Of all the social constructs we've created, I think language is my favourite. Since the most basic beginnings of the human experience we’ve made noises, but at some point we slapped rules on them and started judging anyone who didn’t follow them.

With the advent of the digital age, there has inevitably been more sharing of language across cultures and dialects, and language evolves more quickly than ever before. The process by which we coin and proliferate new words and phrases has been shortened to the time it takes someone to hit upload. As ever, words form out of necessity, a desire to be humorous or educational, or even sometimes by mistake, and if a word can be used to communicate, that word is a valid part of language.

This concept of linguistic imperialism – the imposition of one language on speakers of another – is apparent across much of the history of the English language, evident not only in America, but also across many other cultures within which English was used to displace or replace existing languages.

When a language is imposed upon people, and there is an attempt to eradicate the original vernacular, this often results in the creation of a new dialect, or even in some cases a creole language. Within Scottish Standard English we can see direct influences from Gaelic, for example through the use of the definite article in phrases like “the day”, or “the now”.

Dialectal features such as these are not "incorrect", or something to be removed, but a representation of the way languages can adapt and grow around the people speaking them. You may be surprised to know that there is currently an entirely new dialect of English emerging in Miami, influenced by the region's high percentage of Spanish speakers. It carries through grammatical structures and calques (literal translations of words and idioms) from one language to the other. Phrases such as “making a party,” in place of “throwing” might sound strange to speakers of other dialects of English, but to a Spanish speaker the influence is immediately clear.

The same phenomenon can be observed in New Orleans English, and in many other cultures within which a language community were exposed to, or forced to learn, English. I spoke to Sunn m'Cheaux, who offers lectures on Gullah at the University of Harvard, and is fluent in various Afro-Caribbean creoles, including Bahamian Creole English and Jamaican Patois.

He said of the way his language is received, “There’s a need to put us back in ‘our place’, to denigrate the way we are speaking. Language is formed by people taking chances and coming up with new ideas. There is more than enough space for all forms of language, we can see that space being made when it is profitable and in the best interests of those in power, but when that same space is needed to empower people who have been historically oppressed, then that is a bridge too far.”

Sunn highlighted that there are many grammatical features apparent in his language which can be seen to parallel others, for example the use of a habitual be, “She be doing” or “She do be doing”, present in Hiberno English. While these features may be perceived as valid linguistic structures when viewed in the Irish context, there is an active attempt to eradicate these structures for speakers of African American English (AAE).

Language does not exist in a vacuum, and perceptions are not immune to societal hierarchies, but informed by them. Opinions of language are shaped by the structures acting upon the people who speak them, and often linguistic prejudice is informed by structures of racial, cultural or class imperialism.

The treatment of AAE perfectly represents the role of racism in linguistic prejudice. Many words entering the English vernacular in America comes from AAE, and the ways in which words are taken from the language without proper respect given to its speakers represents something of a double standard.

I asked EK Powell, a linguist who specialises in AAE, about the perception of the language, he said, “I had a job working in a call centre, when customers would use AAE I would respond back in AAE, I would code switch, to make more connection in my conversation. I would then get in trouble for that, told I was unprofessional, and that I shouldn’t talk like that on the phone. The belief that people should push themselves to adhere to one singular linguistic standard ignores the beautiful wonderful variety within a language – you take away the flavour.”

There are those who say engaging with non-standard dialects of a language impedes communication to which I should point out that I do not speak Gullah, I do not speak AAE or an American dialect of English, and yet throughout my conversations in preparation for this article, whenever I encountered an unfamiliar word or phrase, I only had to ask, or to seek clarification in order to quickly understand the points being made to me.

Back in the day before the internet and movies, it was much easier and more realistic for dialects to remain distinct from each other. Now, we're all up in everyone's linguistic business, and words have a wonderful habit of refusing to stick to geographic boundaries. A desire to keep a language "pure" is a fundamental misunderstanding of what language is and how it behaves.

Through media, both social and traditional, we are exposed to a rich tapestry of narratives every day, and in turn our vocabularies get wider for it. Language, like any other man-made system, rarely behaves in a binary or rigid structure. Holding one standardised dialect of English up as the superior form of the language is problematic when we consider the role of linguistic imperialism in colonisation, and it would be remiss of me to ignore the cultural implications of exactly why so many people across the world speak English in the first place.

You are entirely within your rights to have linguistic pet peeves, whether it's the accidental coining of a new word like "irregardless", the paradoxical augmentation of a definition seen through the figurative use of "literally", or even the adoption of words from a different dialect of English like "diaper" or "crosswalk".

All I would invite you to keep in mind before mocking or deriding a person for engaging with language in a way you personally dislike or are unfamiliar with is, just as you have the right to control the ways in which you use language, so too does everyone else.

Upholding one singular linguistic standard may seem inclusive, but to people who do not fit the standard, it is inherently exclusionary. Why should a speaker of AAE be told that their perfectly functional grammatical structures are wrong? Why should someone have to change the way they speak in order to be taken seriously? It is only through embracing and accepting the fluidity and variety of language that we can begin to foster true inclusivity, true communication. Perhaps we should be less critical of the way someone chooses to communicate their ideas, and more focused on the ideas themselves.