The English language is changing rapidly. During the last 15 years our focus has shifted from ‘traditional’ channels of communication (newspapers, books, television, radio) and we’ve found ourselves saturated by a whole array of new media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, online magazines, podcasts).  This shift has been something of a democratisation process.  It’s no longer necessary to have a publishing contract or the ‘right connections’ for your words to become available to the world (or at least the world wide web).

As residents of capitalist societies, we are consumers being marketed to.  Advertisers know that information has to be more concise, more eye catching and more appealing than their last efforts.  There is always competition for our attention.

Added to this is the growing number of people speaking English as a second language.  Linguist David Crystal estimates that non-native English speakers outnumber native speakers 3 to 1.  They not only learn the language, but shape it, dictating norms for how sentences should be structured that we once viewed as mistakes.  Of course, language is organic, it’s alive.  Academic text books and dictionaries do not dictate how English is used, but evolve and are shaped in an attempt to chart current usage (at time of publication).

However, these changes come at a price.  When the channels of communication are no longer dominated by artists and their skillful mastery of well crafted verse, but ordinary people and their un-edited, generic pronouns (“great”), we lose sight of the potential for language as art-form.  When communication becomes more about efficiency than beauty, we find ourselves losing the playfulness and creativity of our words.  Suppose we meet a person at a party with a finely honed tongue, we are dismissive, viewing them as “poncey” or a relic from a long forgotten world.

My own journey places me on some hazy borderland.  As a first language English speaker, raised on the delights of English Literature, I Iearned to marvel at the well chosen word and the careful shading of a finely tuned metaphor.  I get annoyed when reading Shakespeare parodies on Twitter. While watching the movie Shadowlands (the life story of writer C.S. Lewis) recently, I found myself nostalgic for a time I barely knew, a time when language was charming and elegant, when people made speeches, not sound-bites.  On the other hand, as a world citizen (and resident of Sweden) I benefit daily from being able to speak English wherever I go and have learned the value of communication.  I’m also aware of the enormous privilege of having a global pedestal from which to broadcast my ideas at a whim.

Is it possible for artful language to survive in a fast paced world of brevity?

Moleskine image by Amir K.