“Good grammar is like personal hygiene. You can ignore it if you want, but don’t be surprised when people draw their conclusions.”
This and many similar memes regularly make their rounds in the social media. The discussions between the two “camps” – the prescriptive grammar nazis and the casual descriptivists – can be quite feisty; for debates about something as ordinary as language. However, the issue is not as simple as a binary decision between language decay versus natural change. Anne Curzan’s 2014 book Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History gives the readers a thorough and balanced picture of the battlefield between prescriptivism and descriptivism – and not only among the linguists.
No specialized knowledge is required to enjoy the read. However, a dictionary might be needed for those less well-read in English as Curzan often uses obscure words both in her examples and in the text. The author often reverts to her own professional and private experience from the language related public debates which makes the reading more palatable and entertaining for the lay reader. However, the professional reader shouldn’t be discouraged either as Curzan always backs her arguments with precise sources. In other words, the book seems to lie between the professional and the popular – which is perhaps the intention of the author.
It seems that the main message of this book is that prescriptivism is self-reinforcing: the language usage in the majority of reputable printed sources is based on the language guidebooks which are based on the language usage in the reputable printed sources. Every now and then a shooting star of an example cuts through the cycle, such as the now more or less accepted singular they, but in most cases, prescriptivism has little to no impact on the language change as such even though it can have an impact on the discourses around the change. However, prescriptive forces need to be taken into consideration on the level of style and avoiding the prescriptive discourse all together is not wise, especially in linguist-informed literature aimed at education practitioners. Students (and writers in general) need to be aware of the standards and styles in the language they use and adjust their written production according to the situation. The point here is not purism or persecution of all violations of any given standard, but the awareness of standards and what their violation entails.
what should be considered in the use of grammar?