Our Changing Language and Our Changing Times

I was almost through reading a book I was enjoying when  I came across a sentence that made me stop and read it again.  “A child should know that they are loved.”  Yes, that was what it said.  “Child,” a singular noun, was paired with a plural pronoun.  The author was a well-respected magazine editor and writer of several books and scads of articles. How did he blunder like that? I did a little checking and found that it was no blunder. A lot  of people are treating the  language like that these days.

English teachers have always taught—yea, preached—that a pronoun is a substitute  noun, and that a singular noun is referred to by a singular pronoun.  “Child” is singular–one. “They” is plural, more than one. Putting child and they together is an obvious mismatch. But what is being done nowadays with pronouns is  considered permissible and legal usage. The mismatch   crept in to sidestep using “his or her” when the gender was unknown, as is true  in the case of “child.” Some people  consider using  “his or her” cumbersome, but a lot of us  consider not using it lazy. For a while  I got a little put out with the well-known author for breaking the noun/pronoun rule, but after checking sources, I decided “not to worry.” That’s the way  it’s done in this new age.  We say whatever  we want to. Language has always changed with time, and so our language is changing in many ways and will continue to change. But in some cases, it is being given a push and forced to change through carelessness, lack of knowledge,  or  a desire to satisfy new mores, such as  adjusting to make room for gender nonconforming persons.

There are so many areas where the language is being bent and twisted  in different ways  from what was taught for generations. Social media, a more casual style of expression,  can be blamed for some of these changes.  Yet, some individuals, especially English teachers, still think that correct grammar and usage is important.  I remember passing by a colleague’s office door and reading with a smile a cartoon posted there shortly after Barack Obama was elected president. The cartoon shows a crowd yelling “Yeah! Yeah!” A subdued onlooker asks, “Why are they so excited?” One from the crowd answers, “He knows grammar!” Yes, it’s possible to get excited about grammar. The Andrews Sisters, a popular singing group of the Fifties, had a hit song, “You Don’t have to Know the Language.”  That’s just a song. It does matter if you know the language.

Language gives us clues  about what a society is like. Linguists use language shifts and changes in vocabulary as historical markers to identify cultural patterns. The shifts often reflect what is happening in the society. Is our current mixup of tenses and pronoun references a sign of our confused, anything-goes world  where people are doing what comes naturally? Language  rules along with  long-held values  and  expected acceptable behavior  are falling by the wayside. I was in the checkout line at T.J. Max last week (I bought only one thing), and the woman  behind me and I struck up a conversation. She was  distressed that  the young person who had come to work in their office wore jeans torn up at the knees.  The lady bemoaned the fact that today some people seem to be unaware of appropriateness in dress, speech, and  behavior in the workplace and elsewhere.

However, if you talk about a standard of dress or behavior,  the question will come back at you, “Whose standard?” because  a large segment of society  believes everything is relative. They say that one’s idea of right  and wrong is just as good as anybody else’s. If it’s right for me, that’s what matters. In Old Testament  times when Israel was  ruled by judges, it was said that “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). That seems to sum up the way things are today.

Changes in our language are inevitable, so are changes in our society,  and we should be aware of both avenues of change. We, too, change, but as we change, let us not do what seems  right in our own eyes,  but have a deeper reason for what we do.  No matter what  occurs in the culture,  we should not allow ourselves to be  so overcome by the external  shifts  that we lose our bedrock values. As a part of God’s  stable kingdom on earth, we can have discernment to make choices  from a position of  wisdom and strength.

Blessings,

Judith

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A poet is, before anything else,
passionately in love
with language
***W. H. Auden