Language and productiveness

Abstract: One of the first activities created by the human being, is communication. Hand
movings, later screams and sounds, become along the centuries in the articulated language.
Like a dynamic entity, language has evolved along human history. But this evolution is not
linear, many languages stop to use; this are death languages. But taking them as start point,
new languages developed, taking that ancient languages as basement. Along the time, many
people has watch for the adequate use of the language, especially in written media. But
across de 20th Century, with the development of the mass media, all languages, not only
English or Spanish, has a neglect use and abuse. Is a paradox, but in the Information Era
now we live, most of the time language is poorly used. And this overcome media, to affect
all places: schools, government, business and companies. From our point of view, a
language improvement is necessary to be more efficient in our work, our business, in our
whole life.
Introduction. The language is something we take for granted. We learn the phonetic map
of our mother tongue between the six and the 11 months of birth. That means that in this
period we learn to hear and recognize the sounds of any language. Even, A baby exposed to
different languages in this period, may learn to recognize (and after to talk) this languages.
Past some time, around 18-20 months old, a baby has a vocabulary of about 150-300
words. But the right pronunciation and context is a longer process that come around 6 or 7
years old. In this period a child can use hundreds of words and use a correct syntaxes.
During this period of childhood, every person acquire his mental map of language. This
means in this period configure their basic language form. Even, this change during the
social and scholar life.
When this person ends his formative period and comes to the social and working activity,
the theory is that this man or girl counts with enough knowledge and communication
capabilities to face the world. This sounds great, but isnt completely true.
Other formation sources. During this period, are a parallel info source: electronic mass
media. Radio, and principally TV and since some years, Internet, are one source of
knowledge that acts during more time in a persons life that school formation.
Its not a secret that in the last 30 years, TV programs pass from educative contents to
explode mainly violence and sex. Currently we hear that at twelve years, a child has seen
ten thousand murders and know about sex more than his father. And it happened about
internet too. Only in Youtube, the most seen content is music videos, followed by comedy.
This other formation sources has a surprise problem: the bad language use. Not only we
talk about rudeness or vulgarity; we mean the bad use of language: wrong use of words,
poor syntaxes, slang between others, distort the right use of language, and the worst of this,
is that the used of this media dont note it. It becomes the normality.

This problem go further. This poor language, this poor communication, applied in any
organization (school, government, business or companies) obstruct the development of the
need activities.
Why? Because, by one hand, the person ways of communication are distort; then, a
message is not as effective as it may be.
By other hand, laziness to read, code and decode written information (many prefer to search
a video tutorial).
It hits in the organization productivity. Is like a dysfunctional phone: Sometimes we can
rebuild a bad message, but sometimes we cant understand the context.
The final ingredient. And why the other formation overcome school? This is due two
factors. Firstly the easily of acquisition. The school formation needs to enforce to
understand information, code and decode to assimilate knowledge. Comparatively,
audiovisual info, is assimilated so easily, because is a live sample how something is done,
the how to. As Plato said, Long and tedious is the knowledge through theories, short and
effective by examples.
The second is continuity. If we can ask people, we may see that school knowledge is seen
as obligation, something unhelpful and empty. Unfortunately, most teachers drown childs
curiosity, making then see study and knowledge acquirement as a burden, and not as a
pleasure or a gain. Conversely, TV and now internet, are ever there: easy to see, without
great effort and easy to assimilate. They are there practically until persons dead.
Conclusion
Is absolutely clear that a better and assertive communication is essential in any
organization, but this is obstructed by the bad use of language in the media. Banish the use
of media or change the way they use language is utopic and unreal solution. Certainly may
be better improve language, but in this moment thats not solution.
From our point of view, is necessary take some actions:
Beginning from school formation, show the importance of a good language use, and clear
dudes or show mistakes from media. And over this, teach children that they can and may
learn by themselves, to dont feel afraid by the knowledge.
In the case of workers and professionals, teach the importance of a correct use of language
and how to develop a clear and assertive speech or written messages.
Bibliography:
Bringing up baby. Chapters 1 and 2. Documental. 4 chapters. London BBC, 2007.