Prescriptivism -
What? - Prescriptivism (or linguistic purism) is a linguistic term for preffering or championing a specific way of talking over another. In this sense you are almost forcing a person to adopt a new way of speaking, prescribing for them a course of specific ideals by which they should speak. This has recently carried a few negative connotation, people who identify as prescriptivists recieving names like "grammar nazi's". When you lean towards prescriptivism, you can start to criticise all forms of deviantion from Standard English, for example things like: text speak, abbreviations, creoles and accents/dialects.
Who? - Prescriptivism is a heavily criticised ideal these days, so finding current linguistists who support it is hard. However, if we step back a bit, we find people like Henry Watson Fowler. He wrote "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage", from which we can find the quote "It is strange that a people with such a fondness for understatement as the British should have felt the need to keep changing the adverbs by which they hope to convince listeners of the intensity of their feelings." This quote is one that disapproves of people over-using the -ly ending an an adverbial in places where they shouldn't. This is a really common lunguistic allowance today, but to Fowler, this was obviously a very bad variation from Standard.
Other such names are Alexis Manaster Ramer, a Polish/American linguist who has studied deep into historical English and her variations. Manaster Ramer is the founder of the ACL special interest group on Mathematical linguistics (SIGMOL) and the organizer of the first Mathematics of Language conference.
Why? - Unfortunately, prescriptivism is often used to demonstrate superiority of langauge, and his or her favourite class of people over everyone else. Its fuels discrimination, particularly classism and lends itself to the people who are better off, and by that stereotype, better educated.
Descriptivism -
What? - Also called synchronic linguistics, is the study or description of langauges as they are spoken or were spoken in the past by individual communities. Like all sciences, descriptivism in language looks at the facts of language, rather than creating rules and having opinions on how a language ought to be be spoken.
Who? - "Language is an ever-changing and developing expression of human personality, and does not grow well under rigorous direction." - C. L. Wrenn, The English Language.
A female descriptivist, Dr. Alexandra D'Arcy, openly criticises her grandmothers prescriptivism. She has presented and published on lexical, phonological, syntactic, morphosyntactic, and discourse-pragmatic variation and change, both synchronically and more recently, historically. Her research centers on English, and she has worked on a range of varieties (national, regional, social, and ethnic).
What? - Prescriptivism (or linguistic purism) is a linguistic term for preffering or championing a specific way of talking over another. In this sense you are almost forcing a person to adopt a new way of speaking, prescribing for them a course of specific ideals by which they should speak. This has recently carried a few negative connotation, people who identify as prescriptivists recieving names like "grammar nazi's". When you lean towards prescriptivism, you can start to criticise all forms of deviantion from Standard English, for example things like: text speak, abbreviations, creoles and accents/dialects.
Who? - Prescriptivism is a heavily criticised ideal these days, so finding current linguistists who support it is hard. However, if we step back a bit, we find people like Henry Watson Fowler. He wrote "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage", from which we can find the quote "It is strange that a people with such a fondness for understatement as the British should have felt the need to keep changing the adverbs by which they hope to convince listeners of the intensity of their feelings." This quote is one that disapproves of people over-using the -ly ending an an adverbial in places where they shouldn't. This is a really common lunguistic allowance today, but to Fowler, this was obviously a very bad variation from Standard.
Other such names are Alexis Manaster Ramer, a Polish/American linguist who has studied deep into historical English and her variations. Manaster Ramer is the founder of the ACL special interest group on Mathematical linguistics (SIGMOL) and the organizer of the first Mathematics of Language conference.
Why? - Unfortunately, prescriptivism is often used to demonstrate superiority of langauge, and his or her favourite class of people over everyone else. Its fuels discrimination, particularly classism and lends itself to the people who are better off, and by that stereotype, better educated.
Descriptivism -
What? - Also called synchronic linguistics, is the study or description of langauges as they are spoken or were spoken in the past by individual communities. Like all sciences, descriptivism in language looks at the facts of language, rather than creating rules and having opinions on how a language ought to be be spoken.
Who? - "Language is an ever-changing and developing expression of human personality, and does not grow well under rigorous direction." - C. L. Wrenn, The English Language.
A female descriptivist, Dr. Alexandra D'Arcy, openly criticises her grandmothers prescriptivism. She has presented and published on lexical, phonological, syntactic, morphosyntactic, and discourse-pragmatic variation and change, both synchronically and more recently, historically. Her research centers on English, and she has worked on a range of varieties (national, regional, social, and ethnic).
rules were the rules. Even as a toddler Grandmother was always
Grandmother, never Grandma or Nana. Still, summers at Grandmother’s
evoke bucolic memories: a musty-smelling bunk room, purple starfish
stranded in tidal pools, snake dens uncovered in the underbrush,
sun-drenched blackberries smothered in buttermilk and … grammar lessons
over breakfast! Now, I can appreciate that few children enjoy lectures
on the redundancy of at this point in time or the reason why she could
be excused and yet still may not leave the table. Nor is any
eight-year-old particularly enthralled by the dissection of further and
farther over her morning bowl of cereal. However, such fond
recollections are indelibly etched in my memories of Grandmother. - See
more at:
http://blog.oup.com/2010/02/prescriptivist/#sthash.czpFjpzp.dpuf
rules were the rules. Even as a toddler Grandmother was always
Grandmother, never Grandma or Nana. Still, summers at Grandmother’s
evoke bucolic memories: a musty-smelling bunk room, purple starfish
stranded in tidal pools, snake dens uncovered in the underbrush,
sun-drenched blackberries smothered in buttermilk and … grammar lessons
over breakfast! Now, I can appreciate that few children enjoy lectures
on the redundancy of at this point in time or the reason why she could
be excused and yet still may not leave the table. Nor is any
eight-year-old particularly enthralled by the dissection of further and
farther over her morning bowl of cereal. However, such fond
recollections are indelibly etched in my memories of Grandmother. - See
more at:
http://blog.oup.com/2010/02/prescriptivist/#sthash.czpFjpzp.dpuf
Good work :)
ReplyDelete