Prescriptive and Descriptive Linguistics Flashcards
Prescriptive linguistics
how to speak or write properly
Descriptive linguistics
describe how people actually do speak and write, without making value judgments or trying to establish normative rules
“Correctness”
- Established criteria of educated written language
- full sentences, third person singular, no double negatives - Issues on which educated people differ (and which may be different in written and spoken forms, or in different registers of writing and speech)
- Who vs whom - Changes in the spoken language that some people resist
- Me and him v him and I - Pure inventions of self-appointed grammarians with little or no basis in actual usage
- dangling prepositions
Range of attitudes about “correctness” among the world’s languages
unconstrained vernacular evolution vs. maximal standardization and codification
- Pidgins and creoles (Haitian, Jamaican)
- Unwritten languages – or languages where writing is hardly ever used – whose form is set by spoken interaction only (Tanzanian Chagga)
- Written languages with no academies – for instance (English)
- Languages with academies (French, Spanish)
- Languages codified to preserve an archaic form, for instance (Latin)
First linguist
Panini (Indian grammarian 6th century) - preservation of Sumerian as religious language with 4000 rules
Goals of early grammarians
- codify the principles of languages, so as to show the system beneath “the apparent chaos of usage”
- settle disputes over usage
- “improve” the language by pointing out common errors
What was the Prescriptive agenda was for?
Arbitrary features of language are used to block social advancement, social gatekeeping
- Ephraim v Gilead (Shibboleth)
- Haitians saying Spanish ‘r’ for parsely
Communication disorders
When there is genuine language disorder, linguists will aid in diagnosing and treating a problem
Language change is not corruption
It happens, and heavy resistance leads to a split and forms two separate languages, wide range of regional and social varieties, and a more-or-less international formal standard, imposed by consensus and changing gradually over time.
Pedant-puncturing
Putting importance on the “wrongness” of singular their when in reality it is a totally acceptable use of language
Quantifiers
“every”, “many”, etc. Difficult to ascribe an actual quantity to
Malapropisms and eggcorns
“muscle” meaning little mouse in Latin