So there will be words at the front of the race that you don’t like, just as some weeds are (secretly) an improvement and others are just a blight. But they are voted there by forces much more powerful and much less sophisticated than any constant gardeners.

That only means they’re not stoppable by individual efforts, as I’m sure you understand anyway! That doesn’t undermine the validity of your response to leverage – I think aesthetically I see words as products of usage and tend therefore to see shoddy craftmanship as a welcome signal that people are feeling free to have a go. While trying hard to release only the finest products myself.

Two observation-paragraphs:

I was struck on my gap year by the question ‘where have you come from’ which asks not about your country of origin but about your most recent activity. Similarly by stories that Esperanto failed in part because speakers in different countries soon developed mutually unintelligible local variants and styles. Also, I will probably never be able to call someone ‘bruv’ in earnest.

I love that twitter is a community of linguistic communities, and I love the concept ‘meme’. To me that is a novel social and linguistic concept made possible by new technology and representing the new speed and adaptation of interlinked linguistic conventions. It makes language even more obviously a game where the rules help you play, not a test where the rules mark you down. Like in the invention of rugby, breaking them sometimes lets you have more fun.

What I’m curious about is whether – to make the organic metaphor a vegetable one – the growth is better cultivated and trained, or left wild. Pruning brings better results of one kind, for example.

I’m not suggesting language should be governed, but if someone thinks that a tree will be healthier if its branches are cut back – then they should say so.

Then you can have conversations about what is healthy – for communication, for enjoyment, for growth.

Mostly, though, I just hate the word leverage.

Why is this the challenge? Isn’t the enjoyment of language increased by a little mutual incomprehensibility? (In any case, a pre/post-literate environment usually requires words that gesture vaguely at concepts rather than encircle them precisely – like ‘leverage’).

‘Language: use and enjoy responsibly’ – no! I want linguistic absinthe-benders! If some experiences are more like a blast of ammonia, so be it.

I agree with the idea that language’s purpose is to communicate: but I object to having any governors of meaningful usage. Even ugly forms of language (and local government has no shortage: http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/9424111) gain currency by establishing themselves within a social group and convey something within that group, whether it be membership, caution, effectiveness, determination or whatever.

Humans are inherently creative, effective linguists. Some are more sophisticated than others: but language is demotic and does not belong to the elite. Split infinitives, misused apostrophes, malapropisms and novel verbings are ongoing indications (not to mention computerisms like ‘pwn’ and txtspk) of this fact.

Prescriptive linguists are destined to be Canutes, and reduce language in the process. Besides, if everyone spoke in rhyming couplets then it would be harder to make a mark as a good writer.

James – the difference is that the verb + -age form is such a big fat noun that it’s ugly to pretend it’s a verb.

Mark – the challenge to post-literate culture (interesting!) is how to use and enjoy language without losing our ability to understand one another.

Corwin – me too!

The noun leverage became a business buzz-word when it referred to the magnification factor by which a shift in sales results in a profit shift in the same direction.

Leverage, more simply stated, is business risk. Leveraged companies are risky because a small drop in sales causes a large drop in profit — but a small rise in sales still causes a large rise in profit.

A company’s leverage is under the control of its owner’s, and it can be increased by borrowing money.

People who sell company stock would obviously want leverage to sound like a cool word. As in, “It’s risky, cool! I want to buy it!”.

Personally, I would keep my money as far as I could from anybody who wanted to “leverage” it.

Going off-topic slightly, your example at the end of Shakespeare I think is an interesting sociolinguistic one. I would hypothesise that it’s only in highly literate cultures that a small number of well respected individuals have a highly disproportionate affect on how a language changes (or doesn’t – normally the people are respected precisely because they don’t change the language, although I guess Shakespeare is an exception).

In pre-literate, and I would guess maybe our increasingly post-literate, cultures language changes very quickly as there is no widely accepted or accessible standard of what is and isn’t correct. As our culture becomes increasingly post-literate and post-modern I wonder if we’ll see English start to change more rapidly…?