With the imminent arrival of the voice-activated computer (and, for most people, no need to use a keyboard), the Internet is likely to expand at an even faster rate. There will be all sorts of effects of this no doubt. Voices at one end can produce voices at the other or they can produce words. There will also be video-conversations. Will words be read? Or will we want to listen to words?
The advantage of words is that they can be scanned very quickly indeed - far faster than normal reading speed (which itself can be faster than the spoken word) - so perhaps the spoken word or video on the Internet will not be so useful to the sort of (generally) high-ability people who use the Internet at present.
The picture I am getting is that the grammatically correct, discursive type of literary argument is declining and that the written language (as a wide universe) will fall out of favour. Perhaps English will become the 'well' from which basic words are extracted for world-wide use in many academic disciplines, scientific subjects and industrial sectors (each one having their own repertoire) and the remainder of the communication content between experts will consist of subsidiary languages - drawings, 3-D models, gestures (in video-conferencing), mathematics, etc. Thus John Maynard Smith, one of the most brilliant UK scientists, has cited the impossibility of describing the action of a tipple-top in language, without recourse to mathematics.
English will remain and develop as a universal language of 'truncations' - partial repertoires. So (if this picture turns out to be correct), most people will speak their own language fluently but will not write or read it (and will rely on spoken and visual communication), but those with jobs will speak, read and write a particular repertoire of English as a 'spine' on which to hang other non-verbal languages.
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX (tel 01225 442377; e-mail: <k.hudson@bbcnc.org.uk>).
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