Re: Finegan on Ubiquitous prescriptivism

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 9/10/04 11:25:52 AM, Finegan at USC.EDU writes:


> 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.
>

I would take this one step further and say that the PATRONIZING attitude of
linguists towards prescriptivist judgments is in itself unscientific. After
all, if our goal is to describe the language as people use it, we are bound also
to describe, as dispassionately as we can, the attitudes that are prevalent
towards language. At the same time, when we see prescriptivist judgments used as
a rhetorical device to squash people, we have the obligation to speak up.