Like Dennis Brown, the writer of the article, I also think why do academics continue to teach proper English and scold us when we use "our own" English. I think they should teach us how to use proper English but not scold us for diverting from it. Now if we divert from proper English to the point where we make no sense or it is hard to understand what we are trying to say, they should show us and teach us how to make more sense or make our English more easily understood.
But I also feel like if our academic society accepted the use of improper English, then we wouldn't have the diversity in our language that we do now. Some of the reason we divert from proper English is because we find it annoying to follow all of the rules and we want it simpler. Why say ten words when you can say the same thing in two. Another reason may be because they want to "stick it to the man." People break rules just to break rules, or because they don't like those certain rules. So if our academic society was more loose on how we use grammar, how we punctuate, and how we speak then I feel there would be less diversity because people would be less inclined to short hand the language and "break the rules" so to speak.
Your best entry so far Aaron -- some good questions (although your last point is a little confusing). Let me throw a few back at you: what about professionalism? Aren't there situations in which it's inappropriate to use slang? To type like you're texting? Where, specifically, do you draw the line? What's too "loose?" In what situations is it absolutely unacceptable?
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