In the New Yorker blog post "Inescapably, You’re Judged By Your Language," Ryan Bloom has a nice smackdown of the descriptivists who rail against the elitism of language rules. Conclusion? Get over it:
For the individual looking for a higher education or trying to secure a decent job, what seems more humane: Admitting that, ugly, élitist, and unfair as it is, prescriptivism is currently the dialect of power and being able to manipulate that dialect can help you get ahead, or pretending that utopia is at hand, that everyone is a revolutionary, that linguistic anarchy will set you free? The choice to use our natural dialects whenever and wherever we please, to live in a world free of language-based racism and classism, may indeed be a worthy end for which to strive, but it’s also worth remembering that individuals don’t live in the end. They live now.
Not to mention, as Bloom points out, the descriptivists invariably do their railing in flawless, prescriptive English.
