I might add, that the are often occasions where it is better to address ones fellows in the vernacular, rather than using the perhaps more pompous tone of correct English. The message then has a better chance of being understood.

David

I had the advantage of being raised by parents who were very particular over the way their offspring spoke and wrote English. This is a trait that I continue to try to observe and both my partner and I are quick to pounce on any infraction. I too am critical of the way many people,who should know better, have no idea that even simple apostrophes are not an indication of plural, but indicate a possessive nature and that your is not the same as you're. News and weather announcers on the ABC constantly say things such as "there's showers on the way" or "there's been a few local thunderstorms" (few being a collective noun).

My father once asked me if I knew what a periphrasis was and when I answered in the negative, he said "it is simply a circumlocutory and pleonastic cycle of oritorical sonorosity circumscribing and atom of idiality obliterated by verbal profundity" Perhaps this is something politicians should remember in some of their obfuscatory statements

"The correctness of English usage can’t be described by a set of rules"
I enjoyed reading both the original article and your comments mjjl, and I could clearly understand the points raised by both authors. However if there were no rules presumambly I might not understand the article or decline to read it fully because it was difficult or annoying to read. I interpret "correctness" of English usage as a procedure which maximizes clarity or enjoyment for the reader. I just can't see that happening without some set of rules. For sure the rules may change over time but they are still rules.

I consider that the issue of the way in which one speaks is going to become more important in society in the future rather than less.

For centuries, as Professor Higgins observed, "as soon as an Englishman(sic) opens his(sic) mouth he makes some other Englishman despise him." During the more egalitarian 'Sixties and 'Seventies the strangled vowels of The Queens English gradually disappeared and it became fashionable for a while to adopt a kind of hybrid "working class" accent, even amongst academics and literati.

But with the widening distance between the well to do and the poor, combined with current educational woes, language has begun to regain some of the cachet a "good" accent and correct grammar once carried with it.

I agree with the author therefore because, in the bleak and judgemental past, there was always one sure-fire way even someone from a disadvantaged background could learn to adopt a clearer, more grammatically consistent way of speking:- they listened to radio and television announcers.

The public voice of media was once one to be emulated. Rather than talking down to the lowest common denominator, broadcasters of the past allowed listeners a chance to hear how the English language was meant to be spoken; to increase their vocabulary; and to help their syntax. Announcers also guided the public in pronunciation of difficult or unfamiliar words, names and place names.

Increasingly, the only way to learn these skills today is through private education and tertiary studies. A brief exchange is all that's necessary to damn someone as either an elitist or a yobbo; thus widening the chasm that is already dividing our society into the cliched realms of the haves and have-nots.

ps (It also seem that the Americanisation of the language is more insidious than the writer fears: witness that tell-tale talk "with" that crept in unregarded).