Through the wormhole with trepidation...

As much as I adore Morgan Freeman and his show on the Science channel, last week’s episode burst my grammar-elitist bubble. The episode focuses on what alien life might be like: how they feel, how they think, how they communicate, and, essentially, what constitutes life. It was the segment on language that got me.

“Rebel linguist” Simon Kirby demonstrated his research into language evolution using a simple game of telephone. Or, as he called it, “broken telephone.” It worked much as you might expect, with his initial message being garbled by the end. But he didn’t consider that a matter of miscommunication; rather, he saw his phrase evolve as it was passed from person to person. And the manner of this evolution? The phrase became shorter and simpler. Sure, it made no sense, but how many idiomatic phrases do we have these days that make just as little sense?

So language’s evolution is simplification, or becoming easier to learn. Here’s my issue:

Are language purists going against evolution? I’m not just thinking about myself, correcting with my pens the awkward phrasing of my students, but also of “higher” powers that have sought to preserve languages like English and French. I think back to my French teacher, Mrs. Klein, describing the horrors of le parking and le weekend. I think of my own recent insistence on wheel barrow as opposed to “wheel barrel,” as a silly facebook meme put it.

Kirby continued to shoot holes in my elitism, asserting that every mistake makes the language easier to learn for the next generation. Oh no, will the OED some day accept "wheel barrel"?! Sure, make those mistakes for the good of your children! Professors just get in the way of change!

So, do I put my pens down?

I so badly want to hear Kirby speak about any implications for academia: how will we (the academics) change in order to go with the flow of evolution? Or are we already part of it? Is there any such thing as correct grammar, spelling, syntax, vocabulary...so long as the idea is put across successfully? And how do we define “successfully,” in light of these evolutionarily necessary mistakes?

Kirby imagines that we will become “more and more stupid biologically, and more and more smart culturally” (my emphasis). I can get on board with that. I have always reveled in the knowledge that humankind’s first cultural endeavors were images, not words. Images that do the work of thousands of words, whether we as historians know the “correct” text or not. Perhaps, if we meet a far more linguistically and culturally advanced civilization, they will communicate in shorter, simpler forms while expressing bigger, more complex ideas as so many artists have striven to do.