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Hello, I'm Lucy Hockings. From the BBC
World Service, this is The Global Story.
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For many thousands of years,
language has been changing.
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Here in the UK, the gradual departure from
what became known as the Queen's English
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is a trend which has often been characterised
as a threat to cultural identity.
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But with the advent of social
media, the pace of change
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may be running away from us.
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Phrases like "it's giving", "rizz", "no cap",
these are all terms which we attribute
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to internet culture and specifically to younger,
millennial and gen Z demographics.
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Today we're considering how the mass migration
to living our lives online is having
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an impact on the spoken
word in the real world.
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It's even made its mark on
the Oxford English Dictionary.
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Well, with me here in the studio today is
former BBC journalist, author and linguist
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Sophia Smith Galer and Neil Edgeller,
who is from BBC Learning English.
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Sophia, Neil, lovely to have
you with us on the pod. Hi.
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Hi.
Hello, Lucy.
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Neil, last night I sat with my teenage kids
as I now know you did as well and said,
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"I'm discussing language tomorrow.
Things have changed.
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I'm hearing these words from you
all the time. Can we talk about it?" And
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they were straight away like, "Mum, don't do it.
Don't use the words. Don't embarrass yourself.
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You will never come back from this at
all. You know, like this is just steer clear,
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play it straight". What did you say
to your teenage kids?
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Pretty much exactly the same conversation.
I've become aware of this whole range of
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vocabulary used by this generation that
seems completely and utterly exclusive and
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they find it funny when I try and use
those expressions because I use them badly.
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I mean you're such a boomer, if you
basically you start using these words you're
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tainted and it's a no-go.
And Sophia you don't have kids
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but I mean you're so aware of how language is
changing. And you're even writing a book at the
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moment about linguicide. What actually
is linguicide?
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So linguicide is the phenomenon of a language
disappearing and perhaps even dying or
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becoming extinct. And this is happening
around the world at an alarming rate. So a
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language disappearing because it's been
criminalised, war, genocide, other obvious
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examples. But linguicide equally can be
more covert. So linguists also described a
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language becoming associated with
shame and speakers being so ashamed of
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speaking that language,
they begin to speak another.
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And tell us about your job, Neil. You're
creating content to help people learn English. We
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make videos and podcasts and web pages to
help learners of English around the world,
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whatever level they are, to teach them
English, but also to help them to enjoy
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themselves in English.
Well, language is obviously the social
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tool that we all use to communicate. But as we've
already discussed, it's so different depending on
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the generation that's talking and we
alter our language depending on who
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we're talking to. When it comes to our kids and
what we're seeing particularly with the younger
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generations, Neil, what sort of words are
you seeing emerge at the moment?
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Now we're gonna mention some of the
words that we're not supposed to mention.
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Okay, I'm gonna let you do it.
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So I think of all of the
things I've heard recently,
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the most fascinating is this word, skibidi.
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That was the first one that came up
at my dinner table as well.
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Can you use it in a sentence?
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Well, I don't think I can
effectively. I can try and I get
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laughed at. But it's very,
very fluid grammatically.
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So for example, I have heard the expression,
the skibidi rizzler.
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Rizzler is connected to this word
rizz, which we may come on to talk
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about as well. But skibidi seems to be
able to be thrown in almost anywhere.
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And nobody, including my kids, can tell me what
it really means. I think that's part of the whole
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sort of exclusivity of each generation's use
of language.
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To the point about exclusivity and saying,
"Mum, please don't say this word." We should
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think of language speaking also as identity
making. So if you are in a subgroup and you
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use particular phrases to signify 'I am part
of this group', the minute you start hearing
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these phrases adopted outside of the group,
it's not the in-group language anymore. So
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it stops being the in-group language of teenagers,
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for example, because mum's using it.
And then they'll just start using another one.
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But Sophia, what Neil and I are finding
challenging is this is changing so quickly all the
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time. Neil's already mentioned rizz. I
remember doing quite a kind of academic
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interview around the word rizz when
it was the Oxford word of the year.
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The Oxford word of the year has been revealed
and this year it's rizz. Now, if you've no
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idea what that means, don't worry, you
might just be over 30. I'm lucky I've got
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teenagers, I know this one.
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The kids are not using rizz anymore. They might
use it in a slightly patronising ironic way.
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But Neil's now saying they're
using rizzler. What's rizzler?
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A rizzler is a person who has rizz.
Duh.
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See? I'm getting myself into all sorts of trouble
here and all sorts of traps. But it is so, it's
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evolving so quickly.
It's evolving really quickly. And if you
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think about in the past how languages developed
and changed. A language will always change
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because our needs as people change and
different and new things happen. And in the past,
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you may have lived in a remote village
and the only language contact or contact
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you had with any kind of linguistic innovation
would have been some trader rolling into town
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and then moving forward or maybe
perhaps you would move. Today,
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if you're consuming mass media in social media,
you're actually seeing a very diverse array of
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different voices from around the world.
I can be speaking to my nephews at home
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in New Zealand, a world away, it seems to
me, and yet they're using the same words
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as my teenage kids here in London. That
wasn't the case when we were younger.
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No, it wasn't. And that's part of this
homogenisation that social media brings, that the
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kids are using the same slang globally. When
I was at school, the words that we would
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use to describe a really bright person or a
less bright person might be different from the
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words used by someone who was brought up
in a different part of the same country.
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Neil is it just video-based social media or
is there influence here around text sites and
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micro blogging and things as well?
Absolutely yes and a lot of the new
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vocabulary that we've seen emerging over the
last few years comes from blogging and
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from online communities communicating
through text. People are walking around
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and saying LOL and FOMO and YOLO to each
other. That's an interesting development.
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And we're saying LOL. We're not saying L-O-L.
We're not saying F-O-M-O. We've adopted
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them into the sort of existing lexical
structure that we have so that they sound like
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normal words.
And that didn't take long?
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Didn't take long at all, no.
And with some of these words, the skibidi,
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the rizz, rizzler, no cap. Where do they come
from? Is it just, is it from different cultural
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groups? Is it from different sectors of society?
Where are they actually emerging from?
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A lot of the words are being innovated within
in-groups and then they get introduced to
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the mainstream. We're seeing a lot of
vocabulary coming from black and Latino LGBT
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culture in the US. We're seeing loads of
expressions coming from that, like "it's giving",
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"slay", all come from those spaces. We're
also seeing language emerging from what
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actually were incel subculture words from
even the 2000s. Some of these expressions
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don't even come from the 2010s. They're a
little older than we think. When it comes to
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social media and language change, we think a
term is new, but in reality, it's likely been
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in circulation for some time before a sort
of more influential person perhaps uses the
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term and then we see the words leave these
peripheries and leave these subgroups they
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become mainstream and it's these words
that then become more widely adopted.
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And Neil do you think it's also like with our
kids and I'm trying to think back to when I was
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young as well it's a bit of an act of rebellion?
Yeah absolutely yes and I think the interesting
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thing about the language change we're
seeing at the moment is just the pace
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in comparison to pre-internet discourse.
You know, the words are there all around
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the world immediately. Some get picked up,
some don't. And that happened before,
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but it was just much slower.
I mean, we need to cast our mind back
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before 1989, the World Wide Web. What was
happening with language before then.
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Well, I remember when I was at school.
Back in the day.
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The reinvention of the word wicked, meaning
great or cool or whatever. I think I am just
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by about a year too old to use that and feel
comfortable using it, even though it's been in
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circulation for about 30 years now. So
these words have always come about and been
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reinvented, this, what they call semantic
shift, where a word has an original meaning
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and then suddenly has a new meaning. And it's
all tied up with the exclusivity and stuff.
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But it's the pace with which it happens
these days, which is really astounding.
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Sophia, you speak many languages.
A couple.
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Italian, Arabic.
I studied Spanish and Arabic at university
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and my family speaks Italian. I grew up
hearing it but not speaking it.
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So what about these other languages in the
world? Is it the same? I mean, are they
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experiencing the same kind of changes in
these words that we are seeing in English?
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Oh, certainly. All languages are experiencing
the phenomena we've described, such as
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linguistic innovation and adopting new
words. The obvious difference that we may
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observe in other languages is the influence
of English and the fact that English as a
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language, it holds prestige
in so many global domains.
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And there are moves right around the world
to try and protect language. I mean, I spend
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some time in French speaking Canada and
there's real moves to sort of stop the creep
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of English into French that spoke in there.
Giorgia Meloni, the leader in Italy right now,
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very protective of the Italian language.
Countries have different attitudes towards
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how much they try and control linguistic
change, which defies control. Languages are,
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even speaking to linguicide that I'm
writing about, the idea that a language
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can die must therefore mean a language can live.
So as living things, they're really difficult to
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control. And if you say to people, you can't
use this word that we're now hearing lots
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of people say you must use the French
version. It's kind of coming a little bit
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too late because the French version didn't
immediately dominate or resonate with
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speakers. So it can actually be quite
challenging. You're trying to reverse
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time almost in something like that.
Neil, I wonder if words as well and
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phrases that we use can sometimes just be
fashionable. I mean, I'm not talking about rizz,
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only lasting 18 months or whatever, but
other words and phrases that grab hold and
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are trendy but then kind of die away again,
almost like fashion or clothing or music.
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Yeah, I think that's right. You can look at
expressions which are used by many people
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over a short period of time that then kind
of vanish. So we have at BBC Learning English
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podcast called The English We Speak. We look
at idiomatic expressions that are sort of
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trending at the time. A couple of years
ago, we were talking about blended working,
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blended working, working
at home and in the office.
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Yeah, I haven't heard that one for a while.
People don't use it anymore. We all say hybrid
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working now. So yes, there is a fashion for
these words, they come and go.
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And Sophia, you've not just been looking at
how our vocabulary has changed, but it's the
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way we say things as well. And this notion of
up-talk, particularly sort of rising at the end
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of a sentence. I'm from New Zealand. I
mean, we all speak like that at home and
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in the antipodes. I also wondered if it's
not just social media that's influencing
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the way that we speak. It's maybe
years of everyone watching Neighbours.
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We have always used up-talk. I mean, it's
most characteristic, I think, for asking
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questions. I just did it there, asking
questions. That would be up-talk with this rising
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intonation at the end of the phrase. When
it comes to social media and using up-talk,
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something that I've written about in the
past is how asking is there a TikTok voice or
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accent, is there a way that I speak, that I
adopt when I'm making a TikTok video. The idea
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is that when we make video content, we use a
lot of rising intonation possibly to relate
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to our audience.
It's more engaging. It's more engaging.
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Another theory is that I'm keeping you
listening. The rising intonation suggests there's
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more to come.
You're hooking people.
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Hooking people in. When it comes to social
media video, if I can complete a video
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retaining someone's attention, it's more
likely to perform better on the algorithm. So
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actually what's possibly happening is creators
are furthering linguistic innovation based
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on algorithmic direction, which is fascinating.
Neil, speaking of intonation, what about the
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change to pronunciation? Are we seeing
some British words change and they're
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now said in a much more American way?
There used to be a much greater distinction
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between the way Americans would say or
pronounce a word and the way that British
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people would and now that's more fluid and
we're not able to say with such certainty that
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that's American English and that's British
English, so let's have an example of the
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word which I say as 'schedule'. Younger
members of BBC Learning English say 'schedule',
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and 'schedule' is what we used to say
was the American pronunciation.
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What about grammar then, Neil? Are we
seeing those changes? They must surely be
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slower.
Grammar really does change slowly. You
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can look at, for example, you could pick up a
copy of Frankenstein, which was written
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200 years ago and absolutely understand it
completely. There's nothing in the grammatical
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structures which will confuse you. But
something that has happened and has
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happened more quickly recently because
probably of social media is something known
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as verbing which is turning nouns into
verbs.
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I love doing this.
And the most obvious one is
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Google to Google or to friend.
We are podcasting.
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And so that is actually a grammatical change
which we have seen accelerate recently.
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Sophia, is language change picking
up momentum? Is it getting faster?
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As media will change, linguistic innovation
will change. So it's already so hyperfast and
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powerful in the current vertical video climate
that we're in and the amount of language
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we are exposed to. It's hard to imagine how
that can get even sort of more hyperactive,
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but I'm quite confident it will.
And Neil, in terms of your job, do you love
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all these changes to the language? Are you
slightly horrified sometimes?
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I'm not horrified in the slightest. I know lots
of people are, and they think that it's wrong
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and that mistakes are being made. But
language is dynamic. No one here is sitting
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talking like Chaucer, You know, language
changes and I think it's exciting and we need to
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embrace it and at BBC Learning English we
try to describe language as it is rather than
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prescribe the way it ought to be.
What about the future of language? If
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we could look ahead Sophia, what do you think's
going to happen in the next 20, 30 years?
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I think a lot of the future is predictable
in that when I am in my 40s, 50s, 60s, I'm
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probably going to start thinking why are my
kids or the kids around me saying all these
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bizarre words that I've sort of never heard of.
And what do you think, Neil, do you think the
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other thing that might happen is that we'll
see some language sadly die out,
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some languages, because of the prevalence of
English, the prevalence of what people are
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consuming online is going to really influence
what's spoken in the home?
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Yeah, unfortunately, that is a reality. I mean,
languages are dying all the time. And one of
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the features of language in the
social media age is homogenisation.
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Linguicide is such an urgent and pressing
issue because it's believed by the end of the
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century that we are in half of the
world's languages will disappear.
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I have a positive story to tell from New
Zealand about that, about how much more Māori
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is spoken in New Zealand than when I was
young. And when we talk about how quickly
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things change, when I go back home, I
can't believe how much more Māori has just
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spoken in everyday life, among people just
casually, it's not a big thing at all.
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They are an example to the world. They are
used all the time in language revitalisation
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work as examples of how a language that
appears to be dying, becoming extinct,
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whatever phrase you prefer, can
revitalise and acquire new speakers.
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I can't have any conversation about anything
that looks at the future anymore without
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mentioning AI. Oh yeah. Is there an
influence there as well? Is that going
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to change
language?
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Interestingly AI is being used again if we
look at linguicide and endangered languages.
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I've done reporting looking at how AI is
helping people revive their languages or create
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resources very quickly that are able to
support speakers who want to reclaim or
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revitalise a language but again we're seeing
examples where perhaps the AI tools being
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made, especially out of endangered languages
where accuracy is so important because
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there aren't lots of sources necessarily
for them, and the AI hallucinating making up
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words or expressions or grammars for these
languages we described as being of low
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resource, like there's not loads of training data
to train in AI. I would say AI isn't all bad. It
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brings lots of very useful tools for communities,
but it kind of has to be observed and
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watched. And if it's misbehaving,
it has to be told off.
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Well, it's been wicked to have you
both on the podcast. Sophia, thank you.
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Thank you.
Neil, good to see you, thanks.
00:18:18
Thank you.
If you want more episodes of The Global
00:18:20
Story, you can find us wherever you get your
podcasts. We do one big story in depth every
00:18:26
day and don't forget to subscribe. Thanks
for watching, goodbye.
