Prescriptivism and Descriptivism

Prescriptivism

What?

Prescriptivism is the attitude or belief that one variety of a language is superior to others and should be promoted as such.

This creates a definite right and wrong in language usage. Hence, the language must be used in order to communicate properly.

An advantage of this is it allows all the speakers of that language to clearly communicate with each other. However, the language will no longer allow a development outside of the lexicon in the future, which may create educational and class issues based on those who know the rules and who don’t.

Examples of the rule: Don’t end a sentence with a preposition

                                       Don’t split infinitives

                                       Don’t use the passive voice

                                       Don’t use the pronoun ‘I’ in object position

Who?

• Lynne Truss- wrote a book called ‘Eats shoots and leaves'                                             

• Shadyah A. N. Cole- wrote an article on the historical development of prescriptivism, which shows how social and economic conditions influenced scholarly and popular attitudes to the English language; and Geoffrey Pullum’s ideology, power, and linguistic theory, in which the author assesses justifications for prescriptivist claims, and shows that 'in grammar the 19th century never really went away'.

• David Bentley Hart – wrote about English usage rules                                                       ‘The analytic, lexically antinomian line is that, in themselves, words mean nothing; persons use them as instruments to mean this or that. But, conversely, persons can mean only what they have the words to say, and so the finer our distinctions and more precise our definitions, the more we are able to mean.’

Descriptivism

What?

Descriptivism is a non-judgmental approach to language that focuses on how it is actually spoken and written; documenting and researching a language as it is spoken by native speakers with no judgments as to ‘correct’ forms.  It is the scientific study of language.

Who?

• Steven Pinker

• Henry Hitchings- wrote a book called ‘The English Wars’

• David Crystal – 'Language change is inevitable, continuous, universal and multi-directional. Languages do not get better or worse when they change. They just change.'