DIVERSITY | Offering a place for everyone
11 April 2008
About This Issue
From the August 2007 edition of eJournal USA.
In his article "Change Is Gonna Do Ya Good," Ilan Stavans points out that the challenge for dictionaries and those who produce them is the fact that as soon as a list is made of every possible word, and each word's meanings, that list, and those meanings, are already beginning to be out of date. A similar challenge exists in describing the forces that influence a language in illustrating the types of changes, and in describing the process. We have titled this journal "Dynamic English" because it explores the way the world's most commonly used language is evolving in the 21st century under the pressures of technology, globalization, and immigration.
Most people encounter at least one new English word or usage each day, especially those who watch popular media or spend time reading blogs and other Web sites. Americans who spend time living in other countries are especially aware of changes in our language. Either we meet Americans abroad or return to the United States after an assignment in another country, to be surprised by new words and phrases and by how widespread they seem to be despite the fact that we've just encountered them. By the time I heard "24/7" for the first time, it was already in nearly universal use to indicate issues, services, or programs that are in effect 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And I won't soon forget the shock of briefing a college student who, upon learning something surprising, exclaimed, "Shut-up!" The fact that her advisors and fellow students found nothing unusual in this exchange was a clue that this might be a new use for the term I'd always been taught was rude. Apparently it had developed a meaning along the lines of "No way!" or "You're kidding!"
All living languages evolve, and English seems to change more readily than some others. In Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language, linguist Seth Lerer reviews changes in English through the ages, from Beowulf through Chaucer, to Webster's efforts to create new spellings and usages in American English from the English forms, to current changes in the language. He credits Shakespeare alone with coining nearly 6,000 new words. Nor is this phenomenon new for the American version of the language. The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) television network, which produced a series of programs entitled Do You Speak American?, credits Thomas Jefferson as the U.S. president who added the most new words (so far). The program's Web site explains the relationship between language and culture this way: Language sows its own seeds of change; social context gives it the fertile ground to grow and spread.
But are these changes good? The creators of the PBS series asked, "Are we less literate than we used to be? Is e-mail ruining the language?" In his 2001 collection of essays, The Way We Talk Now, Geoffrey Nunberg points out that "American English has always been pretty open about borrowing words from other languages." His view is that mixing elements from different cultures, whether it's language or food, can produce new, interesting, and satisfying results. Nunberg finds more to criticize in experts who complain about language change, sure that they are smarter than the language (or its users), than in those who create and spread new words and uses. Lerer agrees with most of our contributors, writing, "We should not see our language as debased. The history of English is a history of invention: of finding new words and new selves, of coining phrases that may gather currency in a linguistic marketplace."
As Nunberg writes in the introduction to a 2004 collection of his essays, changes in language can serve as clues to important changes in society itself. Lists of characteristics and values that define American culture include words like change, innovation, melting pot, practicality, directness. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that American English is constantly changing and that those changes mirror other changes in the culture.
Robin L. Yeager
The Editors acknowledge the generous contribution of images and videos, some of which represent commercial products. Our grateful use of the images in no way constitutes an endorsement of the products by the U.S. Department of State.
The title of this issue, "Dynamic English," is meant to describe our subject matter: the changing state of modern American English. The journal is not connected to any other program, publication, or product associated with the words "dynamic English."
