I've seen it on your blog but what's prescriptivism?
Linguistic prescription or “prescriptivism” is the belief that language should fall along a “prescribed” [pre-written] path. Meaning that forms of words are locked in by their meaning and how they’re used and when you use a word outside of it’s original meaning, it’s illogical, wrong, or in some extreme of the spectrum it translates into “low class”.
The debate is more like… the difference between “who” and “whom”. Prescriptivists believe that those who use “who” incorrectly are tarnishing the language. On the other end, there are people who acknowledge that language is very fluid and changes according to those who shape it.
The Good: Prescriptivism can be useful in establishing a “standard” for languages. Like… dictionaries, and establishing classes for the language all require a “standard” to adhere to.
Prescriptivism is useful for the purposes of language learning… to some extent. The common joke in learning a language is that people who learn a foreign language will end up knowing the grammar better than the native speakers. Why? Because native speakers learn intuitively and just because a textbook says something, when you’re constantly conversing and using slang and regional dialects, it’s near impossible to be “standard” with your language.
When I used to tutor, I used to try to mix slang with the standard of the language if it was applicable. For English it’s a bit murky, since the tenses and moods are easily confused - English speakers don’t have a separate tense for the “imperfect subjunctive” or even the regular “subjunctive”, and tenses like the “conditional” and “future” require the use of “helping words” like “will” or “could” or “would”… but then you run into questions of “If I was the president” versus “If I were the president”.
The Bad: Prescriptivism can be highly restrictive. And it’s not always as useful as it claims to be. “If I were the president” vs. “If I was the president”. As native English speakers we know what the person is trying to say regardless, and just because it’s the standard, doesn’t mean it’s the vernacular - or common speech. Prescriptivism doesn’t really take into account the accents and dialects like “y’all” etc.
In Spanish there are people who leave out the -d in words like acabado making it sound like acabao. There are people who write a word like haz “do (it)” as as which is technically wrong because el as means “the ace”, but that’s how it sounds when someone says it.
The biggest problem that prescriptivism has is that it so quickly can turn elitist and douchey. No. Really. It can.
Have you ever heard someone make fun of someone for saying “axe” instead of “ask”? I have. I grew up in Harlem and the teachers used to hammer it in that saying “axe” was wrong and that it would hurt our chances at getting a job. Did it? Maybe. Probably in that time more so than today. But “axe” is a very urban thing and it’s especially linked to African American populations, so if someone is mockingly using words like “mah drank” or “let me axe you a question” or “I gotta get my hair did” to say that all black people sound like that, that’s where it can get ugly.
More so than that, hardcore prescriptivism does the same thing with people who have accents. That people who are speaking with some kind of accent are incorrect because the words should be said a certain way. It’s that kind of thinking that says that British English is better than Australian or American English etc.
But in everyday life it can be so douchey to be a prescriptivist if you’re too… hardcore about it. The people who get very upset about the use of “literally” are prescriptivist even if they don’t know it. They’re saying “literally refers to this, technically, so using it in any other way is wrong”. And that can be very elitist, like “you’re ignorant because this is not how you use the language”.
My Opinion: I tend to fall somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, if someone is going to learn a foreign language, best to learn it right if they’re doing it for the sake of academics. Translation, reporters, journalism, writing etc. usually fall back on standard usages of words and conjugation. So that is where it’s useful.
But I don’t buy the whole “language needs to be this way” because really, we’re not using words how they were originally meant to be used. We get rid of words or update them. And that’s how language words. We got rid of “thou” and “thee” and “thine” the way most Spanish got rid of “vosotros” except if you want an old-timey mood. And we know that no one speaks in Shakespearean terms anymore.
We also don’t use words how we used to. The word “worry” had to do with the idea of “a wolf biting your throat”. The word “hysterical” is related to a woman’s uterus - saying that “hysterical” behavior is linked to your period and such. We don’t mean that when we say “That’s hysterical!” We don’t mean “inspiring awe” when we say “awesome”, and we don’t mean “inspiring terror” when we say “terrific”.
My general opinion is that language was made by people. Therefore, as people change, it makes sense that language also changes.
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