As of yet, we don’t seem to have collectively decided on a name for this decade. One could shrug off this lexical inconvenience. But they may not be wise to do so considering the implications. Having a popular consensus on the way we describe a decade is important not only for the present but also for posterity and the way in which history appraises our efforts. The eighties and nineties were easily labelled. But this new century has caused us interminable problems. It is 2012 now. It’s about time we sorted it out.
There is an apparent incompatibility between mathematics and language. We don’t have a term to describe either 0-9 or 10-19. That’s grand when you’re doing a bit of maths maybe but it becomes problematic when we are discussing the evolution of human trends. We love to break time down into decades. Decades are the building blocks of time. They are the units through which we understand out shared past. If I say ‘the eighties’, what comes into your head? Synthesisers, big hair, the Soviet Union, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, economic liberalisation...the list goes on. Equally, the nineties has a clear identity. In the early 1990’s, a common quip people made when somebody behaved in a retrograde manner was ‘welcome to the nineties’, by which they meant ‘get with the times’. The label of ‘the nineties’ gave us a strong sense of the period we were living in at that time. Many people called the decade of 2000 to 2009, the ‘Naughties’ or ‘Noughties’, depending on your taste. This of course was a very British invention. Many Americans called it the ‘Aughts’. However we still don’t have any conclusive name for that particular decade. Now we’re in yet another decade of difficulty. There is certainly no common ground reached on this one yet. Roll on the 2020’s!
Decades give time identity. We immediately make cultural, political and economic associations when the name of a decade is mentioned. The Twenties is an iconic decade. The ‘roaring twenties’. The cloche hat. The decade of radio and jazz. The Charleston, foxtrot and shimmy. The Thirties is equally distinguishable. The Great Depression. lace frocks, negligee and corsets. The rise of Hitler and Art Deco. We talk about these periods through the unit of the decade. It is a tidy way to make generalisations about trends. You rarely hear people talking about trends in the first two decades of the twentieth century. People may allude to the Edwardian period or 'early twentieth century' but never to the unit of a decade. The reason for this is because our language doesn’t support it. We don’t have a way of talking about the first two decades of any century. As a result, these periods lose their powers of association and we begin to find it difficult to connect with them. Whereas it is very different with the famous decades. People will regularly comment on each other’s style through this type of language. ‘I love your coat. It’s so sixties’. Or their friends car...’It has a touch of the fifties about it’. Or their hair...’Look how eighties that girl’s hair is!’ The associations are clear and offer a shared understanding.
The shortcomings of language mean that we have lost our cultural connection with the first two decades of the twentieth century. They have no labels. People need labels because we learn and remember through association. Are we therefore in danger of losing the current decade we are living in? Of course it’s relevant to us now because we are living through it. But will our great grandchildren feel the same sense of disconnect that we feel towards the decade of 1910-1919? Will it be the forgotten decade with no clear sense of human trends, be it fashion, music, art or whatever? It doesn’t matter that all these trends do and will continue to exist. What matters is that they don’t exist under a definable bracket of time. For posterity, this matters.
While researching this article, I asked alot of people what they thought would be the best name for this decade. Their answers were eclectic to say the least! ‘The Tenies’, ‘the Onsies’, ‘the Tenners’,or what about ‘not the Bush years’? ‘The Decadents’ is nice despite its irony considering the financial crisis. The Economist suggested ‘the deccas’. Many people seem to be keen on ‘the teens’. Of course being in 2012, we are on the cusp of that but it’s still useable. Perhaps the allusion to ‘teen’ is appropriate in light of this brave new world we are in. A moody economy. A crotchety financial system. A confused generation. What about a sexual awakening? Where would that fit in?
Even if a name for this decade does begin trending, it doesn’t mean it will exist in posterity. We have little knowledge of what people living between 1910 and 1919 affectionately called that decade. I’m sure there were some nicknames but the point is that they’ve generally been forgotten now. The problem is more institutionalised in language itself. English has left us bereft! Perhaps future generations will find new ways to define this period. Maybe they will name it after events rather than the unit of the decade. ‘The Great Recession’, ‘the Obama Years’, ‘the Collapse of the E.U.’. We’re still at the beginning of this decade. Plenty of things could happen yet. But whatever does happen, it may well lead to the naming of the decade. Let’s hope it’s something good!
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