Paradigm Shift Essay: It Ain't Easy to Speak
A paradigm shift is a cultural revolution in which agents change, morph, and alter a way of human thought or action. Language is constantly being manipulated throughout the ages as it is frequently evolving alongside changing cultures and dialects. Language is the one aspect of human civilization that is continuously being shaped by newly arising popular cultures, informal speech, and the varying vernacular of divergent subcultures. Dialects stem from a common language, yet use distinguishable differences in phonology, grammar, or vocabulary—either due to geographical or social separation. The English language has constantly been adapting to new social situations, cultural shifts, and geographic relocations for a few millennia. Specific contractions such as the word ain’t have been under much scrutiny recently for being an indicator of illiteracy, yet this has not always been the case. The word ain’t has undergone several paradigm shifts throughout the English language dating back as early as the 1600s. Ain’t has been evolving alongside English and American cultures as its roots can be geographically and evidentially traced from its upper-class English ancestry to its more illiterate modern American usage.
The English language has evolved throughout thousands of years, stemming from the original Phoenician alphabet through the Latin language, arriving at Old English and then progressing into Middle English at around 1100 AD. Around the year 1500, the language reached what is referred to as Modern English, and then finally developed into Late Modern English with the rise of the Industrial and Technological Revolutions. Varieties of the English language can range from the drastic grammatical, vocabulary, or structural differences seen in Australian English, Indian English, or Jamaican English, to dialectal variations among American cultures being only separated by socially constructed boundaries, like that of the African American Vernacular English or certain regional differences, including New England English or Southern American English. Also, with the rise of technology and more specifically the United States’ Internet capabilities, the world is becoming more adaptive to learning English, usually in tandem with their own native languages—as English frequently adopts words from other languages into its own.
The use of contractions in English writing dates back to the early 17th century. Contractions were first used by upper class Englishmen as a form of literacy, a formal comprehension of the formation and usage of English auxiliaries and negations. Written speech, along with spoken word, adopted the use of contractions to help condense vernacular, as this was a well-known way of proclaiming exceptional literacy and educability in a highly esteemed social setting. It was not long before ain’t made its way on to the contraction scene as a commonly used form of vernacular among the well-educated, as a replacement solely of am not and are not. Ain’t appeared in print for the first time in the 17th century spelled as both an’t and a’n’t until eventually settling on ain’t. Some linguists believe that “the new spelling may have reflected the way the word was pronounced by certain speakers,” and thus essentially a new word was created. (O’Conner, 49). This supports the fact that different social groups are constantly altering their language, as humans tend to evolve within their given social settings; they need to adaptively create new words and meanings to co-evolve along with these shifting societal changes.
Throughout the 1600s ain’t was being formally used as a way of proclaiming academic aptness in both speech and writing. Yet throughout the 1700s, ain’t can be traced to letters and diaries of renowned English writers like Charles Lamb, Lord Byron, and Lord Alfred Tennyson, using this word in everyday vernacular and in acceptable writing formats—both formally and informally (O’Conner, 48). As colonists started to migrate west to inhabit America in the late 1600s throughout the 1700s, this word journeyed over as well, as it was no longer solely used by the educated, high-class Englishmen, but by virtually the entire English-speaking populace who could grasp the simplicity of these common contractions. This is reflected in novels produced by Austen, Dickens, and Fielding throughout the 1700s that show characters of varying classes using ain’t appropriately (O’Conner, 48). Yet, as the word was introduced to the new world in the United States, it started its path to infamy as a literacy executioner.
The word made it to the Americas and took a turn for the worst throughout the 1800s. Ain’t started replacing have not and has not generation by generation, as it started to engulf a wide variety of meanings and connotations. The word’s roots started evaporating over the years as it became more difficult to find its non-contracted idealized form. It was easy to trace words such as don’t and can’t to their originators, but ain’t seemed to get lost somewhere in the mix as it spread its popularity throughout all of the thirteen colonies of the still-adolescent United States. Ain’t became a contraction vacuum, sucking up all previous meanings and lineages to its traceable pedigree, as it became complex clutter of varying words and unclear ancestry. If one wanted to negate any form of the first, second, or third person present or present perfect, they would no longer need to conjugate a verb to correlate the tense and mood of that predicate with the noun—they would simply say ain’t.
Throughout the 1700s and 1800s, northern United States was concentrated with American congressmen, educated professors, and a large majority of future presidents, while the southern United States was predominantly filled with agriculture tycoons, African American slave monopolies, and inborn wealth. What unknowingly divided the nation during the Civil War Era—besides slavery—were education and literacy rates. Since a majority of Southerners were born into large business empires, the most influential people had no need for formal education. Yet, universities and novel industrial inventions were booming in the north, which helped literacy rates and educational opportunities. Therefore a strong cultural movement was slowly taking place, as the north appeared to excel in academic arenas, while the south drifted towards an uneducated route of monopolies, business empires, and slave trading.
The slave trade was a booming industry in the 18th and 19th centuries as it helped southern states prosper in a primarily agricultural business. This taboo era in American history is tainted by the sadistic acts of human cruelty that is slavery; yet, it was how the south was accustomed to living. Uneducated Africans were shipped to the southern states to work on the plantations of the inherited landowner. The slaves barely knew the English language, but over generations started to pick up that which they can only hear—the vernacular of the plantation owners. Therefore the common illiteracy of the southerners was forced onto the slaves of this era, which would only be passed down to the next handful of generations.
Inevitably, the Late Modern English dialects of these specific social boundaries will persist among the regional and cultural limits of each population. The usage of ain’t is evidentially apparent in some regional parameters of the south, among most of the uneducated older generations. Ain’t is also evident in most concentrated urban areas, due to the high population of African Americans—possibly hereditarily acquired of the language of the previous generation, most of which originate from southern plantation slaves. Interestingly, Merriam-Webster defines ain’t as equivalent to am not, have not, is not, have not, and has not, yet sub-defines it as do not, does not, and did not “in some varieties of Black English.” A children’s novel by Irene Smalls stresses the common usage of ain’t and the black community’s responsibility to stray away from its utilization not only to sound more literate but to cut ties to its origination within their social group. Smalls ironically states “Don’t say ain’t, children. People judge you on how you speaks!” (2). Yet, some linguists propose that there does not need to be a divergence in the informal usage of the word ain’t, as long as they know the correct formal usage of its components.
There are benefits to this intellectually contaminated vocabulary, though. Although the word has lost all roots to its upper-class educable usage, its modern usage has become a hidden gem among English-speakers. It is natural for humans to have differentiating speech, as it signals a change in formality or a changing social scene. The utilization of ain’t would be highly inappropriate in a formal paper or a classroom setting, but not uncommon among classmates outside of school. In opposition to Smalls’ children’s novel on the necessity to deviate from the usage of ain’t, linguist Carolyn Adger claims, “Our speech also shows our social identity. Given the natural predisposition toward group affiliation and the tensions that surround ethnicity and class, its easy to understand why attempts to outlaw vernacular dialects or ‘correct’ students’ speech have always failed.” Therefore, she is saying that certain groups do not want to conform to the societal norm because they feel ethnically connected through vernacular and common speech.
Linguistics is constantly undergoing change to keep up with new technology, altering cultures, and the vast connectedness of the world’s languages. “Change is constant, change is normal, spoken language is the language, telling us there is nothing for it but to adjust, minute by minute, to the vast deterministic pressure of linguistic change, which we are powerless to alter or control” (Baker, 102). Language can help shape cultural groups as well as point out who is among the educated or the illiterate. Yet, language is contextual in that it only applies to the current culture and era in which it is spoken. Vernacular can help identify and connect individuals who have nothing else in common. Language is a way for African Americans to find connectedness, an outlet for foreign exchange students to voice their opinion without bias or a language/cultural barrier, and it is a way for all humans to physically voice their inner thoughts.
Works Cited
"Ain't." Merriam-Webster. Web.
Masci, D. (2000, November 17). Future of language. CQ Researcher, 10, 929-952. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/
O'Conner, Patricia T., and Stewart Kellerman. Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. New York: Random House, 2009. Print.
Sheridan Baker. College English , Vol. 26, No. 2 (Nov., 1964), pp. 91-104.
Smalls, Irene, and Colin Bootman. Don't Say Ain't. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge Pub., 2003. Print.