This video’s pretty relevant to many of the threads on language and linguistics that pop up on the Straight Dope. I’m sure some will agree, and some will disagree, with what he says 
Hah! I like that.
Awesome sauce.
I love the animation and of course Stephen Fry is being very astute.
Extremely cool.
I could listen to Stephen Fry recite the dictionary. I’d pay to hear it.
He makes some good points. I’ve sent the link to my mother who I feel is overly concerned with the correctness of language.
Hey, I cream with joy at language! Metaphorically. 
Though some no doubt find me exactly the sort of pedant he speaks of, I don’t think I am. I’m a slightly different sort of pedant. 
I disagree with his suggestion that some things that can be done to language are only “ugly” because they’re new, “in the way Picasso, Stravinsky and Eliot were once thought ugly.” I think there are natural aesthetic principles as there are ethical, that creations can be judged in the long light of all human culture and history (rather than any one moment’s congested perspective), and shit is not all equal. There are greater and lesser beauties, which necessarily means there are grotesques.
Also, he elides the relationship between his own awareness of distinctions between confused words, and ignorant or sloppy practice. Surely someone who cherishes–revels in–the English language would perceive a loss if he were unable to use so many distinctions in his own writing and reading. So dismissing the significance of others’ loss, or non-acquisition, of those fine points of usage comes across as a kind of elitism in itself. It’s a little like saying that the poor don’t need to learn about art.
I agree with a great many things he says, and wish it didn’t fade out while he was still speaking.
Here’s the full essay that the video’s text is excerpted from.
Whoa, there’s a lot more there. That will take some time to digest.
He also covers similar ground in his radio documentary series Fry’s English Delight which you can get on CD, and therefore probably iTunes.
I’ve heard it said that the first step in bcoming an artist is to learn the conventional, current rules of whatever field you’re studying. But only when you can break those rules with meaning and intent have you become an artist. I kinda like that.
Not that I’m an artist, but when I’m writing or speaking there are certain liberties that I take, some that I don’t use personally but forgive in others, and those that I think are just wrong.
Actually, the last category might only include the use of ‘literally’ to mean ‘figuratively’. I’m curious if there’s any similar usage that Fry would come out against.
His language essay is available as a free podcast on iTunes.
This has been hashed to death here, but “literally” does not mean “figuratively” when used as an intensifier. You can’t replace “literally” with “figuratively” and retain the same meaning. It is a figurative use of the word “literally” but that is not the same as it literally meaning “figuratively”. In fact if you replaced the intensifier “literally” with the word “figuratively” you would weaken the sentence where “literally” strengthens it.
True, it would have been more technically correct to say that people use ‘literally’ in its figurative sense, of which it doesn’t have one. However, since this thread is about artistry and expression trumping pedantry, I’ll let my original statement stand.
Obligatory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3y0CD2CoCs