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Prestige in Motion: How Social Status Drives the Evolution of English
Episode 225
Published 4 days, 20 hours ago
Description
This episode dives into how prestige shapes accents, vocabulary and grammatical norms from medieval London to TikTok. We trace elite speech patterns that fueled standardization, dictionary codification, and social‑media‑accelerated change, highlighting key figures—from Labov to modern language apps—who show why status remains a powerful force in English evolution.
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