Lingual Prescriptivism

So, yeah, I'm wondering how everyone here feels about lingual prescription versus lingual description. In rough, it's the argument between "languages have defined rules and changing them or allowing them to change is foolish" (linguistic prescription) and "languages change over time, trying to get them to stick to out dated rules is ridiculous" (linguistic description).

Both sides of this have good points. Prescriptivism suggests that it's important to stick to linguistic rules or we just end up with confusion and misunderstandings, whilst descriptivism is entirely correct that the tide can't be stopped when it gets started and we might as well go with the flow.

To me, one of the defining topics of debate on this subject is the meaning and usage of words themselves. It really irritates me when people use words "wrongly" or when another word would fit better (ie. be more contextual and cause less confusion) than the one they're using.

Primarily, the whole titular vs eponymous thing. A lot of people use titular (which usually means "in title only") when they should really be using eponymous (which means "this thing is in the title of the work"). I mean, using "titular" in this way confuses people (I saw a review that said, "the titular sword", does that mean it's a bloody axe or something) whilst they could be using "eponymous". However, titular has been used for so long in that way that that's basically it's meaning now, so why should people try to stop it being used that way?

What do all you guys think? Fascism (prescriptivism) versus nihilism and anarchy (descriptivism) is making my brain hurt. :p

Something to consider: some changes to language are necessary, such as new words for new concepts or technology. Changes in usage are sometimes good, if only to keep words from disappearing.

As in your example, though, some changes are frivolous. I particularly dislike the use of "task" as a verb, because it's already a noun and there are perfectly good words that mean the same thing.

Then there's the question of enforcement. The French manage to keep their language "pure," I suppose through the educational system. How do you keep people from misusing your language, and who decides what is misuse or proper use?

Primarily, the whole titular vs eponymous thing. A lot of people use titular (which usually means "in title only") when they should really be using eponymous (which means "this thing is in the title of the work"). I mean, using "titular" in this way confuses people (I saw a review that said, "the titular sword", does that mean it's a bloody axe or something) whilst they could be using "eponymous". However, titular has been used for so long in that way that that's basically it's meaning now, so why should people try to stop it being used that way?

According to Google Dictionary, one of the definitions of titular is

Denoting a person or thing from whom or which the name of an artistic work or similar is taken

• the work's titular song

edited 7th Jan '11 8:34:31 AM by storyyeller

According to Google Dictionary, one of the definitions of titular is

Denoting a person or thing from whom or which the name of an artistic work or similar is taken

• the work's titular song

HOW DO I DO THE QUOTE

Anyway, of course it has that as a definition. Like I said, it's been used for so long in that way that it is in nearly every dictionary. Most dictionaries also mention that it's not recommended / proscribed to use it that way.

EDIT: Working out the commands here is more frustrating than fist fighting with a bear. :| Does anyone have a basics guide?

edited 7th Jan '11 9:58:43 AM by TheDevouringPlague

Use quoteblock instead of quote. Also, Text-Formatting Rules.

edited 7th Jan '11 9:42:56 AM by Deboss

Thank you. :D

Attempting prescriptivism is pointless. The existence of the Real Academia Española doesn't stop the existence of unregulated Spanish vernacular.

A language needs both to remain vital and stable.

With no prescriptivism, the changes will render it unintelligible to various classes of speakers in fairly short order — case in point: slang, which has no prescriptive element whatsoever. It means whatever the group using it at the moment chooses.

With no descriptivist element, it stagnates and dies, because there is no way to adapt to new needs. Case in Point: classical Latin.

Easily refuted by the fact that English survived without any prescriptivism for centuries. Being incomprehensible benefits no-one, and few communities are isolated enough to develop their own complete sub-languages to the point of incomprehensibility. Modern technology, in fact, is causing the opposite to happen. I have no problem understanding that the British use "boot" to describe what I call a "trunk", in large part because of the Internet.

There is a popular straw-man version of descriptivism going around that suggests that descriptivists are for "anything goes". Nothing could be farther from the truth. Descriptivists have no hesitation to classify things as formal, informal, colloquial, slang, regional slang, non-standard, or simple error. Descriptivists do not throw out the rules—they study them deeply, in an effort to get them right!

All your English dictionaries are created by descriptivists. Any Linguists you encounter will be descriptivists. Prescriptivism is pseudo-scientific nonsense, and deserves to be outed and scorned wherever it occurs. It is indefensible.

Heard an interview on NPR today, with a grammarian who pointed out the difference between using "less" and "fewer". Apparently you use fewer with items you can count, less with things you cant. It's "One fewer dollars" but "less money".

All of which convinces me that grammer ought to serve the higher purpose of providing information. Using "less" vs. "fewer" doesnt tell you anything you didnt already know. Something like the correct use of plural forms, on the other hand...

There is a place for prescriptivism, but not inside linguistics as a science.

Prescribing a "proper" grammar and vocabulary, is a matter of etiquette, and proprieties. We could get by without it, just as even entirely uneducated illitarates can easily comunicate with others in their community. To say that without prescriptivism, language would become unintelligible, is like saying that without table manners, we couldn't eat and we would all starve to death. We speak "properly", only to show off how educated and classy we are, not because civilization wuld fall apart without english class.

And that's not entirely useless, we do need to learn etiquette, but prescriptivists should stop pretending that they represent a side of linguistics as a science, and that when they discourage a certain usage, they do it because it's "grammatically inaccurate".

It's just surreal, it feels as if a biologist would complain that the platypus is "taxonomically inaccurate" according to prescriptive taxonomy, or a meteorologist would say that you are not allowed to have a hurricane during a US election season according to prescriptive meteorology.

The terms are misnomers. Prescriptivists and descriptivists are both willing to prescribe usages. The only real differences is that prescriptivists make up just-so stories to justify their claims, while descriptivists study the speech of native speakers to justify their claims. Prescriptivists will remain convinced that X is wrong even if the evidence shows that 90% of all native speakers, including the most educated, routinely use X. (See, for example, split infinitives or sentence-terminal prepositions.)

Of course, prescriptivists and descriptivists also agree on the majority of the language, which can make it hard, sometimes, to determine if a supposed expert is promoting nonsense or has an actual, science-based case.

As an obvious example, prescriptivists and descriptivists agree that "fewer" applies to countables. You can't have "fewer water" or "fewer sand" (though you can have fewer grains of sand). Where they disagree is on "less". Prescriptivists say that because "fewer" applies to countables, "less" must only apply to non-countables. This is what I mean by a just-so story. It sounds logical. The only problem is that it's not true. The overwhelming majority of English speakers use "less" to apply to certain classes of countables. (Details can be found in the Merriam-Webster Guide to English Usage and other reputable guides, but if you're a native speaker, you can probably use your ear as a guide.) "Ten items or less" is perfectly grammatical and correct.

The trick, of course, is that "less" and "fewer" weren't designed to complement each other. In fact, they weren't designed at all. They evolved independently, from different roots, so it's no surprise that that they ended up overlapping in meaning. Lots of English words do. It's part of the eccentric charm of the language, IMO.

edited 4th Nov '12 7:18:03 PM by Xtifr

That, and Old English >>> Modern English was a textbook exercise in "how to create a complex Creole".

We're stuck with that, and are still simplifying the bumps caused.

Every language has similar quirks, english is not particularly special.

As with "nature vs. nurture," they're two unlikely extremes that ignore the possibility of a middle ground. Any language is going to change, and I'm okay with that. However, I'm élitist enough to believe that relatively uneducated native speakers shouldn't get the same "vote" as the most educated. I tend to treat the usage of the highly literate upper-crust and the greatest contemporary prose stylists as normative: if (for example) a George Steiner, V.S. Naipaul, Roger Scruton, or Clive James starts adopting some linguistic novelty, then I'll concede that the language has changed. Not beforehand.

Actually English is a little special. The Germanic/Romance fusion has given English a huge vocabulary and massive redundancy. Also, the tendency to assemble new words out of bits and pieces of other languages.

At its core, language is about communicating with other people, and that means that it's going to be based on consensus and essentially popular usage.

Rules in language exist not to restrict its use or keep it from changing but to provide a framework for understanding. This does mean they're important, but understanding is more important than the rule itself. Misspellings are upsetting because they can hurt understanding; so do things like errors in tense, but when it comes to something like less or fewer, no one's going to be confused about the meaning of 'ten items or less'.

You can make an argument to absurdity that it means we should all use the simplest possible forms of language if that's the case, but for the most part, the rules that we use for English now are mainly for clarity or to provide more information. Those are the ones that should (and will, since they're used for understanding and linked to actual usage as opposed to rules invented for 'properness') stick around.

Ever 9, I've spoken 7 languages to various degrees of competence over the years (some terrible, it has to be admitted). English is... weird, in comparison to the rest.

Afrikaans: some say it's a pidgin that's trying to play with the big boys. And, they'd have a point: the vocab is tiny in comparison with the monster that is English... but, looks terribly anaemic when put alongside Daddy Dutch, as well. However, for a supposed pidgin language, it doesn't import vocab as wholesale from other languages in the way you'd expect it to, being vastly more regimentally Dutch in construction and origin than it by all rights should be and holds its own beyond the "trade language" use, what with sometimes coming over quite poetic and enjoying its idioms. Certainly has done a massive hatchet-job on the grammar and spelling, though: it's the easiest language I have when it comes to both by a good thousand kilometres. Not a Creole, but... a growing pidgin, that's for sure. Still a bit of a squab: give it time to gain more isiZulu and find ways even more divergent from Dutch or Malay before you can label it "Creole". Doubt it'll ever wholesale import English for a good few generations, yet. Major resistance, there.

isiXhosa: plays with tones, breathes affixes and some interesting grammatical structures as a result of said affixes. Roots? Not that many, really: the affixing thing makes the vocab look many times bigger than it actually is (but, ye gads, you've got to be good at memorising lists of roots and affixes accurately or you throw your game off if you use the wrong one: I'd swear blind there are hundreds of both). Lots and lots and lots of idiom, metaphor and wordplay, though: vast bodies of it to the point it makes English look like a slouch. Partial intermix with San languages like Griqua (hence the interesting clicks and tones), for example, but still mainly Nguni in origin, so not a strict Creole. Not as weird as English is with the vocab. By a long way. Nor as messed up in deciding when and how to drop grammar for some things... but not for others. Many dialects, but most readily understandable if you cock your head to listen carefully. Heck, you can have a go at understanding isiZulu fairly easily, depending on the dialect of that you're listening to.

French: maor grammar than English currently has, and certainly juggles with tensile usage more than isiXhosa does (there're affixes, tones and rhythms for that, not wholesale changes in how the root looks 'n stuff). And, so effing pedantic when it comes to not importing words from other places. Sizeable dictionary, but, still... fairly sane. Until you start listening to the various dialects. Good luck with those: it's as bad as English for dialectical shifts in pronunciation and vocab. At best, modern French is a mix of variously related dialects/ languages merging and/or deciding not to bother.

German: ARRRGGGH! GRAMMMAR!!!! Argh! DIALECTICAL SHIFTS (Mix High with Low and then let's just mess about to make your head explode: MAKE YOUR MIND UP)! Argh! Changing spelling conventions mid-way on me! (And, restricting use of the darling Eszett, my favourite bit of the language.)*cough* <adjusts clothing> German makes French look like a slouch when it comes to magical, fantastical grammatical construction. English is made look like a bum, and poor Afrikaans the kid that hasn't learned to talk properly, yet. isiXhosa just looks like a total alien next to it (which, to be fair... is not that far off). Has a flower-press of a dictionary, as well, that's thanks to... all those dialects taking various parts of Highs and Lows of old and doing their regional things with them. But, most of the headache is GRAMMAR! Heaven help me should I ever take up Russian: it's worse. On the plus-side, once you've got your head around the spelling, that bit's dead easy. Mind you, any foreign language that shoves verbs at the end of sentences is fine by me (used to that, thanks to Afrikaans and the sometimes use in English).

Those are my main ones: briefly learned a little spoken Hebrew, Japanese... and a tiny, tiny bit of Latin.

I think I can spot a relatively evolved, humongous, amorphous blob of a Creole without needing to reach for Wikipedia. Which, has had less draconian standardising measures applied with it than some (not looking at French, German, Hebrew or Afrikaans, here...)

edited 5th Nov '12 6:00:22 PM by Euodiachloris

The rules exist in the language. It's just how your brain learns this stuff. It would be completely impossible for communication to occur if we weren't following rules, and even the least educated person in the world rigidly follows the rules of their own dialect. If the rules you have written down in front of you don't match the rules that are actually being used... then you're just kind of stupid for having recorded the rules incorrectly.

Or they were right at one point in time but language shifted. :3

Mandarin; lots of rules, the spoken language itself is a product of the government enforcing a uniform language across the entire country, which by and large was successful, as evidenced by the Chinese dialects being spoken primarily outside of China (with a few notable exceptions).

SCIENCE!!!!

I feel that descriptivism is it for SCIENTIFIC reasons. There is a place for prescribing usage, just like there is a place for choosing whether to drop an atomic bomb or bake a cake. You choose whether to drop an atomic bomb or make a cake or utter a sentence based on context, and SCIENCE can help tell you how to make the bomb or the cake or the sentence. It will also tell you why you make the bomb or the cake or the sentence that way. Science does not tell you whether or not you should drop the bomb, serve the cake, or utter the sentence in a given situation. That is the job of context.

My job involves talking with people all day on the internet. I wish many of them got more prescriptivism in things like spelling, punctuation, and standard formal business-style English grammar, since I can't understand what the hell they are saying and my job relies on some extent to us understanding each other, but my preferences are merely for pragmatic purposes based on the fact that I don't speak their dialect sufficiently well. Their poor formal education does not mean they might not be articulate in some dialect I don't understand but which is a coherent system in and of itself.

As you may guess, this means I can feel superior to everyone on both sides of the issue.

edited 8th Nov '12 5:43:14 AM by Hatshepsut

The forbidden use of the word has citations in the OED going back to 1656, and has been widely used by well-respected English authors and publications. What does it take to make a use legitimate?

I think of it like this: If a dialectal usage is engrained enough through historical precedent—the Wessex be, for instance—then I think that it's perfectly valid if used within that context, but that does not mean that there should not be a maintained standard for usage in a language. Rather, local dialect and terminology should be respected and preserved, but for the sake of mutual intelligibility, some unified formal tongue should be in place and understood by the citizenry.

Of course, when a "dialect" diverges strongly enough from that standard that it can be said to operate on a different set of principles, then it's simply another language. Scots and Jamaican Patois are like that.