Interview with Patt Morrison on Southern California Public Radio about the end of the On Language column. (Mar. 7, 2011)
Has language, and the veracity of language, become irrelevant in the modern technological age? It might be a bit of a leap to make too much out of the decision to end the run of the “On Language” column that appeared every Sunday in The New York Times Magazine, a column started in 1979 by legendary political reporter William Safire. But as the use of language, and grammatical standards, become looser and slang becomes more widely accepted, could the end of an iconic column examining language be a sign of the times? Ben Zimmer, the columnist who took over “On Language” from Safire, wonders about the future of language when “every aspect of our linguistic life is open to technologization of one form or another” and “our growing expectations that computer interfaces should be able to recognize our speech and text, understand it and talk back to us.” We look back on the 31 years of “On Language” and look forward to the future human communication.
(Show page, audio, related On Language column)