• Is the average IQ, which had been increasing until the 1980s, now decreasing?
• What are the causes?
• Is language impoverishment related to this phenomenon?
• Is there a link with the development of certain types of violence?
• Will thinking disappear?

Here is an article published in French on the AGEFI website on Sunday, November 17, 2019 by Christophe Clavé, professor of strategy & management at INSEEC SBE. I am interested in your opinion! Write it in the comments…

The Flynn effect, named after its designer, prevailed until the 1960s. Its principle is that the average Intellectual Quotient (IQ) in the population is constantly increasing. However, since the 1980s, cognitive science researchers seem to agree that the Flynn effect has been reversed, and that the average IQ is falling.

The thesis is still being discussed and many studies have been in progress for nearly forty years without managing to calm the debate. It seems that the level of intelligence measured by IQ tests is decreasing in the most developed countries, and that a multitude of factors may be the cause.

In addition to this decline in the average level of intelligence, which is even disputed, there is also the impoverishment of language. Numerous studies show a narrowing of the lexical field and an impoverishment of the language. It is not only a question of the decrease in the vocabulary used, but also of the subtleties of the language that allow for the elaboration and formulation of complex thought.

The progressive disappearance of tenses (subjunctive, simple past, imperfect past, compound forms of the future, past participle…) gives rise to thinking in the present, limited to the instant, incapable of projections in time. The generalization of familiarization, the disappearance of capital letters and punctuation are as many mortal blows to the subtlety of expression. Removing the word “mademoiselle” not only renounces the aesthetics of a word, but also promotes the idea that between a little girl and a woman there is nothing.

Fewer words and fewer conjugated verbs means less ability to express emotions and less possibility to elaborate a thought.

Studies have shown that part of the violence in the public and private sphere comes directly from the inability to put words to emotions.

Without words to construct reasoning, the complex thinking dear to Edgar Morin is hindered, made impossible. The poorer the language, the less thought exists.

History is rich in examples and there are many writings, from Georges Orwell in 1984 to Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, which have recounted how dictatorships of all persuasions impeded thought by reducing and twisting the number and meaning of words. There is no critical thinking without thinking. And there is no thought without words. How can one construct a hypothetical-deductive thought without mastery of the conditional? How can we envisage the future without conjugating the future? How to apprehend a temporality, a succession of elements in time, whether past or future, as well as their relative duration, without a language that makes the difference between what could have been, what has been, what is, what could happen, and what will be after what could happen has happened? If a rallying cry were to be heard today, it would be the one addressed to parents and teachers: make your children, your students, your pupils, your students speak, read and write.

Teach and practice the language in its most varied forms, even if it seems complicated, especially if it is complicated. Because in this effort lies freedom. Those who explain all the time that we must simplify spelling, purge language of its “defects”, abolish genres, tenses, nuances, everything that creates complexity are the gravediggers of the human mind. There is no freedom without requirements. There is no beauty without the thought of beauty.

http://www.agefi.com/home/acteurs/detail/edition/online/article/baisse-du-qi-appauvrissement-du-langage-et-ruine-de-la-492129.html

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