Teen Girls Are Expanding Language Faster than Any Other Group
Some experts claim women are a full generation ahead of men when it comes to linguistics
Hiya!
I’ll never forget how serious my grandma became after I said “funner” in her presence. I was about eight or nine years old, and we were walking across a parking lot when she stopped abruptly and said, “You mean ‘most fun.’” I replied that no, I did not. This made her very stern, and she pointed a finger at me and said, “Funner is not a word,” before continuing to her car, marking the end of the discussion.
I’ve always seen language as expression and cared little for rules. So I still said “funner,” just not around her. Now, I’m not saying I made up the term, but it is widely used to the point that the debate over whether funner (and funnest) are words continues today. I’m not sure why that memory had such an impression on me, but today’s topic reminded me of it because it seems that, more than any other group, girls and women are the most innovative linguists.
Women Take the Lead
This year, in 2024, Dictionary.com’s English dictionary added 327 new words, including “greedflation,” “hellscape,” “digital nomad,” and “trauma dumping.” They also added 173 new definitions and revised the definitions of 1,228 words. It’s a record-breaking amount, all thanks mostly to social media.
These days, we’re more connected than at any other point in history thanks to the internet, specifically social media sites. Considering this, it doesn’t seem like much of a surprise that more words and phrases than ever before are being created and are spreading rapidly. But a closer look at the data shows that females, particularly younger girls, are primarily responsible.
In the early 2000s, sociolinguist William Labov (who actually created the branch of language studies of sociolinguistics) observed that women spearhead 90 percent of linguistic changes. He wrote that women tend to be linguistically ahead of men “by a full generation.” In other words, it takes roughly a generation for language patterns that began among women to jump over to men. Additional research in 2009 also found evidence of this.
Earlier, in 2003, linguists Terttu Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg at the University of Helsinki published a book titled Historical Sociolinguistics after analyzing 6,000 letters written between 1417 and 1681 — the period that planted the seeds for modern Standard English. They discovered that women were quicker to adopt 11 out of 14 observed language changes in their writing — such as switching from “mine eyes” to “my eyes,” swapping words like “doth” and “hath” for “does” and “have,” or eradicating “ye” from the common vocabulary.
Then, in 2018, researchers conducted a similar study that tracked the origin and spread of new terms in posts made by American Twitter users. After whittling through hundreds of potential word forms, the researchers settled on 54, including “amirite” (am I right?), “baeless” (single), and “cosplay” (costume role-playing).
The study didn’t officially specify gender differences, but Jack Grieve, linguistics professor at the University of Birmingham and the study’s author, told National Geographic that he noticed a gender discrepancy in the study’s data.
Grieve and his team had created a matrix of Twitter profile pictures of people using new words, and a clear pattern emerged. He told Nat Geo that “more often than not, women dominated these matrices, especially Black women,” but they opted not to publish it with the study to protect individuals’ privacy.
While not definitive yet, enough evidence suggests that the influence women and girls have on language shouldn’t be ignored. There’s at least enough of a pattern to question why this might be.
How Come?
So, if women are linguistic leaders, then why might that be? Well, linguists aren’t sure, but they have a few theories. In her book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch says women are more socially aware and have larger social circles. Consequently, she says, women may have a higher likelihood of being exposed to a greater variety of language.
A study from 2018 suggests females tend to find same-sex interactions more rewarding and are more sensitive to the feel-good reward of oxytocin compared to males. Meanwhile, in 2015, computational linguist, researcher, and writer Chi Luu wrote in JSTOR Daily that since women tend to be caregivers, boys will typically learn language from their mothers, while girls learn words from other women.
For a while, some thought women may even have a neurological leg up with the FOXP2 gene, which developed the nickname ‘the language gene’ in the early 2000s. A small study from around the same time indicated that young girls have 30 percent more FOXP2 in their brains than young boys.
However, further research about the gene shows that while important to language, it is not unique to modern humans. And I haven’t found any other research reinforcing the earlier claim that girls have more of the FOXP2 gene than boys.
None of these theories are very persuasive, in my opinion. At the very least, I think more research is needed. For now, it seems no one knows for sure why women and girls are more attuned to language than men and boys. Still, this reminds me of another theory I read about by Sverker Johansson, a Swedish scientist and author.
Does this Support the Origin of Language Theory?
As far as we know, Homo sapiens developed verbal language between 50,000 and 200,000 years ago — though some research argues speech developed as much as 2 million years ago — and Johansson and other experts believe women were key in the origin of Homo sapien verbal language.
Johansson discussed his reasoning and research with The Guardian’s writer, Steven Poole, in 2021, as did American anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, who was inspired by Johansson’s work and took it a step further. Blaffer pointed out that language is, perhaps more than anything else, crucial when giving birth and organizing childcare — which Johansson agrees with. And there’s at least some evidence to back them up.
Johansson put the theory against what he calls “the chimp test,” which is meant to find explanations for why our genetically close chimpanzee cousins did not also evolve language.
For instance, chimps have pretty sophisticated social systems without language, so language likely didn’t evolve as a status thing or for mating. But female chimps not only strike out on their own once they reach sexual maturity, they give birth alone, away from their communities, and return with their offspring in tow. This means female chimps don’t require the trust, cooperation, and coordination that Human females do.
Human females require others to assist in the birthing process. There’s a reason we have doctors, midwives, and entire wellness communities and programs dedicated to it. The idea of a woman giving birth completely alone is bewildering. I mean, it does happen, but rarely and not without immense risk to both mother and baby.
See what I mean? Given the unignorable evidence that women are linguistic innovators, possibly an entire generation ahead of men, the idea that verbal language originated with women makes a bit of sense.
Perspective Shift
Of course, more research is needed, but I noticed one thing in my research for this article—as did many of the researchers I read.
It seems a little ironic that young women are at the forefront of linguistic changes, yet they are also the group most prone to criticism for how they talk. University of Toronto linguist Sali Tagliamonte told the National Geographic:
“This is how generation gaps develop, right? Because the older people start criticizing the young people for how they talk, and what they're really doing is they are noticing language change, and they don't like it.”
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Ye hath opened mine eyes to a new truth!