Come on. You can’t honestly tell me that “folks” or “y’all” are signs of language policing. I think many Southerners would vehemently disagree with you.
You've walked into a pretty innocuous conversation here, and tried to start a culture-war argument even though nobody present has actually taken the position you want to argue against. Please consider not doing that in the future.
I’m sorry you’re offended by people trying to be nice to others by avoiding language they don’t appreciate. I promise nobody is gonna force you to do the same.
What I said is it is a sign of language policing, and that means a sign of the sort of people that like to deliberately misinterpret things so they get to be offended and virtue signal about the response. Normal people, unlike myself, simply shut up as a defence mechanism.
Perhaps the solution then should be to replace “y’all” with the northern regional equivalents of “youse” or even “yinz.” Would you feel happier about that?
What argument do you presume I’m advancing? Perhaps your tendency to see everything as a competition is why you view each conversation as a psychoanalysis evaluation.
Just look at how their usage is promoted in this thread to defeat supposed evils elsewhere in the language.