Words on the Move

Tonight’s speaker is Professor John McWhorter. And many of you may know him from his public writings. And I don’t know how many times I’ve been looking through something online on the New Republic or The Atlantic and reading some things and say, boy, this is really clever and I think this a really great article, and then flip back to the top and it’s John who’s writing this particular work. And John’s particular aspect, even though as an academic he is known for writing on creoles and thinking a lot about, very deeply about how languages form, come together through contact. And I think that’s a really important piece in terms of his public writing because that allows him to be able to talk and to think about how language in our own lives is developing through contact and it’s changing over time. And I think that’s really important and it’s been recognized this year by the Linguistic Society of America with an award. Let me get the exact name. The award is Linguistics, Language and the Public Award, and he’s very deserving of that award. It’s nice to see the society acknowledge that.

John has written numerous books, and many of the books sort of balance between academic works, where he’s talking about creoles, and also ones that are more sort of in the popular sphere, like “The Power of Babel,” in terms of doing our own thing about language as well. One of the books that I’ll talk about in a minute that I’ve enjoyed actually was his second book, “Word on the Street.” I’ll come back to that in a minute. John got to the point where he was, or is, as a public intellectual. First got his bachelor’s at Rutgers in French, then moved on to NYU to get his master’s, and then on to Stanford where he graduated in 1993. His work has taken him from Cornell and then to Berkeley, and then he did something that most academics would never do: he stepped out of the academy and got a job at the Manhattan Institute, where he was for a number of years before returning to Columbia University where he is now. And the one thing I started pointing out in this particular book, “Word on the Street,” it was interesting, when I came here almost 20 years ago now, starting out my career, I taught a class on language and ethnicity, and one of the textbooks was “Word on the Street.” And the one thing that I’ve always quoted him on, like every year, every class, is this metaphor that he uses about language change being like a lava lamp. And I think that’s– I don’t know if I just stole your whole talk tonight. [laughter] I figured because that book was, you know, book number two out of 18, 20 books. – That was 14, 20. That’s funny. – Yeah.

And that particular metaphor I just think is always powerful in my classes because we talk about language change and how through contact, and you can sort of think of it, even with the heat inside the lava lamp, the sort of compression of the molecules and the way that it works in terms of change, that change is not directional in terms of language change. It’s not like we’re all moving in one way. It’s just that it’s moving, and we can’t necessarily predict where those blobs are going to go. And I think John has done a fantastic job for the field, a real service to the field, in being able to explain a lot of how language works in many different spheres and be able to do that in a way with real insight. So please join me in welcoming Professor John McWhorter. [applause] – Tom, thank you for the introduction, and thank you, University of Wisconsin, for having me here to share with you a message that actually, Tom, you haven’t ruined it, but it’s about– [laughter] How words are always on the move because language is like a lava lamp, and it can be very hard to fully understand that because we don’t feel like we’re speaking a lava lamp. But that’s what language really is. That’s what it’s always been. English is not different. It’s not different just because it’s after about 1970.

All language spoken by any human beings is like a lava lamp, and that’s because words are always on the move. What I want to get across to you briefly is a different way of looking at what language is. That, in a way, you’re not told. It’s almost as if there are people who want to keep the truth from you. So, for example, language change. If you ask anybody, do you want language to change, everybody would say, oh, well, of course, I understand that language always changes. But I’m not sure we always understand how very changeable language is and in what ways. And so, for example, all of us know that if there are new things, then there are going to need to be new words for them. You couldn’t miss that.

But I don’t think it’s as easy to know that language changing is as inevitable as cloud patterns changing. So, if you looked up in the sky tomorrow and saw the same cloud pattern as you saw this afternoon, you’d know something was wrong. It’s inherent to the way the weather works that the clouds are always going to be different. Language is the same way. It’s not that sometimes it changes, it’s that it’s inherent to its very nature to always be on its way to being something else, and that includes English and that includes in modern times. Hard to feel it, but it’s true. Or we know that words will come in from foreign languages, but we don’t know this: it’s not just cultural contact, it’s not just cultural change. If you took a group of people and you put them into a cave and you left them there for 3,000 years, somehow they could eat, but, you know, whatever else they wanted to do, but they cannot come out of the cave and they just have to be in there, reproducing for 3,000 years, and then you take that big rock away and they come walking out. They would be speaking a different language than the original people who were in there, even though there had been no cultural change in the cave.

All that they had seen was bats hanging upside down. [laughter] That’s all there was. Nothing changed. But language is always ooching along and changing because it just does. Notice, I didn’t say because it has to. It doesn’t have to anything. It’s just that it does. And so that’s something that we might not know. We know that there are always new slang and new idioms, but not that any dictionary page that we see is just a snapshot of something that’s always moving. Hard to know these things.

There are five things that you can know that can get across the very nature of this. So I want to start with a few word meanings. Audition: immediately you think of somebody standing there and reciting some Shakespeare or something like that. But if you look at the word, it’s about hearing. And now that I make you think about it, you know that that word must have started out meaning hearing. It gradually evolved into meaning trying out on a stage. Lewd, first, just meant that you didn’t know much. It meant unlearned. Now, if you’re unlearned, then you might be kinky or something like that and so it gradually evolved.

Nobody knew but originally the word meant unlearned. To Shakespeare, lewd meant that you were ignorant, and now here we are, the clouds changed. Merry, started out meaning short, of all things. That which is sweet often doesn’t take too long. Next thing you know, merry means short. That’s how words go. Key point, I’m not showing you the interesting cases. I didn’t have to dig. This is normal.

The words that don’t change like that are the ones that are heavily used. It’s a few very meat and potatoes sorts of words, like “I,” “you” and “and.” Maybe brother and sister, but then notice what brother has come to mean in many ways lately. But for the most part, that’s what words do. And so, take a word like blessed. Now, we know what blessed means. Now, if you’re blessed, then you could be considered innocent. And so there is a word that meant blessed in earlier English, which, as time went by, came to mean innocent because you think of a blessed person as probably not being culpable. Okay. If a person is innocent, presumably they’re harmless. So after a while, that word meant harmless.

If you’re harmless, you’re weak. So a word that first meant blessed, after about 500 years meant that you were weak. Step by step, nobody ever noticed, people lived and died, but next thing you knew, this happened. If you’re weak, it might be that it’s kind of weak in the brain that people are talking about. You might be kind of slow on the uptake. You might be a little bit stupid, and if you’re a little stupid, then you might be kind of a silly billy. And so, if you are one, then you’re silly. The original word was selig. Our word is silly.

Silly used to mean blessed. Isn’t that the most amazing thing? That is how words change. That’s our language. Nobody ever woke up and said, “Mommy, the word silly’s meaning is changing.” Within a given lifetime it always meant the same thing, but it started out meaning that. And look what the original meaning was. It was happy. And so you can go from happy and then down to goofy all throughout the ages. That’s just words. Why is this important? It actually helps you in your life to know this. And so, for example, Shakespeare.

You know, Shakespeare, the Bard. Shakespeare’s so wonderful. I’m sure that those of you who are students here have had classes where you’ve had to take some Shakespeare. And we all know that when you go to see a Shakespeare play, unless you have read it beforehand and then probably about three weeks beforehand, and unless you’ve had a whole lot of coffee– [laughter] Unless it’s one of the comedies, it’s tiring. You can admit it. I’m openly admitting it. And I am familiar with many stages of English and I’m a theater person. “King Lear,” if you haven’t read it, I’m sorry. Now you can talk about how poetic it is, etc., but still.

It may be poetic, but you’ve enjoyed many poems more. [laughter] There’s a reason why, when you’re out there in that lobby and everybody’s saying how wonderful it was with a tear rolling down their cheek, you know something’s wrong. This is what’s wrong. [laughter] Shakespeare is wonderful, but just because he uses the words we’re familiar with doesn’t mean that we can understand all or sometimes even most of what he’s saying. And the reason is because of this whole silly phenomenon that I was showing. So, for example, here’s a bit of “Macbeth.” _ Here’s some poetry, or, you know, the idea that Shakespeare is better when people have British accents. So you can imagine this said in a British accent and still, frankly. “Besides, this Duncan hath borne his faculties so meek…” His what? [laughter] But unfortunately we’re not reading it. And the person just keeps on going. He’s in a costume.

So, “Besides, this Duncan hath borne his faculties so meek hath been so clear in his great office.” Clear in your office? I’m not clear in my office. I’m in a chair. I don’t know what that means, but there’s no time. “That his virtues will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against the deep damnation.” Right there you relax a little bit because you actually understood all of it. “The deep damnation of his taking off.” Taking what off? And then it just kind of keeps going and going. And then, you think to yourself, well, I guess because it’s poetic or I’m not British or I’m tired. No, it’s because those words meant to Shakespeare something quite different than what they meant to us. They meant these things, so…

“Besides, this Duncan hath borne his authority so meekly.” So that’s what it means. Authority. “And he’s been so pure in his great office,” so well behaved. Clear, opaque. Pure, poetic. We wouldn’t say that we’re pure in anything that we do in our office now, but we know what it means. _ That his virtues will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against the deep damnation of his knocking off. And you know what it means. There you go. So it goes from this, where it is beautiful, like a vase, to this, where you can imagine Kevin Spacey saying, Who? Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t.

[loud laughter] That was not intentional. I’m sorry. It always reminds me of one of his speeches on “House of Cards.” Okay, sorry. Let’s just take all that. [speaking gibberish] So, and then, you can look at this and you can imagine Sir Alec Guinness saying it. [laughter] And there you go. And so that is why Shakespeare is so difficult. There are some people engaged right now in preparing actual performing editions of Shakespeare where just the occasional word, like that, is substituted. And the wonderful thing is that you can actually experience Shakespeare without tears. And yet, needless to say, those people don’t get to play in anybody’s reindeer games because they’re said to be desecrating the text.

Well, I think that’s– We could call it a little bit blessed or silly. [laughter] So what this means is that, logically, there is no such thing as a community of speakers using a word wrong. That sounds off, but the fact is it doesn’t scientifically make any sense. If a representative number of people are using a word in a certain meaning, then the meaning has changed as it inevitably would have. It’s not unusual when people are using a word in a new way. It’s how old English became modern English. Now, a reasonable objection is, but if a person can use a word any way that they want to, then doesn’t it interfere with clarity? That is a very reasonable question too, which the answer does happen to be no. And it’s because it’s people, not a person, who uses a word in a new way. Meaning change is communal.

There’s never been a language discovered where people started using meanings in their own ways and not understanding one another. If it happened, it would be interesting, but nobody has ever discovered that happening. So words’ meanings are always in a process of change. As you live a life, if you’re lucky enough to live a long one, you’ll notice some words that don’t mean what they used to. Most people don’t live that long. But with written records, you can see that it’s inevitable. So we’re speaking something that’s changing. Second point: the faces of English. And what I mean by this is that there are a great many words that we use that don’t have meanings in the sense that we’re trained to think of meaning.

And we’re talking about our little markers of factuality, acknowledgment, counter-expectation, and easing. Now, you know that I carefully crafted this so that I could get the FACE acronym. [laughter] That is not an academic paradigm, but it works. And so we’re just going to stick with it. So what do I mean by those things? Well, factuality. Take something like “really” and how often we say “really.” It’s a part of speaking to constantly reassure who we’re speaking to that we’re sincere. We all do it much more than you’d think we would feel that we need to. But we just do. Really_ doesn’t mean in reality, the way we use it so much. We don’t even pronounce it as real-ly. It’s “really.” It’s R-I-L-L-Y.

You learn gradually, as you get older, that it’s R-E-A-L-L-Y, but, really, it’s not “really,” “it’s “rilly.” So it’s a factuality marker. And here comes the story of poor “literally” and how it’s used. [laughter] People are so angry. I’ve seen T-shirts about this poor, little word. Why is it that people are using “literally” when really they mean “figuratively”? Ah, the sky is falling. People aren’t as smart as I am. People do not like “literally” at all. Well, first of all, people are always saying this. Have you listened to how people are using “literally” lately? And I have because I’ve only been born lately.

But here is a passage: “He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival. It is literally to feed among the lilies.” Now, you can tell from that phraseology that that was not written lately. That was written thenly. [laughter] So this is 1769, and somebody is using “literally” in just the way that everybody is so upset about now. And the reason that “literally” is not a problem is because people say, well, how can it be that we’re using a word to mean its opposite? So you are running fast, that means that it’s not slow. Okay. That’s probably the first meaning you think of. So how come we say fast asleep? Is anybody running when they’re asleep? I hope not. How come something can be stuck fast? Anything that’s stuck fast is completely separate from any conception of rapidity. So it means that fast can mean both like a rabbit and like a bench. Now, have you ever thought about that? Probably not.

And if you have, you moved on. I mean, if anything, it’s… [laughter] It’s really cool. Or look at seed and sow. Most immediately I think of putting seeds in the ground so that they’ll grow into something. But then, on the other hand, if you seed a watermelon, I think you are highly unlikely to buy a seedless one and then buy some watermelon seeds and then put the seeds in. So that you can enjoy it. You would never consider such a thing. You are taking the seeds out.

Well, have you ever had any problem with that? Anybody told you to go seed the garden, did you think that they meant you’re going to go dig in the ground and take the seeds out to make sure nothing grows? No. Never had a problem with it. These are called contronyms, and you can tell why. And there is a list of about 75 of them in English. The 75th one is “literally.” [laughter] And so we have a word that means both itself and its opposite. And, frankly, about 10 minutes ago everybody made “literally” Ken Golden. Ken Golden is the kid in sixth grade who everybody starts making fun of for no reason at all. You know, there’s nothing wrong with him. He doesn’t dress funny, but there’s some foible he has, one of his teeth is a little off or something, and all the sudden everybody starts making fun of Ken Golden.

When really it could have been Steven Lobe, it could have been Michael Safranski, it could have been Eric Stein. But, no, it had to be Ken Golden. “Literally” is that kid in sixth grade. There is nothing wrong with “literally” that isn’t wrong with “fast” and “bolt” and “bound” and “give out” and “seed” and “splice” and “dust.” And what I’m saying is that “literally” is a factuality marker. It’s evolved into fulfilling that function that all languages have equipment for. Another example: acknowledgment. We’re always acknowledging each other’s frames of mind, and it involves recruiting some word that originated meaning something else and now is an acknowledgment marker. And so, for example, “totally.” Totally” doesn’t mean completely in the usage that we think of as slangy and some people say is improper. Suppose you say, “He’s totally going to call you.” Now, does that mean that he is going to call you completely? [laughter] Like he’s going to complete the call and then he’s going to push the button? No! “He’s totally going to call you,” implies, without you having to say a thing or raise your eyebrows, that there are other people that you and I know think that he’s not going to call but he’s going to call you.

“Oh, he’s totally going to call you.” _ That’s what it means. Taylor Swift is coming to town. We’re totally going to get tickets. [laughter] That implies that there’s somebody who thinks it would be a little bit jejune or somehow wrong to buy the tickets, but you’re going to anyway because, gosh darn it, you love her. [laughter] That’s what the “totally,” that’s what the totally means. It’s an acknowledgment marker which has developed from what did used to mean completely. It was 1930, “totally” meant completely. Now it means something different. “You know” is an acknowledgment marker. Everybody hates how often people say “you know,” but what “you know” is for is to check that the person you’re talking to is on the same page as you. It’s actually very sweet.

And, like many things that are very sweet, it’s very, very old. So this is on “The Canterbury Tales,” and nobody likes “The Knight’s Tale,” and so in school you don’t usually get that one. But if you comb through the whole thing, you can find some interesting things, and I don’t just mean the sex. Look at “I am, thou wost, yet of thy company, “a maid, and love hunting and venery.” Okay. “Wost” meant know, and so what she’s saying is, “I am, you know, yet of thy…” That’s what she’s saying, yet… [laughter] That was the worst British accent, but anyway… [laughter] That’s what that was. Counter-expectation. So much of language is about conveying that something is not what one would expect what is the norm.

And so, for example, you never know what word is going to be recruited to convey that. And in English, one of those words is ass, of all things. It’s become kind of a suffix. And what I mean by that is this: imagine there’s somebody looking out the window, and they say, “Oh, look, it’s a gray-ass squirrel.” [laughter] Imagine somebody saying that. Now you think that person has a potty mouth. But actually is has more meaning than that. If a person says that a squirrel is gray-ass, they mean I would expect the squirrel, there’s some places where the squirrels are black. I can never remember where, but if the person comes from one of those places, than the gray ones look a little kind of cut-rate. And so you say, “Oh, look, it’s a gray-ass squirrel.” It means a squirrel that you wouldn’t expect to be that color.

A big-ass pot means a pot that’s bigger than you would expect to make the spaghetti. [laughter] That’s the first time I ever heard anybody use this. And so ass, of all things, is a grammatical marker of counter-expectation. And yet, a lot of people hear somebody say something like, Boy, this is a long-ass movie, and they think that person is profane, when, actually, that person is counter-expectational. [laughter] And then we have our easing. And so when we are talking to each other, we are constantly reassuring one another that everything’s okay. We’re reassuring one another that we mean it. We’re looking into their brains. We’re entertaining one another with what one wouldn’t expect. And we’re keeping things easy.

When we’re actually talking to each other, that involves a lot of empty laughter. Listen to people having conversations. I mean almost everybody. And there’s all this [making noises]. All that in between sentences. When people are talking about addition, long division, shoes, and yet there’s all this giggling. And the reason that we do that is because that shows that everything is okay. I once had a neighbor who never did that. I didn’t like him.

Nobody liked him. [laughter] Because he didn’t do it. [laughter] He lacks his wife now. I’ll bet she didn’t like it. And that’s because he was not an easer. So, L-O-L. So you can read all these things on BuzzFeed about how it doesn’t have any meaning and then, you know, all this stuff. No, it does have meaning, it’s just not the kind of thing we’re trained to think of as meaning. This is from something that was on BuzzFeed.

And so this is two people, I guess this is called flirting. And so, “I like you.” [chuckles] Smooth. “I’m pretty sure everyone else figured “that out before you, LOL.” [laughter] “I don’t know, just assuming. I wasn’t sure if you did, LOL, but I guess is shouldn’t assume. They charged me again, so it won’t cancel for a while, LOL.” What? What? See, it obviously not funny. “Oh, LOL. “Yeah, they charged me again, but only for a month.” [laughter] So much content in that conversation [laughter] But what are all those LOLs? Why are they doing it so much? And, you know, it’s not about laughter because nothing’s terribly funny. They’re flirting and a lot of flirting is putting one another at ease. That’s kind of a sine qua non of trying to get into somebody’s… life. [laughter] And so you have to have these easings.

And so it has that function. This is actually highly-edited down. There are about 12 back and forths between these two people, and everything is with the LOL, LOL, LOLs because it’s easing. So the FACEs of English. Non-standard dialect is easing. And so if somebody switches into something like black English or somebody is a standard English speaker but they switch into Appalachian English, if right here somebody sounds a little bit differently when they’re talking to a friend about something kind of intimate than they sound if they spoke in a classroom, measuring exactly when some people would be more likely to say “beg” than “bag,” all of that is easing. It’s about comfort zone. And it’s really important to speaking languages as a human being rather than as some kind of robot. So words are on the move partly in just their meanings change in that Shakespearean way.

Then, also, words are often becoming these FACE markers. And you could never stop it. There were FACE markers in old English. There are FACE markers in every language. So those are the big two. Then there are three little other ones. So, grammar. Where do the little bits come from? Something else that happens to words. So, you c’n do it. Where did the c’n, that little c’n, where did that come from? That started out as the verb “to know.” These little words come from something.

They start as something bigger and more solid. “Ought.” Ought’s an odd word. Ever think about it? It’s kind of like if I tell you, you have a tongue. And you think about that thing in your mouth. It’s kind of wet and it’s kind of big and it’s got food probably in the back of it. But you’ve got a tongue and you can’t get rid of it. Think about “ought.” Ought. What an odd word. Where did that come from? Who made that up? They didn’t. It used to be owed.

And so he ought to know that, it was he owed. It’s something that he was culpable of. What’s “ly”? Where did it come from? Did God make it? That’s a little simplistic. Where did it come from? It came from the word “like.” And the word “like” first meant body. Step by step by step. And so that sort of thing is all over your language. And so you can see it happening in relatively recent developments. Richard III might say, “Let us go.” Okay. Richard Rogers, the composer, said, “Let’s go.” I’m sure he said that once in his life.

So, “Let us go.” “Let’s go. We often say, “‘t’s go.” “‘t’s go.” Or “‘st forget it,” “‘st forget it.” “St,” it’s just a prefix. So it started out as “let us,” but we say, the Martian would hear us saying, “‘st.” And it came from “let us.” So that’s something else that happens to words all the time. They’re churning down into becoming these little appendages. And so, for example, it has been guessed that if we say “walked,” that way, way back it started out as what would translate as “walk” did. And so words are always winding up as parasites on other words in that way. And that’s happening all the time. Forth. Words are on the move because sounds change. They change all the time.

The vowels never stop moving, in particular. If a language’s vowels stop moving, then the language would not be a living language. That would be a language spoken only by people who were dead. The vowels are always moving. Now, you can’t think about A, E, I, O, U. That is as tragically artificial a representation of what the vowels are in our mouth as the musings of a toddler are to what an adult human being’s thoughts are. A, E, I, O, U is a tragic mistake. We have many, many, many vowels, and this is where they sit in the mouth. And so if you look at that left column with the beat, bate, bat, that’s the front of your head if you were in “Game of Thrones” and somebody chopped it down in half.

[laughter] I don’t know why I had it chopped in half. So, beat, bate, boat. And then bat. Then you have boat and boot and bought, back there. That’s the back of your mouth. And then everything else happens in the middle. What’s interesting is that so many things where it’s natural to hear someone talking a certain way and think, “Well, what’s up with that? Why doesn’t he stop that?” “Why do they talk that way up there?” Or something like that. When, actually, it’s completely natural if you understand that vowels are like chinchillas. [laughter] Chinchillas are, some people have them as pets. I knew a guy and they were in a cage, and all they did was move all around each other.

It was kind of like a lava lamp except with feces, and… [laughter] He would pop these things out at parties, and I would always think those chinchillas were like vowels. [laughter] And it’s because they’re always moving. And so there’s a person you can imagine these days who’s probably under 40 where, when they say “bit,” if you close your eyes and you don’t have anything else to do, they’re kind of saying “bet.” So I’ll have a little bit. That person will say, “Oh, I’ll have a little bet.” “I’ll have a little bet.” Now, we hear them as saying bit, and then we think, well, she’s nasal or something. But the Martian would hear “bet.” Well, in linguist perspective this makes sense because “i” and “eh” are one chess move away from each other, and “i” was certainly going to move somewhere. In some other dialect, it was going to become “ee”, but in American dialects, often it becomes “eh”. And once that chinchilla is bumped out of its place, well it has to go somewhere else, and suppose it goes to “eh”, which is why that same person might say, “Oh, let’s make a bet, let’s make a bet.” Okay. And we hear that as somebody saying “bet” in a way where they’re opening their mouth wider or something like that, but that new accent is just that the vowels are moving.

So somebody might say, “Well, that was a bit of a bet.” And they’ll say, “That was a bet of a bat.” That was a bit of a bat. [laughter] It’s because, really, she’s saying, “That was a bet of a bat.” That’s it. She’s really very close to saying it. All of those things, this is one tiny bit of a California vowel shift. It’s something where a linguist hears it and thinks, [chuckles] neat. And everybody else– [laughter] That’s me imitating myself. [laughter] Everybody else hears it and they think, what’s up with that? That’s what’s up with it. It’s those rodents. That’s what it is. [laughter] Or, Philadelphia, 1965, a little boy was born.

He was me… [laughter] and the dialect had “you bought something at the store,” and then, as you got older, you read about something called a “bot,” and you don’t really know what it is. So, somebody bought a “bot.” So, “aw,” “ah.” That distinction is disappearing across America. More and more people don’t really have “aw.” It’s interesting and so more and more people talk about making “las” instead of laws. Or, what’s sushi? “ra” fish, instead of raw fish. What makes lazy circles in the sky? A “hak,” whereas I think hawk. A hak. Because what’s happening, it’s easy to say, “What’s up with that?” Why don’t they pronounce their “aw”? That’s why, because the “aw” is collapsing. When you’re trying to teach what the vowels really are in a linguistics class, this gets harder every two or three years because people under a certain age don’t have “aw.” I used to say if you’re having trouble with the difference between bought and bot, then what would you say if a little kitten ran up to you and ran up your leg and meowed at you? And it used to be that the whole class would say, “Aw.” Like everybody had at least that “aw.” Last two times I’ve taught introduction to linguistics, I say, “What would you do if a little kitten “ran up onto your leg, about up to the knee, “and looked up at you and went meow, meow. “What would you do?” And the whole class went, “Ah,” because nobody–” [laughter] Nobody has “aw.” [laughter] It’s changing.

And as frustrating as that is in terms of teaching the International Phonetic Alphabet chart, it’s really quite a natural development. I don’t remember why that was important, so I’m going to just move on. [laughter] So, it’s amazing how sounds change. You know what I hate? Small– I’m sorry if any of you were born in them, I went to college in one for a couple of years– Those small New England towns. Those towns where there’s only one color and it’s brown. And people want to go up to that little town on the weekend, and they find some sort of charm in it. Everything’s damp. [laughter] I can’t stand them. [laughter] And, yet, if you’re living anything like a civilized life, you’re going to wind up in one of those damn places at least two times a year.

Last time I was in Lenox, Massachusetts, or one of those places, I thought the only way I’m going to get through this is at least these places have bookstores. They have antique bookstores. And so after doing whatever we did that was supposed to be fun, we went to the antique book shop, and way in the back, underneath some moss or something, there was this book called “How I Should Pronounce,” and it was from 1885, and it cost, like, negative $7. [laughter] And so I bought that book. And that was the best time I’ve had in one of those towns in a long time. Because it was this guy, you could tell he had a mustache. and… [laughter] it’s 1885, and he’s talking about you should say things. So this is some guy running around in New York City. He’s an Edith Wharton character.

This is how people in the age of innocence spoke. This is how Chester A Arthur and Grover Cleveland actually talked. And so these are the pronunciations that were urged as how you actually speak. Now, I put this paragraph together. Just reading the glossary of this where every second word is like, really, that’s how you say it? “One might com-PEN-sate for ce-LIB-acy “by sampling a juicy NEC-tarin.” And I didn’t think there were nectarines in 1885. Didn’t you think that started in like 1971? But he had them. [laughter] “Or buy a bal-Co-ny seat…” What? “…and take in a melo-DRA-ma.” That would be better than making due with a “CA-nine.” He says, “Don’t say canine.” It’s not classy. “CA-nine.” “DES-pikable, dis-HON-est person seeking to IZZ-olate you.” Why? What? Yet, to him, that’s proper and it’s the vulgarian who pronounces these things the way we do. “Certain things must take pre-SEED-ence “over others, my dear.” “Try being a NAH-mad of sorts.” NAH-mad is how you’re supposed to say nomad. This person wasn’t crazy.

He writes a very literate introduction where he’s very tolerant of diversity, but as far as he’s concerned, if you want to really speak in a way that people will respect you, you have to do that. And so that shows you how arbitrary these things can be. In which case, I want to show you something. The backshift. This is important for the fifth thing. So, did you ever notice that? You can see it. So, you’re going to rebel against something. Does that make you a re-BEL? No, you’re a rebel. Or I’m going to outlaw something, and so you’re a terrible out-LAW.

No, that’s somebody who learned English last night. It’s OUT-law. You re-CORD a RE-cord. One could go on. Now, what’s interesting about that is that backshift is happening in your daily life. You can hear these all the time. So it’s one thing to hear somebody say something and think that person talks bad, but it’s another thing to realize that that shift where the way something becomes a thing, i.e. becomes a noun, is for the shift of that accent to happen is a marvel. So, for example, Eddie Cantor was kind of a non-skeevy Peewee Herman. [laughter] He was a huge, huge vaudevillian and entertainment star back in the ’30s.

Some people are crazy enough to have seen all of his movies many times and have listened to the soundtrack. And in one of them, at the end, he says, “I learned that from a boy SCOUT.” And I thought, what the hell is a boy SCOUT? [laughter] Why doesn’t he say a Boy Scout? But the Boy Scouts were new then, and so he would have thought, well, it’s one of those boy SCOUTS, those scouts who was a boy. But if you say it enough and it becomes a thing, then it becomes Boy Scout. Super Sunset Boulevard. Fastest speech ever. “Sunset Boulevard” is a movie. 1950. Even those of you who think that things are boring in black and white and don’t like old movies, you should see “Sunset Boulevard.” It pulls you along. It makes you a human being. In one of the first scenes, William Holden in the voice-over says, “Wow, I went to buy some food at a superMARket.” And the first time I heard it, I thought superMARket? Supermarket. Why didn’t they retake that? That’s how people said it then because it was a new thing.

There is, that’s too precious. Anyway, the cast of “Mary Tyler Moore,” that was a TV show in the early 1970s. [laughter] One of the best episodes is when they’ve all been out at a discotheque and they come home and this is recent. So it’s not Eddie Cantor, you know, who’s been dead for 400 years. This is in color. Mary Tyler Moore died about five minutes ago. It’s supposed to be modern. The people in it have sex. They go to discotheques. There’s the pill.

And they’re all in her apartment. Actually, they’re up at the top of the steps outside of the apartment, and they’re wondering what they’re going to eat. And somebody says, “Why don’t we have Chinese FOOD.” And then somebody else says, “That’s a good idea.” I’ve never had Chinese FOOD. And they keep on pronouncing it Chinese FOOD. And I remember seeing it and thinking, why can’t they talk? [laughter] What is Chinese FOOOOOD? [laughter] And then I thought to myself, wait, it’s 1972. Chinese isn’t default. I mean, let’s face it. Now, Chinese food is just food for most of us. How often are you going to eat turkey and green beans? Chinese is just food.

But back then it was exotic. It came in a little box. It was bad. It was expensive. And so, for them, it’s a novelty to eat Chinese FOOD. Just like for us it would be eating Martian FOOD. Wow, that’s interesting, but after a while it would be, “You want to order Martian?” And so Martian food. [laughter] So you see these things all the time, and that gets us down to the sex. Here we go. So, want to see something boring? That. So when I first started learning about linguistics, there were always people who were so excited to show you something called compounds. And so they would say, “Well, here’s something.

“It’s a kind of morphology. “You can take black and you can take board and you can put them together and you have blackboard. _That’s… [laughter] That’s how you can create a new word. And I know people who thought of that as so interesting. [laughter] And then blue and bird, well, how do you get a new word? You want to guess? I’ll give you three guesses. Do you put the two words together? And there you go. Now, what’s interesting is, of course, that a black board is some board that’s painted black. Whereas a blackboard today now could be of any color. It could be of any material.

It could be virtual, really. It’s because it’s a thing. So you have the shift. But there’s something more interesting. This is what happens to words. Words come together and create new words. Now, somebody tells you that that’s an example, that blue and bird come together, you have the right to walk out of the room. But there’s more to it than that. So, for one thing, cupboard.

I grew up with the word cupboard. I don’t really know what one is. It’s in the kitchen. But cupboard has something to do with cups. As you learn how to spell, you learn that that word, C-U-B-B-E-R-D, is actually cup-board. What’s a cup-board? Why would you only put cups on it? Apparently it sounds like Dickens or something. But now we have cupboard, and the only way that we know that it’s cup-board is because of the spelling. No little child knows that, “Mm, breakfast” is breaking a fast. Nobody thinks of it as that. You learn after a while.

So it’s not that black and board come together and create blackboard and, zowee, isn’t that interesting? It’s that cup and board came together and created cupboard. That’s interesting because it doesn’t sound like cup, it doesn’t sound like board, and it’s not about cups and it’s not a board. And so you really did get a brand new word. And it goes further. Daisy. You think of it as so basic, especially because of the “Downton Abbey” character. You figure, well, that must have been one of the original words. But no, it was days-eye, and then it became daisy because the flower looks like the eye of the day, I suppose. Or– [sneezing] Bless you.

Hussy, you know, I think I better just not. [laughter] But it was originally two other words. The climate is wrong. Look it up. But, also, then you have a case like it was house and wife. Then you have barn. So, barn. Now, that seems so basic. A barn is heavy.

A barn is red. A barn is solid. Just, [Bfff!] barn. You figure that that was one of the first words after Adam and Eve– Why am I making these religious references tonight? Anyway, so barn. No, barn is a barley “arn.” Barley arn. So, you can imagine that you keep barley in it. An arn was a structure. So a sleep arn was a dormitory. And a guest arn was a hotel. A barley arn. Say barley arn enough times and two things happen. One, you’re bored. Two, you have a new word.

[laughter] Isn’t that nice. World comes from words that mean a man’s age. It’s very pretty. It’s very kind of winter’s coming, how man’s age came to mean world. And this is lots and lots and lots of words. And so, in sum, you’ve see the five processes. Look at poor little “like.” _ Everybody hates “like.” Even people who say it. And the idea is that, why does everything have to be so tentative? Why is it so tentative? But it’s not really tentative. I was on the subway about a year ago, and this guy walked on.

He was about 15, has that kind of Axey smell. And he’s very, [laughter] very confident. Confident alpha boy. And he’s talking about some episode in his life, and this is pretty much a direct quote, and it’s, “So we got there and we “thought we were going to have the room to ourselves and it “turned out that, like, a family had booked it already. “So we’re standing there and they were, like, grandparents “and, like, grandkids and aunts and uncles all over the place.” He was confident. He was sure of himself. I’m sure that at this point he’s angling to get into some school and be some lawyer or something like that. That is what he was like. He wasn’t unconfident.

And yet he was using “like” all over the place, and he was a very smooth talker. “Like,” in brief, is sometimes a factuality marker. Sometimes it’s an acknowledgment marker. Sometimes it’s a counter-expectational marker. There’s a whole book about “like” now, written by Alexandra D’Arcy of the University of Victoria. Definitely worth reading. It’s technically written for linguists, but she writes it in a way that everybody else could understand it too, if skimming it quickly. And it actually teaches you all of the intricacies of “like.” So think about its easing function. This is, like, the only way to make it work.

That’s nice. That’s a very nice way of putting it. Instead of, this is the only way to make it work. This is, like. It’s kind of like someone saying, “Let’s take our pill now,” when really it’s only the other person who’s going to take the pill. It’s not ours. It’s very sweet. “Like” is the new way of striking that note. There’s a book where the second to last paragraph is, I thought, pretty well-written. It’s a passage that I’ve read many times.

I forget the author of this, but what I said was, “Maybe some prefer their flowers pressed dry in books. There are those with affectionate feelings toward the inflatable doll and the corpse. Surely, though, most of us seek life. Language lives.” I worked on that because I really wanted to get across the point that language is always a living thing. So print is a Polaroid– I don’t know why I put Polaroid– So print is a velocipede. No. Print is a snapshot. It doesn’t need to be a Polaroid camera. Print is a snapshot along the lines of the development of something. A word is not something that is. A word is something going on. And not just the cool words and not just the interesting words, but all words are a process, and we’re joining the process as it happens. And that’s because words are always on the move.

Thank you very much. [applause]