"If you can make yourself understood, then you are communicating."
The prime function of speech and language is, of course, to communicate, but if that was all it was, we may as well just speak in Textmessagese - eventually everybody would catch on and understand.
It really is more than that - spoken language has gradually become ugly - even in the mouths of broadcasters - the flow and poetry of communication is disappering - a Shakespeare or Thomas Woolfe, or Cervantes or Hugo, or Tolstoy..... really wouldn't stand a chance in today's world.
Even our dialects and vernacular is disappearing.... "where are the snows of yesteryear?"
Jim Carroll