Noncompositional

I was reminded today of the results of a geography quiz/survey reported on by National Geographic News. Basically, the geographic and demographic knowledge of young Americans is abysmal, despite geography being a core part of primary and secondary education (often under the category of “social studies”). The article links to the website of a campaign called My Wonderful World, which aims to “expand geographic learning in school, at home, and in the community [...] to give our kids the power of global knowledge.”

This reminded me of the plight that faces the field of linguistics, which so far has been mostly unable to get itself into the pre-college curriculum. Of course, it’s probably not exactly easy to convince people that knowing how to recognize grammatical functions and phonological alternations is important (and certainly not compared with knowing the locations of nations we’re currently occupying…or, say, the states that we live in). But in any case, I watched the 60-second ad available on the site, transcribed it, and then altered it as little as possible, to create the following. I recommend checking out the actual video first, though…

What’s wrong with this series of pictures? Half of young Americans can’t distinguish important morpho-semantic categories like tense and aspect. Twenty percent can’t even identify a passive clause. Without linguistics, our children aren’t ready for the world. Language is everywhere. It’s incredible sounds, rhythm, transformations, flavor. It’s economics, and politics. It’s change. Understanding connections between people and places is critical in the 21st century. That’s why we created thewonderoflanguage.org Go there now for your free parent and teacher action kits, and give our kids the power of linguistic awareness. Because kids who understand our languages today can succeed with them tomorrow.