The Importance of Language

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Josue Wagnac Enc1101 10/16/14 The Importance of Language Language is the most powerful way of expressing yourself to others, for reaching agreements, striking deals and coordinating our activities. In “How language transform humanity”, Mark Pagel explains how language is the most powerful, dangerous and subversive trait that natural selection has ever devised. Pagel basically stated that language can be really dangerous if you use it with the wrong intention. For instance, “according to the bible early humans developed the concept that, by using language to work together, they could build a tower that would take them all the way to heaven. Now God, angered at this attempt to usurp his power, destroyed the tower. And then to ensure that it would never be rebuilt, he scattered and confused the people by giving them different languages so this leads to the wonderful irony that our languages exist to prevent us from communicating”. I think that this piece of detail is important because it support the fact that language can be dangerous if you use it with the wrong intentions. Mark Pagel uses logos as his main persuasive rhetorical strategy to convince the audience which are the world experts on human evolution and development and the royal society for the arts about how language transform humanity supporting his theory by using facts about evolution. In my opinion, the text and his theories are effective because he uses actual facts to prove his main rhetorical point. Mark Pagel succeeds on explaining how language transforms humanity to his audience who may question his source. However, Pagel support his theory by using facts about evolution. He stated that we are smarter than chimpanzees because we learn from our surroundings and we learn from others but for chimpanzees is different because they don’t have the capacity to learn from others. For example, “
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