But we all hold different views on things, even the most orthodox and devout religious people do. So I thought that perhaps it would be interesting to see how my own views, those of someone with a background in linguistics, differs from those of other people with, I’m sure, equally interesting jobs and professions.
Firstly, yes, it is true that people who study languages generally pay more attention to correct and proper language use. This is for the most part a no-brainer since it would be the last field of study where your fellow academics would let you off the hook easily if blatant and sloppy spelling errors popped up in your slideshow presentations. By comparison, who would take seriously a mathematician unable to do simple addition and subtraction? Inspite of what many people may think linguists do all day long – at their desks until 2am ferociously scutinizing each and every quality newspaper and correcting all grammar and spelling errors in it – in reality most linguists would hardly if ever correct their friends or colleagues on the spot. Instead, they are well aware of the pitfalls that lurk thereabouts. And of course Nobody likes people who are always trying to outsmart them. It’s like the force. There’s the dark side and the light: the dark side is tempting, it’s all too easy to point out and correct people’s mistakes. The light side can be harder to attain, but linguists know there are quite obvious reasons why certain people use grammar either in a non-standard way. This is because after a certain age your lanuage use tends to fossilize and it gets decidedly difficult for most people to change the way they talk. Linguists have