Most people who introduce new words do so because their vocabulary and access to material is lacking, not because they have invented or discovering something as of yet unnamed by anyone.)
People participating in online forums are now more keenly aware than ever of their own dialect, because they have ready access to large numbers of people from other regions. I think this will have the effect of globalizing language, through the expunging of unnecessary words in local dialects.
Some Instagram celebrity could make up a word, and by the end of the week, 100 million people could start using it. No author from 100 years ago had that kind of reach or influence.
I remember being in high school in the late 90's and reading OpEds about how the internet was going to diminish varied viewpoints since we would all be getting our information from the same sources. Keep in mind: this was around the same time that there was an Internet Yellow Pages so the thought was a small selection of sites plus "global" access would lead to this phenomenon.
Flash forward to today. With Twitter, Netflix, Pandora etc etc you can create your own stream of media that is unique to you. Or you can create your own echo chamber on Facebook. I wonder what it will look like 10 years from now for teenagers from different parts of the US. Will they have any kind of shared references?
I remember reading that something on the order of 100 million people watched the finale of MAS*H. It made shared experience so easy vs today. Then I also think of the time before newspapers or radio and realize that shared experiences across millions of people is probably only a recent phenomenon. E.g. if you were from a small town in medieval Europe you probably had a totally different set of legends/stories etc from the next town over.
In other words, I'm very curious to see where these trends take us.
Now, 20 years later, I find I begin nearly every conversation with the word "so".
I hate it when people do this as it sounds super condescending. Literally talking down to someone like you would a small child that needed to be taught a lesson.
I think starting a thought with “So,” is some unholy mix of pseudo-California valley talk (not that valley) and upper middle class liberal arts in-speak.
For people with a bit of social anxiety, it can serve as an easy and comfortable lead-in to share a thought when they can't think of a better way.
Your second paragraph is probably one of the reasons people do it but it’s also the reason it come off passive aggressive, which when disagreeing with someone sounds condescending.
I hadn't considered it in the context of disagreement; I think I can see how that could rub people the wrong way.
Note that some languages that are collquially refered to as pidgins, aren't (e.g. Tok Pisin).
Not really,... it's always been like that with children.
It is disturbing how many adults do it, trying to act 'cool' and talking like that.
If you want to find more, I posted some notes on the book here: https://alvaroduran.me/language-in-though-and-action
Edit: orthography corrections. Which is still language, though ;)
That's a point I personally disagree with. My impression is that exclamation points typically serve as indicators of an older, rather than younger author, especially if they're included in a joke. If someone sends you a meme or copypasta that ends in an exclamation point it's almost always boomer humor. "Because Jill's real name is Randy!" etc.
They didn't already know you enjoyed seeing them? Saying things like that after the fact instead of to the person's face as you said goodbye is more "old person behavior". You sound like a Facebook user.
And to anyone who thinks that language is sacred and has to be spoken and written like it is in the Oxford English Dictionary I also highly recommend listening to The Allusionist podcast.
https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/186456220892/reviews-of...