Dictionaries report usage
See for example, the word "bimonthly" which is reported as meaning both "twice a month" and "every other month," making the word useless. That also means if enough people say "nukular" instead of "nuclear" it will become acceptable and the dictionary will report it as true.
I teach College Writing and I believe in the validity of shifting meaning. I even teach my students that emoticons are the next horizon of punctuation. But the "language changes" argument is actually a way of disenfranchising students by making it more and more difficult for them to understand the work of past thinkers, since they can't really understand the langauge being used. And in fact, teaching them about structure and rules of something like language actually helps them become more logical in a way that Western society values. Not teaching them proper grammar, syntax and usage materially hurts their ability to think. Trust me, they want to learn how to think, but society is making it difficult.
If we don't start piling up the sandbags on the shores of langauge, English will erode to the point where no one will be able to get the witty repartee of The Register and its readers. Surely a tragedy?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
