But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Our civilization is decadent and our language - so the argument runs - must inevitably share in the general collapse.
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.
0 kommentar(er)
