Contemporary English – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane
Could it be good for us to start thinking about a new period in the history of the English language? A bold question if ever there was one, after all that would imply that we’ve moved past Modern English and into something that could potentially be “Postmodern”? Heaven forbid I go into “post-this” and “pre-that”, things which we academics love to play with on a daily basis in our writing. I’d argue that we may well have moved past “Modern English” as it has been known for the last five hundred years, since its birth in the Renaissance, and into something new. This change isn’t dramatic, it’s been happening over a very long time; even though English has been in its modern phase since the sixteenth century, it’s continuously evolved with each passing generation.
So, what makes today any different than yesterday? Why make the break here between Modern English and whatever we’re going to define the next period of English as? I’d argue this is in large part because of the influx of a great many more voices speaking and writing in English than ever before. Not only is English now a global language, spoken by hundreds of millions of people around our planet, but it’s become one of only a handful of languages through which most global affairs, whether economic, political, or social, are conducted. English is influenced by the introduction of popular words like woke just as much as it is by the theorizing of scholars like me trying to invigorate those ancient Germanic and Latinate elements still living in the fibers of our tongue.
My own native form of English, American English, is a great example of how the language is changing. I argue that one of the main reasons why many American English speakers differ in their phonology and word choice from both the old colonial Americans of the East, as well as our English cousins across the water, is because we have far more ethnically diverse immigrant elements in our English. There are hints of the Irish, Finnish, Flemish, Swedish, and Welsh in my English that my ancestors spoke, just as there are traces of the German that many the immigrants who settled in my native Midwest spoke. Our ancestors may have spoken “broken English” when they first arrived, but that broken English has become our English, another thread in the beautiful and diverse tapestry that is this most diverse of languages.
Yet alongside the influx of new words, and ways of expressing ideas that have proliferated in English are new circumstances that have forced us to come up with new words to express ideas we hadn’t considered before. Just as Modern English was born out of the dramatic transformations in the European understanding of their world and the globe at large in 1500, so too our English is being changed by our own growing understanding of our now global world and its place in the Cosmos. This may be a good time to begin to talk about a Second Age of Exploration, this time not out across the oceans but instead out among the stars. And just as the English of Caxton developed into the English of Shakespeare by way of the English of More, so too our English has developed from the English of Asimov, Heinlein, and Sagan into an English that can prove useful to humanity as it tries to make sense of the wonders previously unknown that our explorers are sure to encounter in Space.
So, what do we call this new English? Perhaps we could take after the oft-quoted George Orwell and call it Newspeak? After all, dystopian visions of the future are just as much in vogue today as stories of violent moments in our past ever are. Or we could call it Global English, to better reflect the geosocial nature of our language as a new lingua franca for all humanity? I see the point in both arguments, but I have less a taste for dystopia and more for utopia, expressed in my love for the stories told in Star Trek, and as much as I’d say it’s good to acknowledge the global nature of English in naming this new period in the history of the language “Global English”, that name also smacks of hegemony and empire, something to be avoided. Instead, I suggest we consider something like “Contemporary English”. This reflects that a change has occurred from Modern English, while effectively meaning the same thing. In short, it’s a perfectly politically safe bet.
Think of how this language is changing every day. There are more efforts at either being gender neutral in speech or inclusive of the diversity of gender which we are all quickly learning about. Think of the extreme irregularity in spelling personal names. My own given name, Seán, has at least four different spellings. For the record, I spell it the Irish way, Seán. English spelling really hasn’t been purely phonetic for centuries, yet today I often meet people who do have phonetic spellings of their names. The funny thing is, at first situations like that throw me for a loop because I’m so used to the idiosyncratic ways that we spell words, including names, in English. This new phonetic spelling is one big influence that the diversity of English speakers has had on our common language. I do think there should be more cultural awareness of the underlying rules in English, but that’s more a problem of poor English education than anything else, something I’ve written about previously.How we react to the diversity of English speakers will dictate how this language continues to evolve in the coming generations. Just as the first English explorers’ interpretations of indigenous American names and languages reflected the culture of their time, so too the ways we interpret what to us are foreign words and ideas will reflect upon our own time. In this Second Age of Exploration, I hope we can learn from our history and explore with a passion for learning far more than any desires for conquest. Our English will be a reflection of our intentions as much as it will be a tool for our usage.
Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane 