Language is technology and like all technologies it evolves over time.
These literary evolutions tend to receive scorn from older generations as newer ones embrace it, then as those generations grow old and new ones emerge - the cycle repeats.
2022 is here and Lake Superior University has released its annual lists of banished words, turning its nose up at modern colloquialisms - but it worth considering that what they consider formal language today will once have been considered slang.
The below article from 1884 is a little archival example we found of this repeating pattern of literary conservatism
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Slanguage: Slang as Technological Progress
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Language is technology and like all technologies it evolves over time.
These literary evolutions tend to receive scorn from older generations as newer ones embrace it, then as those generations grow old and new ones emerge - the cycle repeats.
2022 is here and Lake Superior University has released its annual lists of banished words, turning its nose up at modern colloquialisms - but it worth considering that what they consider formal language today will once have been considered slang.
The below article from 1884 is a little archival example we found of this repeating pattern of literary conservatism
Get new archival finds and analysis in your inbox via the Pessimists Archive Newsletter: