Eng hw

Abstract

Language serves as a tool of communication which has been used for more than 200,000 years. Due to its frequent use in daily lives, language changes such as new internet words, slangs, and texting languages catch people’s attention in a controversial way. The debate had started early in 1800s until now. Some people believe that language change is positive for its development, while opposed voice says that it is disrespectful to traditional languages. By looking at different perspectives of language change in a large time range from distinct fields, it is found that previously people intend to preserve traditional languages that many scholars and college professors were opposed to language change, however, opinions changed over time that now people are more willing to adapt language change. Studies also show that new words and changes influence language development in a positive way. Since language simplifications and innovations are encouraged recently, spoken and written languages diverge so that two language systems may be possible in the future.

Keywords: language, communication, change

The Occurrence, Influence, and Rationality of Language Change

in Spoken and Written English

Languages play a significant role in everyone’s daily life and every culture. Although almost every language was reformed in history, changes and creations of new words become more and more severe. According to The Oxford English Dictionary(OED)’s September-2017 update, more than 1,000 new words, senses, and subentries have been added to the OED in only one quarter, including worstest, fungivorous, and corporation pop (Oxford English Dictionary, 2017). While some scholars think that creating new words is a natural process of language development, others believe it is disrespectful to traditional languages. Before debating whether new internet words and slangs are “developing” or “ruining” languages, people should learn more about the history of language change, as well as the influence and the rationality of it.

This paper focuses on the historical and current perspectives of language change and aims to provide sufficient information to discuss its rationality. To begin with, the background section of this paper will introduce the origin of language as well as the influence of language change in academic fields and daily lives. The similarities and differences between changes in English and Chinese will be discussed in this section, too. Next, the literature review will explain and evaluate the different perspectives of language change in a large time range. Lastly, reasons to applaud language change and some possible ways to encourage language change while preserving traditional languages are provided in the original argument section.

Background

Language, originally, is a product of evolution of human society. According to Mark Pagel’s TED Talk “How Language Transformed Humanity” (2011), human-beings confronted the crisis of visual theft around 200,000 years ago. When people only had two choices to solve this problem - retreating into small family groups or developing the system of communication, we chose the latter, and language is the result. Thus, instead of communicating only with family members with limited ideas, all human-beings got a chance to share everyone’s opinion and create a better society. Language helps people to make agreements, provide advice, and bring forth new ideas. It is easy to imagine that there would be fewer innovations and slower development without languages. However, not only do languages serve as a tool for communication, but they are also a significant part of every culture. “The most extensive catalog of the world’s languages, generally taken to be as authoritative as any, is that of Ethnologue, whose detailed classified list as of 2009 included 6,909 distinct languages” (Anderson, 2009). The reason there are considerable languages even during the globalization process is that people want to preserve their own identities. Just as Mark Pagel says, speaking different languages in different regions is to perhaps “protect our knowledge and wisdom and skills from eavesdropping from outside” (2011).

Yet understanding the significance of language is not enough. From 200,000 years ago until now, things have changed, and language is no exception. In some nations, it is legislated by an academy. For example, Académie Française, the French Academy, “befits the role of the French Academy as legislating the correct usage in French and perpetuating the language” (Pinker, 2005). The French Academy has started compiled dictionary and corrected usage since 1930. However, language started to change even before 1930 that people from all walks of life put spelling, grammar, and punctuation to a much lower position comparing with convenience and understandability. People believed following a set of rules and the guide showed respect to their languages.

Nowadays, even though dictionaries update periodically, our need for new words and phrases never stops. Lots and lots of internet new words emerge, giving people a more convenient and casual way to chat. In the TED talk “Ideas Worth Spreading”, Rainn Wilson asks Erin McKean, a lexicographer, “what if you love a word that you've just made up, like, I don't know, ‘scuberfinkles’?” (2016). From there, Erin McKean’s another TED talk was found, which introduces six ways to make new words in English - stealing words from other languages, compounding two English words together, blending two words into another word, changing how a word operates, doing back-formation, and taking the first letters of a phrase (2014). The corresponding examples would be “ninja”, “bookworm”, “brunch”, “friend (as a verb)”, “edit (it was formed from ‘editor’)”, and “YOLO (stands for ‘you only live once’)”. Slang, as the textbook An Introduction to Language says, also have three ways of originating – combining new words into new meanings, introducing entirely new words, and ascribing entirely new meanings to old words (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2009, p. 319). It looks like creations of internet words and slangs are closely linked with one another, they share some similarities such as combining and making changes from existing words.

Not surprisingly, English is not the only language that changes. In China, some words are originated from existing words but spelled wrong intentionally. For example, the word spelled as “shen me (means ‘what’)” is often typed as “sen me” or “shen ma”. The new words do not change the actual meaning, but they sound less formal. Besides, Chinese four-character idioms were only from historical allusions before, but now people start to create new four-character idioms which follow contemporary trends.

These new words not only influence people's daily lives, but also affect strongly in lexicology. Dictionary editors begin to consider every slang word carefully if any of them should be in a dictionary. And that's why every January, about 200 or 300 people, including some of the best-known linguists in the United States, go to the American Dialect Society annual meeting, and vote on “the word of the year”. For example, "tweet" was added in 2009 and "hashtag" was added in 2012. But not every word they selected achieve wide use. In 2006 the word of the year was “Plutoed”, to mean demoted, but clearly it has not been used widely. As Anne Curzan mentioned, “a word gets into the dictionary because we use it and keep using it, and dictionary editors are paying attention to us” (2014). Due to our frequent use of slang and internet words, these words may get to be recorded as "real" words. But the problem is that when people create tons of new words and slangs, not every word will last for a long time, sometimes a word may be the most frequently used word in a month, but then people never mention it again - because there are other words has been created. That's why it is difficult for lexicographers to decide what to record in the dictionary. They have to mull over whether a word has a long-lasting influence that people will continue using it for a long time.

Why do people make these language changes? In the long history, words and spelling have already been simplified a lot. For instance, in mainland China, all textbooks teach simplified Chinese so traditional Chinese characters are no longer used. Quite a few people think creating new words is essential because it is how language develops. Language is flexible. When there is a need for describing a new object or a new feeling, of course we create one. When existing words are too lengthy, we simplify them. In addition, linguists did a perfect job simplifying written language while keeping the historical origin, so now it is possible to make it simpler as well.

On the other hand, some abbreviated words make people wonder if there is a need to simplify phrases to an extreme level by only using the first letters of the phrase. Moreover, misspelled words and compound words just focus on the meaning but not the origin of the words – when academies created languages, there were reasons why they designed a word with a specific way to spell it. When people combine words together, they may lose the historical significance. Académie Française had rejected words such as digital, deadline, hashtag, ASAP, etc. For instance, the word “digital”, which is banned on November 7th, 2013, was derived from the Latin word “digitalis” meaning “having the thickness of a finger. “It’s only in English that the act of counting on fingers led to the formation of ‘digit’ meaning ‘number’ and ‘digital’ meaning ‘uses numbers’”. (McQueen, 2017).

Changes in language have always been controversial for decades because no one can assure which change is correct. Language is not only a tool people use for speaking and writing, but it is also a part of culture. Are languages being used in a way that is disrespectful to our traditional language and culture? Or should people be encouraged to create new words? The next section will discuss different opinions of language change.

Literature Review

While it is generally believed that the world can be divided into two kinds of phenomena, those which are acts of God – natural phenomena, and those which are made by people- artifacts; this fundamental error leads to a misinterpretation of language and linguistics. Rudi Keller (2005) says, “there exists yet a third kind of phenomena apart from natural phenomena and artefacts, and language is one of these phenomena” (p.61). As language experiences changes and reformations, these alternations are always controversial because of their rationality from antiquity to the present. Below are different perspectives of language change in a large time range – from last century to recent research; and with different points of view – from scholars’ perspectives to actor’s.

Summary

In the book On Language Change: The Invisible Hand in Language, Rudi Keller (2005) dintroduces Lüdtke’s theory that language change “emerges as an inadvertent, unconscious by-product of the coupling of free decision and the search for optimisation involved in linguistic activities” (p.104). The research “whether languages evolve or merely change” has been conducted, and Luc Steels and his research team (2017) conclude that: language dynamics is a true evolutionary process, because it exhibits variation and selection; language variation arises through social learning, performance deviation and creative language use; language selection is based on communicative success, increased expressive power, and the reduction of cognitive effort.

During the changing processes of languages, it is always controversial whether an alternation should be made. Problems such as the wrong use of grammar and punctuations have arisen. A large number of college professors have expressed their dissatisfaction with their students’ writing. Charles Eliot (1871), one of the Harvard presidents, described even well-prepared college students’ writing are with “bad spelling, incorrectness as well as inelegance of expression in writing, ignorance of the simplest rules of punctuation, and almost entire want of familiarity with English literature”. English professors in 1900s also expressed similar opinions that many students did not know the alphabet or sentence structure, and could not write grammatically (McWhorter, 2013).

However, important and constructive changes have been made as well. For instance, the creation of metaphor. Roger Lass (1997) describes that “metaphorical images can define and create new natural or conceptual kinds, which then become legitimate objects of exploration, and enrich the discipline’s universe” (p.43). The creation of metaphor does not harm the traditional language at all, and meanwhile provide people another way to speak more vividly. Thus, supportive voice of changes in languages came up. Jean Aitchison (2000), the author of the book Language Change: Progress or Decay?, says that “it is in no sense wrong for human language to change, any more than it is wrong for humpback whales to alter their songs every year (p.249).”

People try to simplify jargons and complicated terminologies as well. In United States Code (2001), there are a lot of places noted by Advisory Committee saying that “the language of the rule is amended to make the rule more easily understood”. Alan Siegel (2013), a simplicity guru who wants to put plain English into legal documents for government and business, strongly appeals that people should not allow government to communicate in the way they communicate, and should not do business with unintelligible provisions. Yet Jean Aitchison (2000) argues that true simplicity seems to be counterbalanced by ambiguity and cumbersomeness. More specifically, there are several factors to form a “best” language, where simplicity is not the only measurement (p.229).

However, the debate of language’s simplicity has never stopped. It has been said that texting is a scourge because texting spells the decline of serious literacy and writing ability among young people. British actor Ralph Fiennes (2011) says that modern language is being eroded because of truncated sentences, sound-bites and Twitter - "our expressiveness and our ease with some words is being diluted so that the sentence with more than one clause is a problem for us, and the word of more than two syllables is a problem for us". L’Académie française, the French Academy that legislates the correct usage in French and perpetuates the language, had rejected the word “ASAP (the abbreviation of ‘as soon as possible’)” to be recorded in French dictionary. For them, “this abbreviation, which is far from transparent, seems to cumulate most of the vices of a language that conceals its contemptuous and comminatory character under the rags of a shoddy modernity” (2012). However, John McWhorter (2013) states that “texting is not writing at all” because speech is much looser, more telegraphic and less reflective. McWhorter believes that the shorten pragmatic particles, which are generally used in texting, are new constructions that are developing in languages. Besides, while it is normal that lexical units often reach a phonetic minimum at some stage, this can be explained by Lüdtke which he calls “the principle of quantitative compensation”:

If, at some stage, the full form of a lexical unit has become so small that it no longer satisfies the redundancy needs of the speaker, it is increased by lexical means. The loss in sound is compensated for on the lexico-syntactical level. (Rudi Keller, 2005, p.106)

So, although there are voices saying the texting language is disrespectful to traditional language, it increases its lexical means.

Discussion and Evaluation

A closer look at language change has indicated that it is natural, continuous, and involves interwoven sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors which cannot easily be disentangled from one another. As Aitchison (2000) categorizes language change in two different kinds – one is disruptive, as with the increasing loss of t in British English where the utilization of a natural tendency may end up destroying a previously stable system; another one is like a therapy, and the example can be the loss of h in some types of English (p.249). Surprisingly, more scholars think that language change would have a positive result – more therapeutic changes have been made than the disruptive ones. That is why although some experts were skeptical if these changes are “ruining” the traditional language, the others regard language change as a positive phenomenon. Early in 2000, Aitchison has already believed that those experts who argue that language is disintegrating have not considered the complexity of the factors involved in language change, they were expressing their fears rather giving a voice against language change (p.249), and it is easy to see now that language changes are inevitable. So, no matter whether the alternation is disruptive or therapeutic, it is widely believed that language change is a natural process of its development.

When the government wants to make laws more easily to understood, these revisions have only little effect. Siegel (2013) points out that the United States was founded and governed for over two centuries on the basis of a document that is six pages long. That is 0.1 percent of the length of the current income tax code, which currently runs a whopping fourteen thousand pages. Although it proves that government documents can be simplified at some level, this significant length change also reflects the importance of understanding. The reason the government has a 14,000-page income tax code is because people need a clear understanding of it. It is also easy to think that less words would result more confusion. A cumbersome and lengthy code is hard to read through, meanwhile, a simplified document will create misinterpretations and misunderstandings. Until now, there are still discussions whether simplifying a language is considered a progress or decay.

Nowadays, the biggest change in language is texting language. On one hand, texting language limits the vocabulary people use in daily lives. Jill Shargaa (2014), a comedian and a designer, notices the frequent overuse of the word “awesome” has now replaced words like "great" and "thank you”. The overuse of popular word will definitely prevent people from choosing other words. Not only that, the Webster's dictionary defines the word "awesome" as fear mingled with admiration or reverence, a feeling produced by something majestic. When a word is overused, like the word “awesome”, people are taking away the very power when they use it to describe the most mundane of things. On the other hand, John McWhorter’s opinion that “texting is not writing at all” is also reasonable. It is naturally thought that language only refers to written words, but speech is what language actually is. As an example, LOL (the abbreviation of “laugh out loud”) is widely used in texting, but it does not mean laughing out loud anymore. It is evolved into something that is much subtler as a marker of empathy or a marker of accommodation. So, texting language can be interpreted as an overuse, or addition of new meanings to a word.

To conclude, language change occurs in every generation; however, the accelerated changing process brings it a new level of attention. In ancient time, people were more focused on the changes in grammar, punctuations, and rhetoric; nowadays people start to simplify and create vivid languages. Examples such as simplifying jargon and using texting language reflect that language may be interpreted as two distinct kinds – writing and speaking language. People’s opinions vary and create controversies – some college professors strongly oppose students’ writing without correct grammar and punctuation; some scholars believe that language change is a natural process just as any other thing in the world.

Original Argument

From previous sources, experts in the field could not agree on whether language alternations should be made. However, an increasing number of people start to accept language changes and use new words as problems these days because more people are convinced that language change brings the society positive influence.

To begin with, as stated in the background section, language was invented to develop the system of communication (Pagel, 2011). It indicates that the value of language is it creates a way to share ideas. As people use texting language more often in casual conversation, it is not imperative to type every single letter as long as the other dialogist understand the meaning. So, when communication becomes inefficient, people do not need to stick to traditional language. However, linguistic experts have argued that although simplifying phrases creates convenience and efficiency, they are also disrespectful to traditional languages to some extent. I totally agree with Aitchison’s opinion that those experts who argue that language is disintegrating were just expressing their fears rather giving a voice against language change (2000, p.249), because when changes first occur, people are afraid of its consequences. Yet recently these language changes have positively influenced people’s life without losing traditional culture.

Moreover, when people simply say the word “language”, what they are referring to is words and sentences that people are actually using now, not the ones were used in ancient time. As Anne Curzan says, “a word gets into the dictionary because we use it and keep using it” (2014). So, creating new words is not the whole process of language invention, the most important factor is whether people use them frequently. For instance, even though countries like France has its own language academy to legislate the correct usage in French, people do not always follow it. More often, people choose to use the words they think are the most convenient. While someone might concern that the large amount of new words would change the language system entirely, it is merely possible to happen because people use a word only when they like it. This is like an invisible election – when a person says a word one time, it gets one vote. Gradually, useful words gain favor and thus become more and more popular, and unnecessary words start to disappear. Since new words are used only when it gains popularity, language change is reasonable.

Furthermore, creating new words is an innovative process of language development. These changes bring a new trend into people’s conversation. We can say the trend of slangs and internet words are a lot more positive comparing to the trend of name brands or luxury brands. For example, when a person first sees the word “LOL”, he/she might not understand the meaning right away. Instead, he/she needs to figure it out with the context, or he/she can search the meaning on the internet or ask a friend. As a result, he/she may not even realize he/she is learning more and more slangs and internet words. Nowadays, almost everyone believes that scientific innovation advances technology, not only because it brings convenience, but it also provides more advanced skills for people to learn. It seems like language change also has similar functions. Besides, it also gathers people with same interests together. With the abbreviation “AJ”, one may interpret it as Angelina Jolie, another may think of Armani Jeans. Sometimes certain words can only be understood by people are interested in a specific area, especially for fans of stars or sports.

After researching, here are some possible solutions I think of to encourage language change while preserving traditional languages.

At first, it seems like problem of language change is only related to daily communication, yet language education is the key of its solution. Although both spoken and written English change over time, it is crucial to understand ancient and traditional languages. In this way, historical record can be interpreted without misunderstandings, besides, linguistic experts can sum up the changes so that languages can be better improved. For example, in China, students need to learn classical Chinese, a written form of old Chinese that is different from any modern form of Chinese, from primary school to high school. It is hard – some characters are pronounced differently, some have different meanings comparing to today’s words, and the expressions were extremely simplified that one sentence usually expands to two to three times lengthier when explained in modern Chinese. However, since China is a historical country with so many ancient literature and records, it is necessary to understand them. Thus, although Chinese students do not talk or write classical Chinese, most of them are able to interpret the meaning so that traditional language can be read correctly.

Not only does learning traditional language is important, but also learning the standard use of modern language. In the literature review section, it is discussed that people talk and write differently nowadays. In class, professors have the responsibility to correct students’ grammar and punctuation. However, outside the class students do not have to follow those rigorous rules. Since spoken English and written English are developing toward different direction, people may create two language systems basing on current trend – one for spoken language and another for written language. In addition, people should be aware that what are called modern language now will become traditional language years later, thus, modern language needs more stringent specification. For example, casual words or texting language should not be used in academic fields such as in an academic conference. So, although linguists and lexicologists have not created two language systems, when it is possible, wording and grammar should be deliberately considered.

With a more frequent use of slangs and internet words, we can think of this phenomenon as a culture of current generation rather than being disrespectful to traditional language. It is not difficult to imagine that not everyone would accept this perspective; however, it is the fact. As stated above, modern language will become traditional language. People using new slangs and internet words may be attributed to its convenience or its trend, but at the same time, it reflects how people in 21-century speak and write. In the information era, the continual use of new internet words is inevitable. Likewise, learning slangs in different countries and cultures is also logically reasonable because of globalization. In comparison to being disrespectful to traditional culture, new words are symbols of today’s culture.

Conclusion

While the rationality of language change has been debated for a long time, as people become more open-minded and more willing to accept new things, it is now widely believed that language change positively affects language development. With new words and slangs are introduced, people are able to share ideas from nationwide to worldwide, are able to learn new things in different culture, and also revise languages into a more simplified version. Meanwhile, change in language will not harm traditional language as long as there are appropriate ways to preserve it. In all, language change should be encouraged either in academic fields or daily lives. From now on, people should not concern about creating or using new words and slang, we need to know that even an ordinary person can create useful words and help languages develop.

References

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