Language change: tanks, socials, adopters and resisters

As a lexicographer and corpus linguist, I'm firmly a descriptivist. That is, I describe language as it's used (based largely on corpus data). I'm not a prescriptivist who pronounces on how language should or shouldn't be used. When somebody comes to me with a language query, I respond with information about what's typical or most frequent, maybe in a particular context or variety of English, or what's less typical or unusual. I try not to make judgments about what's right or wrong, correct or incorrect.

The same principles apply to new language and language change. If anything, I‘d describe myself as pro-change in that I find the creative flexibility and adaptability of language fascinating and something to be celebrated rather than resisted. Of course, there are words (new and old) and language trends that I personally like less than others. There's language that appears on my radar that, for one reason or another, niggles or makes me roll my eyes and that I wouldn't use myself. However, I try hard not to judge people for their language choices (unless of course they’re obviously offensive).

I've always been fascinated by variation in language and how different individuals use language differently. As an undergraduate, I did a mini research project into gender differences in writing, and my Master’s dissertation focused on how our language choices change with age. And as I get older myself, I'm conscious of the new language I adopt, or don't. I often wonder if there's a linguistic equivalent of “mutton dressed as lamb”. Are there new ‘trendy’ ‘young’ words or phrases that sound incongruous coming from a middle-aged woman? And I'm not just talking about obvious youth slang that sounds ridiculous coming from an older person. I wouldn't, for example, even attempt to slip skibidi or slay or 6-7 into conversation! I'm talking about the slightly subtler new words or ways of talking about things which I think younger speakers naturally adopt quickly but perhaps take a bit longer to feel comfortable as part of your vocabulary as you get older. Over the past week or so, I've become conscious of two new words that have slipped into my vocabulary.

Last week, I found myself explaining to my mum, who's in her 70s, that a new piece of knitwear I was wearing was called a tank, and that a tank is really just a tank top that's been re-labelled. For most British speakers, certainly of my age, a tank top has connotations of something from the 1970s. If I had access to old family photos, I'd have dug out an old picture of me as a child in a classic 70s tank top. Instead, the image of Wallace from the Aardman Wallace and Gromit animations in his distinctive green tank top will have to suffice. As sleeveless knitwear has come back into fashion, fashion brands, probably wanting to avoid those 70s connotations, have opted for just tank as an alternative term.

The second new term, also a shortening, that's taken me longer to slip into is socials. As an observer of language, I know that we started off with ‘social networking’, which soon became ‘social media’ and then got shortened to just ‘socials’. The short form has been around for quite a few years now and in fact, I mentioned it in a couple of talks about language change I did in 2020. Back then, though, I felt a bit awkward using it myself – it didn't quite come naturally. Recently though, I've increasingly noticed myself using it unselfconsciously as it's eased its way into my idiolect. 

Then earlier this week, I found myself reading an academic paper about sociodemographics and attitudinal and personality predictors of lexical change (yes, really!). It’s based on research not into English, but Swiss German, and specifically dialect words and how their usage has changed over time. I don’t think the findings quite map onto English, at least not onto the kind of language change I was talking about above, because the discussion is tied up with quite specific cultural identities and the unique linguistics of Switzerland. However, one of the key findings of the study did pique my interest and got me thinking. The researchers found that it wasn’t just the obvious demographic factors, such as age, gender or educational background, that affected speakers’ use of different words, but that individual personality traits and attitudes also played a significant role in whether speakers adopted or resisted new words.

It got me thinking about the different people I know, meet or interact with and their varying attitudes to new words and language trends. The ones who are, like me, generally welcoming of (or at least neutral about) change and those who are more resistant. Which combinations of demographic factors, personality traits and attitudes shape the ways we view new language both as it’s used by others and that we’re comfortable to adopt ourselves? What factors do you think most affect your own idiolect, the way you view new language, and whether you’re an adopter or a resister?

 

Refs:
Leeman, Kistler, & Tomaschek (2026) “Beyond Sociodemographics: Attitudinal and Personality Predictors of Lexical Change” in Languages 11(3)

The academic article is fairly long and quite dense. I admit that I mostly read the intro and the discussion/conclusions and skipped the details in between. But if you have the patience, I think it contains some really interesting ideas. It’s also open access here.

Mundane language change

When I talk about language change and the need to keep dictionaries up-to-date with current language usage, people tend to immediately start talking about new words, and especially trending new coinages that they may have come across in the media, the likes of wokefishing or quiet quitting. But actually a huge amount of language change is much subtler and much more mundane.

Yesterday, I was looking into the noun form, in the sense of an application form or an entry form for a competition. Looking at different learner's dictionary definitions, I found a split between those which still describe it as a piece of paper to be written on, what we might now call a hard copy (a retronym) and those that have shifted to the more neutral description of a document which implies that it could be a piece of paper or in a digital format, maybe online. And of course, the word document itself has shifted and stretched in the same way.

You probably hadn't even noticed that the concept of a form, that always used to be a piece of paper, has slowly morphed to encompass digital and online formats too without us feeling the need for a new word - in the same way, for example, that we distinguish between a letter and an email.

A lot of language change is similarly undramatic. Words slowly shift from one usage to something slightly different or stretch seemlessly to encompass new concepts. As lexicographers, we have to be alert to these shifts, to gently tweak definitions to keep them current, and edit examples to reflect contemporary usage - in this case, likely showing examples that refer to both paper forms and digital ones.

Phrasal verbs: delivering on a trend

A couple of years ago, I worked on two phrasal verb projects for Collins, a new edition of the Collins COBUILD Phrasal Verbs Dictionary and Work on your Phrasal Verbs (2e), with my friend and frequent collaborator, Penny Hands. We ended up having quite a few discussions about the increasing trend for phrasal verbs and the reasons behind it. Penny wrote a post about it on the Collins ELT blog in which she discusses not just the completely new phrasal verbs that have come into use, but also the trend to add particles after verbs more often.

Since then, it’s something I can’t help noticing, both in everyday life and when I’m researching language for other projects. Last week, I was looking at the verb deliver and came across another phrasal verb trend that seems to have built over the past few years, deliver on sth.

 

[click to enlarge]

It isn’t a completely new combination, of course. Looking back at the old BNC compiled in the mid-1990s, I can find examples of the classic collocation, deliver on a promise, plus just 2 or 3 similar objects:

 

Looking at more recent corpus data though, it’s clear that classic collocation has expanded to include a much greater range of objects in recent years:

 

And it’s been extended from people delivering on promises, to things, especially products, delivering on what you’d hoped for:

 

My Word of the Year 2022: a year late?

At this time of year, dictionary publishers announce their Word of the Year (WOTY). It’s a move aimed largely at attracting publicity and it generally provokes various reactions in sections of the media. Different dictionaries use different criteria when choosing their WOTY, which are often missed or misunderstood by commentators, but maybe that’s part of the fun. This year’s crop so far include:

Collins have gone with a zeitgeisty buzzword: permacrisis

Cambridge went with one of their most looked-up words and a controversial Wordle US English solution: homer

Oxford have put their short-list out to a public vote: metaverse, #IStandWith, goblin mode (you have until 2 Dec to vote)

It got me mulling over what my own personal WOTY might be. I came up with quite a few key phrases that seem to have been around recently, including cost of living crisis and loss and damage (from the recent COP summit), but none of them seemed very snappy. Then as I thought back across my year, I realized that 2022 has largely been the year in which I felt I was getting back to something closer to normal post pandemic. (If we take pandemic to refer to the outbreak and spread of the disease rather than its continuing presence – which I’m all too aware of given I had my first bout of covid this summer.)

In-person

A key part of that sense of normality has been more freedom to meet up with people in person rather than online. Especially in a work context, I went to my first in-person conference for a couple of years with IATEFL in Belfast back in May and in-person meetings have started to return after a long period in which Zoom meetings became the norm.

And from a linguistic point of view, I realize it’s a word that’s slipped into being a fairly unconscious part of my vocabulary. For me at least, there was a time where I hesitated around what to call non-online interactions. Face-to-face was an obvious choice that had been around pre-pandemic but it felt a bit clunky. In some contexts, it could be reduced to f2f, but that didn’t work across speech and writing. In person as a phrase that comes after a verb is, of course, nothing new:

It was about six months before we met up in person.
... corresponded with him by e-mail and met him twice in person.
The profundity of the Kumbh Mela could only be experienced in person.
Discounted tickets must be purchased in person at the Dublin Zoo Ticket Office

[All examples in this post from the News on the Web (NOW) corpus at english-corpora.org]

What’s newer is its use as a modifier in front of a noun, mostly as a hyphenated form:

The pandemic all but stopped in-person community events.
The museum remained closed to in-person visitors for much of the year.
Restaurants and bars must close for in-person service but may remain open for pick-up or delivery.
Large, in-person gatherings like this were a rarity in 2020.

A year late?

When I looked at corpus evidence to see whether my sense of in-person coming into its own in 2022 was correct, I initially found I was behind the curve. Looking at stats from the NOW corpus, it clearly surges in use in 2020 and 2021, but actually drops off a bit in 2022.

When I looked a bit deeper though, what I found was a shift in context over time.  The top collocations through 2020 and 2021 were predominantly related to education - in-person learning, classes, instruction – which is unsurprising given the context of schooling over that period, switching between online learning and kids going back into school. This year’s top collocations though have seen a trend towards talking about in-person meetings and in-person interviews, which perhaps better reflects my own experience.

He reportedly summoned the company's software engineers to San Francisco headquarters for an in-person meeting.
If I'm facilitating an in-person meeting, I'll get to the room early to scope out the seating configuration.
The environmental impact of taking that trip for a one-hour in-person meeting becomes difficult to justify.
Whether it is a remote or in-person interview, be cautious that your answers don't seem rehearsed.
A lot of them required him to come for an in-person interview, and we were living six hours away.

I also wonder whether this will be a more enduring use. Where online education, at least at school level, was very much an emergency measure, it feels that meetings and interviews will continue to be a mix of online and in person. When we just need a quick, functional chat with a colleague, we’ll jump on a Zoom call, but when we really need a proper catch-up and to talk things over, we’ll opt for an old-school, face-to-face get-together. So, we need a retronym – a word that differentiates something that used to be the norm, but now needs to be explicitly stated, like a landline instead of a mobile phone, an acoustic guitar instead of an electric one, or a film camera instead of its now much-more-common digital counterpart. My hunch is that we’ll continue talking about in-person meetings for some time to come.

Eco-related language change: an #ELTCanDoECO lesson

Last week, I gave a talk at the 40^th TESOL France Colloquium about language change and how it’s relevant (or sometimes not) in the ELT classroom. I mentioned several of the key drivers of language change in recent years, including the pandemic, social change, social media, and technology more generally. I also talked about newly emerging language associated with the climate crisis and reactions to it, and I wanted to share one of my ecoliteracy lesson ideas more widely.

In my session, I mentioned some of the new eco-related coinages that have appeared, such as ecocide, rewilding, degrowth and greenwashing. There has also been a proliferation of new compounds formed from existing words in new combinations; net zero, climate vulnerable, regenerative farming, etc. All of which are fascinating and great lesson fodder, but which I’m going to leave aside for now and maybe return to in another post.

As a part of the eltfootprint community, I was inspired by the recent #ELTCanDoECO initiative that encourages ELT professionals to frame ecoliteracy in terms of the kind of Can-do statements we’re already familiar with in our teaching, from example from the CEFR. The initiative is encouraging people to contribute “examples of Can-do statements that straddle environmental competencies and linguistic learning outcomes” – so here’s mine focused around not completely new words, but perhaps appropriately, words which have been repurposed and given new meanings for a new context:

 

… can describe everyday sustainable actions

Environmental competency aims:

• To encourage learners to discuss ways they can reduce waste in their own everyday lives
• To promote discussion of solutions to reducing waste in the wider community
• To equip them with the language to express and pass on these ideas in English

Language learning outcomes:

• To raise learners’ awareness of patterns of word formation, especially the use of the prefix re-
• To expand their repertoire of re- verbs
• To focus on and practise typical verb + object collocations

Level: This lesson could be adapted for any class from about A2 upwards. For lower levels, introduce fewer of the re- verbs (maybe the key 3 + 2 or 3 others) and keep the tasks simple. For higher levels, use the full range of verbs and push students to develop, expand on and explain their ideas more fully rather than just creating simple, single-sentence responses.

1. Introduce the topic and three key verbs

Use the graphic to introduce these three key verbs – reduce, reuse, recycle. Elicit their meanings and encourage students to explain/discuss their relevance in this context. The initial discussion about overconsumption and waste, how it harms the environment (depleting resources and causing pollution from waste), and how these actions can help mitigate that harm will depend on the level of the students, their existing level of awareness of the issues, and perhaps, whether it’s a topic that’s been covered in class before. 

 

Tip: Stretch higher level students by throwing in some of the vocab I just used there, like overconsumption, deplete and mitigate.

2. Re- prefix and word formation

Highlight/underline the re- in the three verbs and ask students what the prefix usually means, i.e. it carries the idea of doing something again, of repeating. Then introduce as many of the additional re- verbs below as appropriate for the level – be careful not to overwhelm lower levels with too much new vocabulary, but higher levels should be able to cope with more as a lot of the words will be at least partially familiar. Either as a class or in groups, get students to explain the meanings of the new verbs and how they’re relevant in this context. 

 

NOTE: Reduce, refuse and respect don’t use the re- prefix in the same way as the others. If sharp-eyed students spot this, acknowledge that they don’t fit the pattern, but are, nonetheless, useful for getting across the message in a memorable way. Also recover, repair and refurbish don't work as standalone verbs without the re-, but the re- still has the same meaning.

3. Identify collocating objects

In groups, get students to add possible objects that could follow the different verbs in this context, making notes or mind maps of their ideas, e.g. recycle paper, plastic, glass; repair clothes, electronic devices, household items, etc. etc. Monitor, guide, collect ideas as a class and correct/introduce any relevant vocabulary.

4. Productive practice

The next stage is to get students to expand on some of their ideas in a more productive way. This could be done in class or as homework, with students working individually or in groups. My suggestion would be an individual homework task in which students choose maybe four of the verbs plus four of the objects generated in the groupwork. They then find or take appropriate photos to illustrate the actions and create social media posts with simple text to describe the actions. My examples below are all my own photos of things that either I do or, in the case of redesign, that I see happening in my community. These could, of course, also be hand-drawn/illustrated posters or any other format you choose.

Students then bring their posts to share with the class and explain (either to the whole class as mini presentations with their posts up on screen or in groups sharing their posts on their phones). Again, the length and detail of the explanation/presentation will depend on the level of the students – for lower levels just encourage students to put the ideas into full sentences, maybe a sentence or two about each image, for higher levels, push for more details about the how and why and whether the solution is effective. Again, give feedback on any language points and encourage discussion as appropriate.

© The images in this post were all created by me - feel free to copy and reuse them with your classes if you wish.