I agree that not all languages are created equal. Effective communication requires a few subordinate skills based on semantics (navigating within a paradigm) and empathy (shifting between paradigms). One such skill is translation, the ability to convey a set of ideas to someone who has an unfamiliar paradigm and to understand ideas they express in that paradigm. Another is background, the ability to recognize semantic cues (e.g. grammar and etiquette) and use them to create a desired impression on someone else, which is necessary to smoothly blend in with one’s surroundings, putting others at ease by appearing to be similar to them. People need to develop the power of communication in order to interact with others, and therefore regardless of how they prefer to speak, they need to be able to shift to different methods of speaking depending on the context in which they find themselves. That is the virtue of linguistic descriptivism: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Or, as my grandfather likes to say, “…as the Romanians do.”

That said, linguistic prescriptivism has virtues of its own, when correctly employed, which is rare. Language is important because it is based on semantics, which is the simplification of interactions and which usually brings with it the concept of designating anything as “proper”. Labels and names are not hard limits for thought, but they shape it by making some thoughts easier than others. Any concept for which we have a word becomes easier to think of, because we can call that concept and associated ones readily to mind instead of retrieving each concept individually. It’s the difference between using the word “bird” and describing the animal’s characteristics anew each time you want to talk about it. The latter is possible, but people might have trouble thinking about birds and what they are like.

If, however, you have a word or phrase that describes an inherently flawed concept, you might not realize it because the use of the word glosses over the fallacy. Absolutes often do this, such as “invincible”, ‘infallible”, et cetera; they imply a counterexample is impossible, but one cannot be certain of that, only that it hasn’t happened yet. If you have a word that has an ambiguous meaning (or even mutually contradictory meanings, another pet peeve of mine), you might accidentally use an argument which relies on it shifting its definition, another fallacy. See the so-called paradox of “intentionality”, a philosophical word that exists solely to create this “paradox”. A word that binds together multiple concepts that themselves don’t have words prompts people to conflate those concepts even when they manifest themselves independently (“masculine” and “feminine”, anyone?). Alternatively, you might simply not have a word for an important concept, and so you would have to concentrate on a train of reasoning for a long time before you recognize what’s wrong, if you even picked up that something was wrong in the first place. Imagine having to criticize an ad hominem attack before anyone had come up with the convenient label “ad hominem.”

Picture if you will, a person who refers to inanimate objects as “shit”, people as “bastards” (which itself became an word of contempt, growing out of referring to a child out of wedlock, another sloppy conflation of concepts), and uses derivatives of “fuck” multiple times a sentence in a sort of emotional inflation. These people exist. Their use of words of contempt as everyday vocabulary blurs the line for them between what they interact with and what they dismiss (though there are sometimes exceptions when a person uses “bastard” as a term of endearment for close friends). They aren’t in the habit of describing things they respect in different terms from things they disrespect, so they don’t tend treat things they respect much differently from things they don’t, though they do treat things differently depending on how they feel at the moment. They often have trouble putting things in perspective, because they don’t have any other words for things. Any task or behavior that they use their semantics for becomes sloppier because of their lackluster lexicon.

Then of course, you have the opposite problem of language done poorly, where people with an overabundance of words create artificial separation between concepts that are actually the same, allowing for doublethink via euphemisms. Politics (“It’s not discrimination; it’s affirmative action”) and religion (“It’s not neglect; it’s honoring people’s free will to hurt each other”) are guilty of such artifice, though they also employ the fallacies mentioned in the previous paragraph, e.g. “I did not have ‘sex’ with that woman,” “God is always ‘protecting’ us.”

Grammar and syntax are necessary for ensuring other people understand what you mean (does “Me eat one hour” mean I ate an hour ago, I will eat in an hour, or I will eat for an hour? Or am I the one being eaten in the past, present, or future?) but a decent vocabulary for critical thinking (which is not taught in school) is important to help you understand what you yourself mean, when you think of your feelings, opinions, category judgments, or inferences of causal connection.

In conclusion, I don’t really care what’s “proper” as long as people can understand each other and avoid sloppy thinking, which practically necessitates that something be considered proper for everyone to learn, though it need not be used in every situation. Sloppy thinking exists in people with excellent and poor grammar alike. I pay much more attention to how much a person’s thinking is affected by their emotional state and whether it is consistent than to how much their verbal expressions conform to an arbitrary set of rules. My answer is my usual one. Neither the enforcement of a rule nor the lack thereof will make anything better, but rather making people better will make the dispute irrelevant. Ultimately, to make society function effectively people must become skilled with both semantics and empathy (and analysis, and all the rest of the mindsets).