[Ads-l] Meta-AD: who decides (are we all presciptivists)?

Andy Bach afbach at GMAIL.COM
Thu Dec 6 23:11:13 UTC 2018


Decades before the rise of social media, polarisation plagued discussions
about language. By and large, it still does. Everyone who cares about the
topic is officially required to take one of two stances. Either you smugly
preen about the mistakes you find abhorrent – this makes you a so-called
prescriptivist – or you show off your knowledge of language change, and
poke holes in the prescriptivists’ facts – this makes you a descriptivist.
Group membership is mandatory, and the two are mutually exclusive.

https://aeon.co/essays/why-language-might-be-the-optimal-self-regulating-system

-- 

a

Andy Bach,
afbach at gmail.com
608 658-1890 cell
608 261-5738 wk

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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