The Linguistic Habits of a New Generation        In the year of 1914 a young girl named Monica Baldwin entered a convent ,remaining there until 1941 when she returned to the outer world. During these twenty-eight years wars and revolutions had come and gone in Europe. Her uncle, Stanley Baldwin, had led his country for some time. Technical developments had changed the conditions of everyday life almost beyond recognitions, but all these events had left as a matter of fact untouched the small religious community to which she had belonged. In 1949 Miss Baldwin published her impressions of those bewildering years of her return to a world in which the motorcar had replaced the horse and carriage and where respectable women showed their legs and painted their faces.        Yet it was not only these odd sights that surprised her, for she was more puzzled by what she heard. During a railway journey the term "luggage in advance" meant nothing to her, so in desperation she asked the porter to do as he thought best. Reading the newspapers made her feel very stupid, because the writers of reviews and leading articles used words and phrases such as Jazz,prefix = st1 /Hollywood, Cocktail and Isolationism. These and many others were quite incomprehensible to Miss Baldwin, who was really bewildered when friends said: "It's your funeral or Believe it or not." This is a rare and valuable reminder to the rest of us that the English language does not stand still. All language changes over a period of time for reasons which are imperfectly understood. Or rather since speech is really a form of human activity, it is more exact to say that each successive generation behaves linguistically in a slightly different manner from its predecessors(,). In his teens the young man likes to show how up-to-date he is by the use of the latest slang , but as the years go by some of his slang becomes standard usage and in any case he slowly grows less receptive to linguistic novelties(,),so that by the time he reaches his forties he will probably be unware that some of the expressions and pronunciations now being used were frowned upon by his own parents. In this respect language is a little like fashions in people's dress. The informal clothes of one generation become the everyday wear of the next, and just as young doctors and bank clerks nowadays go about their business in sports jackets, they are allowed into their normal vocabulary expressions which were once limited to slang and familiar conversation. Young people like to use the latest slang because_.
they feel it is easier to use they believe it will soon become standard usage they want to show they have caught up with the time they find it more powerful in expressing feelings