TED Talks Daily The link between evolution and language | Richard Dawkins
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Sep 18, 2025 
In this engaging conversation, Richard Dawkins, famed evolutionary biologist and author of The Selfish Gene, joins linguist John McWhorter, known for his insights on language. They explore the fascinating parallels between language evolution and biological evolution, discussing how languages, like species, adapt and drift. Dawkins and McWhorter connect linguistic over-specification to sexual selection and delve into how dialects and mutations shape both genes and words. Their dialogue reveals the profound ties that bind language and life.
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Language As Sexual Display
- Human language extravagances mirror biological sexual selection and can be likened to peacock tails.
- Richard Dawkins suggests poetry and virtuoso speech may have evolved as sexual advertising.
Lingual Vestiges Mirror Pseudogenes
- Languages retain vestigial elements just like genomes keep pseudogenes.
- Richard Dawkins compares dead linguistic forms to pseudogenes that no longer function.
Spontaneous Wordplay Revives Endings
- John McWhorter gave a spontaneous example of reviving dead word endings like "-ol" with neologisms such as "wordle."
- He and Richard Dawkins playfully invented "hardle" to show how suffixes can be reused.
