Us Against The World

After reader, I now consider myself part of descriptivists, those who think believe that linguistic evidence proves correct usage of language and who "describe language as it is used." Even La Real Academia Española is a part of this. They have made slang a part of their dictionary. Times have changed and so has language. If slang has become part of formal writing, what's next? 

Immediately after I wrote this I had second thoughts. I'm not a descriptivist, I'm a prescriptivist. Prescriptivists "focus on how language should be used." That's what I support. People can modify the way they speak, but attempting to change how people write is a whole other story. It is not right.

I'm going to come forward with something here. Now I find myself self conscious when using the words "which," "that," and "who." I don't even know if I used them correctly in my first few sentences. But I can make mistakes since English isn't my native language, can't I? Nowadays, descriptivists accept that a native speaker can’t make a mistake. As a prescriptivist, a group of which I now consider I make part of,  I consider this utterly wrong. The messy part of this idea is that whatever the person says is right so how do countries full of immigrants work? And what about people learning the language? What should they learn if everything is right? Lane says he "[glories]  the real-world mess of dialects and slang." That makes non-natives have an absolutely marvelous time learning a new language with all the slang and no rules. I'd be ECSTATIC.

Then, Lane states how prescriptivists force non rules on schoolchildren. But ever since the English language had became more than a dialect, a "set of standard conventions for formal writing and speaking have been imposed." They are there for a reason and mustn't be modified. 

This reminds me of "Survival of the Fittest." The essay exposes how scholars could modify grammar because nothing was correct or incorrect. Some form of regulation was necessary to stunt the unparalleled growth of those creative intellectuals who sought originality through the modification of the language. Changes made by an insignificant number of scholars to limit these changes won't be likely to modify how people write unless severely imposed like English in Thiong' O's life. 

These regulations may be wrong, but its better to pass on a few mistakes in order to condense the spectrum in which these errors may reside. A little change is better than none. 

Lastly, Garner, my partner in the debate, appeals to the reader's logic by introducing examples and names that one must supposedly know. This might have worked because now I'm 100% a prescriptivist.