Mad Men and Language of the 60's

I'm a Mad Men aficionado.   Haven't yet seen this season's kickoff but already the media is awash with critiques; I'm trying not to read them so I don't suffer from spoiler revelations.

I've been involved a several conversations recently about Mad Men-ese, i.e. the way people talk in the Mad Men series, the way the language reflects the way people actually talked in the time frame of the early sixties.  People have been slicing and dicing the language used in the script and checking out whether some phrases are anachronistic.  For example, they analyze whether people then said things like "I am so over you..."

I'm not terribly interested in deciphering the Mad Men script in this manner.  What does make me ecstatic, however, is the notion that people care this much about language usage and its continued evolution.  One of the strengths of the English language is its ability to continually evolve as language habits shift and usage varies across geography as well as over time.

Hurrah!  I often fear we're getting so used to text message English ("r u ok?") that we're losing interest in how dialogue works and what it says about our culture and social change within that culture.  Apparently, there are those stalwarts out there who care a lot about English usage.  Here's to all of them.

As some said in the sixties, "That's nifty." (Actually, Mark Twain said things were nifty, too.  So "nifty" wasn't coined in the sixties but that's quibbling).  "Really neat."