In todays modern society it appears as
though language is devolving instead of evolving. Language is devolving because
of people spending more and more time online, and the world is now revolving
around a computer or Television that depletes language, instead of reading a book.
Language can also be seen to be devolving as a result of people’s
misconceptions and misuse of language.
Television, which was once a treat, is
now an everyday use and commodity. On top of television, the Internet has now
taken the human capacity for actually using the library, which has instead been
replaced with researching everything on Google. In Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman
dedicates much of his work to showing Huxley’s fear that, “there would be no
one who wanted to read” (Postman xix). Huxley, in his theory, essentially
believes that humans would not need or want to read. Postman proved Huxley
right, by showing how humans have now become attached to technology, and that
humans now value show business highly. Postman explains that people straying
away from reading has come as a result of television being regarded as the same
as reading, but also adding entertainment. An example would be the news in
which Postman explains how news is now “pure entertainment” (Postman 100),
which “ abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction” (Postman
105). Television has therefore ruined Language because it abandons logic and
programs such as the daily news have no medium to actually carry the news, but
are now based on ratings. Valuing how many people find the show entertaining
above whether the actual content follows the rules of language or is innately true
and trying to help people. The issues surrounding television becomes more
apparent because the average American watches 5 hours of television per day. By looking into Americas past we can see a
further example of how language is devolving due to the increase in watching
the television. The Lincoln-Douglas debates in the 19th century became
a huge social convention, and people spent over seven hours each day listening
to political issues from two politicians. The topics encountered included hot political
topics that were highly relevant. In the time of these debates, people valued
having a strong political knowledge base and keeping up to date on current
events. Comparatively if the same event was staged in the modern day, it would
not gather nearly the same audience, but instead would be shunned, because of
the lack of movement in-between scenes, the lack of excitement and because
political interest in the US has generally declined to the state that now, 70%
of Americans do not even know who the Secretary of State is. Postman, in his
book Amusing Ourselves to death, shows
multiple examples of modern day television shows which have had low ratings
because they have been on serious events and political issues without
advertisements, or entertaining music in the background.
Language has also devolved because of people’s
misuses and misconceptions of the English language. George Orwell in his paper Politics and the English Language, states
that the English language, “is full of bad habits which spread by imitation” (Orwell
1). Orwell shows that humans have a tendency to over use phrases and sentences
which tend to become misused from their actual purposes, and when this happens
words lose there intended value and meaning. An example of misconceptions of
the English language is that pretentious diction benefits writing. Whereas
Orwell states that pretentious diction is “used to dress up a simple statement
and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgment” (Orwell 5). By
using pretentious diction and foreign words, humans are trying to provide a
sense of culture and elegance, when in actual fact there is no genuine reason
for the words to be included in the writing and instead take away from the
actual purpose of the written piece.
In conclusion, what was once a simple but
educational language has since turned into a devolving language. The devolution
of the English language can be traced to Television and the Internet that has
depleted writing, and the misuse of language in the modern day.
