Alice Robb, “People Use Fewer First-Person Pronouns As They Get Older” (The New Republic, Sept. 30, 2014)
Linguist Ben Zimmer doesn’t see the new data as an indictment of millennials, either. For twenty-somethings, says Zimmer, “Their frames of reference have more to do with themselves as individuals, and later on those frames expand to include spouses and children.” Life changes, as much or more than attitude changes, are likely to affect diction. “Starting a family also licenses a person to speak on behalf of the family unit. In a Facebook post of someone who is married, and especially of someone married with kids, the use of ‘we’ is implicitly understood to encompass the nuclear family in one shared ‘voice.’”
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