Language and language change
Language is innate to humans. It allows the communication of our thoughts and ideas, and even the existence of them. It can only be developed and acquired through socialization.
It's really interesting the role that socialization plays in language change.
In order to understand this idea better I really have to mention what Prescriptive and Descriptive grammar is.
Prescriptive grammar are the rules which tell us how to use language in a proper way, I mean; the "correct" way.
Descriptive grammar has to do with the real use of the language, how people use language everyday.
Thanks to Descriptive grammar language changes and becomes the "right" one. To put you all on the same track I'll give you an example what has happened in Chile.
When someone (a Chilean person) wants to make somebody else smell something, there are 2 options. #1: ¡Huele esto!, and #2: ¡Olorosa esto! The first option would be the "correct" one. The second one is the way in which Chilean people really use language. After a while, the RAE (Real Academia Española) noticed that that word was so widely and commonly used by people, that they decided to put that word into Spanish dictionaries as a Chilean way of speaking. Yeah... It's fascinating how this works, I mean; language change. It's like after being an insignificant molehill it turned into a big mountain.
In this unit of linguistics, thanks to all the reading and discussion groups, I think that my reading and writing skills had become better, and also my reflective skill has improved by writing my essay. My biggest conclusion would be that I strongly believe that a world without language,so there's no communication at all, would be a dead world.
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