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It's wonderful the way young people talk today!
William Labov sez:
Whenever language becomes the overt topic of conversation, we find a uniformly negative reaction toward any changes in the sounds or the grammar that have come to conscious awareness. Communities differ in the extent to which they stigmatize the newer forms of language, but I have never yet met anyone who greated them with applause. Some older citizens welcome the new music and dances, the new electronic devices and computers. But no one has ever been heard to say, "It's wonderful the way young people talk today. It's so much better than the way we talked when I was a kid."That's in Principles of Linguistic Change: Social Factors, Blackwell: 1994 -- yet another great big fat expensive book I wish I owned all for my very own self. (language)
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