WHAT LANGUAGE DOES In a creative civilization, language works as a flexible, responsive agent. It changes and grows with the demands made upon its resources. And in an era such as ours when new knowledge of every kind challenges the experts, thousands of new words, meanings and symbols appear to communicate those findings. As students of language, you hardly need to be reminded of this spate of language. Who can escape the fact that we live in a world of constantly changing language? Even the householder sprawled before his television set takes for granted the terms representing a swiftly changing world of technology. He watches the launching of space craft, communication and weather satellites and intercontinental missiles during countdown, lift-off from the launching pad. He follows range tracking through radiation belts and to the hum and clatter of electronic computers, he surfs the internet. The householder may also reach for a tranquilizer as he thinks of the terms his high school son brings up at the dining table and his daughter dawdles in a corner over virtual reality. To cope with this tremendous master-servant, language, in our own writing and to become able of evaluating what we read and hear, we should have a basic idea of language, of what it is and does.

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