TL;DR: fuck everyone’s grammar authoritarianism. Language exists to communicate: successful, natural communication is correct language use, regardless of grammar rules.

Well, my linguistic work is completely unrelated to the fediverse, so my self identification as a descriptivist is also totally independent of any conventions here. I don’t really care what others use, and if somehow my instance were to insist that I communicate exclusively in Basic English, I would ignore it and/or switch instances, depending on how reasonably they presented the case to use only Basic English. If the whole fediverse banded together to enforce that, I’d be very surprised that all of the non-anglophone instances agreed (especially the francophone / Zangendeutsch speaking ones, can you imagine?) and ignore it unless and until it became obvious that I was hampering communication and fucking the vibe up for people.

By descriptivism, I mean that I’m interested in grammar as it is (successfully, for communication purposes) used, not the rules listed in a grammar book. My professional focus is on the transmission of grammar to adult second and foreign language learners, which is why I jump to grammar as an example, but spelling, word choice, or other aspects of language can certainly also be approached from a descriptivist perspective (accepting “ur” for “your/you’re“ and responding to the question “can I go to the bathroom?” without insisting that the asker say “may I go to the bathroom?” would be examples of descriptivist approaches in those categories).

The most common comparison to descriptivism is prescriptivism, which leads you to sentences like “that is something, up with which I will not put.” There’s also, I guess, mixing elements of multiple together and hoping that it will work, but I wouldn’t consider it a lect if it’s not a system that can be used to accurately and consistently communicate with others… how many others is a very interesting question that we could discuss for hours, but it’s not my area.

I am personally very interested in grammar (obviously) and etymology, but I find the exclusion of dialects that are perfectly understandable to most local English speakers or insistence on following arcane rules, especially in informal situations, pretty fucked up, to be honest.

Of course if you’re from Glasgow talking to someone from Baton Rouge, one or both of you may need to tailor your speech to make communication work, but that’s a momentary adjustment and doesn’t imply that either speaker is wrong or making errors in their speech. My native dialect pronounces “internet” without any [t]: the first is completely elided and the second is replaced by a glottal stop. I’m not forgetting to say the t or mixing up the word, I’m speaking in the way that people around where I grew up do. When I’m speaking formally (as in, giving a lecture, not just talking to the doctor or anything), I’ll pronounce the first t, and if I’m speaking on the phone or with someone from a very different place, I’ll pronounce both, but those pronunciations are not more correct in my opinion, just more widely understood.