this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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Totally agree with your first couple paragraphs. Language is ever-evolving and that's good. Descriptivism vs. prescriptivism is what I tell people when they act out about "non-proper" usage of language or contemporary teen language. Language is a tool to be used by us and is forged by our needs. It should also be adaptable to not exclude people on their very personal beliefs, be they of sexual prefence, political or religious orientation, and everything else similar to these.
It's cool to have a heart-to-heart about language with people on Lemmy - it should be discussed way more on here. Do you know of any good linguistics communities on here?
I don't know of any off hand, I was in a discussion with someone else here about linguistics but because I disagreed with a point they made, they called me an idiot and stopped communicating. I mean, right there is an example of what I mean about being open to other people's ideas rather that dismissive of everything.
Like I said I'm an English major and have always been a short story writer, so language is quite important to me and yet I know that some of my ideas are from the older ways of thinking about language (after all, it was over 40 years ago that I got my degree). And I try not to ever deliberately exclude people if I happen to use old-school ways of labeling men and women.
That comes from the place I was educated and the beliefs I had growing up, not any desire to be ignorant to others at all. In fact I always hope that my writing can reach across barriers in some way.