(FB 1542397477 Timestamp)
MEME LINGO AS AN EXPRESSION OF ASPIRATIONS TO SPECIATE
English has attained, in the post WWII world, the status of a lingua Franca, or trade/diplomatic language.
There are sound economic rationale to have such a language, and historical rationale for that language to be English. Simply put, there are a host of transaction costs that can be minimized or avoided if we adopt a common language, for common purposes.
But to those of us who speak English as a first language, there are a whole host of NEW transaction costs entailed both in being intelligible to foreigners and in foreigners being intelligible to us… Our language’s status as global lingua franca vastly aids and speeds the invasion and colonization of our lands. Our private thoughts and communications are readily understood by alien elements, at home and abroad. Our ability to discern ingroup from out is greatly degraded. Our ears are assailed by constant tirades of malicious, dishonest, out-group critique.
For all of these reasons, and more, we are rapidly evolving our own non-mutually intelligible idioms, in the form of meme lingos filled with euphemisms, jargon, and inside jokes.
And it’s not just us. My parents, who are still very much plugged into university-educated SWPL culture, have been adopting a progressively more idiosyncratic lexicon and usage my entire life, to the point that the way they talk, though still intelligible to me, sounds increasingly jarring and foreign (though it is no doubt soothing and familiar within their circles…)
This process is being accelerated by, for example, internet censorship, as we are forced to innovate especially our expressions of derision faster than that can be identified, understood, and suppressed by the implaccable racial enemy.
So my prediction is English will continue to variagate, into a standard “global” variety, and a bunch of regional and subcultural dialects, which will eventually become wholly unintelligible, separate, languages.