The End of Language
Some of you may be familiar with Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis. Conceived at the end of the Cold War, it posited an end to the Hegelian dialectic in, among other areas, forms of government. It contended that Western liberal democracy has triumphed and, as it represents the apex of sociopolitical development, we are witnessing a veritable “end of history.” Tepidly welcomed at first, the thesis appears to have received its final blow after 9/11 as yet another era of conflict commences.
Barely anyone is aware of it, but we are living at the end of the most staggering change that has taken place in the English language since the time English is qualified by linguists as a distinct language. For the fear of ending up like Fukuyama or wearing a particularly snug tinfoil hat, I will say that this change does not equal the end of evolution of English, but rather an unprecedented deceleration. A process not unlike the regress in natural selection when it comes to the human species.
We live during the most static era of language development in human history. At no other time has the evolution of either grammar or vocabulary has been as slow as it is now. I have been recently reading William Shakespeare’s Othello and am still astounded by the extreme differences in spelling of words in editions of the book within the first twenty years after initial publication. Words in consecutive editions are often spelled not in two, but three different ways. The explanation is simple: there were no set spelling conventions back in the 17th century as each printing house used its own rules. Grammar, and often times even pronunciation were not static, with subjects, objects, and verbs gamboling with much abandon from place to place across sentences, by no means, in the case of Shakespeare, only to conform to poetic meter. Such liberality in both syntax and diction continued in English until the middle of 19th century.
What has caused this rapid deceleration in language development was first, the emergence of government-sponsored universal education, and second, the advent of modern communications. In the past there were no standardized teaching materials or curricula. Universal education has increased literacy in the Western world to unprecedented levels, promoting spelling, grammar, and style conventions assiduously forged by historical grammarians of the day. First time in history there was a government-backed, standardized, proper way to speak and write. Local populations retained the shibboleths of their own dialects, but, in public space, they espoused grammar rules and standardized spellings.
This was enough to cause the spread of the overwhelming majority of conventions in English and other languages. Indeed, this phenomenon is by no means limited to English. Every official language in a country with a stable government jurisdiction and universal education behaved the same and continues to do so. A corollary process that has begun about fifty years ago is the spread of literature, music, and other media throughout the globe, especially after the creation of Internet. Children all over the world learn English by using textbooks from the Oxford University Press, Pearson, or a better or worse derivative thereof. People across America watch the same TV shows, which are also instantaneously available to people in England or Australia. A lot of American slang words not used before have thus entered the British lexicon. The picture here is of a world where there is less and less variation in language. The only thing that has changed is that in the past the motor of this shift was government; now it is media, corporations, and culture. It is important to not confuse the relative amount of evolution in English and the amount of exposure to different sources of information in the language, which, on the other hand, is increasing exponentially.
Changes still occur, but we overestimate their amount or effect. Despite the potential of new words arising being as big as it used to be five hundred years ago, the amoral process of natural selection in the instantly-connected world assures that only the coolest slang words survive, with the vast majority not enjoying any significant lifespan. What in the past used to be hundreds of independents processes, now is quickly becoming one global process in English word creation and retention. Tumblr has native English-speaking users from throughout the world, but “Tumblr English” is only one and is understandable to all no matter the country. Personal idiolects are steadily becoming less and less varied as we watch the same moves, listen to the same music, and read the same books from publishing houses with their own spelling and grammar conventions (a honorable exception, though, must be made to the American-British spelling divide). The sinews of change and evolution in this new world are paradoxically diminishing.
We still do witness deliberate attempts at change or variation in English. A very good example is the struggle of changing the traditional usage of personal pronouns, or even inventing new ones, to avoid the awkwardness of unintentionally emphasizing the masculine in items or people with no designated gender. Many people use words such as “anyone,” or “everyone” with the pronoun “them,” despite their traditionally being singular. This has become relatively standard, though a good wordsmith can recast a sentence without using either one to avoid such awkward emphasis in the first place. Attempts at creating gender-neutral pronouns have been less successful. Actually, to the chagrin of their proponents, every such attempt in the last 50 years have been a resounding failure, which shows how hard it is to change ingrained habits and predilections. The last success in this realm has been the reintroduction to the English language of the word “Ms.” at the turn of the 19th century. It is doubtful, however, that any new addition in this realm is about to be popularized in the foreseeable future.
A gift that keeps on giving when it comes to on-line “gotcha” media is the ubiquitous, regurgitated articles titled something along the lines of “7 Errors You Make in English that Are Actually Not Errors.” Naturally, they are not. They are no errors in languages, just conventions. In a future commentary I will talk about how to distinguish bad from good language rules. The lesson here, however, is that these arguments we have over a few (indeed, I rarely see those articles listing more than 7–9 of such items) captious disagreements are frivolous when taking into account the era of the vast language consensus in which we live.
If you have not yet read my commentary on human agency in language, I urge you to give it a read.
