Language Does More: Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot? (Language Change)

I love Auld Lang Syne. It might be the best song a group of people could ever sing together. I give it five stars, just like the author John Green did. But it’s dated for sure: “Should auld acquaintance be forgot” sounds quaint, and the very title “Auld Lang Syne” sounds ancient. Indeed, the song has been sung for half a millennium. If you, too, have always found it confusing, maybe you’ll identify with this rant from the climax of When Harry Met Sally: “Does that mean we should forget old acquaintances? Or does it mean that if we happen to forget them we should remember them – which is not possible because we already forgot them?” It’s beautiful, but it doesn’t exactly make sense.

This is on my mind because I just spent the holidays with my parents and siblings. My mom never misses the PBS News Hour, and she’s often got NPR going. And whenever an anchor says “Thank you” to a reporter and they DON’T reply “You’re welcome,” I know I’m going to get asked about it. It’s a pet peeve of hers, when people don’t say “You’re welcome,” and as a linguistics PhD I am top of mind for people who want to gripe about pet peeves. Reporters should say “You’re welcome” like normal people, my mom will opine. And so, over a commercial for Moana 2, we discussed whether or not this is a sign that the English language is falling apart.

Of course, it’s not. Complaints about the rising generation ruining everything are at least as old as writing itself. And it’s not like my mom doesn’t know that. What’s really happening is that language is changing. The thing my mom has lived with for her whole life is becoming unfamiliar. John McWhorter put it fantastically: “Language never has followed the rules of logic. … Language is like one of those lava lamps from the 70's – there are no grounds for considering the clump of lava at one point in the lamp more ‘appropriate’ than at any other.” As a linguist, I find this analogy perfect. Now, that’s all well and good for a psychedelicfor psychedelic desk toy, but, to be fair, language is different. It’s not a novelty meant to amuse – it’s a tool meant to communicate. When it changes, miscommunications happen, and that’s not good. Maybe my mom was right to be frustrated with those flippant reporters.

But maybe not. Who says those reporters were being flippant? We assume things about people based on how they speak – everyone does. Disparate, random, unrelated individuals have shown remarkably uniform judgments when presented with samples of speech, whether it’s to determine someone’s ethnicity or to decide whether someone is trustworthy. But just because we’re in agreement doesn’t mean we’re right. After all, well-meaning people regularly consider their speech to be bad, ungrammatical, incorrect. If something sounds unexpected, we usually love it or hate it, but we rarely do neither. The reporter who doesn’t say “You’re welcome” probably isn’t not-saying “You’re welcome” – they’re just saying something else.

To go further, “You’re welcome” in particular is no Auld Lang Syne. Its reign as the standard response to “Thank you” is pretty young. Gretchen McCulloch shows that it’s just over a century old – in this specific context, the phrase was first attested (ever!) in 1907(!) and it took some time for the phrase to catch on. It turns out that light bulbs, telephones, and Coca-Cola are all older than the standard “You’re welcome.” Before the turn of the century, people said all sorts of things, like “My pleasure” and “Don’t mention it,” among others. Those sound a lot like “No worries” and “For sure” and all the other things kids these days say when you say “Thank you.” Semantically, they all just mean that the other person hasn’t imposed on us.

And that’s the heart the matter. “You’re welcome” doesn’t really NEED to mean anything at all. It’s just what you say. If you’ve ever said hello by saying “How are you doing?” you know what I mean. You’re not a bad person for not expecting (or wanting) the person to tell you how they’re doing – it’s just another way to say hello. (If you’re really interested, it’s called a “phatic” marker, which is from the same root as “euphemism” and “homophone” and “prophet,” which all have something to do with speaking). It’s not literal. It’s a way to show you’re listening, you’re present, you’re together. It’s just like Anne Hathawy in The Princess Diaries, where she wasn’t really telling Julie Andrews to shut up when she said “shut up.”

But it’s not like Julie Andrews knew that. What she heard was something rude and surprising, in context. It must have felt like the conversation she was having – the very word she was hearing – was being lava-lamped before her eyes. In order for language to change, there must be Julie Andrewses, losing their linguistic footing. She wasn’t wrong to be shocked, at least the first time she heard it. The point is to keep talking so everyone learns to understand everyone else.

Which brings me back to my mom. I told her (yet again) how language changes and the reporters aren’t destroying English. But I realized that it wasn’t really about the facts of linguistics in the first place. It was about the conversation, the complaint, the argument. It was a way we could talk so we could prove that we were listening, we were present, we were together. And so, as the commercial for the new Moana faded out – leaving me sure it can’t top my favorite song from the first one – I rolled my eyes (yet again) and added this to my trove of holiday memories. Just in time to celebrate another change – not of the language but of the year. This New Year’s, you can bet I was belting out Auld Lang Syne. It doesn’t exactly make sense, but it’s beautiful.