Contemporary English makes my shit itch
Yeah, that’s right, I don’t have enough clouds to shout at today. If there were more clouds, I could be reshaping them into fantasy scenarios with my imagination… Ohh look, a dragon, a yacht, an oasthouse, Marilyn Monroe beating Bill Clinton to death with a 12-foot dong. Unfortunately, due to the cost of living crisis, there are no clouds at all. Just a slate grey sky and twelve hours of drizzle. So instead I have been ruminating on the cultural decay of the English language. Specifically British English, or English as I prefer to call it. The insistence that the guttural, incoherent sounds they use to communicate across the pond constitute a form of English is, after all, still downright offensive.
A few minutes online these days, or interacting in the real world, frequently involves having to tolerate the way other people use the English language. I suppose this has always been the case. But I don’t recall it being as irritating as it is in the current age. Everywhere, things are cringe; things don’t make you cringe as they did in the halcyon days of past years; they just are cringe. Like someone took the word and flattened it with a sledgehammer. These days, everywhere you go has a vibe. It doesn’t matter where it is; could be the moon, could be the public toilets at Charing Cross train station. None of them have an atmosphere, character, ambience or feeling, nah bruv, they’ve just got a vibe.
Everything is either unhinged, iconic, or problematic. Well, I’m not unhinged, I’m deranged. I’m not iconic either, extraordinary maybe. Don’t start me on problematic; everything’s problematic! Do you have your own opinion?… Woah, hold up, that is very problematic. What’s wrong with the opinions you were furnished with? I’m not problematic, just offensive and occasionally questionable.
I know, I know, stop, someone call a linguistic doctor. It’s giving… ICK. I’m delulu, giving off main character energy. Button your lip, Sonny Jim, I’m just living my best life, and you don’t want me living rent-free in your head (among the cobwebs and rotting cauliflower). By now it should be clear that I’ve understood the assignment.
This is the modern world, and amongst all the faffing about, and the back and forth, it seems we’ve made a right pig’s ear of it.
Let’s dial it down a tad. It’s like someone has taken charge of the lexicon and driven a steamroller across it. I believe this might be called lexical impoverishment or maybe homogenisation, although maybe not in the strictest academic sense. I get the feeling there is something else at work, some hidden mechanism. Certain phrases, the fash, AI slop… cringe and problematic also. There is something performative happening here. Some way of signalling that you’re part of the right crowd or belong to some cultural moment or other. I don’t think people adopt these expressions because they are necessarily an improvement. Many of them are less expressive than the words that were used before. Instead, they function as societal markers, methods of belonging, quickly amplified by the power of social media and the internet superhighway.
Herein lies the crux of my rant. I liked the olden days, when people had their own idiosyncratic ways of expressing themselves, regional expressions, words you wouldn’t hear outside of Lincolnshire, Pembrokeshire or Sussex. Words and phrases that developed more organically. Back when people were born in barns, had the Blackpool illuminations in the sitting room, and the idiot box made your eyes go square. When talking to a stranger from a different part of the country was an education because the vernacular was quite different from yours. When almost everyone had some degree of linguistic individuality. Frankly, the polar opposite of now, where we have all adapted to one very small dictionary, force-fed to us by an algorithm.
This is the modern world, and amongst all the faffing about, and the back and forth, it seems we’ve made a right pig’s ear of it.
So please don’t reach out, circle back or touch base.
Because modern English boils my piss.