If you’re even a little interested in language, you’ll love The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of “Proper English” from Shakespeare to South Park by Jack Lynch. Here’s an excerpt.

Lynch asks “What is proper English?” and “Who gets to define it?” Turns out the earliest grammar guides coincide with the rise of the middle class in the early 18th century. They weren’t written by aristocrats, but by “middle class writers who wanted to sound like their social superiors….” And it’s not that upper class speech is better—then or now—but that the upper classes hold social and economic power—then and now. If you want to share or influence that power, you need to use the language properly.

His story describes the rise of standard English, and the push and pull between the prescriptivists and the descriptivists. Prescriptivists tout rules. They are the grammar police who pounce on grammar, spelling and pronunciation mistakes. But the thing is, as Lynch points out, these so-called rules are not carved in stone, but are more like “rules of etiquette, made by fallible people, useful only in certain situations, and subject to change.”

Descriptivists are more interested in how language is used and how it changes. And change it does. Consider the influences of technology and globalization on English. Descriptivists remind us that many of the standard rules are not rules at all, but matters of taste and indicators of class. Rules change with time, usage and fashion.

Two things are inevitable: first, that language is a living, breathing thing. Like it or not, it will change. Second, the world that controls social and economic power uses standard English and if you want to have influence in that world, learn to use the rules, whether you agree with them or not.

The best position to be in is to know the rules of standard English and decide whether or not to use them, to be able to fit the language to the purpose and audience. I wouldn’t break a rule, even if I know it’s bunk, when my reader believes it to be true. For example, if I work for Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board and I’m writing a letter to a retired teacher, I’m not going to risk splitting any infinitives or beginning sentences with and or but, even though I KNOW these aren’t valid rules. I’d only risk alienating my reader and I’d come out the loser. Similarly, it would be goofy to use perfect spelling and standard usage in an IM conversation or spell every word out in an SMS message.

This book made me think about how stuck people can get about the rules. Often, when people learn what I do, they bemoan the state of the language—Kids today don’t know how to spell any more—all they do is text message. Isn’t it terrible? Nobody knows how to write! And everyone seems to have grammatical pet peeves. People are always confessing their intolerances. I just smile and nod. I know most of the time these pet peeves are matters of taste—we object to what seems tasteless to us.

I confess that I like change in language—I’m a descriptivist by nature. I’m fascinated by ingenuity, and by how technology and globalization refresh and enrich English. I’m always amazed by how flexible language is. Still, I have an inner prescriptivist, and I have my pet peeves:

Should You Have Any Questions
Why I Hate the Semicolon
What’s Wrong With Comic Sans?

What about you? What are the things that drive you crazy about language?