Laura Ahearn would describe the Latin language as moribund, or heading toward death due to lack of teaching (245). The sheet music above is able to be read and many, or at least a few, would be able to read it with correct pronunciation, but after the passing of a few more decades or centuries, the language will likely die. 

When a language dies, an exuberant part of a colorful culture dies. Language helps to enrich lives with the addition of creativity. However, more than just beauty is lost when a language dies. Ahearn lists some notes from K. David Harrison on what dies along with language, including but certainly not limited to, “(1) the erosion of the human knowledge base, especially local ecological knowledge; (2) the loss of cultural heritage; and (3) failure to acquire a full understanding of human cognitive capacities” (248). 

Languages can die rapidly, such as if a geologic event wiped out a small community of language speakers of a remote language (254). In the case of Latin, the death, or continuing progress toward its ultimate death, is more gradual and due to a discontinuation of speakers and takeover of more powerful empires with more powerful languages. 

The funny albeit incredibly inappropriate movie Sausage Party includes some deeply reflective looks at culture and ethnic relations today. The above clip shows a bagel, meant to represent a Jewish man, arguing with a lavash, meant to represent a Palestinian Arab man, over who deserves the land in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The movie uses stereotypical voices and language choices for the two characters to represent their ethnicity very obviously to the audience. 

The Jewish bagel is represented as such with his stereotypical New York Jewish accent, whining, “come on, are you guys gonna weigh in here?” to Frank and Brenda to choose a side of the conflict. The Arab lavash is represented as such through both the Middle Eastern style of music playing in the background and his aggressive voice, complaining, “you come into our aisle and occupy more and more shelf space!”. 

Laura Ahearn calls this issue a form of Mock Spanish in which particular phrases and accents are used to racialize a language (232). The film writers use what Ahearn calls indirect indexication, using these phrases, and oftentimes not in a purposefully racist manner, to indicate specific qualities of a certain race or ethnicity. In this case, the two characters are speaking English but the forms of English used lead one to assume the race/ethnicity of the character. 

In the above clip, Congressman hopeful Ben Wyatt begins to introduce his wife as she plans to state an apology before changing his mind and inviting her to speak hers. She then addresses the questions that she knows will follow on Wyatt’s campaign trail. These are questions such as, “why did you change your hair?”, and, “do you miss your kids while you’re at work?”. Ben adds that he is never asked these same questions despite the fact that he has the same kids as Leslie and likely changes his hair just as often. Leslie is a strong woman looking to change the views held by the many women as mentioned by Laura Ahearn in her book Living Language, “‘One day you suddenly realize that you are a mother and all you wish to do is stay home with the children’” (192).

This emphasizes the point that Ahearn makes that gender is learned, something that “children either unconsciously adopt or are consciously instructed in gender-appropriate behavior (190)”. Even more than gender being a learned quality, gender is an active quality (191). Gender is not innate but rather something we perform, as evidenced by the similarities that Leslie and her husband have but the vastly different ways that they are treated solely due to culturally understood gender roles. 

The men’s rights activists seen in the crowd exemplify the fear that some men have in the collapse of the societal gender roles that keep them on the top of the social ladder. The way in which Leslie speaks to the crowd displays how “differences in communicative style reflected deep gender inequalities in society” (197). Ben can say what's on his mind to the crowd in whichever way he wants to represent that, and he is not mocked when he makes a mistake in his phrasing. Leslie's gender, however, is made readily apparent through her language in the way that she must speak calmly in order to gain her audience's trust and cannot sound overly independent in her speech if she wants to win anything. 

In the Seinfeld clip of Elaine and her boss, Mr. Lippman, the language, posture and attitude used by Elaine all serve to show the particular register she uses in speaking with her superior. In chapter 6 of her book Living Language, Ahearn quotes that, “‘a linguistic repertoire that is associated, culture-internally, with particular social practices and with persons who engage in such practices” (Agha 2004:24; emphasis in the original). Examples of registers include what people metalinguistically label as “polite language,” “geek speak,” “informal speech,” “God talk,” “girl talk,” or “slang”’”(123-124). 

When speaking with the higher-up, Elaine politely begins the conversation with, “You wanted to see me, Mr. Lippman?” (0:01). In attempting to explain her choice of editing to her boss, she shares that she, “felt that the writing lacked a certain emotion and intensity” (0:22). Her word choice and attitude in speaking these phrases represent her understanding of the situation that she is in as an employee and she uses the register of polite language to discuss with him. 

In the second clip, Elaine is seen speaking with her friends, a different social setting than the situation in which she speaks to Mr. Lippman. Elaine’s register range surpasses just the polite language register and includes the informal speech and slang that she uses here. 

Elaine starts off by greeting her friends, “Hey, what’re you doin’ out here?” (0:07). This greeting is a question phrased in a much more colloquial manner than the question she used to start off her conversation with Mr. Lippman. When George suggests they eat at Reggie’s, Elain complains that, “There’s no big salad” (0:20) and George, too bitingly for Elaine’s taste, counters, “They’ll make you a big salad, what’d’ya think, they’re the only ones that make a big salad?” (0:22). Elaine then adopts a passive aggressive tone that she would never have used when addressing Mr. Lippman, agreeing in an exasperated manner, “Alright- let’s go- to Reggie’s” (0:27). It is only when she is in this carefree situation with friends that she can use informal speech, dropping her g’s and using ‘hey’ instead of ‘hello’. 

Memes will certainly, and confusingly, be mentioned in the chapters of history books discussing the 21st century and their different media for art and culture. If you showed this photo to an octogenarian not caught up on the internet culture of today’s youth, they likely wouldn’t even know where to begin in attempting to understand this. However, to an in-the-know youth, the language used her in conjunction with the photograph of a Shiba inu makes perfect sense.

This is an example of society directly morphing language and not necessarily for the worse. These fragments are not fully formed sentences, and they do not make perfect sense to an older person. But to someone who understands how to utilize language in this way, the photograph depicts how this dog is personifying an individual attempting to lose weight but is being tempted by cheat foods, and is weighing the pros and cons of junk food with their Weight Watcher's program and diet.

Ahearn’s Living Language asserts that, “speaking is itself a form of social action, and language is a cultural resource available for people to use” (8). Language is a social activity and there is no way to separate language from the society who uses it. In relation to this meme, the language displayed on the photo does not hold relevance unless looked at through the lens of the speakers. Now, the speakers here are likely young millennials looking to express themselves through a newly formed medium for expression and conversation. The phrases here are not ‘proper English’ phrases but the group of individuals who uses this medium is not concerned with that, because it is a dialect of language that they do understand.

However, one can look at the backlash that Rihanna received from thousands of individuals who did not understand her music as a medium through which she expressed herself in English and her native language of Jamaican patois. Calling it ‘gibberish’, but all the while enjoying gibberish memes, Twitter users all over the world judged her for singing in a dialect of English that they could not understand but continue to use a pseudo-dialect of English that the majority of Americans don’t even understand, memes and internet culture. 

Additionally, there is an alleged “cognitive divide” between literate and illiterate individuals. A study by Scriber and Cole in 1981 supposed that those literate in no dialects compared to those literate in variations of the three Vai dialects in their community would have different cognitive abilities (93). It could be argued that understanding the language used on the internet and social media is a new dialect and that those fluent in this dialect have differing cognitive abilities than those who are not. 

DS Bigham, in his article, “Sounding Gay, Punk, or Jock: What Language Says About Your Social Group”, describes the “social code” that individuals follow in society with the way they dress, interact and speak. Word choice, accent and different pronunciation of sounds all add to the identity one puts into the world. The preceding Friends clip outlines a scenario in which some of the friends are returning for Thanksgiving dinner and are attempting to persuade Monica to let them in for food. 

“I’m tellin’ ya- I can do it” (1:29). Joey’s language here exhibits his roots as a New Yorker and not the most highly educated man. He drops the ‘g’ in ‘telling’ and uses the more colloquial form of you, ‘ya’. His social group in high school was likely that of the less intelligent, class-clown type and his language carries that attitude through. Joey’s personality and career as a confident actor are demonstrated by his upbeat, “I can do it” and sure-of-himself “I’m tellin’ ya”. 

“It doesn’t matter why we’re late, just let us in so we can have some of your delicious turkey!” (0:13). Rachel’s language in this scene highlights her background, her social group of the elite class. Although she lives in a tiny New York City apartment now, she was raised a spoiled child and the effects of this on her personality followed her. Rachel’s popularity never failed her in high school and her entitled attitude shines through her words, thinking herself deserving of a Thanksgiving dinner no matter what awful thing she did to her friends this time as evidenced by how she states that, “it doesn’t matter” why the group is late. 

In Living Language, Laura Ahearn argues that, “our thought processes might be affected not just by virtue of speaking language-in-general or because of the particular semantic or grammatical structures of our own language but because of the social patterns of everyday language use” (92). The language used by characters is mostly consistent throughout the show, not only this scene. Their everyday language use is representative of their personality and it can be argued both that their language shapes their personalities as much as their personalities shape their language. 

It is also possible, and quite likely, that over time the language of characters like Rachel adapts to become closer to the language of characters like Joey, as Joey uses the language of a long time New Yorker. According to Ahearn, “Every time a child, adolescent, or adult enters a new school, region of the country, religious community, profession, or other social group, the general process of becoming socialized into that community is accomplished largely through linguistic interactions and is often accompanied by the learning of new words or usages” (60).