Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words

by Anne Curzan

We should also recognize that we, as readers and listeners, have the power to make more informed and generous judgments when we encounter language that surprises us or even jars us. If we can do that, we can call ourselves astute caretakers of the language. And we will be more effective writers and editors as a result.

Advice about usage is like any other kind of advice. Some of it is really good. Good advice about usage helps us create aesthetically pleasing prose, avoid unhelpful ambiguity, and promote clarity of expression.

Standardized English is not the parent with lots of offspring varieties. It is a sibling, with lots of siblings. And it is the sibling that got picked out by speakers with social, political, and economic power to be the one whose habits get recorded as a model for the other siblings.

Yes

The standardized variety is not neutral, and it’s not better in any linguistic or structural sense. At the same time, it carries a lot of power, and it is the password to jobs and connections with lots of social and economic power.

Many people, understandably, want to believe that throughout its history, language has been a neutral medium and that it recently shifted. In this view, language was a neutral conveyor of a message, not the message itself, and then historically marginalized groups started politicizing the language by asserting what language they found offensive and inoffensive. But here’s the thing: The language has never been neutral.

those who have historically enjoyed a lot of social power have had to worry less about consequences—making it seem like freedom of speech is the same as freedom from consequences for getting it wrong.

we are all being asked to rethink some of our language choices to be respectful and inclusive of everyone around us. For the more powerful who have not had to be as careful with their choices, they are now getting a taste of how careful everyone around them has been with their language.

Be the wordie: the bird-watcher who does not try to kill the new bird.

The diversity of our pronunciations is part of the diversity of us.