Practice critical thinking and become a smarter news consumer by subscribing through my link https://ground.news/drgeofflindsey to get 40% off unlimited access with the Vantage Plan. So often linguists seem to be defending language errors simply because they're all 'woke'. In this video we look at prescriptivism and descriptivism, standards, language 'rules', arbitrariness and the way emotions can control our thinking about language. 0:00 Quiz and introduction 1:50 Broad perspective & Ground News 3:30 Ferdinand de Saussure & arbitrariness 4:51 Standardness 6:13 Prescriptive & descriptive 6:44 Unconscious complexity 8:50 The value of standards 9:40 Language is rule-governed 11:10 Precedents 12:11 Covert and driving 13:16 Mistaken reanalysis 14:20 Emotion 16:17 Evidence against them 18:04 The power of association 22:56 Lingerie Ferdinand de Saussure https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ferdinand_de_Saussure_by_Jullien_Restored.png Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Butterfly effect pendulums by Wrzlprmft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Double_pendulum_simultaneous_realisations.ogv Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.