I, for one, flinched at that usage of hoi polloi, and wondered in what rarified environment the writer must dwell where the hoi polloi are at the universities. Certainly not my town.
Regarding the ownership of the language, I like to believe it is held in common, as in a common trust, and that its speakers have a responsibility to all other speakers of the language--current and potential, present and future--to maintain it in the most rational, educated, and conservative manner possible for each. Linguistic change is inevitable, yet language is larger than the individual, and such change must not be based on caprice, but on the language's own necessary functionality.