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For a very long time, I proudly thought of myself as a grammar nazi/nerd. Over the last several years, however, my thinking on this subject has evolved and I no longer feel it's important or necessary to be pedantic about, say, ending sentences in prepositions or the less/fewer distinction. First, there's the fact that language is about communication. If we're effectively and precisely able to get the point across, who cares if we're adhering to any particular rule about how that communication is supposed to be done. Second, I have a much better appreciation for the idea that languages naturally evolve and change, and that different communities have different (consistent) rules for determining the grammaticality of an utterance. Railing against the evolution and diversity of language is to miss some of that beauty.
All that said, there is another way to interpret pedantic prescriptivism which I experience quite viscerally. So, for (a not great) example, I recently ran across a sentence like, "She walked passed the lake." This sentence is in error, because the writer should have used "past" instead of "passed." The error does not, however, cause any confusion or misunderstanding, as you can tell because I know what the correct word is. That said, I do literally twitch when I read a sentence like this, because the error is not aesthetically pleasing to me.
And this brings up an additional consideration, which is that language is not just about getting the point across; it's also an art form. When a musician makes a performance error and plays the wrong note, we can have a similarly visceral twitching reaction because the error is aesthetically displeasing. We might know what note the musician should have played, and thus are not "confused" about the piece of music, but none of that changes our displeasure at hearing the wrong note. I think the same argument can be made about language.
But that stills leaves up in the air how we're supposed to respond to transgressions of prescriptive rules. You can't make the argument that split infinitives are objectively and absolutely the wrong way to use the language because something something Latin, but you can argue that infinitive splitting is ugly or not to your taste. How do you treat these evaluations? If a writer or speaker does not follow the rules, do you treat them as an amateur, sloppy artist and give them poor marks, or do you simply say that they have a different style which is not your thing?
This matters, because writers and speakers who don't "follow the rules" find themselves shut out of certain social circles, jobs, and institutions. Should that be the consequence of a poor/different style of performance?
All that said, there is another way to interpret pedantic prescriptivism which I experience quite viscerally. So, for (a not great) example, I recently ran across a sentence like, "She walked passed the lake." This sentence is in error, because the writer should have used "past" instead of "passed." The error does not, however, cause any confusion or misunderstanding, as you can tell because I know what the correct word is. That said, I do literally twitch when I read a sentence like this, because the error is not aesthetically pleasing to me.
And this brings up an additional consideration, which is that language is not just about getting the point across; it's also an art form. When a musician makes a performance error and plays the wrong note, we can have a similarly visceral twitching reaction because the error is aesthetically displeasing. We might know what note the musician should have played, and thus are not "confused" about the piece of music, but none of that changes our displeasure at hearing the wrong note. I think the same argument can be made about language.
But that stills leaves up in the air how we're supposed to respond to transgressions of prescriptive rules. You can't make the argument that split infinitives are objectively and absolutely the wrong way to use the language because something something Latin, but you can argue that infinitive splitting is ugly or not to your taste. How do you treat these evaluations? If a writer or speaker does not follow the rules, do you treat them as an amateur, sloppy artist and give them poor marks, or do you simply say that they have a different style which is not your thing?
This matters, because writers and speakers who don't "follow the rules" find themselves shut out of certain social circles, jobs, and institutions. Should that be the consequence of a poor/different style of performance?
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