Instigators of Language Change : Old vs. Young

A popular belief in regards to language change contends that the coinage of neologisms and use of slang and colloquial language are solely the domain of the younger generation. However, this is a simplified view of the social functions of language. Language change occurs in diverse forms for diverse needs, therefore it cannot simply be one age group that instigates language change.

Certainly for younger people, using language in new and often non standard ways functions to promote solidarity within a social group to gain them covert prestige in order to establish and continually reinforce their identity. However, adults also instigate language change particularly in their specialised field by creating jargon, adapting foreign words to their own foundation of language and creating the attitude towards language through education of younger generations.

The young have been rapidly coining new terms that have become integrated into every-day vernacular due to the ubiquitous nature of electronically mediated communication (which can be accredited to the digital revolution that is currently underway). Some of the most well known terms that have transcended their digital contexts include “lol, ceebs, wtf, omg, yolo, hashtag”. The commodification of some of these words into dictionaries such as the Macquarie, Online Oxford Dictionary and certainly their ubiquitous use in spoken language is evidence of their popularity. 

Evidence of language change isn't restricting solely to the domain of lexicology.  It is prevalent too in the syntax associated with electronically mediated technology. Due to its rapid nature, terms such as the past tense "has" are being compacted to "how's" as in “how’s your day been?”. Furthermore, the excessive use of punctuation (particularly exclamation marks and question marks) is another example of language change instigated by the young as they compensate for the need to express emotion through a medium that inhibits such expression. The excessive use of letters and capitalisation to graphemically convey the prosodic features of spoken language are employed in a similar way.

Language change can only be considered successful if the majority are implementing them regularly. Being unaware of the implicature, connotations or accepted use of a term can lead to a feeling of social instability or being "out of the loop" and thus can render one not privvy to the kind of covert prestige that adept users of language have access to. Thus proficient use of neologisms is desirable in many contexts and this encourages its pervasive nature.

The term “hashtag”, originating from twitter for technological purposes has now been integrated into spoken discourse as a result of the ubiquity of and access to social media in today's society. It is used as an intensifier that signals in group membership by "tagging" certain ideas or concepts that other people relate to. Linguist Ben Zimmer of the Visual Thesaurus states that “[hashtags] show that you’re part of a community that shares these conventions, to show that you’re playing the game.” This affirms the idea that the young drive language change as they are experimenting with language both innovating and conforming to build in group membership in order to aide them establishing and affirming their identity. Furthermore, as new language pervades general language use, other (older) people latch onto terms to be perceived as digitally aware and up to date.

It seems that compared to younger people, the language changes instigated by adults are considered to be more permanent. This is due to the fleeting nature of slang (which is the predominant area in which young people instigate change) but also due to the belief that with age comes maturity and expertise and thus adults are more successful as the young in driving language change. Language change instigated by adults is evident in the addition of jargon is specific fields such as politics. In last year’s election campaign the term “sand-bagging” was adapted from the Americanism “pork-barrelling” to refer to doling out money to marginal seats. Similarly, John Howard adapted the American term for “water-cooler” topics – that is, the dominant policy issues of the day which captivated mainstream swinging voters – to “barbecue stoppers”. These examples further exemplify how adults also are more likely to adapt terms as they are more resolute in their language therefore go to greater lengthens to adapt it to a foundation that they are familiar with.

As with slang, jargon promotes in group membership and excludes others who are not proficient users of the technical language relating to a specialist field. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the complex language utilised within these domains, as it is often prescribed by the complexity of the concepts being discussed. The issue at hand is the discrepancy between the specialist's level of knowledge and the general public's level of knowledge and how this is accounted for (or not accounted for) when communicating. Recently, people have demanded more clarity in the language directed to them, an example of this is in on the new style guide on the www.gov.uk website published on July 26th 2013. The article poses that political figures should avoid using jargon as it promotes language manipulation by obfuscating the reality. This demonstrates that not only do adults drive language change, but that they use this to strengthen their connection to other adults, perhaps of the same profession in order to increase their sense of belonging thus authority in a field. And some also (unfortunately) use it to purposefully alienate people and enforce social distance and social hierarchy.

Attitudes towards language are based on the education one is provided with by the institution that is run by adults. Education's influence on language change is evident through comparison of past and present teaching models. Since Federation and up until 20-30 years ago, the education system took a very prescriptive approach, influencing young students to believe that their language must abide by a set of strict rules and anything that strays from these rules is unacceptable. Nowadays the education system is far more descriptive approach. This facilitates students to be more innovative with their language use. The effect of this educational approach is evident in the many linguistic initiatives constructed by the young, such as lolcat memes which initiated from a young male to his girlfriend on Facebook and grew to be worth more than 2 million dollars, and now has its own lolcats bible. This illustrates the great influence adults have on changing attitudes towards language simply by being the educators for the young.

Language change occurs as people develop their language use to better suit their needs. For the young it is to establish and continually reinforce their individual and group identities by being innovative with language as understanding the language paradigms of their various social groups and conforming accordingly. Amongst the adults, language change occurs to strengthen one’s position in a field by coining new jargon or adapting foreign words to make them unique. Furthermore it is to improve the educational system for the younger generations and thereby influence the attitude towards language use in society. Hence, language change is driven by people of all ages as they adapt to their changing needs through life.