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English language politics: Prescriptivism vs. Descriptivism
13 years ago
General
I didn't used to think that modern people cared so much about this, but apparently there are people who can still practically get into fistfights over it. That's the issue of prescriptivist usage. vs. descriptivist usage in the English language.
Prescriptivism is a view that the English language must be protected from changes that are socially deemed frivolous or of low class. This adopts a specific polished usage as the standard, and discourages or condemns usages that fall outside this standard. This includes things like slang, portmanteaux, protologisms, and if you really wanna get fussy, you don't say "wanna" or "gonna", contractions aren't considered cool, you are not to blithely use split infinitives, and prepositions are something you don't want to end a sentence with. Prescriptivism may also tend to see English as a tradition whose proper form does not make any large changes in living memory; non-standard usages may be condemned even if they have been a historical norm.
Descriptivism is a view that languages, dialects and accents are all equally natural, and that language naturally evolves and mutates over time, and that it is usually more meaningful to describe a word based on how it is actually used rather than how someone thinks it ought to be used. And anyone who studies historical languages and dialectology knows that this is actually how languages behave - even the most polished accents are prone to generational change, and what is considered proper will inevitably be the same as what is most common among influential people. In a less classist society, the standard is more simply what is most common among the general population.
The political (practically partisan political) divide between these two philosophies of language have embroiled English language policies for centuries. Entire new dictionaries have been founded as prescriptivist or descriptivist reactions against an established dictionary's opposite philosophy - the prescriptivist American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language was founded as a response to the increasingly descriptivist Webster's Dictionary. And usually when words or usages have been stigmatized, it's because they were prohibited by prescriptivist grammarians. For example:
* Split infinitives were already natural in English, but half a millennium ago they were deemed incorrect because split infinitives are not possible in Latin, a popular language of the educated classes that was viewed as superior to English.
* "Ain't" isn't just from an African American Vernacular English realization of "isn't", but was also historically a realization of "am not" for English speakers in general. While "amn't" became the norm among English speakers in Scotland, Ireland and the north of England, "ain't" developed in southern England and in colonial English, but was gradually replaced by "aren't" because "ain't" had developed a low-class stigma.
* "Ax" has pretty much always been used as a synonym of "ask", all the way back to Old English verbs "ascian" and "acsian". Again, "ax" gradually developed a low-class stigma and was discouraged.
* "Span" was originally the standard past tense of "spin", and even appears this way in the King James Version of the Bible. And while many speakers still use "span" in this sense, it later became considered uneducated-sounding, and was replaced with "spun" (already the past participle of "spin") in formal usage.
* I could go on with examples, but you get my point.
You can probably tell that I am a descriptivist. I do enjoy studying English, and I am certainly capable of speaking it in a polished manner. And while it can be important to emphasize communication clarity by adopting common literary standards, these are completely irrelevant to me everywhere they aren't absolutely essential, because language to me is neither "right" nor "wrong", but an instrument of individual expression that simply exists, with its own internal grammatical consistency. Dialect and accent are one of the cornerstones a speaker's cultural treasures - when they are forced to give them up, they lose a piece of their culture. Having grown up in a multilingual multiaccental community, I usually practice sensitivity towards other people's natural speech variations, and I believe all of these deserve dignity, recognition and protection from hostile language attitudes. I embrace and accept natural organic language shifts, and I even enjoy liberal use of portmanteaux and spontaneous protologisms in casual use, so far as they are readily understood by the people I'm with from the context in which they are used.
Language is beautiful and ought to be studied and treasured. Language is also inherently impermanent, and changes over time. Rather than fighting this, we should be going with the natural flow. We should not forget our past either - we should document all the conventions and changes that used to be, because etymology is also a beautiful thing.
Prescriptivism is a view that the English language must be protected from changes that are socially deemed frivolous or of low class. This adopts a specific polished usage as the standard, and discourages or condemns usages that fall outside this standard. This includes things like slang, portmanteaux, protologisms, and if you really wanna get fussy, you don't say "wanna" or "gonna", contractions aren't considered cool, you are not to blithely use split infinitives, and prepositions are something you don't want to end a sentence with. Prescriptivism may also tend to see English as a tradition whose proper form does not make any large changes in living memory; non-standard usages may be condemned even if they have been a historical norm.
Descriptivism is a view that languages, dialects and accents are all equally natural, and that language naturally evolves and mutates over time, and that it is usually more meaningful to describe a word based on how it is actually used rather than how someone thinks it ought to be used. And anyone who studies historical languages and dialectology knows that this is actually how languages behave - even the most polished accents are prone to generational change, and what is considered proper will inevitably be the same as what is most common among influential people. In a less classist society, the standard is more simply what is most common among the general population.
The political (practically partisan political) divide between these two philosophies of language have embroiled English language policies for centuries. Entire new dictionaries have been founded as prescriptivist or descriptivist reactions against an established dictionary's opposite philosophy - the prescriptivist American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language was founded as a response to the increasingly descriptivist Webster's Dictionary. And usually when words or usages have been stigmatized, it's because they were prohibited by prescriptivist grammarians. For example:
* Split infinitives were already natural in English, but half a millennium ago they were deemed incorrect because split infinitives are not possible in Latin, a popular language of the educated classes that was viewed as superior to English.
* "Ain't" isn't just from an African American Vernacular English realization of "isn't", but was also historically a realization of "am not" for English speakers in general. While "amn't" became the norm among English speakers in Scotland, Ireland and the north of England, "ain't" developed in southern England and in colonial English, but was gradually replaced by "aren't" because "ain't" had developed a low-class stigma.
* "Ax" has pretty much always been used as a synonym of "ask", all the way back to Old English verbs "ascian" and "acsian". Again, "ax" gradually developed a low-class stigma and was discouraged.
* "Span" was originally the standard past tense of "spin", and even appears this way in the King James Version of the Bible. And while many speakers still use "span" in this sense, it later became considered uneducated-sounding, and was replaced with "spun" (already the past participle of "spin") in formal usage.
* I could go on with examples, but you get my point.
You can probably tell that I am a descriptivist. I do enjoy studying English, and I am certainly capable of speaking it in a polished manner. And while it can be important to emphasize communication clarity by adopting common literary standards, these are completely irrelevant to me everywhere they aren't absolutely essential, because language to me is neither "right" nor "wrong", but an instrument of individual expression that simply exists, with its own internal grammatical consistency. Dialect and accent are one of the cornerstones a speaker's cultural treasures - when they are forced to give them up, they lose a piece of their culture. Having grown up in a multilingual multiaccental community, I usually practice sensitivity towards other people's natural speech variations, and I believe all of these deserve dignity, recognition and protection from hostile language attitudes. I embrace and accept natural organic language shifts, and I even enjoy liberal use of portmanteaux and spontaneous protologisms in casual use, so far as they are readily understood by the people I'm with from the context in which they are used.
Language is beautiful and ought to be studied and treasured. Language is also inherently impermanent, and changes over time. Rather than fighting this, we should be going with the natural flow. We should not forget our past either - we should document all the conventions and changes that used to be, because etymology is also a beautiful thing.
