Authority as to usage:
Obviously his first source of information and authority will be the body of intelligent and educated people with whom he comes in contact. If he follows their usage in matters of language, he cannot go for astray....
“If we know what a man means and if his usage is in accordance with that of a large number of intelligent and educated people, it cannot justly be called incorrect. For language rests, at bottom, on convention or agreement, and what a large body of reputable people recognize as a proper word or a proper meaning of a word cannot be denied its right to a place in the English vocabulary.’ (Vide, Rhetoric and English Composition by Carpenter, pp. 21 - 22)
“Language is at best only symbolic of the word of consciousness, and nearly every word is rich in unexpressed associations of life-experience, which gives it its full value for the life of mind. Subtleties, delicacies and refinements of feeling and perception are only indicated by words; the rest lies deep in our conscious or unconscious life, and is the source of the tone and colour of language. Words accordingly must be steeped in life to be living; and as we have not two lives, but only one, so we have only one language.” (Vide Teaching the Language Arts, Hinsdale, - 19)
1368 Minute of Dissent
