#prescriptivism

[skulkofroses]

System roles are like a lot of labels, they're useful as self-descriptors to help both yourself and others better understand you but, when applied as rigid, prescriptive boxes that all must fit neatly into, they become unhelpful at best and often harmful and restrictive.

[prokopetz]

I'm not saying this would necessarily be a positive outcome, but it would certainly be a very funny outcome if centuries of strident prescriptivism end up going down the toilet because it turns out that the academic register is so easy for generative language models to mimic that the false-positive problem proves irresolvable.

[cuttledragon]

I think we need to disambiguate "we." Here is my suggestion:

* We - The speaker and the listener

* Wu - The speaker, the listener, and someone else

* Wo - The speaker and someone else, but not the listener

* Wa - The speaker and Waluigi

[love-ardour-anarchism]

Look, I fundamentally do not care about how exactly butch and femme as labels were used "back in the day" and I fundamentally do not give a fuck whatever the newest prescriptivist take that this fresh hell of a webscape has birthed is

"Has butch been used by men? Are men allowed to use the term "butch"?" Motherfucker, I don't care. Butch originally just meant "masculine" and was used for straight dudes. Any queer usage by men or people of any other genders came later. I don't really care when exactly it started being used in a queer sense and I don't care where you draw your arbitrary lines in the sand as to who is allowed to be butch.

Prescriptivism is a blight upon this world rivaled only by all the other fucking brainrot that exclusionists and radfems come up with on a daily basis. Men use "butch" as a label. They identity with it. Trans men, gay men, queer men, bi men, demi-men, intersex men, nonbinary men. Women use "butch" as a label. They identify with it. Trans women, lesbian women, queer women, bi women, demi-women, intersex women, nonbinary women. Nonbinary people use "butch" as a label. They identify with it. Butch is a noun. It can be a whole identity, butch is love and butch is life and butch is our community. And butch is solidarity as well.

Who do you think you are to tell others they are wrong for it? Some of you will say "be gay do crimes" and then turn around and become the volunteer hall monitor "who gets to use this word, queer police" 🤓🤓🤓 you look like this, you're silly, find something better to do like actually protecting our community from fascist agitators who LOVE the shit you're dedicated to right now cause when it all comes down to it: it is divide and conquer all the same.

[glitter-and-be-gay]

my toxic prescriptivist trait is that every time I see someone use “less” instead of “fewer”, my brain screams about it in big, bold letters. but I’m very brave and don’t actually say anything to the person so I think everyone should be very nice to me actually

[charlesoberonn]

Listen, I'm mostly descriptivist when it comes to the definition of words, but there are cases where I'm strictly prescriptivist and oppose a new definition for a word on "this would make language worse" grounds.

One of them is the word "literally" being used to mean 'figuratively'.

Another is one that I heard recently about how the definition of "tariff" is changing from a kind of import tax placed on the importer by the importer's own government, because of the way Trump is using the word wrongly.

Don't let Trump literally change reality by making his blatant lies retroactively true.

[captainfairygodmother]

Can people please stop making fun of stutters and seeing people who have stutters as 'uneducated'/'uninformed'?!

So I just saw a TikTok of an interview with Andy Burnham, who stutters from time to time, as well as pauses between words a lot when speaking. I wouldn't even say his stutter is particularly bad in comparison to how a lot of people stutter, and it definitely does not make him incoherent.

A commenter, when asked why they dislike him so much, said it's because "He doesn't have a clue what he's saying, he can't string together a sentence without stopping or stuttering".

STUTTERS ≠ NOT BEING INTELLIGENT

...and nor should people with a stutter be seen as 'poor public speakers'.

As someone who has quite a stutter in most conversations (I don't experience it to the extent where it's every sentence, or at least as far as I'm aware, but it's still a very present part of my speech), the way I speak is not a reflection of my intelligence. In fact, I study English Literature and English Language. I got 9s in both at GCSE, and am on track for/currently achieving A*s at A Level in both. It is a similar situation for every other subject I have studied, yet I have a stutter that impacts every conversation I have, sometimes to the point where it prevents me from being able to say a word at all (despite being good at pronouncing complicated words across multiple languages).

Better yet, I am also a confident public speaker who has participated in various competitions, as well as stood in front of a crowd of ~60 judgemental teenagers to do a lecture at my old highschool. Did I stutter during these moments? Yes, to an extent. But did that make my topics any less researched, well-structured, or beneficial?

Absolutely not. It was the same content as it would be if I didn't have a stutter, just including an extra few repeated letters or words here and there.

I'm not saying you have to see Burnham as some kind of political saviour for Labour and the government, nor am I saying that you have to agree with his policies.

What I'm saying is that you should NEVER hate or disapprove of someone based on the way they speak, as it is something that for some of us cannot be easily changed, nor should it be, when it is something that does not massively impact on life.

So stop making fun of stutters.

[geekysteven]