The Complexity of Language in Modern Society

The history of language probably started when our earliest ancestors had the need to communicate with each other. Since beginning that era, language had evolved into this ever-growing and seemingly governed system of that same communicative property our ancestors used. But is language really rule-governed? Is the current evolutionary status of language really comparable to that of our ancient brethren? Is the level of complexity of our ancestors’ language, disregarding the difference in level of language if there is, is the same as ours in current society? Language is indeed rule-governed, and it is this ever-increasingly stricter and ever-expanding system that differentiates our level of language and its complexity from our ancestors.

Language is rule-governed, but the rules are not ratified by an authority, but rather by these invisible set of human-abided rules, which are shaped from the pragmatism of the different forms of language. Two large components of language that contribute to the successful projection of sense of meaning are vocabulary, the meaning of a word, and grammar, the correct usage of the word. Vocabulary is human rule-governed shaped by its usefulness in society. Everyone knows that an apple is. An apple is usually red, sometimes green; is a fruit; grows on trees; etc. But that is simply the meaning of what human society gave the word ‘apple’ to intend. What truly is an apple? It is this solid collection of atoms. But, to take something as literally as this statement would not be very useful for human language. In that sense, then people are all atoms, because we are all solid collections of atoms. Vocabulary can then be said to have been shaped by its pragmatic uses in human society. Grammar is also human...

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...y had become deeper from the earlier eras, sacrificing flexibility for precision.

Language is rule-governed, and more developed in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and complexity than that of our ancestors. Along with greater language prowess grew also our capability of knowing and perceiving something. Take for example the example of the color red. If I had lived in earlier eras where the word ‘red’ was just limited to ‘red,’ then I could have easily said that my school’s uniform is the same color to that of the McDonald’s waitress’ uniform. But, seeing as how I live in the modern era, I could easily distinguish my school’s uniform as maroon, and the McDonald’s waitress’ uniform as more of a scarlet tone. With this, there is no true way of ‘knowing’ something, especially in such a complex way, unless the language one understands welcomes the idea of that something.