Grammarians Beware: Do We Even Need Standard English?

Stop clutching your pearls–I’m going to both vindicate and chastise you. Language has one purpose and one purpose alone. To communicate ideas. (Did that fragment make you itch?)

I’m guilty of shifting from silently correcting people’s grammar on social media to outright rage when I have to read a post five times to understand its meaning. If the purpose is to communicate, then, bruh, you failed. Yet, I’m also guilty of speaking in a weird hodgepodge of Standard English, AAVE, patois, and slang. 

My point is, that all of these languages and dialects are valid. Low country Creole. Valid. Appalachian dialect. Valid. The issue arises when you don’t know your audience. Read the room. Remember that codeswitching is vital to survival if you do not belong to the traditional WASP culture. We need to be able to communicate in the expected ways of the establishment, but that doesn’t devalue the language that we speak in private. 

Wats good? Wha’ gwan? How are you? All necessary and beautiful. So stop clutching your pearls and realize we can be fluid. Knowing when and where is the only rule.