"Irregardless I Literally Could Care Less"

"Greene’s abhorrence of linguistic meddling extends to the 'grouches,' 'scolds' and 'vigilantes' who complain that English is going to hell in a Hupmobile and insist on imposing specious rules and crotchets on a language that is doing quite nicely on its own, thank you. In fact, he argues that the quality of this “declinism” has itself gone downhill over the last century."

Geoffrey Nunberg in The New York Times reviews Robert Lane Greene's You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity.