How Language is Devolving

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 19^th 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.