Paper 2: Language diversity and change

I was on the train last week, minding my own business, when two teenagers sat opposite me. For twenty minutes I listened to a conversation that consisted almost entirely of 'like', 'literally' and 'no cap'. One of them said something was 'literally the worst thing ever'. It was a sandwich. I am not a snob. I simply believe that words have meanings, and that if we let those meanings slide we lose the ability to say anything precise at all. When 'literally' means 'figuratively', it means nothing. When every sentence is padded with 'like', no thought is ever completed. Schools must take some of the blame. Teachers, terrified of seeming old-fashioned, no longer correct pupils' grammar. Social media does the rest, rewarding speed over care. The result is a generation that can send a hundred messages an hour but struggles to write a coherent paragraph. English has survived invasions, printing presses and the telephone. I am not sure it will survive TikTok.

Every few months a columnist overhears teenagers on a bus and announces that English is doomed. It's a tradition almost as old as English itself: writers in the 1700s complained that the language was being 'corrupted' by new words such as 'mob' and 'banter'. Take 'like'. Linguists have shown that it does a lot of work: it can introduce reported speech or thought ('she was like, no way'), soften a statement, or signal that a number is approximate. Young speakers who use it heavily aren't failing to think – they are using a flexible tool that older speakers often lack. And 'literally'? It has been used as an intensifier for centuries; you'll find it in Dickens. Words shift in meaning all the time. 'Nice' once meant 'foolish'. None of this means anything goes. Knowing when to use formal Standard English is a vital skill, and schools teach it. But being able to switch between styles – texting your mates one minute, writing an essay the next – is a sign of linguistic skill, not decline.