Recency illusion explained

The recency illusion is the belief or impression, on the part of someone who has only recently become aware of a long-established phenomenon, that the phenomenon itself must be of recent origin. The term was coined by Arnold Zwicky, a linguist at Stanford University who is primarily interested in examples involving words, meanings, phrases, and grammatical constructions.^[1] However, use of the term is not restricted to linguistic phenomena: Zwicky has defined it simply as, "the belief that things you have noticed only recently are in fact recent".^[2]

According to Zwicky, the illusion is caused by selective attention.^[2]

Examples

Linguistic items prone to the recency illusion include:

• "Singular they": the use of "they," "them," or "their" to reference a singular antecedent without specific gender, as in "If George or Sally come by, give them the package." Although this usage is often cited as a modern invention,^[3] it is quite old,^[4] going back to the 14th century.^{[5] [6]}
• The phrase "between you and I" (rather than "between you and me"), often viewed today as a hypercorrection, which could also be found occasionally in Early Modern English.^[4]
• The intensifier "really," as in "it was a really wonderful experience," and the moderating adverb "pretty," as in "it was a pretty exciting experience." Many people have the impression that these usages are somewhat slang-like, and have developed relatively recently. They go back to at least the 18th century, and are commonly found in the works and letters of such writers as Benjamin Franklin.
• "Literally" being used figuratively as an intensifier is often viewed as a recent change, but in fact usage dates back to the 1760s.^[7]
• "Aks" as a production of African American English only. Use of "aks" in place of "ask" dates back to the works of Chaucer in Middle English, though typically in this context spelled "ax".^[8]

See also

• Frequency illusion

Notes

A. Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage noted, "Although the lack of a common-gender third person pronoun has received much attention in recent years from those concerned with women's issues, the problem, as felt by writers, is much older" (1989, page 901).

Further reading

• Zwicky . Arnold . 17 November 2007 . The word: Recency illusion . New Scientist . 196 . 2630 . 60 . subscription . 10.1016/S0262-4079(07)62923-6 .

Notes and References

1. John R. Rickford . Rickford . John R. . Wasow . Thomas . Zwicky . Arnold . 2007 . Intensive and quotative all: something new, something old . American Speech . 10.1215/00031283-2007-001 . 82 . 1 . 3–31. free .
2. Web site: Zwicky . Arnold . 7 August 2005 . Just between Dr. Language and I . Language Log . 5 May 2015.
3. Web site: What Is the Singular They, and Why Should I Use It? . Mora . Celeste . May 12, 2020 . Grammarly blog . Grammarly . July 9, 2021 . Admittedly, using the singular they in a formal context may still cause some raised eyebrows, so be careful if you’re submitting a paper to a particularly traditional teacher or professor. But the tides are turning, and English will soon be more efficient.
4. Book: 1989 . Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage . registration . Merriam Webster. 978-0-87779-132-4 .
5. Book: . 1996. The American Heritage Book of English Usage: A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 978-0-547-56321-3.
6. Web site: Pullum. Geoffrey. Geoffrey Pullum. 13 April 2012. Sweden's gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. ... our pronoun they was originally borrowed into English from the Scandinavian language family ... and since then has been doing useful service in English as the morphosyntactically plural but singular-antecedent-permitting gender-neutral pronoun known to linguists as singular they. 28 March 2023. 8 May 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160508062955/http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3898. live.
7. Web site: Zimmer . Benjamin . Ben Zimmer . Literally: a history . Language Log .
8. Book: Lippi-Green, Rosina . Rosina Lippi . 1997 . English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States . 2nd . Routledge . London . 9780415559102.