White english wont andcant sit still, like literally. Language, constantly. Did you know the word clue derives from crew, the middle english word . In this area a ball of bread like these is through the labyrinth. It does not make sense. Other words have changed this way, taking on new meaning or new shades of meaning. In the age of means and texting, lol, nsw, dfw etc. , language continues to shift but as John Mcwhorter explains, that shouldnt scare us. Tonight he explains how the english language is evolving before our eyes and argues why we should embrace this change, not fight it. John mcwhorter is associate professor of english and comparative literature at columbia university. Hes the author of more than 15 books including the language book and the power of table. Hes currently writing his 20th book. Please give a warm welcome to John Mcwhorter. [applause] thanks everybody. I want to talk to you not too long about a new way of hearing language and i think its important because i think linguists have failed to explain the realities of how language change works and what language really is. Were all impatient to understand why everybody speaks it differently than we do but really theres a lot in common in languages and natural history. The way biologists have taught us to see flora and fauna. You never know it from the way language is taught in the school system. Youd never know it from even taking one or two linguistics classes that certain things are really hit on the head. I want to give you a new way of looking at language that will feel good. All this makes us easier to walk down the street feeling better about what you hear and feeling better about your own speech. And what it comes down to is this the fact that language is inherently changeable. Language changes. Its not that it might change, it always will change, it must change. If you ask somebody whether they think language should change, i dont think anybody would say no but you tend to think that what language change is his first of all, that you need new words for new things, i think anybody would accept that. You assume that a lot of those words will come from Foreign Languages and that process is exciting. And we know that slang changes so language changes. Language change is much more profound than that. So lets see if this works. There we go. Though heres what we know and heres what you dont learn. We will always need new words for new things, thats true but what we are not taught is that language changes as inevitably as cloud patterns change. The analogy is looking up at a sky and seeing the clouds today and how you would feel if you looked up tomorrow and saw the clouds in the same place, know what nobody would expect that. Its the same thing with language change. Language change at the change the way cloud patterns change. The clouds are changed by winds, languages changed because every generation slightly misinterprets what the last generation says. As never not happened and it always will. Or words will coming from Foreign Languages. Thats true but if you took a group of people and for some reason put them in a cave and somehow they could live in the cave with food and everything they needed but they were in the cave and there was no cultural change, theres no contact with anybody else and that group of people somehow managed to reproduce and live in the cave for 2000 years, when those people came out of the cave they would be speaking a whole new language. Not because anything new was invented, not because they had met anybody else and it wouldnt be just the slang. They wouldnt understand the people who had gone into the cave. Thats because its inherent that language changes, thats what language changes. Or you know that slang and idioms will change but its hard to see that the dictionary, the dictionary is a wonderful thing but the dictionary page is like a polaroid snapshot and thats really all it is. It can be a beautiful polaroid snapshot but if you have a polaroid of somebody at 40 and 10 years later you encounter that person and you show them a picture of themselves 40, you dont think that the way they were 40 is somehow the way they really are and that any change that happened since then is somehow wrong or peculiar. People change. Languages are the same way. Language changes in five ways, thats not true but for words on the move i have fashioned it to five easy to remember ways. One of them is something that tonight im going to call creeping implication. Words change like creeping implication what i mean by that is that at any point in time , a word has different residences surrounding it. Theres the dictionary definition and then there are other things that word makes you think of. As time goes by, what everybody thinks of the word as meaning moves into including those residences. After a while, the words meaning has changed and after a long while, the words meaning is unrecognizable. That is something that happens almost every word in any language. The words that dont dont change like and or in, the words for things like father and brother, those are the exception. Thats a boring collection of 100 or 200 words. Most words are always moving along. For example, philly first meant glasses. Audition first meant your earring, it meant nothing about being up on stage. Lewd first meant and the italics is messed up there, unlearned. You can imagine how unlearned mike moore into the meaning of sexually improper but originally lewd meant unlearned. You have to knew that if you read chaucer. Mary first met meant short, it gradually became to mean jolly because short is often pleasant. It happens bit by bit. Nice first meant all food. Local was the word for bread. Llworks which we now associate with health food stores, that was the word for vegetable. Apple first meant fruit. So for example lets say you are pleasant and we imagine what that word meansif you are blessed , then theres reason to think that you are innocent so a word that first means blessed mike many generations later mean that you are innocent. So innocent is probably harmless, it follows and that was a residence that was surrounding the word and next thing you knew a word that originally meant less meant harmless, thats far enough. If something is harmless its probably sweet and so the word came to mean week. This is happening century by century. If you are weak, one way you might be week is mental. Yomight not be a sickly week but you might be slow so after a while that word that meant blessed meant thin. If you are dim, one of the ways it might manifest is that you are kind of goofy and gradually that meaning thrown in such that blessed meant goofy. Originally the word meant happy and so word that started out meaning happy the game blessed which became harmless which became week which became slow whichbecame goofy. All that was a single word and this is the thing , thats normal. Thats what words do. Almost every word in your mouth is doing that. We cant feel it within our lifetime but thats how language change works. This has implications. Its not just that silly is interesting or anywhere that you are using has that kind of history. It gives you a sense of why shakespeare can be difficult to hear in real time if you havent read it first. Its a controversial topic and many people say that shakespeare is just a matter of poetry or that it has to be performed really well or that its better when the person has a british accent but i think all of us know that if all those things are in place, shakespeare, if you havent read it. Its one thing to read it but in real time, if somebody were doing king lear right here and you had read it, you get tired after about 20 minutes and somebody tells you you are not poetic. Its not only the poetry. Its that word meanings change and shakespeare was a long time ago so a lot of words that we hear sound like english because they are but the words dont mean what they need to us because much time has gone by for example entered, he defended himself, wife or when my dimensions are well compact, compact is on itself but you let that go. My mind is generous and my face is true as honest madams issue. My mind is generous. Why generous . People are making fun of him and hes objecting that hes free with his goods. Its not impossible but its odd. Its a little stumble as you are listening to to that. Hes not going to stop and explain and you cant act your way through. Then my mind is generous. We dont usually talk about a generous brain. Its a lot so that happens. If that happens about three times a page, there goes the piece. Jenna generous when shakespearewrote it meant noble. He talks about how he is as noble as anyone else. If you are noble , noble involved being magnanimous with your full. As a result after a while generous came to mean magnanimous and he needs a new word for noble and it was actually noble. So thats why shakespeare is hard. At this point i know how angry some peopleget the idea that shakespeare might be, get ready for it, changed. Theres a growing movement especially over the past 20 years to translate shakespeare but to adjust shakespeare, especially where the words are such that we can no longer understand what he meant when hearing it live and have it ready. For example, besides, miss duncan has borne his faculties so meek, faculties, what does it mean . You dont have time. Duncan has worn his faculties so meek that its clear that his great office is clear what . Im not clear, im sitting in a chair. Nobody would say my john, you are looking clear but its a play and you keep going. Pleaded like angels trumpet tone begins the season, youre happy now because thats poetic but angels, trumpet tone sounds the damnation of his taking off. Where are we going . Hes taking all this line, whats it mean . He keeps going. Thats hard. You can read the footnotes but lets face it, we are busy. After a while, especially you have kids you dont have time to read it so you are watching it live but suppose you change that to the things that means. So besides, miss duncan have borne authority so meek he can stand his faculties. Authority has borne his authority so meek had that not been clear in his great office but we cant tell what that means so pure in his great office, the idea being that he keeps his hands clean that his virtue will plead like angels, trumpet tone begins to beat damnation. Not the taking off of his knocking off, thats what it meant. It had kind of a slangy favor so its knocking off. So the issue is that word meanings change. Whats this mean . Theres no such thing as a community of speakers using a word wrong. We hear it that way. We think lately, people are using such and such to mean this but its supposed to mean that. But we understand its inherent to a word for his meaning to change. We understand a word isnt something that is. Its something going on. Thats the way language has always been. It means that if a representative, a number of people are using a word in a certain meaning, then the meeting has changed as would inevitably have been the case. Its not odd. Its just that thats evidence of the reality of language in your own life. If a person can use a word anyway they want, then doesnt it interfere with clarity . But the answer is this. Its people, not a person that uses a word in a new way. So meeting change is communal. No transition has ever occurred without various people having their own way, having trouble understanding one another. That would be a problem in america and thats because its a communal matter. Word meanings change. Creeping implication being that you can think of yourself as speaking something that is everchanging and it becomes a sports to wonder where the word meanings are going to go. There are various choices as to how its going to happen but to wait for the word meanings to stay in the same place is unfortunate cause they are always going to keep changing so you always hear the disillusionment taking place when really its just language in its own sense thats the first thing. Second thing, the spaces of language. And these are types of words and expressions that you never talk about in school, you never talk about this is grammar but its actually a crucial part of what language is. Linguists call it pragmatic which is an unfortunate jargon term. Because we think of pragmatic as being about 18 Different Things so im not going to say maddock ever again. Were going to call it faces of english and ive got this cute little acronym here called sexuality, acknowledgment, expectation and even. The first levels of these things spell face so thats what we are going to call it. What do i mean by that . We have sexuality markers in our language where we have ways that we can use we can barely say what they mean so really. I got tired of the way you read it. I cant take it anymore. Its been raining for so long im tired, really. Now formally we think that it means real tension but we dontpronounce it that way. Its really. If youre a child and you cant read yet you have to learn that this word should be spelled r i ll y as really and what we use really for is to indicate in an ongoing way when we talk that we are sincere in conversation and we are not doing it in a tidy sort of way such that we do it once at the beginning of something called the paragraph and never do it again. Its something we constantly do, almost the way somebody might be preening themselves and doing adjuster over and over. Donald trumps relief and is one of those gestures so why did he say that . Its because he wants to indicate his factual holiday and he has chosen that particular formula. Now factual alley explains the literacy problem. There are many people who are upset that thoroughly is being misused because its supposed to mean by the letter exactly so people seem to me music using it in figurative constructions. People say im literally dying of thirst. And thats just wrong because it means that you are using something to mean its opposite. So theres actual and then figuratively. That really gets a peoples nose but it doesnt have to, believe me. This is why. Literally starts out meaning by the letter. Now, thats what it meant at a certain point. Everybody who thought of it as meaning only that is now very day. And they died not knowing something that you guys and women can although which is that literally was never going to stay meaning by the letter. No word ever stays still. The only question is what was going to come to mean . The one thing words tend to do when they have a meeting of intensifying is they become less intense. Put bets on it that a word that went meant by the letter was going to start meaning Something Like really. Thats the way it was going to we can, you know that was going to happen. But once it means really, people are going to use it to intensify their expression, thats what we do when we speak. Next thing you know as you might say i was dying of thirst and not mean it, you can say i was literally dying of thirst. You knew that wasgoing to happen. Often its said , as my foot tangles in this wire that this use of literally is new. And i can imagine how it must feel that way. There are many reasons why it would feel new. I dont know. Its fortunate to be introduced to such a party of fine women at this arrival. It is literally the seed among the lilies, 1769 and this is somebody who is writing in a much more formal era so its not soon but wyatt irritates people is because this word that means the opposite and people think well, that cant be. Ive seen a teacher where somebody complained about literally on their chest and to say the word literally means figuratively i stand against it. But you can run fast but then you can be fast asleep. You can sit fast, be stuck fast. It means rapid and the opposite of rapid, does that ever bother you . If you are aware of it now, isnt it kind of neat . There are a lot of words like that. Somebody can pull away, both chair to the ground and the world keeps turning. If you see a watermelon, chances are you do not purchase some seeds and put them into the watermelon before you eat it. You are taking the seeds out. But then if you are exceeding a plot of land it would be counterproductive to take the seeds out of the ground, you are putting them in. Has that ever confuse you . Thats three examples and there are seven of them up there. There are about 75 of what are called confidence in this language. Contrary number 56 is literally. To the extent that we have probably not known what a person meant, if a person sent i is literally freezing to death what they are telling you is why they didnt die so you are confused, it just means weve got another contranym. Acknowledgment. An awful lot of language is a matter of looking into the person you are speaking to his mind and acknowledging their state of mind. Nobody puts it that way but thats an awful lot ofwhat we mean. Such as totally, the way people below a certain age used totally. It doesnt mean in total fashion. So if someone says we are totally going to get tickets to the taylor swift concert, they dont mean were going to get tickets for a taylor swift concert in a complete way. Thats not what it means. Were totally going to get tickets for the taylor swift concert means it doesnt really mean something it doesnt, it means we both know there are reasons why some people would suggest we should get those tickets so that maybe shes considered a little bit xyz or we are busy students or Something Like that but we are going to get a ticket area if somebody says hes totally going to call you, its not hes going to call you in his completeness, its hes going to call you even though some people have reason to believe hes not. Thats actually what everybody is saying totally walking down your street everyday needs. Its an acknowledgment of standing conditions of which all are aware and you dont get taught these things but thats what it means so there are lots of markers and this is a modern language, this is all language. Some chaucer, emily says in the night that i am, that meant no. Yet my company is a maid and i love some things and others. Shes saying today we hear you know is kind of a tent but chaucer is putting in a very long time ago. So actuality an acknowledgment, then counter expectations is a major aspect of how you actually communicate. It doesnt fit in to our sense of what an adjective or a past tense is but is very much grammar so the reason i did if i may is because the things that you think of this obeying, as some sort of degradation of language which are sophisticated. For example, you might think that you up and an adjective is just to be vulgar. Thats a big. [bleep] pot and you think why didnt the persons a big pot . Its because they meant something specific. Imagine a person looking out the window and they see a squirrel and they say hey, i see a gray asked squirrel. That doesnt just mean i see a great squirrel and im kind of a person, it has a more specific meaning, it means hey, that squirrel is gray rather than the black squirrel that i sent so in some cases i forget which one, squirrels are black. You would only say i saw a gray asked squirrel became for somewhere where the squirrels are a different color so what you mean is squirrel is gray, its a gray asked squirrel. We went through this long. [bleep] opera, it means it was longer than you would expect anything to be, it was probably minor for example and thats what it