Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35-1425

Title: New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research
Series Title: Multilingual Matters
Publication Year: 2024

Publisher: Multilingual Matters
http://www.multilingual-matters.com/
Book URL: https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/?K=9781800416147

Editor(s): Nuria Yáñez‐Bouza, María E. Rodríguez‐Gil, Javier Pérez‐Guerra

Reviewer: Carrie A. Ankerstein

GENERAL SUMMARY

“New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research” is a volume of conference proceedings from the 6th Prescriptivism Conference held in Vigo, Spain in September 2021. It is meant as a multi-disciplinary showcase of research in prescriptivism practices from the 18th century to the present, looking at the role of prescriptivism in language usage guides, literary and scripted texts, in non-mainstream English speech communities, and in other languages. Contributions are from established and early career researchers, Emeritus professors and graduate students. The intended audience includes postgraduate students, researchers and other professionals. The volume is available as an ebook: GBP 30.00, EUR 40.00, USD 50.00 and hardback: GBP 119.95, EUR 144.95, USD 159.95.

CHAPTER BY CHAPTER SUMMARY

Editor Nuria Yáñez-Bouza’s Chapter 1 “Prescriptivism in Language, Literary Texts and Speech Communities” sets the scene for the current volume, noting that the new approach to prescriptivism views prescriptivism not as the mere opposite of descriptivism in a simple binary distinction, but as an important part of sociolinguistic study. Yáñez-Bouza argues for incorporating “prescriptivism into the dynamics of the language”, arguing that it should “not be seen as a hindrance to language change […] but rather as a significant aspect of language history” worthy of academic study (p. 2). She cites Curzan’s (2014) influential and nuanced categorization of prescriptive strands: “standardizing”, which seeks to document correct forms, aiming for a conformity of use; “stylistic” which identifies appropriate forms for different registers; “restorative” which seeks to revive earlier forms; and “politically responsive” prescriptivism which seeks to address changes in society, for example the use of gender inclusive language. Yáñez-Bouza notes that this approach has generated a new body of research, noting the conference series on prescriptivism, running since 2003, and subsequent reference volumes on prescriptivism; the current volume being the latest edition.

Yáñez-Bouza argues that this volume aims to represent a variety of angles from which prescriptivism can be studied, with the title “New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research” meant to convey the dynamic nature and current trends and future directions of the field. It is an exploration of prescriptivism in language (Part 1), literary and scripted texts (Part 2), and speech communities (Parts 3 and 4), allowing the exploration of the role of prescriptivism “as a social factor in language variation and change, in written and spoken standards, as a sociocultural phenomenon enregistered in the voices of literary texts and scripts […] and as a symbol of identity in the construction of speech communities” (p. 9). The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the following chapters and closes with the argument that ignoring the role of prescriptivism in modern linguistic study will result in a failure to fully understand how language is used in the real world, thereby overlooking an important aspect of language development.

Part 1: Prescriptivism in Language Norms

In Chapter 2 “’One of the commonest faults of even well-bred people’? Attitudes towards post-vocalic /r/-absence, /h/-dropping and /h/-insertion in 19th-Century English Grammars”, Marco Wiemann investigates phonological variation and the attitudes towards some pronunciation variants in the Collection of Nineteenth Century Grammars (CNG) corpus of 258 grammars published in Britain and North America. Wiemann found that general discussions of /r/ and /h/ were neutral and descriptive, whereas post-vocalic /r/-absence, /h/-dropping and /h/-insertion were discussed negatively in the CNG. Wiemann also notes that the discussion of the pronunciation features in the grammars is taken directly from pronunciation dictionaries and that future research in the perpetuation of prescriptive norms is worthy of exploration.

Carmen Ebner-Mosely’s Chapter 3 “’Your not my type’: Effects of Stigmatised Linguistic Variation in Online Dating” explores the impact of grammatical errors (grammos such as “could of” instead of “could have” or “they’re” instead of “their”, etc.) and mechanical errors (typos such as “abuot” instead of “about” or “ohter” instead of “other”) in an English-speaking dating context, using an indirect attitude elicitation in which participants were shown a stimulus (which was either correct or contained a grammo or typo) and presented with a forced choice: “Pass, next” or “I like. More please!”. Participants were also asked to rank the stimuli on an 11-point scale, rating the writer of the text for variables such as likeability, conscientiousness, intelligence, etc. In addition to providing demographic information, participants were asked to rate their attitudes towards language use, such as whether they get annoyed by incorrect use and whether they are judgmental. Ebner-Mosely confirmed the results of similar studies: both grammos and typos have a negative impact, but the effect was stronger for typos in comparison to grammos. Ebner-Mosely argues that typos are likely to have a stronger impact because they are more salient; grammos in contrast are less salient because they rely on the reader’s language knowledge and experience. Ebner-Mosely argues that the study of prescriptivism is more nuanced than correct-incorrect judgements; context and appropriateness are also important factors.

Anja Wanner & Difei (Lynn) Zhang explore modern views of prescriptive rules in Chapter 4 “Bad Grammar and Metalinguistic Awareness”. They asked 180 American speakers from different age groups and professional backgrounds to complete a grammaticality judgement questionnaire composed of 14 sentences containing a syntactic feature that prescriptive grammars and usage guides typically address. Wanner & Zhang found that their participants were not sensitive to the traditional prescriptive rules commonly cited in introductory linguistics textbooks (i.e., split infinitives, sentence final prepositions and the use of “hopefully”) and instead found that their participants rated uses of subject and object case pronouns (i.e., “and me” in the subject position) more negatively. Wanner & Zhang argue that when prescriptivism is discussed in the linguistics classroom, instructors should use such examples instead of the old standards. They also argue for helping students to become more meta-linguistically aware so that they can better reflect on language use and attitudes towards it.

Part 2: Prescriptivism in Literary and Scripted Texts

In Chapter 5 “Poetry’s for Kings: Prescriptivism and Resistance in English Poetry”, Joan C. Beal investigates attitudes towards non-standard language in poetry from the 16th century to today. Beal notes that in the 16th century, English was just beginning to be used in learned texts but was not yet taught in grammar schools, where Latin still reigned. Poets of the time were advised to use “standard language”, but the concept of “poetic license”, i.e., deviating from the standard, was acknowledged. Beal notes that this was the start of the push and pull between linguistic ideology and the role of poets that was to play out over the centuries. Beal explored William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), John Keats (1975-1821), John Clare (1793-1864), Tony Harrison (1937-present) and the Beat poets. She found that, in the 16th century, poetry was seen as “courtly” and the view was that the language should match. In the 18th century, prescriptivism was dominant and in the 19th century, there were objections to Keats’s use of Cockney rhymes, but Clare’s use of dialectal vocabulary was praised. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the poet was seen as a performer whose voice should be authentic. Beal concludes that this push and pull between prescriptivism and poetic voice is likely to continue.

Jane Hodson, in Chapter 6 “The Significance of Stance in Fictional Representations of Non-Standard Language and Prescriptivism”, argues that stance and the use of metalanguage can aid the analysis of fictional texts; that it can be informative about the attitudes toward non-standard language, inviting readers to align themselves (or not) with those attitudes. Hodson notes that, for the most part, fiction follows prescriptive forms, but that there is also some resistance to prescriptive usage. Hodson presents a close-reading of three novels: “Miriam” (1800), “Domestic Scenes” (1820) and “The Unknown Ajax” (1959), showing that there are two strands in British fiction: one is a dominant prescriptive strand, the other is a dialect-endorsing one. Hodson notes that some texts, such as “The Unknown Ajax”, are ambiguous, allowing readers to take either stance.

In Chapter 7, “Breaking the Who/Whom Rule: The Final Taboo?”, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade explores the use of “who/whom” in popular culture, starting with its coverage in usage guides, including Kingsley Amis’s cheeky “The King’s English”. Tieken-Boon van Ostade used the keyword “whom” in searches in The TV Corpus (around 325 million words; 122 instances of “whom”) and The Movie Corpus (around 200 million words; 72 instances of “whom”), indicating similar degrees of use in both corpora. These instances were categorized in terms of variety of English (North American, Australian/New Zealand, British, etc.) and by type of metalinguistic comment (correction, discussion, explanation, criticism through context, awareness). Tieken-Boon van Ostade also explored the use of “who/whom” in more detail using the British series “Roadkill” and the American series “The Chair”, with the accompanying issues of race, sexism and ageism. She found that “who/whom” is used for characterization in popular culture in the US, whereas in the UK, such criticism of the use of “who/whom” is unappealing to audiences. She also notes the different attitude about “who/whom” in Australia, where the old prescriptive rule is followed. Tieken-Boon van Ostade ends her chapter with a call to create databases for pop culture from different Anglophone backgrounds so that the differences in attitude about linguistic phenomena can be explored more effectively.

In Chapter 8 “Evaluating the Standardising Influence of the Copy Editor: A Qualitative Study”, Linda Pillière turns attention to copy editors, who are thought to be at the forefront of hyper-standardization. Pillière explored what changes copy editors propose and how these relate to the prescriptive practices in usage guides and to what extent authors make the changes. Pillière studied three British, Booker Prize winning authors: Penelope Lively, Jim Crace and Kazuo Ishiguro, analyzing final copy-edited proofs, lists of copy editors’ queries and author responses. Pillière found that copy editors frequently evoked common prescriptive rules (i.e., split infinitives and sentence final prepositions) though not consistently, even for the same editor and text. She found that authors were generally more likely to address grammatical comments in contrast to comments on word choice and concludes with some thoughts on how such changes affect the author’s voice.

Part 3: Prescriptivism in Speech Communities I: Varieties of English

Lucía Loureiro-Porto’s Chapter 9 “’He speak very careful English’: A View on Prescriptivism in Two Outer-Circle Varieties of English” explores prescriptive markers in two outer-circle varieties of English, Indian English and Hong Kong English, using data from the International Corpus of English, also comparing them to inner-circle varieties. Three registers were investigated: private conversation, academic writing and student writing for two markers of linguistic democratization: modals (i.e., ‘have to’, ‘need to’, ‘want to’) and epicene pronouns (i.e., singular ‘they’ and combined ‘he or she’) and non-democratic options (i.e., ‘must’ and generic ‘he’). Loureiro-Porto found that the two outer-circle varieties follow the same democratization trends found in the inner-circle, though this was stronger for Hong Kong English than for Indian English. She also found that the outer-circle varieties generally adhered to prescriptive norms, though there were differences between the two varieties, and student and academic writers.

In Chapter 10 “Indian English Usage in the 21st Century: Enduring Colonial Norms and Emerging Local Standards”, Kranti Doibale, Sachin Labade and Claudia Lange present a pilot study investigating the acceptability judgements for usages in the prescriptive tradition and lexicogrammar features that are distinctive to Indian English (and other South Asian varieties), such as the use of “only” and “itself” as presentational focus markers and verb complement patterns such as “discuss about” and “request for”, etc. Doibale et al. found mixed results, but their respondents (affluent, highly educated speakers) generally did not reject regionally distinctive lexicogrammar features. They argue, quoting Schneider (2007: 49), that a “locally rooted linguistic self-confidence” is emerging.

Magdalena Císlerová explores the decolonization process in a close reading of metalinguistic comments found in two Australian novels, Peter Carey’s “Illywhacker” (1985) and Hsu-Ming Teo’s “Behind the Moon” (2005), in Chapter 11 “'Cahstle, (…) not Kehstle': Reflections of Prescriptivism in Australian Literature”. Císlerová found that prescriptive norms, a preference for Standard British forms over Australian, are entrenched in Carey’s 1985 novel, but this is not so for Teo’s 2005 novel. Císlerová concludes that “language and identity in Australia are inextricably linked, and that cultural insecurities sowed by colonialism are reflected in attitudes to AusE [Australian English] over a century after Australia became independent” (p. 231).

Part 4: Prescriptivism in Speech Communities II: Beyond English Speaking Communities

Heimir F. Viðarsson explores the uptake of prescribed morphosyntactic and lexical features in 700 student essays (including teachers’ corrections) in Icelandic in Chapter 12 “Towards Modelling Past and Present Effects of Prescriptivism: Icelandic 19th- and 21st-Century Student Essays”. The motivation for this study is whether prescriptive changes to a language can be successfully enacted by institutions, in this case, schools. Viðarsson explored linguistic features that had been counteracted as part of the prescriptive tradition, including the use of the generic pronouns “maður” (one) and “þú” (you), the free definite marker hinn/sá” (the), superfluous “að” (that), and verb-adverb/adverb-verb placement. Viðarsson found a trend for decreasing adherence to prescriptive norms over the 19th and 21st centuries and found interaction effects of gender, region and age of the speaker and the uptake of the linguistic feature.

In Chapter 13 “Prescriptivism and Variation: The Greek Word for 'Coronavirus'”, Spiros A. Moschonas, Costas Mourlas and Thodoris Paraskevas explore the real-time use of the variants “κορονοϊός”, “κορωνοϊός”, “κορονaϊός”, and “κορωνaϊός” and the usage guides published by various news outlets over three phases spanning from May 2013 to June 2020. The four variants under investigation differ according to orthography in the first constituent (<o>/<ω>) and morphology (the linking vowel -a-/-o-), which also affects pronunciation. Moschonas, et al. started with the research question of whether usage followed prescriptivism or whether prescriptivism was responding to usage, but found that the interaction between prescriptivism and usage was more complex. Moschonas, et al. conducted their corpus study with two types of data: a metalinguistic corpus (74 texts prescribing the correct variant) and a linguistic corpus (authentic usage of the variants in news articles, tweets and radio). In Phase 1 (May 2013 to May 2014), they found variation without overt prescription, with the -a- variants and <ω> variants most dominant. In Phase 2 (December 2019 – April 2020), when most of the metalinguistic texts were being produced, Moschonas et al. found that the preferred spelling was still <ω> but the variants with -o- were now dominant. In Phase 3 (May 2020 – June 2020), after the establishment of metalinguistic texts, “κορονοϊός” was the dominant variant. Moschonas, et al. argue that “[a]lthough prescriptivism aims at eliminating variation, it could also […] introduce or foster some variation, albeit in a highly compartmentalized manner” (p. 290); with compartmentalization found in different cases and domains.

In Chapter 14 “Suppressed No More: Prescriptivism and the Evaluation of Optional Variability”, Machteld de Vos and Marten van der Meulen explore the assumption that standardization is the suppression of optional variation using normative works on Standard Dutch. Their aim was to provide an overview of how optional variation is approached in prescriptivism using normative works from 1550-1650 (n=10), marking the onset of Standard Dutch and 1917-2016 (n=131), a period of maintenance of Standard Dutch. Instead of using the three stances towards variation used in other research (non-acceptance, acceptance and a category in between), de Vos and van der Meulen propose six categories: suppression, reallocation, conditional suppression, awareness, acceptance and advocacy. Thus they argue that standardization is not necessarily intolerant of variation and thereby question the idea that prescriptive and descriptive approaches are dichotomous.

EVALUATION

The volume is clearly aimed at a postgraduate, research/professional audience and most readers will likely be in the field of prescriptive research, but Wanner & Zhang’s Chapter 4 “Bad Grammar and Metalinguistic Awareness” in particular has broader relevance and is clearly useful for linguistics instructors in its challenge of attitudes towards prescriptivism in the linguistic classroom. They, as others in the volume (see for example de Vos and van der Meulen’s Chapter 14), challenge the commonly evoked prescriptive-descriptive dichotomy and accompanying dismissal of prescriptivism by many linguists and instructors of linguistics. The point is well made and supported by their data and this linguist and instructor, your current reviewer, has changed and enriched her teaching materials accordingly.

That is the strength of this volume as a whole: it presents the range (of foci and methodologies) and relevance of research into prescriptivism showing that a serious acknowledgement of prescriptivism is necessary to fully understand linguistics and the study of language. This is why I asked to review this volume – I had strong feelings towards prescriptivism but I knew that I lacked an evidence-based foundation for my views. As Yáñez-Bouza says in Chapter 1, if the role of prescriptivism is neglected, we will fail to explore how language is used in the real world and we will miss out on a vital part of how languages develop.

All chapters are stand-alone (though there is an index pp. 319-326), which is a strength considering that cover-to-cover readers are unlikely, but for that reason cross-references to related in-volume chapters would have been beneficial. These, with the exception of cross-references in Chapter 11 to Chapters 5 and 6, are lacking. For example, in Chapter 7 Tieken-Boon van Ostade mentions non-standard language in popular culture, including fictional texts, for the use of characterization, a reference to Hodson’s Chapter 6 (and vice-versa) would have been a nice tie-in and would alert readers to another potentially helpful paper. In another example, Pillière found that copy editors frequently follow traditional prescriptive rules surrounding split infinitives and sentence-final prepositions, which is in contrast to Wanner & Zhang’s finding that modern (American) audiences are less sensitive to these specific rules; here again cross-references would have linked these different (conflicting?) points of view.

It is clearly stated that “New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research” came out of the 6th Prescriptivism Conference and the chapters read as such, i.e., as proceedings from the conference, in that they generally present pilot or preliminary studies limited in scope and data, see for example Wanner & Zhang’s report of “preliminary insights” (Chapter 4, p. 78) and their acknowledgement of incomplete survey data (not all participants provided background info, p. 79, complicating the analysis); Tieken-Boon van Ostade’s acknowledgement of practical limitations concerning corpus data (Chapter 7, p. 133); Pillière’s small-scale study and “tentative” findings (Chapter 8, p. 154); Doibale et al. present a “pilot study” (p. 186) in Chapter 10; and so on. This is not necessarily a weakness, however, and some readers, particularly current postgraduate students in the field, may find these chapters to be fruitful starting points for their own research;, indeed several chapters end with ideas for future study.
In summary, I can recommend this volume as a broad selection of current research in the field that successfully challenges the view of prescriptivism that many linguists might hold – assuming that they, like I was before, are dismissive of prescriptivism, unaware of its nuance, depth and relevance. The range covered here is also likely to be useful to current postgraduate students and new active researchers in the field as inspiration for their own research.

REFERENCES

Curzan, A. 2014. Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History. Cambridge University Press.

Schneider, E.W. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge University Press.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Carrie Ankerstein, PhD, is a senior lecturer in English Linguistics at Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany, where she teaches general linguistics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, and academic writing. Her research interests include second language acquisition and explicit and implicit processes in L1 and L2 language processing.