Title: State of the Language English Observed
First published: April 24, 1986
Description: Synopsis - What is happening to the English language?  Is it in a period of decline, as the pessimists would have us believe?  Taking a robust and commonsensical view.  Philip Howard examines the language in its various branches and categories.  He discusses the effect that the new technologies of communication, from cable television to photocomposition, are having on the mother tongue.  He explores the new dialects that are coming into the language.  He navigates the back streets of euphemism and the broad, boring boulevards of cliché.  He discusses the origins and meaning of the latest vogue slang, from the ‘yea talk’ of Sloane Rangers to the obdurate survival and reinvigoration of Cockney rhyming slang.  

Philip Howard concludes that for various social, geopolitical, and technical reasons, there is a Revolution in English going on.  But, he argues, in any rich and living language change is necessary and healthy.  We should not wring our hands about the state of English, but use our brains and our tongues.  It is the approach that has been favoured by English wordsmiths from Samuel Johnson to the Fowler brother and Eric Partridge.
Subjects: English language