English language: prescriptivism and deprescriptivism

Question 1

what is prescriptivism

Answer 1

what language SHOULD be like

Question 2

prescriptivism

Answer 2

1. they believe there is a right and wrong answer
2. there is a correct way of speaking

Question 3

what is descriptivism?

Answer 3

what language is ACTUALLY like rather than what it SHOULD be like

Question 4

descriptivism

Answer 4

1. don’t refer to it as right or wrong
2. no correct way
3. instead refer to it as standard or non-standard English

Question 5

What do prescriptivists do?

Answer 5

1. tend to CORRECT people into standard English and RP-forms
2. educate the middle-class, they are right everyone else is wrong

Question 6

who created the U and non-U language?

Answer 6

Alan Ross

Question 7

what is the theory called that Alan Ross created?

Answer 7

The U and non-U language

Question 8

what is the U and non-U language?

Answer 8

U is the ‘posh’
Non-U is the ‘not posh’

Question 9

what did ross suggest?

Answer 9

1. middle class speakers attempted to sound like higher classes
2. number of lexical choices acted as ‘shibboleths’
   3.middle class speakers wrongly hose pretentious or euphemistic words over words they believed the working cl;ass people use

Question 10

examples of U language

Answer 10

napkin
false teeth
what?
ill (in bed)

Question 11

examples of non-U language

Answer 11

serviette
dentures
pardon
sick(in bed)