Lighten up on 'proper' English, already!

Those who know me well enough know that I tend to get exasperated with pedants prognosticating about English grammar and going on wail-fests about declining standards of English. The article-post referenced under the title of this post will give you a good insight into my overall approach to such matters. That's why I'm noting it here. A paragraph towards the end puts it well. This tells you why I think it important that we are careful about the way, and whether, we 'correct' what we may regard as mistakes in English. We should ask ourselves what the motivation is and what advantage and/or disadvantages we may be conveying to our victim/interlocutor and indeed what the power dimensions are and whether we are acting with love and respect.

In theory, there is real utility in imposing standards through education - these standards are meant to get everyone 'on the same page' and provide a form of cultural unity through language. On the other hand, they (seemingly) legitimize discrimination against those populations whose English is non-standard (certain African American communities being a prime example). By being taught black-and-white rules for "what is right and what is WRONG," we learn to see language in value-laden terms; as adults, we think we can size up a person by their accent, the kinds and variety of words they employ, their conjugations, their idiomatic use, their slang, their spelling and so on [5]. In some sense these judgments aren't wrong: our peculiar backgrounds (class, race, region, gender) and predilections are reflected in our language. On the other hand, prescriptivism implies that there is a moral dimension to language use, and that we should stigmatize variation. It's hard to see the good in that.

Quite so.
This is why it is a Christian question but we should be wary: there is a morality in 'correcting' language errors and we should be aware of our own stake in the forms -dialects- of English we use because they are all freighted with social judgements and temptations to disrespect or disadvantage others.

If we encourage (and I say it no more strongly than that) others to speak or write according to certain standards we should be mindful of doing so in such a way as to enable them to increase their ability to 'perform' more resourcefully in society and to improve their life-chances. They are not 'wrong'; they are simply using a dialect different to our own. The fact is that in these transactions, of course, the dialect being 'corrected' is usually one associated with social and economic disadvantage or opprobrium. It is all too frequent that in 'correcting' dialectal forms that are not "standard English" (and let's be clear; that is a form that was simply the variety -and its contemporary variants- that the socio-economic elite of England happened to be speaking when they came into dominance) the 'correcting' is done in such a way as to reinforce judgements of superiority and inferiority and so reinforce the cultural meanings associated with accent and dialect usage ('posh', 'earthy', smarmy, trustworthy, poncey, one-of-us, etc etc).

If one of the outcomes of Christian discipleship is that we treat all people as worthy and worthwhile, we should be wary of how we -if we- offer or encourage other usages.

It is worth recalling too, that so many of the things that some put over as 'stupid' language usages are regarded as the proper ways of doing things in the socially-prestigious forms of other languages. Double negatives are a sign of educated speech in French and absolutely normal in Spanish and Italian, for example; it's no good talking to them about the mathematics of two negatives, that's a gross confusion of categories and usually an unworthy put-down.Writing contractions is often considered insufficiently 'formal' in English, but for goodness sake it's normal in good French writing (though I suspect that some contractions would be frowned on - "J'sais c'qu'ils dise', par exampl'"). And let's also recall that so-called split infinitive were used by Shakespeare, Austen and the Brontes and such writers didn't necessarily use apostrophe 's for genitives German does fine without that and so did English writers before the Victorian period.

PS (Friday 8 April): I've just read this article on education and the linguistic situation above seems to me to be the linguistic reflex of the more general issue that the quote at the start of the article highlights:

in reality, of course, high school is a machine for social sorting. The purpose of high school is to give young people a sense of where they fit into the social structure.

And, of course, labelling their language use and rewarding or deriding them for it is a very good way to give a sense of where they fit in the social structure.
Of course, it then becomes clear that what the system often rewards in reality is the ability to blend in with the prestigious crowd or to pick up enough to do so later on. So those with good linguistic ability and motive to pick up the register and accents are in a better position. Those who don't have that ability or whose current social, ideological or other solidary commitments will often then define themselves in contradistinction to the 'elites' and it will become harder for them to transition because their self-image /pride won't easily acquiesce.