Communication breakdown

What is happening to our language?

 I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or 'there by', as they say in Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father's eyes had closed upon the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it. There is something strange to me, even now, in the reflection that he never saw me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy remembrance that I have of my first childish associations with his white grave-stone in the churchyard, and of the indefinable compassion I used to feel for it lying out alone there in the dark night, when our little parlour was warm and bright with fire and candle, and the doors of our house were—almost cruelly, it seemed to me sometimes—bolted and locked against it. --quote taken from Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield

If this same thing were to be written today it would most likely go something like this. I was born in Scotland. I never met my father because he died while my mom was pregnant. In my youth, I visited his grave site often and got an odd sense of separation anxiety when in  my home at night.

It just isn't the same. The meaning is similar, but the picture painted by Dickens is just so vivid and powerful.

"...But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security..."

"...Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends..." --quotation taken from a transcript of The Declaration of Independence

The average man living in America today is much more likely to say something akin to "Yo, where the bi***es at?" than anything anywhere near as eloquent or meaningful as the words of our forefathers.

There are often dozens of synonyms for a given word each having slightly different meaning based on context. But most of the time, one uses the first word that comes to mind out of a sense of expediency, out of some need to spit out how we are feeling at any given moment. It is more important to us that we express how we feel, rather than taking the time to properly communicate the point we are attempting to make with all of the subtle nuances that would correctly draw the exact picture. Our world has become one of generalities and not specifics.

I shudder to think of what the Declaration of Independence would look like if it were written today.
 As was mentioned in the movie National Treasure, people just don't talk that way anymore. But they should. Is it sheer laziness? A failure in parenting or teaching? A total lack of interest in society and culture in general?  Any one of these things could cause the gradual disintegration of our language and a tendency for one and two syllable words to be the norm and not the exception. Unfortunately, the problem seems to be all of the above.

I wonder how long it will be before it gets to the point where we give up on English altogether and go back to the grunts and groans of the caveman.