One of the most rehashed, although true, sayings about the nature of language as a human ability is that it is similar to a living organism. Each of these languages arises at a moment in time –always derived from another close relative and also created from scratch at the dawn of history– resulting from an evolution based on the need for humans to communicate. However, it also reflects to a certain extent the communication needs at a specific moment in history as a speaker and places it in a specific social context. In turn, it is this social context that will simultaneously influence the development of these languages towards new horizons, and as such, language and humans are inevitably linked through interpersonal relationships. And the evidence is undeniable: we are social animals.
This means that, taking into account the evolution of each of the languages we speak today, the way we speak changes over time, whether years, decades or centuries. Everything changes, from syntactic structures to the words we use, which one day had a particular meaning, and then that same word is incorporated into the language with a new meaning. We also adopt foreign words, and we incorporate emoticons and graphic symbols to add layers to our speech. Indeed, there is a long list of resources that we almost subconsciously assimilate and without them, we feel unable to express ourselves in our daily lives. Who know what new developments we will incorporate into our language in 10, 50 or 100 years time.
Without a doubt, one of the most observable phenomena in today’s social interactions, especially in speaker communities in the era of globalization and the sharing it entails, is the “economics of language” or “language economy”. Essentially, this is the term denoting the tendency of contemporary speakers to reduce the length of their speech acts or produce the same speech acts, but using fewer linguistic resources. In short, we say more with less. This is undoubtedly a consequence of such a frenetic world that we currently live in, where immediacy, causing an impact quickly and fast content prevail, since it has been shown that people increasingly struggle to focus on texts over a certain length in some areas. This is why speakers today use and create resources that allow them to express themselves quicker because the better the selection of information, the more effective the communication result will be, and the more time saved, the less time we demand from our interlocutors. This certainly has a very positive impact on interpersonal relationships, as well as on several areas of professional communications and those used for publicity and consumer purposes. Would it make sense to have a 2-minute TV advert that only talks about technical characteristics? Would we be happy to listen to an uninterrupted speech during a presentation that lasts for hours? Which article would we choose to find generic information about a random topic: the 5000-word or the 100-word article? Of course, each decision depends on the context, our tastes and the level of depth we seek in our documentation process, but the trend is undeniable: we want immediacy.
These aspects have permeated all languages and, of course, Spanish as well. Therefore, these languages have developed resources that express ideas quickly Below we discuss some of the most representative examples.
We must first mention the growing importance of borrowing foreign words, most of which come from English and French. This is a very controversial matter, but we must remain up to date with trends and reflect on when to incorporate them and when to reject them. Many foreign words enter a language simply due to the fact that they are the first to coin them, thus creating the concept and, in turn, naming it. These words travel quickly through global communication networks and, if we add to this immediacy the fact that these words are formed by a very specific composition that exists solely in the original language, their adaptation to the target language is complex. It must also be noted that many of these concepts do not have an equivalent in the target culture, which means that the quickest thing to do is to adopt the concept and the original designation. Interestingly, using foreign words for concepts that do exist in their native tongue is attractive, since they are often much more concise. In addition, they indicate modernity or show belonging to specific groups, whether social or professional. In this way, this borrowing is also a social position and knowledge resource.
There are other resources within a language itself that shorten the words we use, the most common being abbreviation, which consists of shortening words following a specific criterion. The following are the most common:
- Abbreviations: abbreviation by removing letters of syllables (e.g. “lab” for “laboratory”, “rehab” for “rehabilitation” or “RE” for “regarding”.
- Symbols: a letter or symbol that represents a word, normally units of measurement and other metric systems, such as “m” for meter and “€” for “euros”.
- Initialisms: the result of reducing an expression to the first letters of a group of words, such as “CEO” for “Chief Executive Officer”. When an initialism is read as a single word, it is called an “acronym”, for example “NATO” for “North Atlantic Treaty Organization”.
These abbreviations have entered our way of speaking at work and our social circles. In fact, some of them are considered to demonstrate proficiency in certain sectors and are seeing a surge in popularity. However, regardless of our desire to express ourselves more with less, it is important to always ensure that the information we give is sufficient for the listener to correctly receive our message.
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