In Pursuit of Happiness with Judy Woodruff
Aug 6, 2026 · 40 min · 10 segments
How did American English become distinctly American? In this episode of "In Pursuit of Happiness", Judy Woodruff explores the 250-year evolution of the language we speak with linguists Anne Curzan and…
Valerie FridlandGuest
Anne CurzanGuest
Judy WoodruffHost
I want to ask you, picking up on what both of you were talking about a moment ago, is our language becoming more coarse? I'm thinking about social media, but also the way people speak to one another.
I think if you went back to old English times, you would be shocked by how coarse the language was.
Of course, you wouldn't be able to understand it, but it was very gruff at that time.
But I think what you're getting at is this idea that we don't use as many formal terms.
And I would say there certainly is a lot of evidence that profanity is in wider use today.
You see it certainly on TV and shows and movies much more than you found before.
And in fact, one study that was done in the early 2000s found that in literature, the rate of use of profanity had gone up about 30 times more from the 1950s.
So if that's in literature, you can only imagine what it is in social media and things.
Has it become more colloquial? Has it become more informal, more casual? Yes.
This is continuing a journey, though, English has made for several hundred years.
And part of this is a movement towards what's been called camaraderie politeness or this idea that showing people that you're intimate, that you care, that you're, you know, you're bros, you're dudes together.
That that is more valued than this discernment politeness, which is where you decide what rank people are by the way you talk to them.
And I think this is continuing more of a tendency towards egalitarian relationships that we've had since the 1800s.
So as someone who studies the history of the English language, when you're studying these older periods hundreds of years ago, you have no recordings of day-to-day speech.
I want to ask you, picking up on what both of you were talking about a moment ago, is our language becoming more coarse? I'm thinking about social media, but also the way people speak to one another.
I think if you went back to old English times, you would be shocked by how coarse the language was.
Of course, you wouldn't be able to understand it, but it was very gruff at that time.
But I think what you're getting at is this idea that we don't use as many formal terms.
And I would say there certainly is a lot of evidence that profanity is in wider use today.
You see it certainly on TV and shows and movies much more than you found before.
And in fact, one study that was done in the early 2000s found that in literature, the rate of use of profanity had gone up about 30 times more from the 1950s.
So if that's in literature, you can only imagine what it is in social media and things.
Has it become more colloquial? Has it become more informal, more casual? Yes.
This is continuing a journey, though, English has made for several hundred years.
And part of this is a movement towards what's been called camaraderie politeness or this idea that showing people that you're intimate, that you care, that you're, you know, you're bros, you're dudes together.
That that is more valued than this discernment politeness, which is where you decide what rank people are by the way you talk to them.
And I think this is continuing more of a tendency towards egalitarian relationships that we've had since the 1800s.
So as someone who studies the history of the English language, when you're studying these older periods hundreds of years ago, you have no recordings of day-to-day speech.
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