A lot of things affect our speech, and obviously we can all say “the internet” right, but I think there has to be something else right?
Think about this: plurals.
These days “women” has become both a plural and a singular among a large group of netizens, and i’ve even noticed that the change from singular to plural now sits on the O sound. (wuh-men vs. weh-men) but even that is inconsistent on which is the plural and which is the singular.
Think about this: personal voice and (what Google tells me) “idiolect.”
Personal “accents” essentially, ways of speech that are particular to an individual, or just a small in group maybe. Like how in the states some people can tell “oh you’re from the northern part of the state aren’t you?” or “oh you must be from this area of the state” even though most people would consider their accents the same. There’s also personal voice, not just in how distinctly individual a described experience is but also in how intimately you come to know that feeling/experience through said description.
- An example of the loss of personal voice is easily attributed in part to the internet’s love of irony, which seems to depersonalize a lot. The statement “I’m concerned about this health issue” or “I’m worried I can’t get my homework done” became a meme of “The lion does not concern himself with [health issues and homework]” which just completely took the self out of the equation.
- An example of loss in idiolect I think comes directly from the plural confusion, which I think must be connected because it seems to be about a change in pronunciation of the word and dialects definitely change where emphasis is placed and how. People are no longer sticking to their pronunciation of words, but WHY?
Again, we could of course cite the internet as a driving factor to this, but I want to know a step further than that. What’s causing that, what’s causing the loss in words and localized or personalized dialects? Why are we all heading to this homogeneous place with fewer words and less verbal/vocal differentiation?
Edit to overall simplify:
- What other than the internet is a driving factor to changing speech in the modern day? What leads to the dropping of certain words among groups that could use them just fine (like no longer using the singular version of a word, when the singular version is still linguistically useful?)
This is mostly based on things i’ve noticed just while doomscrolling but thing’s I’ve searched up since posting include:
- this covers idiolects in a lot more depth, and has also allowed me a bit more insight into the fact that I was using the term a little incorrectly in my original post. Idiolect seems to be a lot more internally defined than much else, I still don’t fully grasp the concept but it seems I didn’t completely misuse it either.
- this article covers vocab decline and has found that there are some arguments towards vocabulary increases at the time of study[edit: time of study is 2016] (the “Flynn effect” and generally more people completing high school or higher education being cited as reasons vocabulary might be on an increase) and also points out some arguments towards decrease such as changes in populations (with an influx of non-English speaking populations there would be a decrease in English vocabulary, with an influx of students involved in testing outcomes of general population testing such as the SAT will change,) and changes in reading throughout the general population (fewer people of the time were reading)
- this particular study finds a decrease in vocabulary
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these two go over “Dialect leveling” (the second is a blog post I discovered, not an academic sources, though it’s a relevant personal account on the experience being discussed)
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it seems this is the term i’m trying to discuss, and the Cambridge link attributes the levelling to multiple causes including “access to social mobility” alongside a lot of other factors surrounding (to boil down something complex for ease) community.
there’s also a study titled “Dialect leveling and Language attitudes In a Basque town” by Azler Garcia-Palomino (titled here, should be downloadable below, but I am tech illiterate so don’t rely on it sorry)
The paper mentioned above cites a few causes, again mentioning physical mobility and location changes, but also increased communication, education, and influence of media. I found it mentions “rapid convergence with the standard across several varieties since [the language’s] recent standardization in the 80s” pretty early on, which shows that this process isn’t as hyper-modern as I may have thought, and seems to be something that is pretty normalized when groups gain more contact, mobility, interaction, and other rapid social changes.
Garcia_2021_SOSY2021proceedings.pdf (930.5 KB) i’ve linked it like this in case you want to read, honestly this was the best find I feel like this is the most related to my overall question even though it’s looking at one particular group, it’s given me some insight into why the changes in language might be happening the way they are now.
Thank you for responding with your sources.
A strong factor is the deliberate desire to not sound like your parents’ generation. It may not be a loss, but rather a deliberate desire to bury and avoid use of particular oldster words. Usually accompanied by rolling eyes, air quotes or general snark.