Is poetry to blame for the deterioration of the English language?

Well, that’s what Jonathan Swift thought. He blamed rule-bending poets in his 18th-century “Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue” for diluting the strength of the English language. Two centuries later, Alison Flood at the Guardian (who admits to getting a little persnickety about language) uses Swift’s lament to prove that bastardizing English started long before "a tidal wave of mindless Americanisms” came barreling across the pond. Hm. What’s wrong with a “staycation?”

From the Guardian:

I am the sort of grumpy person who refuses to abbreviate anything in my texts, relishing the amount of time it takes me to type out the full words, who orders a medium coffee in Starbucks (not a venti or grande or whatever they call it – and incidentally, pity this poor woman who refused to kowtow to the company's ridiculous vernacular and was ejected by police), who is annoyed by the fact that "staycation" has now been entered in the Oxford English dictionary and enraged that Enid Blyton's getting a 21st-century makeover.

So I'm feeling a little silly to realise that, actually, this is nothing new. We've been whining on about the deterioration in English for years and years and years, and perhaps we need to get over ourselves. Looking at Swift's 300-year-old plea to keep things the same I'm minded to think that, actually, part of the glory of English, from Shakespeare's insults to Bombaugh's txt speak to the ever-expanding dictionaries of today, is its constantly changing nature, its adaptability, its responsiveness.