PBS subtly blames women for the demise of English?
Nonsense. The assumption that the change of English is somehow the demise of the language is absurd, since the language has been steadily evolving, you know, since forever and will continue to evolve, you know, until forever. If English meets its cruel demise, it’s only the next in an indefinite series of many such demises.
As for female-led innovation, the role of female speakers in language innovation is complex but there are a few generalizations about women and language change: (1) women lead the way in language innovations, but (2) compared to their male peers, females speakers more often uphold prestige forms, avoiding substandard variants and using variants not marked as substandard (standard-neutral?). Explanations for these generalizations tend to get murky and centered around gender sociology (I do like the network hypothesis), but the point remains that women both lead innovation and generally “speak better”.
Lastly, the verb “blame”, like “demise”, assumes that linguists evaluate language changes, and that’s just plain wrong.
