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linguistics.ucl.ac.uk>Before we all agree that linguistics has to be prescriptive, let's be sure we don't miss two important points about the traditional rejection of prescriptivism: 1. Our job is to describe the facts `out there', and not to try to *change* them; e.g. if people use reflexives in funny places, or split infinitives, we note it as part of our data alongside all the other data. Writing descriptive grammars and dictionaries for non-native learners isn't prescriptive; we're just telling them what natives do. 2. We still believe (don't we?) that all varieties are linguistically equal. The difficulty of persuading students to the contrary isn't evidence against this view, but evidence for the need to persuade them. It's true that socially prescribed rules or conventions are at the heart of language, so we linguists have to deal with prescription all the time; but that's surely not what anyone has ever meant by `prescriptive' linguistics, is it? I.e. I disagree with Robert Knippen when he says: Rules have to come from somewhere, right? That's what "presceiptivists" are for. Rules come from the community of native speakers, and linguists are in principle outsiders observing those rules. An interesting case arises, of course, when linguists themselves constitute the community of native speakers, namely in the terminology of linguistics. At that point we become the experts, and we have the right to decide what the rules are - e.g. what exactly we mean by "prescriptive"! =========================================================================== Prot Richard Hudson Tel: +44 171 387 7050 ext 3152 E-mail: r.hudsonMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
HUM.HUJI.AC.IL>I would like to agree with Alexis Manaster Ramer's comments on prescriptivism and second language teaching. He writes: >[C]an we agree >that the case of second language teaching is not really >the crucial one, since here one could easily argue that >all we are doing is telling the learner what native >speakers do, i.e., really being descriptive. UNLESS of >course we tell learners to say things which are not in fact >said by native speakers (or to avoid those which are) in >the name of some prescriptive idea. I think this happens >in second language teaching quite a bit, but then it is >clear that THAT is NOT what the various colleagues who >have written on this point had in mind, isn't it? In my experience, second-language teaching is prescriptive precisely in this negative way. I remember when I was in high school being told that I spoke Spanish better than a native. With the hindsight of being a linguist, I now understand that that meant that I was speaking some artificial prescriptive form of the language (which, of course, is what I had been taught) rather than some "real" form of the language. When I learned Hebrew in college, our teacher explicitly taught us not to use certain syntactic constructions which Israelis use all the time, as well as certain pronunciations. In fact, he told us that if we couldn't master the prescriptive alveolar-trill /r/, we were better off using the English retroflex /r/ rather than the velar or uvular /r/ that most Israelis use. So I agree that the question of prescriptivism in second-language teaching is a crucial one, and that there is plenty of true (i.e. bad) prescriptivism out there. I would also like to confirm the gist of a comment by Lynne Hewitt, who wrote that >trying to get native speakers of Hindi to tell you what >they really say colloquially has been in my experience nearly impossible. >They see their language through a prescriptivist filter even more obscuring >than that practiced in typical pedagogy of U.S. English. The same is true of Hebrew speakers. Here in Israel people are brainwashed into thinking that what they speak is not really Hebrew. The natonal television channel runs a short called "The Time for Language" in which prescriptivist nonsense is spewed about how people ought to talk on the basis of Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew. I have led discussion groups in an introductory course in which the distinction between prescriptivism and descriptivism is covered. The students had no problems with the English examples (preposition stranding, etc.), but one I got to Hebrew examples the universal response to constructions that they all used was "but that's wrong". I think it is difficult for people living in America, where the influence of prescriptivism is relatively weak, to appreciate the kind of paranoia about language that heavy-handed prescriptivism can cause. Live long and prosper, Yehuda N. Falk Department of English The Hebrew University of JerusalemMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
ist.flinders.edu.au>I have been monitoring the discussion for sometime, unsure which side to jump in on, because I tend to take a presciptivist or antiprescriptivist as it suits me (namely whether I am on the attack or the defensive, assisting a foreign student or defending my own mother tongue). I have at times been called a stirrer, but I see an inconsistency between the current political incorrectness of prescriptivism, and the current prescriptive notions of political correctness. My government, my university and many vocal pressure groups want to force me to speak a different language from the one I learnt from my mother. I however speak a well established dialect of English and decline to learn a foreign man-or-woman-made language in order to conform to other people's notions of political correctness. This is a rather dangerous course as these prescriptions have been enshrined in legislation and regulations, and do threaten sanctions. In other words, I am being discriminated against for my language, because in my language "he" and "chairman" and "the handicapped" and "the disabled" are perfectly good forms which have been arbitrarily outlawed in favour of abominations like "he or she", "chairperson", "people with a disability" because some people like to deliberately misconstrue my choices as denigrating (actually that is probably etymologically unsafe, but I decline to excise it from my lexicon either). When I intend to be insulting, rest assured I am quite capable of making that intent clear. When I am speaking neutrally and rationally in my mother tongue, it is not helpful to deliberately twist my words according to someone else's idealistic (and to my mind incorrect) notions of language. I am more than happy to defend the cause of the widows and orphans and other disadvantaged groups. But I am not willing to learn some ill-conceived artificial language dreamt up by some committee or faction. dP P.S. On Nov 3 our university is hosting, for the year of equal opportunity, a debate starring politicians, lobbyists, media figures, etc. addressing the topic 'that political correctness inhibits freedom of speech'. - powersMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
CS.Wayne.EDU>Re Karl Teeter's comment, I certainly have never claimed that prescriptivism OR anti-prescriptivism are recent ideas. In fact, I think I pointed out that "traditional" grammarians debated the issue of prescription vs. description at various times. There is, however, a kind of anti-prescriptivism, associated with "modern linguistics" which is probably historically unique and which consists in a very thorough point-by-point refutation of every prescriptivist theory. This is the stance which I was taught when I learned linguistics and which i think is widely held in linguistics, which is how the whole discussion here started. I thus found it a bit surprising that so far we have heard almost nothing but defense of prescriptivism in one form or another. Re Vicki Fromkin's comment, I don't think those of us who have raised the issue here are completely confused. You say that linguists have nothing against dictionaries but should be opposed to "pundits" who a.o.t. decry usages like "hopefully", yet the sad truth is that dictionaries (which as I pointed out earlier typically have linguists working for them) routinely get involved in the "hopefully" and frequently rely on "usage panels" in such cases. Although they are not as black-and-white as the "pundits", the result is often the same. In any case, excpt for the OED, the very question asked is not, How often is the form used and by whom, but merely do certain "experts" consider it correct, which is the essence of prescriptivism. It thus seems to me that there is a basic contradiction between what we teach our students and what leading members of the profession actually practice. Moreover, as to the merits of the case, I myself accept the strictures of, say, Jespersen or Hall, against the traditional prescriptive grammarians and indeed,as I said before, I regard such prescriptive theories as I know of to be nothing better than drivel. On the other hand, the descriptivist theory that there is nothing more to language than simply what native speakers say and that the notions of correctness, better and worse usage, etc., are mere inventions of "traditional" grammaians and lexicographers seems almost equally naive. It seems to me, as it apparently did to Bloomfield, that there has to be a third alternative. Alexis MRMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue