Are you sure they’re the best?

“Can you allow in your worldview the possibility that the greengrocer or urban youth has his own sense of language, and is actively wielding it, rather than simply trying and failing to follow all the rules?”

I don’t imagine that they’re trying and failing to follow any rules. I don’t imagine that they have a sense of language either. I suspect that they are speaking and writing without any thought at all. Whether or not they are conscious of how they use language, their speech and writing still sounds ugly and stupid to me. My disdain is aesthetic, not pedantic. All these anti-prescriptivist rants seem to be saying is that my taste is somehow less valid than the greengrocer’s. Bananer oil.

But more on topic, I always wonder about those who gnash their teeth upon seeing “to beg a question” misused or the singular “they.” Don’t they know that many of the best writers don’t adhere to the “rules”? And many of the best speakers don’t either? I understand being duped by arbitrary rules when you are young, but once you are old enough to examine your beliefs about language, is it anything other than a foolish obstinacy and lack of perspective that nails them to the prescriptivist cross?

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