Evolution of Language

If you've ever tried to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, you know from experience that the English language has undergone major changes since the 1300s. At that time, Old English was changing significantly; in Scotland, the Northumbrian dialect became the Scots language, and in the dialect more commonly spoken in England became Early Modern English. The printing presses that sprung up in London allowed this version of English to proliferate, and it became the dominant dialect in the UK. But enough of history. How is language changing today?

Technological advancements that spring up what seems to be daily in our generation are largely responsible for modern changes in the spoken English language. For example, there is an article, "Hugely popular text messaging spawns language change," which describes numerous new words created solely to describe certain actions associated with text messaging. There is hexting (cheating on your partner through text), drexting (drunk texting), and sexting (sending naughty images and texts). There are numerous others such as confexting (a text confession) and wexting (walking and texting simultaneously), but perhaps the most widely used word produced from texting is sexting because it has made a splash on the legal scene; it has been ruled that sexting with youth under 18 is considered child pornography.

Read more funny examples of texting lingo: http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Hugely+popular+text+messaging+spawns+language+change/2930387/story.html#ixzz0lqqOGsvQ

While still talking about technology, we must acknowledge that cell phones, AIM, and Facebook have changed the way the youth communicate. There are numerous abbreviations such as lol, nvm, ttyl, etc. that save time and space when typing. People are unbelievably creative when shortening words. However, these usually stay in cyberspace (although some people use 'jk' commonly in spoken language). A widely popular word that is used daily by young Americans is 'like.' It has been a part of the English language for years, but only recently has it begun to be used as a filler (where some people say 'um' when thinking). Other words are simply reflections of current issues, interests, and politics. In the 1940's, we got "blitzkrieg." The 1980's gave us "anime" and "moonwalk." Today, we have adopted words and phrases such as collateral damage, NASDAQ, ageism, Ethernet, petrodollars, and so on. As time passes, the language continuous to grow exponentially. The English conversational vocabulary has grown from 90,000 to nearly 500,000 words.

Purely for your amusement, here is an exaggerated parody of the overuse of the word like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fGZtrBeDcQ

Some nations are up in arms to fight these changes, or what they might call "pollution" of their language. For example, in order to preserve the purity of the French language, there exists L'Académie française. This exclusive organization consists of 40 members, called les immortels (the immortals) who are elected by existing members and who serve on the board until death. The members of L'Académie are responsible for preserving the French language (specifically keeping English words out), they periodically produce French dictionaries with new words they have created to address modern issues and inventions. For example, for the word e-mail, they adopted the Quebecois word "courriel" but in France, most people still use "e-mail" or the abbreviated version "mel" in daily conversation.

My question to you is whether the natural evolution of language is a negative thing? Does the addition of new words detract from the purity of a language? Are this changes a reflection of changes in culture or thought?

additional referenced sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Scots_language

http://www.flashnews.com/news/wfn5100416fn9876.html