Althouse: "Language change across the lifespan."

January 9, 2013

"Language change across the lifespan."

"One theory, anyhow...."

12 comments:

bagoh20 said...: Shouldn't all bubbles at the college level be the same with straight lines leaning left?; 1/9/13, 6:12 PM
Ann Althouse said...: That cartoon is too high on education and low on aging.; 1/9/13, 6:20 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Ha ha! College is the peak of one's thought life? Lord help us were it true.; 1/9/13, 6:22 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Maybe it's depicting one's perception of one's thought life.; 1/9/13, 6:23 PM
edutcher said...: The lines in older age aren't weird enough.; 1/9/13, 6:27 PM
bagoh20 said...: I agree that a great opening of the mind takes place at the teen/friends level, and again in middle age. The rest of the time is too busy trying to be who you've decide to be to explore the possiblities.; 1/9/13, 6:27 PM
chickelit said...: At least it conveys ourosboros, in a disconnected way.; 1/9/13, 6:53 PM
Methadras said...: I have to ask this question because i just need to know, but what is the leftist fascination with cartoons? Do they figure its an easy way to disseminate information to their little retarded progs? Just curious.; 1/9/13, 7:24 PM
James Pawlak said...: Only English mutates at a high rate. Poles, Italian and the Spanish can read, without special education, literary works of 400+ years ago. To do so in English requires special classes and a glossary.; 1/9/13, 7:26 PM
Mr Evilwrench said...: Physicists, mathematicians, engineers etc. are known to peak in their early twenties. They'll have greater insight after, and do good work, but their most innovative and energetic time is during and after university. I'm sure you'll see that in other fields.

The fact that English mutates means it's still "alive", vs, say, French, which has an academy instituted specifically to prevent change in the language. Myself, I have no difficulty reading 17th century vernacular. That's about four centuries, no?; 1/9/13, 7:50 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/10/13, 12:30 AM
Balfegor said...: If that's supposed to be language, I would have thought the level of variation from the standard dialect would peak around the early-mid teen years, and then settle down in college. I don't think that college students have anywhere near the proliferation of clique-ish verbal codes and slang as early teenagers have. This is all anecdotal, based on my experience, of course, but I don't think I'm wrong.

If that's right, it might be because as college students, you have a bunch of people from many different places all thrown together, so you tend to default either to standard US English or the standard dialect of the school/community -- linguistic innovation will impede basic communication in those circumstances.

This pressure towards the standard dialect would become only more pronounced as you enter the workforce and begin interacting extensively not with an isolated group of fellow-students in a narrow age-range, but with people from different generations and different backgrounds.; 1/10/13, 11:00 AM