Whither English?

Once again this week I guested into the editing class my friend teaches online at a local university. And this time, along with the usual questions about specific points of usage, one student asked what I think will change in English usage, and what changes editors should resist.

Which is a really interesting question! Predicting language change is fun and occasionally one gets it right, but there are always innovations that you just can’t predict – and social and technological changes, too. When you look at how things have changed in the past, it gives some sense of the usual forces of change. As I said in one presentation on the topic (more than a decade ago now), we tend to change language for four general reasons:

• to make life easier
• to feel better
• to control
• things slip

Fads that become accepted are common. The shifts in the pronunciation of the letter r – and their shifts in social status (for example, the advent of r-dropping in England, its adoption in America as a sign of higher status, its shift over time towards more of a working-class signifier in America but not in England) – are emblematic of this, as I wrote about in an article for the BBC. A lot of it has to do with signifying various kinds of social group belonging.

On the other hand, sometimes changes are invented and propagated – such as the ideas that you can’t split an infinitive (I’ve written about this more than once) and can’t end a sentence with a preposition, and the prescribed distinction between less and fewer. A few of these “rules” have become undisputed standard English now (such as the proscriptions of double negatives and double superlatives); others (such as the ones I just mentioned) are often waved around as rules but aren’t universally accepted, and serve mainly to license social aggression (as I wrote about in another BBC article). I did a whole presentation on when “errors” aren’t some years ago, and a bit more recently on when to use “bad” English.

None of which yet answers the question. Let’s see… 

• I think that social media will continue to be a good vector for the rapid spread of new usages and references (everything is citational, after all), but of course I can’t predict which ones. 
• I think that punctuation will get to be used more and more variably for subtle significations (after all, the presence or absence of a period at the end of a message can convey tone, sometimes importantly). 
• I think emoji will keep getting used, including as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, not just interjections, but how far into formal writing they will spread I don’t know. 
• I think capitalization will continue to be basically haywire, because it’s weird and complicated in English anyway (here’s something I ghostwrote for PerfectIt’s blog about it).
• I’ve noticed what seems to be a shift (yet another!) in the pronunciation of r among younger people, at least partly under the influence of pop singers who are avoiding the retroflex sound in favour of something closer to a mid-high mid-front vowel. I’m not sure where that’s going, but keep an eye on it.
• I suspect we will, at length, start using they-all or something similar to convey that we’re speaking of a group of people, rather than a single person of unspecified or neutral gender. I am very much on board with singular they – if you have an hour, watch this presentation I gave on gender in language, including the vaunted history of singular they and the deliberate reactionary imposition of the idea that he is the natural generic default. But singular they can bring the complication that we aren’t always sure of the number of people signified. When we started using you for all second persons rather than distinguishing between singular thou and plural you, various people in various places innovated y’all, youse, yiz, yinz, and so on. So why not the same with they?
• And, because identity is important to people, especially when threatened, and because language is a key means of conveying that identity, I think Canadian usages and in particular Canadian spellings (centre, colour, you know), which have been slipping a bit in general Canadian usage, will come to be increasingly emphasized in response to threats to Canadian sovereignty. That’s not a change so much as a revitalization. But keep an eye out for innovation of Canadian signifiers too!

And as to the question of what changes to accept and what to resist, as I said in my “when does wrong become right” presentation, there are five questions we should ask when evaluating a change:

1. What is the change? Really? (Sometimes the “change” is the original form and the “traditional” usage was invented and propagated more recently.)
2. Where did it come from? When?
3. Where is it used? By whom?
4. Who is your text for? (Usages that annoy one audience may charm another.)
5. What are the gains and losses – what does the change add in expressive value and clarity, and what does it take away?

Oh, and I am definitely in favour of being pragmatic to the point of deviousness in our choices. As Machiavelli said, “consider the results.”