Where language rules come from...

So, where do language rules come from? In the past, they were determined by people who decide that one thing is right and everything else is wrong. "Language, The Loaded Weapon" describes them as Shamans. At this point, those Shamans of prescriptive language have mostly lost their influence. This does not signify the triumph of the true linguists, for they no longer play a huge part either.

New rules, in my mind, are mostly determined by people who wish to express their ideas and feelings in a unique way. This is not the only possibility, however. Dialects such as those used in the south and in black communities can also grow from a lack of the education required to express their thoughts. Perhaps they feel that they "lack language" as Moraga once said and so they create their own rules. Such new rules would spread through communities as more and more people heard others using them and became assimilated into the group of "dialect users."

Amidst all of this speculation, there's always the possibility that new rules arose merely because people enjoyed the way something sounded. Can't sounds better than cannot, for example. Poetry and Music show that man has a natural attraction to rhythm, and this attraction extends into the mundane plane of everyday speech. In the end, it's not so much a matter of what is right, but what sounds good or what you believe best expresses your purpose for speaking or idea.

Regardless of how language arises, the process repeats itself almost constantly, spawning new dialects and rules on a regular basis. The most important aspect is that it allows different people to express their thoughts.