(Up to: Ceci NEst Pas Une Pipe Big Words No Clever )

Q 1. Does bad written language indicate/should it be taken for an indicator of intellectual "inferiority"?

I've seen many people over the years criticise someone else for not being able to spell/grammaticise correctly, e.g. "why should we take you seriously when you can't even spell?". This would imply, though, that as spelling is a "basic" of education, and education would infer some level of intellectualness, someone's main point (at any one time) cannot be thought of as "stable". In this way, many people may use another person's linguistic abilities to decide whether or not their point is worth considering. It is not a judgement of the point, but a judgement of the person in the debate.

My initial reaction to this is that this doesn't make sense, for two reasons:

1. A concept should exist independently of language, and as such its validity isn't jeopardised merely by a "faulty representation" or form.
2. Following on from this... With the English language becoming ubiquitous, it is more and more common for people to attempt it, but not necessarily be a fluent speaker. Thus, the original point may be solid, but (again) the presentation of it may be in a language not usually used by the presenter.

My reaction to point 2 is that maybe we are capable of differentiating between those that obviously do have an inherent understanding of a language, and those who don't - through use of language oddities, cultural particulars, et al. People who are not necessarily comfortable with a language will come across as stilted, maybe restricted, and so have a different form of the language again.

But still, does this mean that we should use language presented as an indicator of the validity of the point, and/or a pre-judged "reputation" of the author?

An idea: Write an HTML converter to turn pages into textspeak. Textspeak, to me, represents a "status" separator in terms of how people think about how they present the information in their head, and thus, how they think about the same thing. Would presenting formal documents in a heavily-abbreviated, cultural-yet-lazy form affect how it is interpreted by a reader?

Watch this space.

Also:

• BBC News: Bad spelling 'puts off employers'