Future of work..? We could learn from linguists.

All public holidays are equal but some are more equal than others. You probably would never find someone that hates the critically-acclaimed fiction story Animal Farm as much as I do, but that is pretty much how I’d describe Labour Day as a holiday. Not affiliated to any specific religious or cultural community, Labour Day can be traced back to a global labour movement in the 19th century, where workers worldwide rallied for better working conditions including better and fairer wages, and shorter working hours. In more recent history, some may recall a 5-and-a-half day working week as the norm or your parents may, depending on your age. Today, most follow a 5-day work week, with many advocating for it to go down to 4. To this day, there are still marches to continuously promote labour rights for the working class. It is a holiday that commemorates the righteous, valiant attempts at equality and a better life all over the world across history.

Most people in the world work, sans a minority crowd that cannot or can afford not to, and it is for this same reason that labour issues persist as one of the most important challenges of our, or any, generation, even if the historical significance and symbolism of this yearly holiday fly past the heads of most these days. We understand what it represents in theory, but what do labour rights and issues mean for us today?

Flash forward to present times. Countless people have written endlessly about the simultaneously hopeful yet frustratingly vague topic of “future of work”, from academics, employers or employees. (But what does that even mean?) Currently, as a new generation of workers enters the workforce, ever so self-entitled than before, they apparently view work through an entirely different lens from their elders. They expect good work-life balance, flexible working arrangements, all while having no “loyalty” to their employers. More and more people are questioning the purpose of a career altogether, jumping on board the idea that they “do not dream of labour” and hence will not put in any amount of effort beyond their job scope, simply because they are not paid to. Extremists will even boycott traditional work altogether and rely on farming for their own sustenance (though you can argue that having that choice is a privilege in itself). But, are their demands and expectations of work really that radical?

I recall a concept I learned in school while in Linguistics class, about two approaches to language rules – prescriptivism and descriptivism. It’s been years now, but it remains in my memory because it altered my perspective on things even outside of the classroom.

Succinctly, prescriptivism imposes the correct usage of language and adherence to the pre-existing rules of language, while descriptivism approaches language as a more fluid, flexible entity that should adapt to its users’ needs. The best linguists understand them not as conflicting systems, but complementary ones. Language rules are important for a reliable structure, efficiency and to be comprehensible to the people you’re addressing.

But ultimately, the purpose of language is to communicate and be understood. When old language rules no longer serve their users, linguists account for how people adapt and language changes. They validate and record these changes, to ensure languages, most importantly, serve this objective. A great example of how the two meet is dictionaries. While a prescriptive language tool in nature, linguists have long embraced the expansion and change of words and meaning over time, in a very descriptive fashion. You’re probably lying if you say you’ve never had to use urbandictionary.com in your life. For some of us, you might even use it more than a traditional dictionary because it captures and includes modern-day nuance to historical definitions of words, even if those are mostly still valid and relevant.

Similarly, the purpose of work is to earn an income that helps afford a baseline level of physical, mental and psychological survival at the lowest level, and then a lifestyle, at a higher level. Just like with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, it is after those needs are met, do the other purposes of work play in – to find meaning, feel like a productive and contributing member of your community, evade boredom, or even conversely, just sink in the satisfaction of having a boring but reliable routine. These are all reasons why people both need and want to work, and the accompanying rules and systems related to work should support people’s objectives and ideals.

It is much easier to follow the way things have always been. Choosing to go against the currents is at best inconvenient but at worse deeply detrimental and disadvantageous. Thus, I think it’s fair to say that rebellion is often a result of desperation rather than plain pettiness or self-righteousness. People often go against the pre-existing system because it is no longer working for them (or because they’re finally speaking up about how it was never fairly designed for them to succeed, but systemic inequality is another discussion for another time). If the current systems of work established in a different time in history do not serve them, it is natural for these people living and growing up in vastly different circumstances, to seek out one that better serves their needs.

More often than not, even opposing schools of thought are more similar than they seem. Rather than choosing one or the other, a middle ground validates the existence and necessities of our current systems and rules, but also considers how these systems should always serve us, rather than limit us.

The future of work is a topic that will continue to prevail because it is one that affects us all. But I hope that by the time it inevitably becomes my turn to occasionally shake my head (and maybe even quietly jeer) at the unreasonable and ungrateful newest generation of workers, I’ll remember this exact thing I wrote about on LinkedIn this one day. And if that means an uncomfortable change of mindset and all I’ve ever known is necessary, I hope I still come to embrace it, no matter how begrudgingly. Because while this is my future, it is even more so theirs.

That is the circle of life, after all.