LANGUAGE FORUM

VOL. 42, NO. 1-2, JAN-DEC 2016

Is “shall” Dying a Slow Death?:

A Corpus Based Study
BRAJ MOHAN
GLA University, Mathura, India

ABSTRACT

This paper is a corpus based study of the phenomenon of

language change over time. This paper investigates how the
preference of using “will” in place of ““shall”” increased
with passage of time between 1960 and 1993. The data from
Brown Corpus, LOB Corpus and British National Corpus have
been analyzed to understand the change in the use of “will”
and ““shall”” over time by British and American users of
English. The study shows drastic decline in the use of “shall”
particularly in the second half of the 20th century. However,
this change is not uniform as it is more prominent in the
American English than in British English. Female users of
English were found to be more resistant to this change than
the male users of English.

Keywords: Language change, language variation, “shall”,

modality

INTRODUCTION

A living language constantly changes according to the growing

needs of its users. This change occurs in almost all the areas of
language – syntax, lexicon, phonology and semantics. English is
one of the liveliest and most rapidly changing languages. The
rapidity of change in English can be understood from the fact that
thousands of new words are added to Oxford English Dictionary
annually. Oxford English dictionary is updated four times a year
and around 500 new words, phrases, and senses have been added
114 BRAJ MOHAN

in June 2015 alone. In most living languages, the change in

lexicon is rapid and slow in syntax.
Change in language is generally frowned upon by the
“purists” who generally treat language as a set of rules of
grammar and pronunciation. Initially the new usage, words, and
meaning change is taken as language decadence, and later on the
same decadent language becomes the norm. Now, it is an
established fact in linguistics that language change is inevitable
and even desirable. A language that does not adapt itself
according to the changing and expanding needs of its users
slowly dies. In the words of Baugh, “When a language ceases to
change, we call it a dead language. Classical Latin is dead
because it has not changed for nearly two thousand years”
(Baugh & Cable 2005: 2). Perhaps English is the liveliest of all
languages due to its ability to adapt, accept, borrow and change.
Among the recent changes in the English Language, the
replacement of ““shall”” by “will” has been quite rapid as within
a duration of less than fifty years the use of ““shall”” has
significantly reduced not only in informal and spoken English but
in formal and written English also (Berglund 2005: 132; Barber
1964: 134).
According to Oxford Advance Learner Dictionary ““shall””
is a modal auxiliary which traces its origin from the Old English
word sceal of Germanic origin. It is related to Dutch zal and
German soll, which mean “owe.” The traditional rule in British
English is that “shall” is used with first person pronouns, i.e. I
and “we,” while “will” is used with third person pronouns for
talking about the future. This rule is reversed when a strong
determination or compulsion is shown. In the last few decades an
increasing tendency of preferring the use of “will” over “shall”
with first person pronouns “I” and “we” has been noticed and
“shall” seems to be dropping out of use (Berglund 2005: 132).
However, in one domain the use of “shall” seems to be
unaffected. The use of “shall” seems to be unaffected and even
sometimes overused in legal language, which is very
conservative and resistant to change (Gotti 2001: 90-91;
Darmstadter 2008: 229). Even in legal language the usage and
meaning of “shall” has started debates and some scholars have
IS “SHALL” DYING A SLOW DEATH? 115

suggested stopping the use of “shall” in legal language (Garner

2013). Keeping in mind the ambiguity created by the use of
“shall” in legal documentation, some scholars suggest that the
use of “shall” be replaced by a more precise modal like “must”
for showing legal obligation (Garner 2013; Williams 2005: 202).
Many users of English do not seem to adhere to these rules
regarding the use of “shall” and “will” any longer. “shall” is
rapidly losing it currency even in formal English of the educated
class. Many users of English are dropping the use of “shall” and
replacing it with “will.” In both written and spoken British
English as well as in American English, the use of “will” with
first person pronouns is increasing. This seems to be very
obvious example of language change. This phenomenon inspired
me to carry out a diachronic research on the use of “shall”
between 1960 and 1993. This study seeks the answers to the
following questions:

• How did the use of “shall” and “will” change between 1960
and 1993 in the written English of the authors born in UK
and Ireland?
• What is the trend of “shall” being replaced by “will” in
British and American English?
• Does gender play a role in the preference of the use of “will”
over “shall”?

For exploring the above mentioned questions, a diachronic study

of the use of “shall” and “will” has been conducted using three
corpora – BNC, LOB and Brown. The diachronic study of
language relies on empirical data, which has been obtained from
the above mentioned corpora. Quite a good number of researches
on language change have been carried out using the data from
corpora (Rissanen et al. 1997; Peitsara 1993; Nevalainen 2000;
Berglund 2005). Many corpus based researches have also
meaningfully contributed to various pedagogical explorations as
corpora are a reliable source of real language in use (Wichman et
al. 1997; Kettemann & Marko 2002; McEnery et al. 2005; Tan
2002). Corpus based studies have been recommended and
effectively used for designing lexical syllabus and also in
116 BRAJ MOHAN

developing material and pedagogy of language teaching (Sinclair

& Renouf 1988; Lewis 1993). Hence, the use of corpora for
researching the use of “shall” between 1960 and 1993 is a valid
approach for this research.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Some important research has been done in the area of the use of
the expressions of future time. Mair (1997) studies the use of
future marker “going to between 1961 and 1992 using the press
article of four corpora – LOB, FLOB, Frown and Brown. In his
research, he suggests that use of “going to” considerably
increased with time between 1961 and 1992 and this increase is
more noticeable in American English. This may indicate the
increasing preference of using “going to” over traditional “shall”
and “will” as “stylistically informal alternative” (Mair 1997:
1541). The finding of Mair (1997) regarding the increased use of
“going to” corroborates the findings of Aitchison (1991:100).
However Mair does not study the use of “shall” and “will” in
comparison to “going to.” Ylva Berglund (2005) tried to fill this
gap by studying the use of the four expressions of future – “will,”
“shall”, “ll,” and “going to/gonna” in the press articles of the
same corpora as Mair (1997) studied. He found the use of “shall”
consistently falling over time (2005:131-32). Leech et al suggests
that it is not the case with “shall” only but the use of more other
modal auxiliaries is decreasing (2009: 74). In some researcher it
was also found that the use of contracted form “ll” has
consistently increased (Krug 1996; Axelsson 1998).
The findings of Ylva Berglund (2005) regarding the
decreased use of “shall” need to be re-examined as he only
compared the older corpus like LOB with later corpus like
FLOB. His data does not show the true nature of this change as
the samples from many different time spans have not been
analyzed here. Furthermore, Berglund’s data is limited to press
articles, which may represent the use of “shall” in that particular
domain and cannot be treated as true representative data of
language in use. The representative data of language in use must
comprise data from varied domains and genres. These concerns
IS “SHALL” DYING A SLOW DEATH? 117

have been considered in this research to make its findings more

reliable regarding true language in use. The study of the use of
“shall” in the syntactic environment also establishes the need and
the validity of this work.

THE DATA

It is a corpus based study based on British National Corpus

(BNC), Brown Corpus and LOB Corpus. BNC is a huge corpus
of 100 million words, while Brown and LOB are of one million
words each. Brown Corpus represents written American English
and LOB corpus represents written British English. The spoken
corpus and the written corpus have been studied separately for
the purpose of comparing the trends of the use of “shall”
wherever it was possible. However, the main focus of the study is
on the use of “shall” in written English by the authors of UK and
Ireland and USA. The data of spoken English was not
diachronically distributed in BNC so this did not make a
diachronic study of spoken English.

METHODOLOGY

The data of BNC have been analysed using the online tools of
BNCweb in terms of gender and nationality of author/speaker
and time span. The total span between 1960 and 1993 has been
divided into three parts for the analysis of the data. The use of
“shall” has been studied in these corpora in terms of the effect of
gender (Male Vs Female) varieties (American English Vs. British
English) and time. The comparison between the use of “shall” in
British English and American English has been done with the
analysis of LOB Corpus and Brown Corpus. AntConc has been
used for analyzing Brown Corpus and LOB Corpus. The
following words and phrases were searched in the corpora:

1. Shall
2. Will
3. I shall
4. We shall
118 BRAJ MOHAN

5. I will
6. We will
7. Shall I
8. Shall we
9. Will I
10. Will we

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

The increased use of “will” in place of “shall” has been studied

from various perspectives. An effort was made to see how the
use of “shall” was slowly replaced by “will” over time and how
the preference of the use of “will” over “shall” has been
influenced by gender and the type of language use – written or
spoken. An effort was also made to see whether there is any
difference between American and British English in terms of
preference of using “will” over “shall” with first person pronouns
“I” and “We.”

THE USE OF “SHALL” AND “WILL” OVER TIME

The diachronic study of the use of “shall” in texts written

between 1960 and 1993 indicates that the use of “shall” was
constantly losing its currency and was being replaced by the use
of “will.”

Figure 1. Use of “shall” in British English

IS “SHALL” DYING A SLOW DEATH? 119

In the analysis of the BNC, 366.55 instances per million words

were found in the texts written between 1960 and 1974. The use
of “shall” is dropped to 229.44 tokens per million words in the
texts written between 1975 and 1984. The occurrence of “shall”
further dropped to 204 tokens per million words in the texts
written between 1985 and 1993. As we can see in Figure 1, this
drop in the use of “shall” with the passage of time is quite
substantial and rapid.
The preference of “will” over “shall” is further studied in
syntactic context using BNCWeb. The occurrence of “will” and
“shall” was studied with first person pronouns “I” and “we.” We
looked for four clusters “I shall,” “I will,” “shall I,” and “will I”
in the written texts of British National Corpus. The results
presented in Figure 2 clearly indicate that the use of “shall,”
particularly in assertive, was rapidly replaced by will with the
passage of time.

Figure 2. “Shall” vs “will” with first person subject

Table 1.
I We We Shall Will Shall Will
Per million words I will
shall shall will I I we we
1960-74 122.2 125.11 86.71 26.77 30.26 6.98 6.98 4.44
1975-84 53.83 54.48 80.21 52.54 9.94 3.03 12.67 1.08
1985-93 51.39 59.23 51.9 79.61 7.49 4.49 8.05 2.88

The analysis given in the Table 1 shows that the use of “I shall”
was as high as 122.2 instances per million words in the texts
120 BRAJ MOHAN

written between 1960 and 1974 and dropped to 53.83 instances

per million words in 1975-84 and further dropped to just 51.39
instances per million words in the texts produced in the next 14
years. A similar pattern of constant drop can be seen in the use of
“we shall” and the reverse trends can be seen in the use of “we
will.” The figure and the table above also show that the use of
“shall” with first person pronouns is being replaced by the use of
“will” even in the interrogative sentences. However, the rate of
replacement of “shall” by “will” is less rapid in interrogative
sentences than in affirmative sentences.

THE USE OF “WILL” AND “SHALL” IN WRITTEN AND SPOKEN

ENGLISH

The cause of this replacement of “shall” by “will” may perhaps

be due to phonological reasons. The articulation voiceless palate
alveolar fricative (sh) involves more efforts than the articulation
of voiced bilabial semi-vowel (w). This hypothesis of preference
of “w” over “sh” based on of articulatory efforts is further
supported by the results of the analysis of the spoken data.

Figure 3. Use of “shall” and “will”

in spoken and written English

We can see in the figure above that the preference of “will” over
“shall” is more frequent in spoken English than in written
English. This variation in the preference may be attributed to
ease of articulation as the articulation of “shall” takes more
efforts than the articulation of “will.” Written texts may be free
IS “SHALL” DYING A SLOW DEATH? 121

from this logic of effort but we cannot forget that written

language is more or less the presentation of the spoken language.
Furthermore, in writing also the spelling of “shall” is more
effortful than that of “will” as “shall” requires more letters than
will. One of the reasons of comparatively less use of “I will” and
“We will” in written English may be due to the notions of
formality, grammaticality, and editing which are generally
associated with the written English.

ROLE OF GENDER IN PREFERENCE OF “WILL” OVER “SHALL”

The role of gender in the use of “I shall” and “I will” was also
studied both in written and spoken corpora and it was found that
female users of English used “shall” with I particularly in written
texts more frequently than the male users of English. In the
written English of female authors, 111.2 instances of “I shall”
and 102 instances of “I will” in each million words were found,
while the corresponding figures for the male authors were 50.78
instances and 59.23 instances per million words of “I shall” and
“I will” respectively. Thus in written English, female authors
were found more “grammar conscious” than the male authors.

Figure 4. “Shall” and “will” in written and

spoken English male vs female

In spoken English also the trend is more or less the same. In the
spoken English of the female users of English, 101.2 instances of
“I shall” and 130.98 instances of “I will” were found in each
122 BRAJ MOHAN

million words in BNC , while in the speech of male users the

instances of “I shall’ are 64.24 and 142.43 instances of “I will” in
each million words of BNC. This again indicates that male
speakers of English are more “liberal” in terms of grammaticality
and formality than the female users of English.

USE OF “SHALL” AND “WILL” IN BRITISH ENGLISH AND

AMERICAN ENGLISH

An effort has also been made to compare the use of “shall” and
“will” in American English. For this, the Brown Corpus and the
LOB Corpus have been used, which represent the American
English and the British English respectively. The data have been
analysed with the help of AntConc. The trends of using “I shall”;
“I will”; “shall I”; “will I”; “we will”; “we shall”; “shall we”; and
“will be” were studied in order to understand the trend of
replacing “shall” by “will” in British English and American
English. The data have been standardized by calculating the
percent of occurrence in terms of the use of “shall” and “will”
with “I” and “we” separately.

Figure 5. Use of “shall” and “will” with

“I” and “we” in Brown corpus and LOB corpus

In Brown Corpus 39 occurrences of “I shall” and 56 occurrences

of “I will” were found, while in LOB Corpus “I shall” occurs 79
times and “I Will” also occurs 79 times. Since Brown Corpus
IS “SHALL” DYING A SLOW DEATH? 123

represents American English and LOB Corpus represents British

English, we can conclude that in written British English the use
of “I Will” is as popular as that of “I shall,” whereas in written
American English the use of “I Will” is more popular than the
use of “I shall.”
In the Brown Corpus “shall I” has been used 9 times and its
alternative “will I” has been used 7 times, which clearly shows
that many American authors prefer the use of “shall” with “I”
over its alternative “will” in the interrogative sentences. The
story of the use of “shall” and “will” is also not very different in
written British English. In LOB Corpus, “shall I” has been used 8
times and its alternative “will I” has been used 5 times, which
shows that the British authors prefer the use of “shall” to “will”
more than the American authors.

DISCUSSION

It may be interesting to discuss what may be the possible reasons

for the preference of “will” over “shall.” Charles Barber
attributes this change to the use of weak form (“ll”) in place of
both “shall” and “will” (Barber 1964: 134). In the sentences like
“I’ll do it” or “He’ll help me,” the speaker himself gets confused
about which modal he intends to use – “will” or “shall.” The
second reason of the preference of “will” over “shall” may be
due to the human tendency of investing minimum efforts. The
writing of “shall” involves more efforts than writing “will” in
terms of number of letters in these words. In pronunciation also
“will” involves less efforts than “shall” as articulating
approximant “w” is easier than articulating “sh” which is a
voiceless palato-alveolar fricative. It is interesting to note that the
same users who often prefer to replace “shall” by “will” were
found using “shall” in questions. This phenomenon may be
attributed to syntactic position. “shall/will” comes before subject
in questions due to which it needs prominence. It seems, since
“shall” is more prominent phonetically in terms of vowel length
and efforts in articulating the opening consonant, it is retained in
the sentence opening position. In this study, women have been
found more “grammar-conscious” and traditional in the matter of
124 BRAJ MOHAN

using “shall” with “I” and “We.” Perhaps, women are more
resistant to change than men. Several studies have proved that
women use better language in terms of grammar and
pronunciation than men which may be due to their psychological
orientation of following the standard and “discipline.”

FINDINGS

From the above analysis the following observations can be made:

1. The use of “shall” with “I” and “We” consistently declined

between 1960 and 1993. Rapidly increasing tendency of
preferring “will” over “shall” has been observed.
2. A significant difference has been found in the use of
replacing “shall” by “will” between assertive sentences and
interrogative sentences. The tendency of replacing “shall” by
“will” in interrogative sentences has been found far less than
in assertive sentences.
3. The tendency of replacing “shall” by “will” has been found
slightly more in the language of male users of English than in
the language of the female users of English.
4. It has been observed that the trend of replacing “shall” by
“will” is more prevalent in spoken English than in written
English.
5. The trend of replacing “shall” by “will” is more in American
English than in British English.

As a final note it can be said that the tendency of replacing

“shall” by “will” is quite strong and even the “purists” in
grammar have also accepted that this phenomenon of change is
acceptable. However, the acceptability of replacing “shall” by
“will” is more in assertive sentences than in interrogative
sentences.

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IS “SHALL” DYING A SLOW DEATH? 125

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BRAJ MOHAN, PHD

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH,
GLA UNIVERSITY, MATHURA, INDIA.
E-MAIL: <BRAJ182@GMAIL.COM>