Language Evolution and Speech Style

Abstract

This chapter discusses language evolution and speech style. The greater the interpersonal distance between individuals involved in a communication situation, the more autonomous are the symbolic vehicles to understand. The languages associated with complex modern civilizations have larger vocabularies than those of the classic civilizations, which exceed those of local tribal languages. World and classical languages provide richer resources for communicative subtlety than do local languages and offer a larger variety of names for a given thing. The major mechanism underlying the process of language evolution is that social evolution produces speech communities in which situations calling for autonomous speech occur with increasing frequency. The increasing complexity of the division of labor produces specialists who produce finer lexical distinctions and more abstract terms with which they can communicate their specialized knowledge to people outside their specialty. The direction of linguistic evolution is toward the precise and explicit speech of the analytic philosopher, the scientist, and the bureaucrat.