Gaurav Kamath, a Ph.D. student in Linguistics at McGill University, who spearheaded the recent study. This research tells a fascinating new story about how usage patterns have changed on the language front over the last hundred years. Researchers announced their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. To show this, they examined a huge dataset of political speeches from U.S. Congressional Record corpus. This paper uses a dataset to explore forces underlying language change with a novel temporal perspective. It further disrupts previous explanations of intergenerational change in linguistic adoption.
The study’s analysis involved examining the total number of words used in speeches by year and the age of the speakers. Most crucially, we excluded procedural remarks to hone in on the meatiest of speeches. This enabled the researchers to measure changes in usage and meaning of words within different age groups and temporally.
Key Findings on Word Usage
One of the most interesting things we learned from Kamath’s study is how the usage of the term “article” is evolving. It was this beautiful research, that up until the 1940s, “article” mainly meant physical things. By the 1950s, this use had pretty much disappeared, and since the 1970s, it’s almost always been used in reference to a breaking news story. This evolution is an interesting case study of larger trends in how language evolves with shifts in society.
Furthermore, Kamath’s results rebut the common notion that language change requires new generations to replace their elders. Rather, it underscores that word change influenced by young people isn’t a new phenomenon. Older speakers could still be slower to adopt new usages than their younger counterparts. Through historic advocacy efforts, they can and should play a central role in introducing new terms in their everyday government practice.
“This runs counter to general beliefs about how language evolves over time.” – Gaurav Kamath
Implications for Linguistic Theory
Kamath’s research implications go beyond just tracking how people use words — it undermines a theory that’s largely shaped our understanding of language development. Previous Linguistic Conceptions Traditionally, it was thought that younger generations were the primary agents of language change while older speakers were notionally grounded to a set norm. Yet, as this study so beautifully illustrates, the reality is much more nuanced in that all age groups work to shape language in active and powerful ways.
Morgan Sonderegger, a co-researcher on the project shared that their specific data set was so important.
“We used data from American Congressional speeches because it allowed us to track individuals’ speech patterns over several decades; but politicians usually aren’t the most socially representative group of language speakers.” – Morgan Sonderegger
This statement highlights the importance of being careful not to overgeneralize results from one group of people. Despite the challenges, the study offers an important framework for understanding how macro linguistic trends are produced from micro contexts.
Future Research Directions
This research opens up fascinating possibilities for predicting language trends based on the patterns we see in usage today. Sonderegger made some predictions about how their methods will be used in the future.
“Could our methods be used to predict people’s uptake of up-and-coming slang used by today’s teenagers?” – Morgan Sonderegger
This line of inquiry suggests that further exploration into how younger generations adopt and adapt language could yield valuable insights into contemporary cultural shifts.