One of the most stunningly stupid popular narratives about language is that it's declining steadily. You know the lines: English is being destroyed by young people not using 'whom' or by them using 'like' (as in 'she was all like ...). This clearly parallels the general Decline of Civilization narrative. xkcd has this beautiful piece playing off of that by way of
Idiocracy. Just look at panels 3 and 4 and substitute 'language', 'grammar', etc. for 'religious', 'moral', 'society', etc.
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