B. R. Myers, wielding his club like a rapier as usual, has an excellent piece up at The Atlantic on the work of Ian Robinson, a British critic (an evangelical, as it happens) who writes primarily on the ongoing collapse of the English language. The piece is partly a review of Robinson’s latest book, Untied Kingdom, and partly a look back at Robinson’s first book, The Survival of English: Essays in the Criticism of Language, but like any good review essay, it’s as much about Robinson’s subject as it is about his books—a subject on which Myers has a lot to say in his own right. I particularly appreciate his trenchant summary of why the state of our language matters:
Our language itself is losing its power to express moral disapproval. Obscene and sinful are headed the way of decadent and outrageous; perhaps depraved will be watered down next.Such changes affect the way we think, because we do so in words. This is why Karl Kraus, the founder of modern Sprachkritik, or “criticism of language,” was so hard on the Viennese press of the 1920s and 1930s. He is alleged to have said that “if those who are obliged to look after commas had made sure they are always in the right place,” the Japanese would not have set Shanghai on fire. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but the New York Times article speaks for itself. People who cannot distinguish between good and bad language, or who regard the distinction as unimportant, are unlikely to think carefully about anything else.