"We're Fortunate to Have a Language over Which to Pitch Our Fits"

"The idea of 'good' English as opposed to 'bad' was coming into play. This, Lynch says, had to do with the rise of the middle class--a set of interlopers who had had the luck and nerve to earn some money, and thus aspired to fake their way into the outer realms of the ruling elite. One of the necessary tools for this was knowledge of how the language was spoken and written by those who lived at the top."

Carolyn See in The Washington Post reviews Jack Lynch's The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of "Proper" English from Shakespeare to South Park.