There is another element of living creatures: they grow, change, and evolve. This is also very true of language. There are words that are born every year to keep up with the changing landscape of our lives. New technology necessitates the development of new lexicons. Words that are no longer useful die out, or are saved in idioms in which the original meaning has been forgotten. How words are used becomes a question... whether words are used correctly or incorrectly becomes an issue. A debate is raised between "good usage" and "bad usage" and the question is begged: who decides? Who decides if a particular usage is good or bad? Does anyone have the authority to tell me that the way I use language is "bad" or "wrong"? Do I have the authority to tell someone else?
As in other issues of our life, we tend to demand the freedom to determine our own usage, while maintaining our right to be the authority over other people's usage. If we think we are "right" we do not hesitate to defer to the ultimate authority. How often in an argument (hmmm, discussion) with my husband or children have I said, "Look it up in the dictionary," smug in my knowledge that I am "right"?
Total freedom in this area would lead to a recreation of the Tower of Babel. If there were not common agreement on what most words mean, communication as we know it would cease. It is this common ground of the way words are used that enable us to discuss this at all. So, we are all agreed that there must be some way of determining what is "good" usage. There must be a higher authority than our own personal decisions. Next week, we'll look at some view's as to whose authority should be followed in this area.
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