Logos: John McWhorter

John McWhorter, in The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, explores the evolution of language within worldwide cultures across time.

In Doing Your Own Thing: the Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care, McWhorter asserts that the degradation of language usage in contemporary American culture limits our self-reflectiveness. “Culture lives by the generation, and words that live only in the dictionary or on word-a-day calendars are, in essence dead,” from Doing Your Own Thing.

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