Descriptivism Vs. Prescriptivism
For a bit of background, see the Wikipedia articles on descriptive and prescriptive language policies.
5 Comments leave one »
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23.Jul.2007 - 12:19 pm A baby who is just learning to talk is not representative of the speech community as a whole, but I still appreciate the humour. |
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25.Jul.2007 - 3:26 pm Yes, I was going for the humor angle… |
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26.Jul.2007 - 5:39 pm [...] a large group of native speakers use the language [confirmation needed], then who am I to get all prescriptivist and tell them it should be [...] |
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27.Jul.2007 - 5:45 am This is new to me. I clicked on the links, and read them. Very insightful. I like the perspective of seeing the two concepts as complimenting each other. That perspective makes more sense to me. |
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27.Jul.2007 - 12:06 pm Yes, the two concepts can be complementary, but it’s common for people to think of them as mutually exclusive ideas, with hardcore linguists in one camp saying we should *only* describe how a majority population uses language, and grammarians or traditional language teachers in the other camp saying it’s right to try to correct “wrong” usage and keep the language pure. But I am with you, that the two ideas are complementary. On one hand, language is living and changes, and we have to accept that, but on the other hand I think it’s right to correct people who don’t use language correctly, *especially* if they haven’t finished learning the language completely. |
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