Steven Pinker: 10 ‘grammar rules’ it’s OK to break (sometimes) (Steven Pinker, The Guardian)

You shudder at a split infinitive, know when to use ‘that’ or ‘which’ and would never confuse ‘less’ with ‘fewer’ – but are these rules always right, elegant or sensible, asks linguist Steven Pinker.

Pinker Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th Photograph: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images.

Among the many challenges of writing is dealing with rules of correct usage: whether to worry about split infinitives, fused participles, and the meanings of words such as “fortuitous”, “decimate” and “comprise”. Supposedly a writer has to choose between two radically different approaches to these rules. Prescriptivists prescribe how language ought to be used. They uphold standards of excellence and a respect for the best of our civilisation, and are a bulwark against relativism, vulgar populism and the dumbing down of literate culture. Descriptivists describe how language actually is used. They believe that the rules of correct usage are nothing more than the secret handshake of the ruling class, designed to keep the masses in their place. Language is an organic product of human creativity, say the Descriptivists, and people should be allowed to write however they please.

John Berger: ‘Writing is an off-shoot of something deeper’ (John Berger, The Guardian)

Language can’t be reduced to a stock of words. Most political discourse is inert and ruthlessly complacent.

‘True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal’ … John Berger at home in Paris in 2005. Photograph: Ed Alcock for the Guardian.

I have been writing for about 80 years. First letters then poems and speeches, later stories and articles and books, now notes. The activity of writing has been a vital one for me; it helps me to make sense and continue. Writing, however, is an off-shoot of something deeper and more general – our relationship with language as such. And the subject of these few notes is language.