Ubiquitous prescriptivism

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

I very much agree with Ed Finegan's observations on the hypocricy in the prescription vs. description mantra that is (or has been) so often repeated in introductory textbooks and courses. He makes his case strongly in his contribution to the Cambridge History of the English Language, vol 6.

Still, while the terms "prescriptive" and "descriptive" are misleading, let's not forget that there are profound differences between the linguistic worldviews at play. Consider for example this excerpt from The Vocabula Review's "Ask Fiske" section about the usage "a whole nother":

"Among educated speakers, a whole nother thing is sometimes used jocularly — though the humor of this phrase and others like it escapes me entirely. Perhaps a clever person thought of this arrangement as an example of tmesis, a rhetorical figure in which one word is made into two (another > a nother) or a word or phrase is added between parts of a compound word or between syllables of a word (a whole nother)...Among uneducated speakers, a whole nother thing, however, is just another example of dull-witted, ungrammatical English. Stupidity and mimicry explain its use. "

This comment, which I think is fairly typical of "prescriptivist" approaches to language, can be distinguished from how a linguist might respond in at least two major ways: 1. an ignorance about how language works, specifically about linguistic change - a linguist would probably not suggest that a usage such as this could result from the conscious effort of "a clever person", and 2. a real lack of curiosity about how language works or why speakers do what they do - a linguist (or anyone really interested in understanding language) would not dismiss a linguistic phenomenon as a product of "stupidity and mimicry". Thus, while the claims that linguists are driven purely by scientific objectivity are often overblown, it is important to remember that we still are a long way from the kind of anti-intellectualism displayed by commentators like Fiske.

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Ed Finegan
Sent: Fri 9/10/2004 10:14 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Ubiquitous prescriptivism

Don't know who among participants in the 'egregious' discussion were
kidding, who were serious.

It strikes me, though, that we display an 'unevenhandedness' wrt
description and prescription. Dialectology and linguistics more
generally claim a vigorous descriptivism, but when it comes to people's
linguistic judgments we proscribe only some kinds and historically have
been condemnatory. Our textbooks and popular treatments poke fun at
folks who prescribe, in large part, I think, because we see THEIR
prescriptive views as linguistically arbitrary and frequently disdainful
and discriminatory. But here, too, we're inconsistent because when WE
deem particular usages discriminatory, we vigorously prescribe some
usages and proscribe others. I say that's good, but let's put our
politics on the table and not misleadingly invoke science, when religion
  might be closer to the truth.

I'm reminded of current war talk with god invoked on both sides.

Ed Finegan