Language as a self-regulating system
Thought-provoking article by Lane Greene, the language columnist and an editor at The Economist:
"Who decides what words mean: Bound by rules, yet constantly changing, language might be the ultimate self-regulating system, with nobody in charge", Aeon (12/6/18).
Greene starts with a wallop:
Decades before the rise of social media, polarisation plagued discussions about language. By and large, it still does. Everyone who cares about the topic is officially required to take one of two stances. Either you smugly preen about the mistakes you find abhorrent – this makes you a so-called prescriptivist – or you show off your knowledge of language change, and poke holes in the prescriptivists’ facts – this makes you a descriptivist. Group membership is mandatory, and the two are mutually exclusive.
But then he softens the blow by saying, "it doesn't have to be this way".
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