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It's also important to note that there was a great shift in culture and society between that time and today, namely, the shift from Modernism to Postmodernism. With that you get a whole host of effects on language, amongst other things. The Modernist period had already seen a shift away from classical/Romantic approaches to language. They began to question everything on the philosophical level and on the level of basic meaning, and so the exploration continued with Postmodernism, but this departure saw an even greater shift away from the classical. Well, not so much a shift away...rather a mash-up if you will.
New language was created to explain the function of existing language. We relaxed our view of how we use it. We created more of it to use in our rapidly changing daily lives.
The written gave way to the spoken; text gave way to the visual.
The combination of such factors has seen a change in our language unlike anything seen since the Norman invasion of England.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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