A recent AP article highlighted varieties of Spanish in contact as part of the behind-the-scenes fun of the Pan American Games. The author pointed out the possible misunderstandings that might ensue when speakers of two different varieties of Spanish – say, one in which guagua means ‘bus’ and one in which the same word means ‘baby’ – come into contact. The message of the piece is that language variation can result in some embarrassing or hilarious misunderstandings, but it is all good fun. In sharp contrast, other examples of variation cause fear and panic, from the notion that ‘Spanglish’ is ruining the Spanish language (and possibly English, too), and that texting is killing grammar and ruining students’ writing skills (over half of those polled on edutopia.com think so).

The question is: when is language variation fun and when is it a problem? Who decides? My guess is that language variation is seen as ‘harmless fun’ when it involves mere lexical variation (as all examples in the AP article do) – in country X, they say a, but in country Y they say b. How cute! How quaint! How fun!

But when the language variation does not coincide with national boundaries (in country X they say a sometimes and other times they say b, although some speakers almost always say c, etc.), when it involves contact between two languages, or when it involves a new technology or the possibility of language change, it becomes slightly suspect and theories about how the various phenomena will ruin the language, harm youth, their writing, and their ability to think clearly. How scary! How dangerous! How alarming!

The reality is that both the kinds of language variation that are seen as harmless and the kind that are seen as scary are two sides of the same coin. Language variation and change exist, they are interconnected, and they are functional – we exploit the resources of the language variation to make meaning in interaction, languages change to better accommodate our needs as social creatures. In other words, as Rosina Lippi-Green summed it up in English with an Accent, here are three of what she called the ‘linguistic facts of life’:

• All spoken language changes over time.
• All spoken languages are equal in linguistic terms.
• Variation is intrinsic to all spoken language at every level.