Kinds of langauage change

Causes of language change 
Languages change for a variety of reasons such as political pressures, technological 
development as well as social, culture and moral factors. Below are examples of causes that 
lead to change in the English language.

Political factor- which is caused by foreign invasion, migration and colonization.

Social factor- which means foreign influences from Latin, French, American, 
Australian, Indian and others. The unique way that individuals speak also fuels 
language change. Vocabulary and phrases people use depend upon the place, age, 
gender, education level, social status.

Cultural factor- This means the exposure of one language group to another via 
television, radio, films, music, magazines and fashion. 

Technological factor- which means rapid advances in information technology, 
industries, products and economy simply require new words that drive language 
change. 

Moral factor- which is about recent developments in anti-racism and 
environmentalism (Beard, 2004). 
1. Political Factor 
Many times, language change has some kind of political roots such as human migration and 
invasion. When people move to a country and learn a new language, they learn their adopted 
language imperfectly. They then pass on these slight imperfections to their children and to the 
people in their social circle, and eventually alter the language (Aitchison, 1991, p.109).
Besides the language changes brought about by migration, politics play some roles in 
language change in more immediate ways by the public debates. For instance, increasing 
environmental awareness and environmental policies in recent decades has led to a number of 
new words and phrases such as “tree-hugger”, “eco-friendly”, “carbon footprint”, 
“greenwashing”, “locavore”, “eco-terrorism” and “green collar jobs.” In political debates, just 
four years ago in the U.S. presidential election, “the common citizen” or “average Joe” 
suddenly replaced by “Joe the plumber” due to one of thousands of candidate-voter 

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conversations (Powell & Cooper, 2008). New political words such as “9/11” (2001), 
“weapons of mass destruction” (2002), “red state/blue state/purple state” (2004), “subprime” 
(2007) can now be seen in newly edited dictionaries.
The liberation of women and the struggle for gender equality has also brought about some 
important changes in language. For example, student writers today are encouraged to use 
gender-neutral and gender-inclusive nouns and pronouns and to treat women and men in a 
parallel fashion. For example, police officer for policeman, firefighter for fireman and 
humankind for mankind ( p. 411).