I got a fine public dusting on Melanie and Mike’s excellent site last week, for daring to take issue with Curmudgeon’s Corner. In the light of the comments (mostly prescriptivist) of many newcomers here over the last week (and because the swine didn’t print my reply this week! ) I thought I would reproduce it here to see if the basic argument gets any takers.

The Curmudgeon Corner original piece:
"Coal prices are forecasting at a record high…” by Michael Tent
http://www.takeourword.com/TOW113/page4.html


My reply, along the lines of “I would rather be bludgeoned than curmudgeoned to death”:
&
Mike and Melanie’s dis:
“logic is flawed…clear communication is paramount”
http://www.takeourword.com/TOW114/page4.html#cur


My unprinted reply:

My critique of Malcolm’s view was based neither on the specific term he was examining, nor on whether a usage occurs in Shakespeare.

The argument I evidently failed to communicate clearly was this:
1 Language is a constantly evolving stream – meaning is invested by users, not defined by curmudgeons. There is no right and wrong in absolute terms. What counts most to the majority of users (as you rightly summarised) is clarity of meaning.
2 What also matters is the context of speech community – I suggest radio’s more colloquial forms fit the pretence of one-to-one communication, whereas if the same phrase was offered in printed form it might not be appropriate. It is often observed that we use different grammar and vocabulary when, say, talking to a plumber or writing to a bank manager.
3 My analogy about flying into airports was to point to similar migration of meaning (and elision) between the components of a sentence – a curmudgeon might have once insisted upon “being conveyed by flight in an aeroplane to disembark at the airport”.
4 I see no possible real confusion of meaning in either ‘flying into an airport’ or ‘coal prices are forecasting’. To grope for a completely artificial interpretation of what this non-standard grammar might be taken to mean misses the point: we apply exterior context to define likely meaning. For example, if someone remarks to you “My car’s telling me it’s time for a service”, no one but a lunatic (or a curmudgeon!) would think of remarking on the car’s sudden ability to speak and diagnose your religious requirements.
5 Pointing to the Shakespearean usage of ‘casted’ to contradict Malcolm’s assertion this form is not used was an irony you missed. Here was a practical example of language evolution. You are of course right to say we never intentionally select words that convey completely superseded meaning – yet if the curmudgeons and language police were to have their way, this is the cul-de-sac to which our language would be consigned, since the traffic moves on either with or without you. The truth is that most curmudgeons are actually just defending a socially prestigious language variety against what they feel as a threat from the unwashed masses – pure snobbery.

If Malcolm had simply said that usage sounded a bit ugly to him, I would be happy to agree; euphony is often the most reliable guide we have to good communication. There are more important battles to be fought than such artificial quarrels as this: after all, of the many thousands of auditors how many took a wrong or confused meaning from the broadcast?”



This week Eminem did print a sort of acknowledgment that there is an alternative view of language that doesn’t rely on Curmudgeons telling us to get in line:
http://www.takeourword.com/page4.html

So over to you, if anyone’s interested. Is language best described essentially by rules (“you must do this”), or is it more accurately understood by (largely non-judgmental) descriptions of how people are actually using it?