Stephen Fry on the beauty of "incorrect" language and the stupid futility of linguistic pedantry

By Cory Doctorow at 10:26 am Wednesday, Jan 7

The latest Stephen Fry podcast, "Language," is an outstanding rant on the absurdity of being a pedant about the English language, that most glorious, reeling drunken bastard of a tongue that has neither academy nor dictator to rule on "correctness" and so has blossomed into a million variegated subforms in every corner of the globe. Fry excoriates people who insist on "correctness" in language, and urges us all to speak in ways that entertain and please us, rather than adhering to some rigid, notional code (among other things, he has withering contempt for people who complain about the verbing of nouns, pointing out Shakespeare's proclivity for same, and the prevalence of verbed nouns such as "propositioning" in our everyday speech).

On the way, Fry damns the idea of traditionalism itself -- and celebrates change, evolution, playfulness and the democratizing of the tongue. Every word of this is well-spoken, well-thought-out and absolutely liberating. What a treat.

Series 2 Episode 3, Language