Libertine Seguros said:
It depends on your opinion of Sapir-Whorf.
Language is a fluid thing which adapts to the situation around it. New thoughts and concepts are brought up all the time, and so new coinages need to be created to fit. Old terms acquire new definitions by euphemism or otherwise, so new terms need to replace them.
A general degeneration of language proficiency is not necessarily what's gone on so much as an enormous increase in our exposure to written language that fulfils functions not previously ascribed to it, eg internet forum communication, instant messenger services etc where we type like we speak, rather than like we write, and an enormous increase in our exposure to language written by and for informal communication between people of varying education levels. I would choose a different register to write in, were my posts to be published on the front page; I write in a different manner in instant messages, in informal forum chat, in more discursive, analytical forum chat, and in long email missives to some of my more distant friends who I don't have the opportunity to speak to as often.
Language is an adaptable thing. Though the higher registers may take a puritanical approach (see French or Icelandic), these are usually the most impervious to change, because when writing (or speaking) formally, for official, academic or journalistic purposes, a certain register is expected that gives your discourse a certain gravitas. It simply would not do to write a sentence like "n then he was like, oh my god, like, he was lyin' an'all!" in academic or journalistic script, even if you tidied up the phonetics.
There are certain errors that really grind my gears, for sure (there's that "for sure" again!). "Could of, would of, should of" in particular drives me mad. But ultimately, if somebody writes that in something academic, official etc, then it will just be crossed out. If you write that on your CV when applying for a job, it will go straight in the bin. But these are less the product of the information age, and more the product of a general misconception born out of a linguistic habit that predates the internet (the abbreviations into "could've, would've, should've" and so on).
Believe me I'm familiar with the fluid tendency and sub-regional context of language, as well as the preference for established hierarchies between the
hochdeutsch, in the canonical sense, versus
dialekte in relation to one's provenance, education and social status. In Italy the people didn't start to really speak "Italian," which is imprecisely said to have evolved from the Florentine dialect of Dante in the late Middle Ages, until televisions were more or less introduced en masse in the 50's and 60's. They spoke in
dialetto. The country was only unified in 1861, thus for many centuries the Italians, just like their spoken dialects, were a heterogeneous entity only vaguely connected to a common identity by the geographical context. And dialects often, in their refusal to embrace the high parlance of the official language doctrine, frequently offer possibilities and solutions that more aptly express the social and cultural identity of a completely valid local tradition. In fact, in this sense, the standardization of language here, wrought by a modern commercial means of communication, with the consequent decrease and even loss of dialect is lamentable. Since it recalibrates the cultural parameters of identity, while at the same time eliminates what might be called that semio-diversity, which found diverse expression in the local food, art, architecture, in short
kultur.
But my point attempted to address something entirely different: that is, the forces at work which are presently determining what appears to be the general, and here I disagree with you, language anemia of our times. The ways of communication you mention and the various levels of reception, are being, so it appears, reformulated upon lines totally in synch with the commercial interests of the corporations that have come to dominate the famous information age. Language and communication are no longer based upon even a standard grammar, if we are to judge by the way young people generally write these days, let alone sophisticated modes of
elocutio.
It's clunky, awkward, unsophisticated; but more than this, reflects a chunkiness, awkwardness and unsophistication that is being inculcated in young people’s thought process through the "schooling" they were given on the internet and not
in school. Finally it doesn't enable young people to express themselves adequately in situations that demand more than what they are used to on the internet.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not a language purist, nor one for affected formality, however, changes in dialect and modes of expression should work toward making us think better, not worse. That's my critical concern in my line of work. The corporate world of the information age does not, to me, appear to be achieving this goal, in the new standards being set by the commercial means of mass communication.
Basta.