That’s all very well, but I fear we may be getting carried away. A noun is after all, a noun, a ‘thing’ word not a ‘doing’ word. You can’t just swap the two about, or where would we be? America, probably. I think Steven Pinker is absolutely right to draw a line in the sand, but he’s clearly confused about where it should be. Or indeed on which beach it should be. He seems to think that while some grammar rules are mere ‘superstitions’ (how I laughed!), others aspects of our tongue are solely a matter of good taste  - to whit, his own very suspect liberal metropolitan taste. We are encouraged to adopt his lax (some might even say immoral) standards in grammar, and yet superimpose upon this a vague and clubby sense of what appears to be appropriate to the context of academia (if we can for a moment accept that Steven might be considered an academic, and not some trendy media personality with a secret longing for acceptance by informed and serious people). As for Mr. Michael Rosen, I am surprised that he is allowed any where near children with his views and the damage that could be caused. 

We in the front line of language and literacy development in UK universities are doing our very best to preserve nouns and verbs. Messrs Pinker and Rosen have not been at all helpful. We expect this of course from Mr Rosen, a longstanding linguistic terrorist. But Mr Pinker must swallow his share of opprobrium here too: he must begin to appreciate that without all the ‘superstitions’ of grammar the whole edifice collapses. If I cannot tell you that you are wrong, incorrect, and illiterate to boot, why can you tell me that I lack ‘style’? Mere empty flaneurie. We must be very careful to preserve the substance of linguistic discrimination, or we will be left  standing before our colleagues and the world at large clad in only the flimsy lingerie of our linguistic prejudices, and this must not be allowed - under any circumstance - to happen. It is our job to tell others that they are wrong, incorrect and illiterate to boot. Whilst it is obvious that, in language, what is acceptable as good, appropriate and fitting is for us - the elite, the chosen - to decide, we cannot afford to accede any of the hard won territory our grammatical struggles (and those of our forefathers) have secured. To put it another way: we all revere and indeed, depend on, the language standards that enshrine, for all of us, the natural requirement that all higher thought, academic rigour, and critical endeavour be realised exclusively through our very own Standard British Academic English ( and by this I mean not youthspeak, Birmingham speak, patois, or any other deviations, or alternatively in these days of so-called internationalisation Scottish or Australian English, or Singlish, or, God forbid, another language entirely like French), preferably in written form, in ink, on paper. But these standards are not invulnerable: Nay, they are often left undefended and weak, like Andromeda or some other woman tied to a rock, and especially so in the epoch we now inhabit whence the Internet and Michael Rosen roam free, despoiling our fair language wherever they find it. Yet these cultural terrorists are not the only enemies of nouns and verbs - we must beware those like Pinker who would  - no doubt unintentionally, foolishly - undermine our entire culture (and livelihoods!) by remorselessly chipping away at the rock of grammar, the geology of correctitude, that is the very foundation for everything we hold dear and preserve. 

We MUST stick to the rules, and ABOVE ALL ensure OTHERS do; else all is LOST.

Yours etc,