ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the startling statement by the Doomsday Clock atomic scientists in 2018 that a widespread debasement of language among those in positions of public responsibility has helped to bring us closer to midnight than ever before. Maryanne Wolf’s important work on the effects of digital technology on literacy and on “the highly elaborated reading brain” helps us to understand how this is so. The discussion then turns to the evolution of speech and the layered communication skills described by Merlin Donald (“rudimentary song”, mimesis, myth, narrative, concepts, digital technology). Michael Polanyi’s theory of the “tacit dimension” and Alison Gopnik’s research on what and how infants know support Wolf and Donald in enabling us to understand the significance of dialogue for effective communication and social organization. The chapter concludes with a summary of the modern development of literary studies, with a view to assessing the relevance of reading and criticism for the state of affairs that the chapter describes.
