The Gene Code

Just had a fascinating conversation with a good friend whose grand daughters had just been visiting for the weekend. We were talking about the trend in many of the young using less and less grammar in their speech and the increase in 'text speech'. She told me of one of her relatives, who had an au pair come over from Sweden to learn English but found it impossible because the family with whom she was staying was using so little of English syntax! I told her that I had heard that in a couple of American States, they were stopping teaching the written language as part of the main curriculum and issuing laptops instead.

Then the conversation took a very interesting turn where we began to talk about recent research in genetics where they discovered that there is a specific gene to do with grammar. We posed the question whether the fall away in grammar is a 'retro' move in terms of our using our expressive capacity as human beings? Obviously it must have represented a huge step forward at some time in our genetic evolution. Whilst pondering that, we also asked ourselves the question whether there was an aspect in current communications that we miss altogether because it is so easy to see the down side of it?My friend said one thing she had observed in her grand daughters was a much more expressive use of body language as part of their listening to 'rap' Many of the words had an accompanying body movement which was somehow very 'inclusive' and 'communicative'...it seemed to bring the mind and body together more than perhaps formal verbal communication ...fascinating !

I found this quite a gripping conversation and feel it is an area that deserves a lot of consideration and much more research! It feels very important to be watching the trends and be open about what it all might indicate...to be constantly reaching for more intelligence and consciousness about what is going on in our world.