There is no subjunctive mood in English.

<But there is a difference in making errors attempting to speak someone else's dialect and in speaking one's own native dialect, even if they would generally be thought of as dialects of the same language. >

You have to remember that not all speakers of a language or a dialect are equally proficient users, whatever their age. Errors are commited daily in every dialect world over. The errant speakers are corrected, directly and indirectly, by fellow members. Aren't those fellow members behaving in a prescriptive way, IYO?

<<The usage is controlled and prescribed by certain commentators in many dialects. Those commentators are themselves speakers of those dialects. >>

Not necessarily. Many a prescriptivist has dismissed an entire dialect/sociolect (separate from their own, of course) as "incorrect" or "slovenly" in the past and the present. Even today such things may persist, even if disguised somewhat. For instance, many would-be "usage guides" decry usage that, while not explicitly against any particular dialect/sociolect, includes "problem usages" that are disproportionately associated with a particular lect or particular lects that have historically perfectly valid reasons for arriving at the forms they use today.

<<Now, are you going to tell me that there will not be many prescriptive comments coming from the natives of Lillestrom that will wish to allow the use of "Ee, by gum!" to become a part of their local dialect? >>

Unless it spread it'd be classified as an idiolectal feature. Anyway, that example misses the point because phrases such as that are largely peripheral to overall language usage (in addition to it being an idiolectal thing). Idiolectal phrases can be interesting but this whole conversation has been about dialect/sociolect-wide usages in the many other areas of language (syntax, morphology, semantics, phonology, etc). To compare those with that example is inequitable in many ways.

<Yes, to be constrained by rules says that prescriptivism is at work>

And rightly so, or those who ignore grammar and spelling would have killed off the core language long ago.

***Who are you talking to there, Damian?***

It would be invidious to say who, exactly, M56. I think the M56 is clear of obfuscating obstruction though! :-)

It's just that sometimes obvious gramatical and linguistic erudtion (of which there is no doubt) invokes such enthusiasm that sentence construction becomes just a wee bit jumbled.

The M56....I zoomed along that on the way to Wales the other week! What a co-incidence :-)

<Idiolectal phrases can be interesting but this whole conversation has been about dialect/sociolect-wide usages in the many other areas of language >

In what way is ""Ee, by gum!" idiolectal?

"[T]hose who ignore grammar and spelling would have killed off the core language long ago."

Hmm...

Long ago, the "core language" was spoken by entirely illiterate people who never concerned themselves with "grammar."

So how come it wasn't "killed off" way back then?

I have read that the subjunctive is no longer commonly used in English.
I understand that the imperfect subjunctive exists in French.

What is this "core language"?

There was never a standard for the language until relatively recently.

I'd really like to know what the people who think there is no subjuctive in English consider 'if I were' to be. Is it indicative?

"Be" in "The powers that be" is not a subjunctive, it is an archaic plural. (Why would it be a subjunctive? What do you mean by that?)

>>"Be" in "The powers that be" is not a subjunctive, it is an archaic plural. (Why would it be a subjunctive? What do you mean by that?)<<

What reason do you have to say that, considering that it is not unusual for English phrases to preserve instances of the subjunctive not only in places where Late New English dialects which largely preserve the subjunctive would still use the indicative but also in dialects which have otherwise completely lost the subjunctive, and that it is quite usual for subjunctive-preserving LNE dialects to use the present subjunctive rather than the present indicative in many subordinate clauses introduced with "that"? From what I have looked up the phrase, everything that I have read says that that is subjunctive, and furthermore I have not been able to find anything that says that "be" was used for a plural present indicative copula as late as Early New English, considering that the phrase is from Tindale's bible translation of 1526. Yes, "beoþ" was used as such in Old English, but I have nothing that it indicates that it survived late enough for this.

In "the powers that be", "that be" is a simple relative clause, which does not take the subjunctive in English, and never has done so. Clauses with the subjunctive that have "that" are not relative clauses.

That "be" was used as the plural is common knowledge. Plural "be" is also preserved in the expression "Here there be dragons."

Thank you for pointing me to the Tyndale Bible, which I had not recognized as the source of that expression. It is available online, and it is extremely easy to search it for plural indicative "be", as in this famous passage from the Book of Matthew:

"14 But strayte is the gate and narowe ys the waye which leadeth vnto lyfe: and feawe there be that fynde it."

>>In "the powers that be", "that be" is a simple relative clause, which does not take the subjunctive in English, and never has done so. Clauses with the subjunctive that have "that" are not relative clauses. <<

Yeah, I somehow missed that "that" was being used as a relative pronoun and not a subordinating conjunction there.

>>That "be" was used as the plural is common knowledge. Plural "be" is also preserved in the expression "Here there be dragons."<<

That such is using such makes sense, but it seems that people often take plural "be" as being present subjunctive simply because such is, strangely, more familiar in nature than the use of "be" in the indicative.

>>Thank you for pointing me to the Tyndale Bible, which I had not recognized as the source of that expression. It is available online, and it is extremely easy to search it for plural indicative "be", as in this famous passage from the Book of Matthew:

"14 But strayte is the gate and narowe ys the waye which leadeth vnto lyfe: and feawe there be that fynde it."<<

In the context of the Tyndale Bible, that this is indicative actually makes sense from some of the discussions on the web I read about the discussion, which noted that the Douai-Rheims Bible used "are" where "be" is used in the Tyndale Bible, while both Tyndale and Douai-Rheims both use "are" later on for that same subject ("the powers") and that the Vulgate used "sunt" (indicative, of course) for both cases. The question came up of why Tyndale used subjunctive where both the Vulgate and the later Douai-Rheims version, also based off of the Vulgate, had used indicative in what I read, which of course this would obviated in the first place by having the use of "be" in Tyndale be plural indicative. In this context, I would have to say now that I would be inclined to agree with you, now that I have thought about it a bit more.

This whole debate about prescriptivism is rather silly. Those of you who are defending it seem to be willfully misunderstanding the word. Prescriptivism does not mean "the application of rules to language." All language has rules. Prescriptivism means that a certain group of speakers decides that the everyday usage of another group of native speakers is somehow wrong and should be avoided. This has nothing to do with a single mistake being corrected by another speaker, or even one speaker whose idiolect varies enough from that of his peers to seem "off" to them. As Travis said before, this is an elitist group of standard-language speakers imposing their speech patterns on another community. Just think, until the late 19th century, many Americans thought that their speech was deficient, and that only British (specifically English) speakers were correct. Prescriptivism, when properly defined, is obviously untenable from a scientific viewpoint.