Prescriptivism & Political Philosophy

[Dave Wilton]

In the recent discussion of The Vocabula Review, several contributors
mentioned a relationship between liberal/conservative political ideology and
prescriptivism, but no one provided any details of why there might be such a
relationship. For my part, I can't think of any strong arguments either way
and I can identify prescriptivists who come from a range of political
ideologies. I would be interested in knowing what the outlines of such an
argument might be, in particular why a liberal might consider language and
its use more important than a conservative would.

The reason I ask is not because of prescriptivism per se, but because I've
been doing some work on linguistic folklore and have identified several
false etymologies and language tall tales that have a distinctly liberal
political bent. These include (but are not limited to):
1) the false etymologies for "picnic" and "Indian/In Dios";
2) the "they speak Latin in Latin America" quote falsely attributed to Dan
Quayle;
3) the belief that the term and concept of "politically correct" were coined
by the right in order to make fun of the left.

I cannot, however, find corresponding tales that reflect a conservative
bent. I can think of three reasons for this:
1) Living in Berkeley, I just haven't heard the conservative tales;
2) It's a small sample and the skew to the left is normal statistical
variation, i.e., coincidence;
3) There is a real tendency for those on the left to invent/promulgate
stories about language usage.

My intent is not to start a political discussion or to further the debate on
the merits, or lack thereof, of prescriptivism. I'm just curious about a
potential relationship between an individual's political philosophy and
their concern about language. My email is dave at wilton.net for those who
don't want to respond to the list.

--Dave Wilton
  dave at wilton.net